More Missing Trillions!!??

Some time back I realized that the 2+ trillion I thought was missing from the Pentagon was a misunderstanding on my part of how these things work.

Perhaps I was looking in the wrong place...

Christian Scientist Monitor:

The mystery of the missing $2.9 trillion

Economists scour the US to find out why we're more in debt than the Department of Commerce says we are.

By David R. Francis | columnist

from the October 29, 2007 edition

Like most people, economists love a mystery – especially if it involves not a missing person but a missing $2.9 trillion in United States debt.

That's $2.9 with 11 zeros after it.

Some words of explanation: Every quarter the Department of Commerce comes up with the US "International Investment Position." At the end of 2006, for instance, the US had a net negative position – by this measurement of international assets and liabilities – of $2.6 trillion. In other words, the country is by far the world's biggest debtor nation.

A quarter century ago, the US was the world's largest creditor nation.

The economists at Commerce count American-owned private assets in foreign nations (plants, equipment, retail outfits, property, corporate stocks and bonds, etc.), US official international reserves (gold, special drawing rights, foreign currencies), and other US assets abroad. The measurements get complicated. Then these economists count what foreigners own of American assets, looking at the same list of assets.

Subtracting the value of American international assets from what foreigners own of American assets, they come up with how much Americans are in debt to other nations and their peoples.

But if you look at the current account of the US balance of payments, which measures primarily the balance of trade, and also flows of interest and dividends, foreign aid, and other international transfers, the US should be far deeper in hock – $2.9 trillion more over the years from 1990 through 2006 than the official $2.6 trillion. Every month, the Commerce Department has reported huge deficits in trade and the broader current account. These deficits have to be financed somehow by foreigners, and so the US should be piling up its international debts in grand style.

[. . .]

There's more to the mystery than that, however. One advantage for the US is that the dollar is the primary currency used in international reserves of other nations and for invoicing international trade and investment, such as for oil and other commodities.

So when the dollar loses value, foreign holders of dollar assets lose on their dollar investments. Almost all US foreign liabilities are in dollars and about 70 percent of US foreign assets are in foreign currencies.In what Gourinchas calls an "eye-catching, back-of-the-envelope calculation," a 10 percent depreciation of the dollar represents a transfer of 5.3 percent of US GDP from the rest of the world to the US. America's GDP is currently $13.7 trillion, and the dollar is down 20.6 percent since 2002. So foreigners have – in effect – given the US about $1.3 trillion.

It's not really that simple, emphasizes Gourinchas. Nonetheless, the US has had a free lunch.

Jonathan Schwarz explains how to differentiate good guys from bad guys

This is the end of a post in which Schwarz is explaining a previous post about extremely inflammatory things Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt has said and the total lack of concern about it.

A Tiny Revolution:

WHAT I LEFT OUT: The dividing line between what foreign leaders are acceptable isn't, as I implied, just whether Democrats or Republicans are meeting with them. The dividing line is also (perhaps mostly) whether they've knuckled under to US foreign policy. Anyone who has is acceptable, and Democrats are generally safe cozying up to them. Anyone who hasn't is radioactive, and if Republicans meet with them, they may well be attacked from the right, with Democrats joining in.

To understand this phenomenon, look again at Arafat. He was a vile terror-monger up until 1993, and any American politician who met him was a terrorist-lover. This had nothing to do with Arafat making any statement like Jumblatt has--it was purely because he wasn't doing exactly what we told him to do.

Then, when we finally broke him and he agreed to be the US-Israeli subcontractor under the Oslo accords, he received the seal of approval. Clinton could hug and kiss him as much as he liked. (Later, after Arafat surprised us with unexpected backbone in 2000, he went back to being a vile terror-monger.)

The process worked in reverse with Saddam Hussein. It was perfectly fine for a bipartisan group of senators to meet with him in spring, 1990 at the height of his criminality. They all happily smooched his ass, with Alan Simpson commiserating with him about the "haughty, pampered press." (This was shortly after Saddam had had a British journalist executed.)

Then when Saddam disobeyed orders and invaded Kuwait, he was suddenly transformed into the Butcher of Baghdad. No one, Democrat or Republican, could possibly have met with him after that without the standard explosion of insanity.

Or take the two Mahmouds, Abbas and Ahmadinejad. They've both engaged in exactly the same kind of holocaust denial, with Abbas writing, "Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions—fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand."

But it's perfectly fine for Abbas to have said it, and fine for George Bush or Hillary Clinton to hang out with him, because Abbas follows orders. If he stopped following orders, that holocaust quote would be repeated every time he's mentioned in the US media, and Hillary couldn't meet with him anymore. Conversely, if Ahmadinejad would just start following orders, he could deny the holocaust all he wants, and Hillary could make out with him on national TV. No problem.

This is so glaringly obvious you'd think it might occasionally appear in a US newspaper, perhaps as often as once a decade. But it doesn't. As Noam Chomsky likes to say, you've got to admire the discipline.

Posted by Jonathan Schwarz at 03:03 PM

Cindy ponders where to go from here

October 27, 2007, San Francisco march of about 30,000 protesters

Oct 28, 2007 10:27 AM
Subject:	The Morning After by Cindy Sheehan
	As I sit sipping my morning cup of coffee and reflect on the anti-war protests sponsored by the Oct27 coalition (where I saw some good collaboration between UFPJ and ANSWER---at least in San Francisco ---yea!), I have a few thoughts. Yesterday, tens of thousands of activists from around Northern California, Northern Nevada and some from Southern Oregon attended the rally in my new hometown, San Francisco . Despite weather in the Eastern part of the country, I hear that the rallies all over the rest of the country were extremely well attended and the energy was high. The throngs of humanity in San Francisco stretched out between the Civic Center to Dolores Park in a line that was over two miles long and it took over an hour for the last marcher to reach the endpoint. However, what does this all mean? We have marched. We have done sit-ins in Congress Reps offices all over the country. We have written letters, emails and sent faxes. Some of us have camped in ditches in Central Texas for weeks at a time. CODEPINK is doing a marvelous job of keeping the pressure on in DC. We have had countless numbers of rallies, teach-ins and candlelight vigils, but the occupation is continuing and people are still dying and are forced from their homes by the ongoing and unremitting violence. In November of 2006, the peace movement scored a major coup but we later discovered that the Democrats had only used our vibrant, angry and deeply committed movement to regain both Houses of Congress. Some of us erroneously thought that we could relax a little and allow the 110th Congress to take some of the slack from us hard-working activists to end the war and hold BushCo accountable. After all, that’s what we pay them for, isn’t it? I, and my organization, was roundly criticized by many people for going to Congress in January to demand that the Dems do the job we elected them to do. “Give them a chance.” “Shut the f**k up.” These and harsher epithets were hurled at us. I understand, because we wanted to relax, too. In November, we were as shocked as everyone else was, though, when Nancy and Harry (Bush Enablers Number One and Two) took impeachment “off the table.” We knew there would be no rest for the weary with this Congress, and, unfortunately, I think we have been vindicated…very regrettably for democracy around the world. Where do we go from here? George has asked Congress for 45 billion (to add to the 200 billion Congress already handed him) more Chinese lent dollars for 2008 to sustain his bloody occupations and Congress will unconditionally yield to his request because they are puppets of the Supreme Puppet. Coincidentally, this will keep the bloody mess going until the ’08 elections where the Dems can point their blood-stained fingers at the Repugs not even realizing that we are not buying that load of crap anymore. Both parties are culpable; both parties are supporting war crimes; both parties must be held accountable. We need to run Peace Candidates against the Bush Enablers and we need to support the Peace Candidates we already have like Dennis Kucinich that are floundering on the decks of the USS Main Stream Media. The peace movement must also be held accountable. We wrangle for a limited amount of funds and guard our “listservs” jealously and fiercely. It is way past time that the peace movement share resources, gifts and talents to force the established elite in DC to do our will. We are the moral majority in this country; we are in the right; we need to work together to funnel and focus our energies. So many times we are on parallel paths going the same direction but rarely walking together towards our common goals. We can be sure that the Corporatocracy is walking lock-step toward their goal of US global hegemony which is neither peaceful nor benevolent. In March of ’08 we will be mourning the 5th anniversary of a “war” that was going to take six months (Donald Rumsfeld), 50 billion dollars (Paul Wolfowitz) and zero American lives (George Bush). Obviously, this is unacceptable. The Camp Casey Peace Institute is calling for a Peace Summit in San Francisco on the weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday to bring the leaders of the movement together so we can find ways to support each other to our common goals of peace, sustainability and accountability and to plan for relevant and effective actions all around the 5th anniversary. With US aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf and Turkish forces poised on the border of Kurdistan , if there ever was a time to put differences aside and celebrate similarities, as BushCo in tandem with Congress, Inc has brought our world to the brink of World War III, it is now. Cindy@CindyforCongress.org

Is it April yet?

Telegraph.co.uk:

Aliens caused Sicily fires, say officials

By Nick Pisa in Rome

Last Updated: 7:31pm BST 26/10/2007

Aliens were responsible for a series of unexplained fires in fridges, TV’s and mobile phones in an Italian village, according to an Italian government report.

Canneto di Caronia, in northern Sicily, drew attention three years ago after residents reported everyday household objects bursting into flames.

TV news footage at the time showed electrical appliances as well as cookers, a pile of wedding presents and furniture smouldering.

Dozens of experts including scientists, electrical engineers and military boffins, arrived in the village 60 miles east of Palermo to investigate the phenomenon.

Arson was quickly ruled out and at one stage an amazed scientist was interviewed after he described how he saw an unplugged electrical cable burst into flames.

Locals were quick to blame supernatural forces and at the time the Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth backed up their fears and said: "I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods. Let’s not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers."

Now in an interim leaked report published by several Italian newspapers it has emerged that the Civil Protection Department has concluded the most likely cause was "aliens".

The report was ordered by the Italian government and brought together dozens of experts including a NASA scientist. Their two year investigation has cost an estimated £1 million.

According to the report the fires were "caused by a high power electro magnetic emissions which were not man made and reached a power of between 12 and 15 gigawatts."

The report also detailed a possible UFO landing close to the village, citing "burnt imprints which have not been explained were found in a field."

Francesco Mantegna Venerando, Sicily’s Civil Protection chief who coordinated the report, said: "This is not the final report. We are still working on our conclusions and this has been leaked.

"We are not saying that little green men from Mars started the fires but that unnatural forces capable of creating a large amount of electromagnetic energy were responsible.

"This is just one possibility we are also looking at another one which involves the testing of top secret weapons by an unknown power which are also capable of producing an enormous amount of energy."

Doom, Gloom, and lots and lots of CO2

from the October 11, 2007 edition of the Christian Science Monitor:

A key threshold crossed

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to be released next month will show that the limit on greenhouse-gases scientists hoped to avert has already been surpassed.

By Gregory M. Lamb

In Ray Bradbury's science fiction novel "Fahrenheit 451," that number represented the temperature at which books would burn, a symbol of a disturbing future under a totalitarian government.

For climate scientists, a similar number, 450 parts per million (ppm), holds its own ominous meaning. It represents a dangerous concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; a total that they were not expecting to be passed for at least another decade.

But a new UN-sponsored report, to be released next month, will show that as of 2005 the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had already reached 455 ppm, according to Tim Flannery, a prominent Australian climate scientist who says he's seen the raw data that go into the document.

In an interview on Australian television this week, Dr. Flannery said that an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will show that carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide, methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and other greenhouse gasses are at much higher concentrations than previously thought. Reuters quotes him:

"We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade.... We thought we had that much time. But the new data indicates that in about mid-2005 we crossed that threshold.... What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that could potentially cause dangerous climate change."

About 75 percent of the total ppm represents carbon dioxide, associated with burning fossil fuels. The rest is a combination of the other gasses, he said.

On the Sierra Club website, blogger Pat Joseph explains the meaning of 450 ppm:

"450 ppm has long been held up as the threshold we dare not cross if we hope [to] avert the worst consequences of warming. Well, if Flannery is right, (and there's no reason to think otherwise) we crossed that line without even breaking stride."How did it happen? For one thing, countries such as China and India are actually "recarbonizing," Mr. Joseph says, meaning that their economies are becoming more energy-intensive "as they turn increasingly to [greenhouse-gas emitting] coal to feed their growth."

In May, the IPCC estimated current concentration of greenhouse gases at only 425 ppm, said a BBC report at the time. It noted that many scientists equated 450 ppm with a 2 degree C (3.6 degrees F.) rise in temperatures. Allowing temperatures to rise more than 2 C could lead to major impacts on the environment, scientists said. In the article, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, explained the strategy this way:

"If you want to stabilise around 450 ppm, that means in a decade or two you have to start reducing emissions far below the current level.... So in other words, we have a very short window for turning around the trend we have in rising greenhouse gas emissions. We don't have the luxury of time."

But, says Flannery, named Australian of the Year for 2007, that window is closed. According to the Australian Associated Press he says that higher figure is due to miscalculating the potency of other greenhouse gasses, which are included in the 450 ppm figure and measured in terms equivalent to that of CO2. But he adds:

"[A]lso we have really seen an unexpected acceleration in the rate of accumulation of CO 2 itself, and that's been beyond the limits of projection ... beyond the worst-case scenario. We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change – that's what the new figures say.... It's not next year, or next decade; it's now."

A major UN climate change meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December aims to set a course toward a new global agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The current Kyoto Protocol, signed by the majority of the world's nations but not the United States, expires in 2012. Flannery told Reuters that the 450 ppm figure adds to the urgency and importance of that meeting.

Meanwhile, Erwin Jackson, policy director of the Climate Institute, an Australian environmental group, told the Australian Associated Press that reducing greenhouse gas levels would be the only path to avoiding a catastrophe:

"The longer we stay above the kind of levels we're at at the moment, the more likely it is that we would start to see the loss of the Great Barrier Reef; you would actually start see the collapse of the great ice sheets and places like the Amazon starting to burn down."This weekly feature appears with links at csmonitor.com

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

Oil and Food

Truthout pointed me to the Oil Drum, a fascinating blog about the effects of petroleum on the world, and this post in particular about Oil Depletion and Food Prices.

The whole post and comments are worth checking out.

Perth gets Wind Powered Desalinization plant

Schematic of the Reverse Osmosis process, which uses a spiral-wound membrane module

.

http://www.water-technology.net/projects/perth/images/4.jpg

Perth Seawater Desalination Plant, Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO), Kwinana, Australia

With the official opening of the Perth Seawater Reverse Osmosis Plant in November 2006, Western Australia became the first state in the country to use desalination as a major public water source – and this may be simply the beginning. Facing a drying climate, the Water Corporation of Western Australia is actively exploring a variety of options to meet growing demands, which makes building a second SWRO facility a serious prospect to consider.

Located at Kwinana, some 25km south of the city, the new plant has an initial daily capacity of 140,000m³ with designed expansion to 250,000m³/day, making it the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere and the biggest in the world to be powered by renewable energy. Ultimately supplying 17% of Perth’s needs, the plant will be the largest single contributor to the area’s integrated water supply scheme and provide an annual 45GL, to help serve the 1.5 million population.

"Supplying 17% of Perth’s needs, the plant will be the largest single contributor to the area’s integrated water supply scheme."

[. . .]

The total project cost was AUS$387m, with annual running costs of under $20m – less than one dollar per week per household. The anticipated water cost has been estimated at $1.17/kl.

BACKGROUND

Growing concern over the dwindling natural supplies of water across the region in the wake of the hotter, drier shift in the climate acted as the main driver on the project. The winter of 2001 saw the poorest inflow of water to the reservoirs serving the Perth metropolitan area since 1914 and by 2002 it was clear that the region was suffering the worst two-year drought on record. In 2005, it was confirmed that in the eight years from 1997 stream flows had dropped to an annual average of 115GL compared with the 161GL/yr over the previous 23 years (1974–1997).

The initial response was to implement a medium-term drought recovery plan, which included restrictions on sprinkler use, obtaining a temporary increase in groundwater allocation and the provision of $142m to further augment supply capacity.

This led to the construction of three bores into the Yarragadee aquifer deep below Perth's northern suburbs and a further nine into the shallower aquifer at Mirrabooka. Two new dams were also constructed in the South West, where rainfall is naturally more plentiful – at Samson Brook and Wokalup Creek.

By 2004, these combined initiatives had added nearly 40GL of water to the municipality's integrated supply system.

To safeguard the future of supply in the longer term, the Water Corporation have adopted what they have termed a 'security through diversity' strategy. Competitive tendering for the new plant design began in September 2004 between pre-qualified consortia and bids were received in the following February. In April 2005, the contract for the plant was awarded and construction began almost immediately, with work beginning on the pumping station in May and pipeline construction in September.

THE PLANT

The Cockburn Sound is an area of environmental sensitivity so the potential impact of the new plant on this water has been extensively considered and strict monitoring conditions have been imposed on TDS, temperature, DO and the sediment habitat in the vicinity.

The plant is designed to operate continuously, drawing water with an input salinity of 35,000mg/l to 37,000mg/l at 16°C to 24°C via the new intake structure. This amounts to under 0.02% of the water in the sound being removed per day, which first passes through a pre-treatment filter to protect the pores of the membranes, before being forced through the spiral wound membrane elements of the RO treatment trains.

After treatment, the product water is treated with lime, chloride and fluoride before being stored and ultimately being blended with water from other sources and entering the municipal integrated supply system. The filter backwash and concentrate stream is returned to the sound.

Although the concentrate flow is about 7% salt, the discharge nozzles are designed to act as diffusers, ensuring that mixed water salinity falls to less than 4% within 50m of the discharge point. As a result, there will be less than 1% increase in the salinity of the receiving waters.

Electricity for the desalination plant – which has an overall 24MW requirement and a production demand of 4.0kWh/kl to 6.0kWh/kl – comes from the new 80MW Emu Downs Wind Farm, which consists of 48 wind turbines located 30km east of Cervantes. Developed by Stanwell Corporation, a power generation corporation owned by Queensland Government and Western Australia's Griffin Energy, this facility commenced operation in 2006.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

"Electricity for the desalination plant comes from the new 80MW Emu Downs Wind Farm, which consists of 48 wind turbines located 30km east of Cervantes."

Wind turbines at sunset. The Emu Down Wind Farm provides the new plant with electricity making it the largest facility of its kind anywhere in the world to be powered by renewable energy.

From the Founder of RealGoods

From an email from the Solar Living Institute:

Solar Goes Mainstream!

The Solar Power 2007 Conference in Long Beach, California, in late September, was a real eye opener. This young conference has doubled in size every year for the last three years and this year there were nearly 9,000 paid attendees - the largest solar conference ever, unless of course you count SolFest and the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, which are consistently larger. I've been going to solar conferences since the early 1980s, and most were noted for their rag tag conglomeration of mission passionate solar pioneers with stars in their eyes.

This year was different. It was the first time I felt underdressed at a solar conference with business suits being the attire of the day. Gone were the mom and pop garage solar businesses and in their place were billion dollar giant companies like SunPower, QCell, Sharp Solar, Kyocera, Conergy, and SunTech. Watching Whole Earth Catalog Founder Stewart Brand interview CNN maven Ted Turner on a plenary stage was a real treat for me and an especially unique juxtaposition of the last 40 years of innovation. Ted commented that we should be dropping solar panels on Iraq instead of bombs.

A few staggering facts and figures that I took away from the conference:

• PV has been growing 70% - 80% annually in the U.S.
• Solar hot water is growing 50% - 80% every year
• California has an RPS (renewable portfolio standard) of 20% by 2010, meaning we need to have 20% of our power coming from solar by then.
• Most CEOs estimate that by 2010 we the world market for PV will be about 15 GW (gigawatts or 15,000 megawatts). Compare this to our current level of a little over 2 GW.
• Today, worldwide, we get 1/10 of 1% of our power from solar
• By 2030 we will get 30% of our power from solar
• By 2100 we will get 70% of our power from solar

In the same "CEO Forum," most CEOs agreed that the solar economy would reach "grid parity" (where solar costs the same as utility company power) by 2011- 2012 in the U.S. At this point the market will break wide open as there will no longer be any barriers to solar entry whatsoever.

One of the biggest challenges in the solar industry today is the silicon shortage, which has caused the major PV manufacturers to limit the supply to its dealers for the last couple of years, which has wreaked havoc for many smaller installers. It is expected now that this silicon shortage will be gone in approximately two years and the solar floodgates will again become wide open. Many manufacturers are working on PV modules that use less silicon like thinner wafers, thin film technologies, concentrators, and metallurgic grade silicon.

Driving home from the conference my strong sense was that the PV market right now is where home computers were in the late 1970's and cell phones were in the late 1990's. It's both gratifying to be a pioneer in this industry having sold the first PV module in America back in 1978 and daunting to see the tidal wave of the solar economy washing up on our shores so quickly. In the long run it's just what we need if we're to have a chance to mitigate global warming.

For the Earth,

John Schaeffer

Some Economic Sense

BobHarris.com:

"Nobel Economics Winner Says Market Forces Flawed"

Economics

Tuesday, 16 October 2007

That's an actual current Reuters headline. Princeton professor Eric Maskin shares this year's Nobel Prize in economics with two colleagues; the trio are pioneers in the field of mechanism design theory, which is dedicated to finding ways to make markets work more efficiently and fairly. Maskin dares to say something fairly sensible, it turns out: Professor Eric Maskin, one of three American economists to receive the award, said that he "to some extent" takes issue with free-market orthodoxy championed by U.S President George W. Bush and some other western leaders. "The market doesn't work very well when it comes to public goods," said Maskin, a slight, soft-spoken 57-year-old who lives in a house once occupied by Albert Einstein. [snip] "If I buy a car, I use the car, you don't and the market for cars works pretty well. But there are many other sorts of goods, often very important goods, which are not provided well through the market. Often, these go under the heading of public goods," he said. Prof. Maskin goes on to speak of the needs of ensuring that public goods are provided for properly, taking into account the interests of all citizens, and on the role of his field in finding ways to do so most fairly and efficiently. This should be considered sane, valuable, important work, especially if we care more about building sustainable human societies more than any ideology, yes? However, the mere acknowledgment of this complex field is an affront to "free market" ideologues who prefer to believe that markets are, by their very existence, efficient -- in much the same way that food riots are, by their very existence, orderly. Unfortunately, this remains something of a state religion in the US, so while hundreds of newspapers have reported on Maskin's winning of a Nobel, few have bothered to pick up the Reuters story of what the Nobel Prize winner actually says. (In fact, as I write this, the wire story is already a day old, and while I might have missed something, I can't find it in a single American newspaper.) The efficiency of the great free market, absolutely proven once again.

Hmmmm...

Antiwar.com:

October 15, 2007

The Dair El Zor Hoax Why are the Israelis lying about striking a "nuclear facility" in Syria?

by Justin Raimondo

The great "mystery" arising out of the recent Israeli strike at Syria – purportedly targeting a nuclear-related site near the town of Dair El Zor in the northern part of the country – has been the subject of much speculation, but its real purposes have been hidden behind the veil of obfuscation deliberately thrown over the affair by the Israelis and their media amen corner. The gale winds of another Israeli propaganda campaign are blowing at full force across the American media landscape, perpetrating a hoax of outrageous proportions: namely, that the Israelis knocked out a nascent nuclear facility. In a replay of the disastrous Judith Miller fabrications, the Times makes it look like the Syrians, with North Korean assistance, had constructed a nuke plant that was just about to go online: "The attack on the reactor project has echoes of an Israeli raid more than a quarter century ago, in 1981, when Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq shortly before it was to have begun operating. That attack was officially condemned by the Reagan administration, though Israelis consider it among their military's finest moments. In the weeks before the Iraq war, Bush administration officials said they believed that the attack set back Iraq's nuclear ambitions by many years." What a lot of nonsense. The Iraqis had completed a nuclear facility that was fully operational and could have produced weapons-grade materials. The Syrian project has been going nowhere for 40 years, as Joseph Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and a senior fellow and director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, informs us: "It is a basic research program built around a tiny 30 kilowatt reactor that produced a few isotopes and neutrons. It is nowhere near a program for nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel." Who cares about facts when you've got a perfectly good excuse to run a sensational headline? In any case, "many details remain unclear," as the Times piece puts it, which gives the editors an out. However, I'd trust Laura Rozen before I'd trust the Times, and she relays the following far more plausible account from Intelligence Online: "In attacking Dair El Zor in Syria on Sept. 6, the Israeli air force wasn't targeting a nuclear site but rather one of the main arms depots in the country. "Dair El Zor houses a huge underground base where the Syrian army stores the long and medium-range missiles it mostly buys from Iran and North Korea. The attack by the Israeli air force coincided with the arrival of a stock of parts for Syria's 200 Scud B and 60 Scud C weapons." The moment this story hit the headlines, the alarm on my bullsh*t meter started clanging pretty loudly. But what, one wondered, was the purpose of this elaborate deception? First, it was meant as a warning to Iran, a clear demonstration that the Israelis can and will act if Tehran fails to curb its ambition to join Israel as a full-fledged member of the nuclear club. Furthermore, it was meant to show Washington's solidarity with Tel Aviv in this matter: in spite of doubts arising from the Rice-Gates faction within the administration, the Americans gave the Israelis the green light. It also, I believe, prefigures, on a much smaller scale, the sequence of events likely to trigger war with Iran: an Israeli strike, Iranian retaliation via Hezbollah, followed by American intervention, which would be practically inevitable. Second, the Syrian hoax aims at derailing the recent U.S. agreement with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear apparatus. If North Korea is "proliferating," it's already in violation of the accord, and the neoconservatives in the administration and its periphery are already howling that the deal is off. Third, and, in my view, most important in the long run, this whole propaganda campaign is designed to make an ideological point. As Joshua Muravchik put it in the Los Angeles Times Sunday morning: "Law is largely a matter of practice and custom, and it is gradually changing to accommodate new realms of self-defense. Had American forces found nuclear weapons in Iraq, or a nuclear program nearly ready to produce weapons, the international assessment of our decision to invade would be very different today. That we made an appalling mistake about Iraqi WMD shows the risks of the new doctrine that Bush proposes – but it does not diminish the issue that gave rise to that doctrine. "The evolution of our thinking about these issues will be at the forefront of the debate as Washington moves closer to a preemptive (or 'preventive') strike against Iran's nuclear program." Yes, "the evolution of our thinking" will be helped along by the Israelis, who, as we know, are always in the vanguard when it comes to pushing the boundaries of prudence, not to mention morality and basic human decency. From "Israel has the right to defend itself," a phrase we've heard with metronomic regularity over the years, the progression to "Israel has the right to preemptively attack whomever and whatever it pleases" – based on "secret" intelligence – is a cognitive leap made easier by Israeli boldness. What it's all leading up to is an assault on Iran that may well be sparked by an Israeli provocation. It's fitting that the whole propaganda campaign is based on a gigantic lie, one that surpasses their previous record in its brazenness and sheer scope. This is the War Party's signature style. In spite of reports that Israeli commandos landed on Syrian soil and made off with "nuclear materials" – a highly unlikely made-for-TV-movie scenario – one imagines that if this were true, they would have displayed the evidence by now. And what about the IAEA? Surely their scientists would have detected the nuclear emissions from such a bombing raid: yet we have seen no evidence, no announcement, no nothing. What's up with that? It's all verrrrrry suspicious. As Joe Cirincione put it to the BBC: "This appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a preexisting political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war with Iraq, then it should." It's the same gang, with the same agenda, only this time their lies are on a bigger scale – and the stakes are much higher. What's amazing, to me, is that, even with this kind of record, these guys appear to be getting away with it. Once again, the major news media outlets are acting as conduits for war propaganda – and instead of displaying the least bit of skepticism, they're more gullible than ever.

Gossip more powerful than facts in shaping opinion: study

Think of this next time you try in vain to convince someone of something by using facts...

Physorg.com:

"People are unduly influenced by gossip, even if it contradicts what they have seen," said Ralf Sommerfeld, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany.

He suggested that people tend to place a certain stock in gossip because culturally it has evolved as a useful information-gathering tool.

Gossip may do more to shape a person's opinion than facts they know to be true, even when the chit-chat contradicts the evidence, a study released Monday said.

The findings emerged from a study by German researchers who set out to find how gossip about a person's reputation affects the way people behave towards that individual.

To probe the role of gossip in this context, the researchers set up an experiment where 126 undergraduate students engaged in a series of computer-based games with anonymous partners or adversaries.

The students were given a pot of 10 euros (14 dollars) and allowed to choose whether to give their "partners" a fixed donation (1.25 euros, 1.75 dollars) or withhold the money.

In later rounds of the game, the players were given notes about the way their adversaries had behaved in previous rounds, and specifically whether they were generous or not.

Players who read positive feedback about their partners tended to reward them with donations, suggesting that the group consensus or "gossip" had a strong impact on their decisions.

And finally, the researchers tried out a different scenario, providing players with a list of their partner's decisions in the most recent round of games, and providing false gossip that contradicted the facts.

Surprisingly, in this case the students' decisions appeared to be guided by the gossip rather than the evidence.

Writing in the paper, the authors noted that the findings suggest that humans "are used to basing their decisions on gossip, rumors, or other spoken information. Such a strategy could be successful in an environment where direct observation is potentially less common than indirect information about others."

In such a world, individuals gather a lot of information indirectly by gossip from different sources.

"The resulting picture of any person with whom the individual is in social contact would be much more refined than the picture based on the small amount of direct observation of these people."

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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Five Myths About Europe

Next time someone preaches of the evils and irrelevancy of "tired old Europe" point them at this article in the Washington Post.

The myths:

1. The sclerotic European economy is incapable of leading the world.

2. Nobody wants to invest in European companies and economies because lack of competitiveness makes them a poor bet.

3. Europe is the land of double-digit unemployment.

4. The European "welfare state" hamstrings businesses and hurts the economy.

5. Europe is likely to be held hostage to its dependence on Russia and the Middle East for most of its energy needs.

The man who knew too much

This story in the Guardian, about Rich Barlow, a former CIA Pakistan expert who now lives in a trailer in Montana, encapsulates nearly everything that is wrong with the direction this country has been traveling the past few years.

What with Gore in the news with his Nobel Prize and all...

the Budz:

Will Al Gore face his inconvenient truths about our stolen elections?

by Harvey Wasserman | May 18 2007 - 10:39am | permalink
article tools: email | print | read more Harvey Wasserman
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman

[. . .]

Gore’s actions on the 2000 recount might be discounted as a stategic failure.

But they were followed by something much much worse. In January, 2001, the Black Caucus of the US House demanded a Congressional dialogue on the seating of the Florida delegation to the Electoral College. This procedure had been established in 1887, in response to the stolen election of 1876. It required the signature of one Representative and one Senator.

Tragically, Gore prevented this from happening. As the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress gathered to ratify the election, Gore repeatedly gaveled down those Representatives demanding a discussion of the theft of Florida’s decisive electoral votes. This very ugly, politically catastrophic moment is forever memorialized in Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11.

Staff from the office of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone have said Gore told those Senators inclined to join in that he would not recognize them if they tried. Senator Hillary Clinton told the Free Press Editor that Gore “begged” her not to sign on to such a challenge.

The result: there was no Congressional challenge on the theft of the election of 2000. Ironically, with Dick Cheney presiding over Congress, there was indeed such a session on the stolen election of 2004, facilitated by Sen. Harry Reid. But following the cave-in of 2000, it again lacked the full weight of the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate.

In short, Al Gore and the Democratic Party were complicit in the most demoralizing and anti-democratic events in the recent history of our nation. It is fine for the brilliant and lucid former Vice President to decry the power of money and television in the destruction of our democracy.

But what can tangibly and irrevocably destroy a democracy more thoroughly than the outright theft of elections, especially when it happens without challenge from the opposition?

We welcome the heartfelt insights of Al Gore on the broader issues of modern democracy. But when will he finally come clean on what he and John Kerry did—and didn’t do—in allowing the theft of our last two presidential elections?

When will Gore muster the courage of former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker in denouncing the role of voting machine proprietors and techno “insiders” in corrupting the voting process?

Most of all, we need to hear how Al Gore and the Democratic Party plan to guarantee it never happens again. And then we need to see them actually act on it.

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman’s three books on the theft of the 2004 election are available at www.freepress.org. Harvey’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org.
_______

About author Harvey Wasserman is co-author, with Bob Fitrakis and Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by the New Press. He is author of SOLARTOPIA! and HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE U.S., available at www.harveywasserman.com

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Quote of the day

New York Times:

Phillip Zelikow, Rice co-author and head of 911 Commission, disparaging those who wish to abandon civilized talks with north Korea and revert back to the old, obstructionist strategy with North Korea, the same strategy that saw them explode a nuclear bomb:

“You can’t just make these decisions using the top of your spinal cord, you have to use the whole brain,” said Philip D. Zelikow, the former counselor at the State Department. “What other policy are we going to pursue that we think would be better?”

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

A familiar administration divide:
Vice President Dick Cheney says
Israeli intelligence was credible,
while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
questions whether there was a real threat.

Cheney, the very embodiment of the reptilian brain.

Portrait blog, update:

Right after the last post, the Portrait blog, spreading like a fungus, took over my domain, rendering my original art page unreachable!

After numerous emails back and forth and finally an educational midnight phone call to the help number at 1and1.com, it was determined that they had a bug in their server software that prevented the situation from being fixed in any way other than simply deleting the blog and starting over. Fortunately, I'd saved a copy of the text of my first couple of posts, as well as the files, so it was easy to replace them after deleting it.

The problem appeared because I'd initiated the blog without first initiating a subdomain to put it in, so when the blog appeared it took over the domain. Makes perfect sense, now that I think of it. Didn't make sense at the time.

Now, with the blog safely in it's own subdomain, the original webpage has become visible again in it's old domain, like a recently eclipsed sun coming out from behind the moon.

In summation:

• Old Portrait Webpage
• New Portrait Blog

New Portrait Blog

Here's a new blog I've started to showcase portrait gigs, one of which I had yesterday.

One of the nicer portraits:

Tin Whiskers Destroy Electronics

As so often seems to be the case lately, here is yet another story about the world we live in which is absolutely mindboggling... how the perfectly understandable rush to get rid of lead in our enviromnent could lead to the destruction of anything electronic you care to mention. Nuclear power plant safety devices, missile control systems, your iPod, you name it.


physorg.com:

Tiny 'Tin Whiskers' Imperil Electronics

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer

Henning Leidecker, a chief parts engineer with NASA Goddard, looks at an electrical relay that has grown tin whiskers in Greenbelt, MD on Friday, Sept. 28, 2007. Tin Whiskers are tiny tin strands that sprout without warning from tin finish or solder, short-circuiting electronics. By some estimates, they've caused as much as $10 billion in damage since they were first noticed in the 1940s. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

(AP) -- They've ruined missiles, silenced communications satellites and forced nuclear power plants to shut down. Pacemakers, consumer gadgets and even a critical part of a space shuttle have fallen victim.

The culprits? Tiny splinters - whiskers, they're called - that sprout without warning from tin solder and finishes deep inside electronics. By some estimates, the resulting short-circuits have leveled as much as $10 billion in damage since they were first noticed in the 1940s

Now some electronics makers worry the destruction will be more widespread, and the dollar amounts more draining, as the European Union and governments around the world enact laws to eliminate the best-known defense - lead - from electronic devices.

"The EU's decision was irresponsible and not based on sound science," said Joe Smetana, a principal engineer and tin whisker expert with French telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA. "We're solving a problem that isn't and creating a bunch of new ones."

Typically measuring under a millimeter long, tin whiskers look like errant strands of static-charged hair, erupting in every direction from tin-based materials like solder. Their cause is hotly debated. Other metals also grow whiskers, but not like tin.

Trouble arises when the whiskers bridge separate parts of increasingly miniaturized circuit boards. They also can flake off and interfere with sensitive optics.

While scientists debate their cause, they agree on one thing: Small amounts of lead mixed with the tin have been remarkably effective at preventing whisker eruptions for decades.

Lead, however, is a serious health concern. In children, it can cause learning or behavioral problems and has been associated with anemia and kidney problems. In adults, exposure has been linked to high blood pressure and reproductive organ damage.

Last year, Europeans barred the toxic metal from most electronics to prevent its being incinerated or accumulating in dumps after computers and other gadgets are tossed out. Similar measures are being considered or are already in place in other countries, including Japan, China, South Korea, Argentina, Australia and the United States.

Some companies say the EU rules threaten the reliability of their products, exposing them to unknown risks and possibly threatening people's safety.

But EU officials say the regulations banning lead, cadmium, mercury and three other hazardous substances are needed to protect people and the environment.

They also note that many types of electronics are exempt from the law, including military and other national security equipment, medical devices, and servers, data storage computers and telecommunications gear that use leaded solders.

Exemptions are also granted when alternatives to the hazardous materials don't exist yet, or because the substances can't be replaced without jeopardizing safety.

Still, even some companies with exemptions say it's getting harder to buy the leaded parts. They worry about the increased risk of pure-tin parts, the culprit behind the most devastating tin-whisker-related failures.

"Over time (the failures) are just going to get worse and worse and worse," said Jim McElroy, executive director of International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, or iNEMI, a group of big electronics makers, government agencies and other parties active in tin whisker research.

"Even if the military is exempt forever, they will be forced to convert because they can't get the components they want," he said. "And that will eventually happen across the board."

Tin whiskers have left a trail of destruction in a string of important machinery, chronicled in an extensive database of publicly disclosed failures kept by researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Last year, for example, NASA engineers testing parts for the space shuttle Endeavour discovered that millions of tin whiskers were causing an electronic box to inaccurately point the shuttle's engine, knocking the rocket's trajectory off-kilter, according to Henning Leidecker, chief engineer of the electronic parts office of NASA's Goddard and a tin whisker expert.

It turns out NASA had approved the pure-tin-coated clamps used for holding circuit boards in place back when the electronics were made in the 1980s, before NASA adopted its current rule requiring a small amountof lead in its tin coatings.

"These whiskers have the potential to destroy missions," Leidecker said.

Failures blamed on tin whiskers have run the gamut of devices and manufacturers.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recalled some pacemakers because of a high failure rate caused by tin whiskers.

In 1998, PanAmSat Corp.'s $250 million Galaxy IV communications satellite, which provided service to tens of millions of pagers across North America and thousands of pay-at-the-pump gas station machines, was deemed a total loss after two processors failed. The main spacecraft control processor, which governs the satellite's positioning and other functions, failed for an unknown reason, and the backup couldn't be used because tin whiskers had shorted it out a year before.

At least 10 other satellite failures have been blamed on tin whiskers, according to the NASA database.

Over the past two decades, also according to the NASA database, nuclear power plants have been temporarily shut down at least seven times after tin whiskers in the alarm system circuit boards triggered false alarms, alerting managers to threats that didn't exist. There have been no reported injuries.

"There's a real loss of money because the plant is shut down and stays down, and it also presents a situation where workers are taught not to believe the alarms," Leidecker said. "Are you comfortable with that? I am not."

The military also isn't immune. Whisker-related malfunctions have been reported in the radar used aboard fighter jets, in the target-detection system of certain missiles, along with various unspecified problems in other parts of the U.S. military's missile programs.

Little is known about those failures, other than the part that failed and the cause. Most involve military secrets and are only known because they're revealed in technical forums by defense contractors, who incur heavy repair expenses for malfunctioning tin-whisker-infested equipment and are active in scientific circles looking for a fix that doesn't involve lead.

Tin whisker experts said the industry is working fast to come up with a lead-free solution. So far, other materials have shown to be effective in preventing tin whiskers, but not as powerfully as lead.

One promising remedy is tin-silver-copper solders, said George Galyon, a senior technical staff member at IBM Corp. However, Galyon noted that lead-free solders often require much higher temperatures, which can warp circuit boards and cause materials to degrade.

Despite the setbacks, he said the major players realize anti-lead laws give them no choice.

"It's whistling in the wind if you think we're turning this back," he said. "China's full-bent on it, the major markets are into it. The world flipped over in one fell swoop."