Saturday, April 26, 2014

'David Against Nuclear Goliaths': Nation Wages Legal Fight 'for All Humanity'

Marshall Islands, still plagued by U.S. nuclear bomb testing, says 9 nuclear nations must abide by non-proliferation, disarm

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
Mushroom cloud from Castle Bravo detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall IslandsIn an unprecedented legal action, the small Pacific nation and former U.S. nuclear testing site of the Marshall Islands has filed lawsuits "on behalf of all humanity" at the International Court of Justice against the U.S. and 8 other nations for their "flagrant denial of human justice" by failing to work towards nuclear disarmament.
The nations cited by the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) are the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China — all parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as nuclear-armed Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — which are not parties to the NPT but which the challenge says are "bound by customary international law."
In addition to the suits filed Thursday in The Hague against the 9 nations, an additional suit specifically calling out the United States was filed in U.S. Federal District Court.
A campaign site launched with the suits to garner support for the action explains that the RMI "knows firsthand the horror and consequences of living in a world with nuclear weapons."
Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. used the RMI as a testing ground for the equivalent of 1.5 Hiroshima bombs detonated daily during the 12 year-year period. The testing included the detonation of the infamous Castle Bravo, which was 1,000 times larger than the bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima. As journalist and writer Robert Koehler noted:
Not only did we expose many thousands of [Marshall Islanders] to ghastly — often lethal — levels of radiation with 67 nuclear blasts, with glaring evidence that at least some of the exposure was intentional, done for the purpose of studying the effects of radiation on human guinea pigs; not only did we wreck the Marshall Islanders’ way of life and pristine paradise, creating a nation of internal refugees confined to a Western-style slum on the island of Ebeye; not only did we cower, as a nation, from any real responsibility for what our fallout did to these people, settling our genocidal debt to them with $150 million “for all claims, past, present and future”; but also, throughout our dealing with them as nuclear conquistadors, we displayed a racism so profound, so cold-blooded, its exposure must forever shatter the myth of American exceptionalism.
"Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons, and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities," stated Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum. "The continued existence of nuclear weapons and the terrible risk they pose to the world threatens us all."
To address this global threat, the suits seek no compensation but rather that the courts order the nations to fulfill their disarmament obligations as laid out over four decades ago by the Article VI of the NPT:
Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.
With the legal challenge, "this small island nation is standing up against 9 of the most powerful countries on the planet," writes David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a U.S.-based organization supporting the lawsuits, and consultant with the RMI legal team. "It is 'David' against the nuclear 9 'Goliaths.' Its field of nonviolent battle is the courtroom."
"After 46 years with no negotiations in sight, it is time to end this madness," Krieger added in a statement. "The Marshall Islands is saying enough is enough. It is taking a bold and courageous stand on behalf of all humanity."
_____________________

'Drop Everything and Take Action': Activists Issue Clarion Call to Save the Internet

As a countdown begins, time to show "FCC largest protest it's every seen" say defenders of net neutrality

- Jon Queally, staff writer
If you cherish the open internet, say net neutrality defenders, now is the time to prove it. (Credit: Free Press / CD)There's no time like the present to save the future of the internet.
That's the message from the nation's largest and most active organizations focused on the issue of online freedom and net neutrality.
Following this week's news that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is preparing a push to pass new rules that would allow the nation's internet providers to create a two-tiered, two-speed internet by allowing corporations to pay for privileged access to broadband "fast lanes," the group's opposed to the move are warning the American people that if they don't act quickly and aggressively, the open internet they know and love could be destroyed forever.
"It's time to launch the largest protest the FCC has ever seen." —Josh Levy, Free Press
In his organization's call to arms on Thursday, executive director of Free Press Craig Aaron, asked people to consider what they would do if they learned the internet "they knew and love" had only three weeks to live: "Would you spend your time binging on listicles or the final season of Breaking Bad?" or "Would you take to the streets and raise hell?"
And in a post on Friday, the group's campaign director Josh Levy announced: "It's time to launch the largest protest the FCC has ever seen." He continued:
Under [the new FCC] rules, telecom giants like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon would be able to pick winners and losers online and discriminate against online content and applications. And the FCC has the nerve to call this "Net Neutrality."
You might wonder why the FCC would move forward with such an ill-advised plan. But such is the political calculus of Washington, where our policymakers tie themselves in knots to soothe corporate interests while obscuring their plans with technical jargon, hoping the public will be too confused to notice.
Well, we noticed. And we’re not happy.
In anticipation that the lovers and defenders of the internet will, in fact, choose to fight rather than roll over, Free Press and some its allies are now planning a day of direct action for May 15th where they plan to go beyond petition drives and phones calls by "rising up" against the FCC proposal with street protests in Washington, DC.
In addition to Free Press, groups like Demand Progress, Common Cause, RootsAction, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU, Public Knowledge, and others have swung into action mode to fight what they fear will be the death of "net neutrality"—the key principle that has guided the web since its inception and stipulates that all online content should receive equal treatment free of corporate or government interference.
"Let’s organize like mad to save the internet, as if democracy and press freedom both depend on it ... because they do." —Jeff Cohen, RootsAction
As summarized by journalist and Free Press co-founder John Nichols at The Nation, the urgency of the groups' collective message is that net neutrality can be saved, but "only if citizens raise an outcry."
The activated groups and their members are doubly outraged that the Obama administration has strayed so far from early promises to protect the open internet. Now, despite the continued disappointments, they are vowing to highlight the profound and terrible consequences that could follow if net neutrality is destroyed.
"People are right to be outraged that Obama’s FCC is moving to extinguish an open internet," said RootsAction.org co-founder Jeff Cohen, who cited promises made in 2008 by then-candidate Obama to defend the ideals and policies of an open internet. "We must not allow net neutrality to be just another broken promise. Let’s organize like mad to save the internet, as if democracy and press freedom both depend on it ... because they do."
RootsAction.org has teamed up with Demand Progress to encourage their members to lobby both the FCC and members of Congress.
"In order to get the FCC to save net neutrality, we need to bring a lot of public and political pressure to bear right away," said Demand Progress executive director David Segal. But in order to make their voices heard and claim a victory, he acknowledged, "We'll need to enlist the help of hundreds of thousands of Americans over the next couple of weeks."
As for the new FCC rules proposed by Wheeler, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's April Glaser and Corynne Mcsherry warn the American public that the "devil will be in the details." They write:
While all we have now is a statement that a proposal for what the proposed rules might look like is being circulated in private within the FCC, the public should be poised to act. In an FCC rulemaking process, the commission issues what’s called a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). After the NPRM is issued, the public is invited to comment to the FCC about how their proposal will affect the interest of the public.
The FCC is required by law to respond to public comments, so it’s extremely important that we let the FCC know that rules that let ISPs pick and choose how certain companies reach consumers will not be tolerated.
"The next three weeks are absolutely crucial to building the public pressure it will take to get the FCC to scrap this wreck and do what it should have done in the first place." —Craig Aaron, Free Press
According to Craig Aaron, that leaves approximately three weeks to save the internet by killing Wheeler's proposal and again trying to force the FCC to do what experts—not to mention the federal courts—have said is the best solution: reclassify broadband as a public utility.
"Now is the time for action," said Aaron. "The next three weeks are absolutely crucial to building the public pressure it will take to get the FCC to scrap this wreck and do what it should have done in the first place."
As he explains, a federal court decision earlier this year "told the FCC that if it wishes to ensure Internet users can send and receive information free from ISP interference, then the agency must classify ISPs as telecom carriers under Title II of the Communications Act."
Though reclassifying broadband wont be easy, admits Aaron—noting the army of lobbyists which powers the telecom industry's political operation  —the decision to do so would put the FCC on much stronger legal footing. Moreover, he says: "It’s also the right thing to do — really, the only thing to do — to protect the public and safeguard the Internet’s future."
In the end, he urged, whatever it is people are willing to do to protect net neutrality and the future integrity of the free and open internet, they should "drop everything and do it right now."
_____________________________________

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Earth: Game Over?

Earth: Game Over?

We're in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, and this will be the first one—and possibly the last—we will witness as human beings.

Not even counting Noah’s flood, Earth has “rebooted” a number of times through mass extinctions. But the next one we see may be our last. (Photo: Mykl Roventine / Flickr)Video games usually provide you with multiple lives. If you step on a landmine or get hit by an assassin, you get another chance. Even if such virtual reincarnation is not built into the rules of the game, you can always reboot and start over again. You can try again hundreds of times until you get it right. This formula applies to first-person shooter games as well as simulation exercises like SimEarth.
The real Earth offers a similar kind of reboot. Catastrophe has hit our planet at least five times, as Elizabeth Kolbert explains in her new book, The Sixth Extinction. During each of these preceding wipeouts, the planet recovered, though many of the life forms residing in the seas or on land were not so fortunate (“many” is actually an understatement—more than 99 percent of all species died out in these cataclysms). As Kolbert points out, we are in the middle of a sixth such world-altering event, and this will be the first—and possibly the last—extinction that we will witness as human beings. The planet and its hardier denizens may soldier on, but for us it will be game over.
A subset of environmentalists is already preparing for the end game. In the latest New York Times Magazine, Paul Kingsnorth—the author of the manifesto Uncivilization—confesses that he has given up trying to save the planet. He rejects false hopes. “You look at every trend that environmentalists like me have been trying to stop for 50 years,” he says, “and every single thing had gotten worse.” He’s heading to the wilderness of Ireland to grow his own food, homeschool his kids, and prepare for the difficult days ahead.
Survivalism: it’s not just for right-wing wackos any more.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are still trying to figure out how to avert disaster. The United Nations recently released another in its series of reports on climate change. This one tries to put a price tag on what we need to do over the next 15-20 years to stop the global mercury from rising.
To implement the recommendations of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), governments must dramatically increase their investments in low-carbon energy sources. Each year, governments will have to spend an additional $147 billion on such renewable sources of energy as solar and wind power. On top of that, governments need to put $336 billion each year into greater energy efficiency in public and private infrastructure. If we follow all the IPCC recommendations, we can expect to save about $30 billion from eliminating subsidies to industries in the dirty energy sectors.
That still leaves an annual bill of more than $450 billion. This is probably a lowball figure, given the commitment that the industrialized world has made to help the developing world continue to grow economically without expanding its carbon footprint. This figure aclimatlso doesn’t cover current climate change costs associated with extreme weather events, droughts in food-growing areas, the preservation of coastal areas, and other catastrophes in the making. The bill for upgrading U.S. infrastructure alone will run into hundreds of billions of dollars each year.
If you’re planning to remodel your kitchen, you’re supposed to get a couple of different estimates. So, with a task as large as saving the world, it’s probably wise to check in with a couple other sources.
But those looking for salvation on the cheap are going to be disappointed. The International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization connected to the OECD, estimates that the world needs to invest a trillion dollars into clean energy—every year between now and 2050. Then there was the Stern Commission report on the economics of climate change that came out in 2006. At the time, Nicholas Stern estimated that stabilizing the current level of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere would require an investment of 1 percent of global GDP, which at the time was a little more than $300 billion. He revised that up to about $600 billion a couple years later, though nowadays he’s talking more in the trillion-dollar range as well.
Of course, these costs should be compared to the price tag for not addressing climate change quickly and resolutely. This, Stern estimated, would add up to 20 percent of global GDP. At some point, of course, we will hit a tipping point at which no amount of money can turn back the clock.
Where will the money come from? A “climate security” tax on military spending would make sense, forcing governments to turn swords into windmill blades. We’re currently wasting over $1.7 trillion a year on the enormous potlatch otherwise known as the global military budget.
Another “simple” answer is to not only remove subsidies from dirty energy but to tax it as well. In this way, governments discourage the use of coal and oil and raise the revenue necessary to invest in clean technologies. It seems an elegant solution, except that the energy companies and their political representatives have bitterly fought against carbon taxes. In 2011, the Labor government in Australia pushed through a carbon tax and established a $10-billion “green bank” to support sustainable energy projects. That hasn’t lasted long. The new center-right government has vowed to repeal the tax, but the Australian parliament has so far turned back the government’s repeal effort.
Denmark offers a less fractious alternative. The country is currently planning to unshackle itself completely from fossil fuels by 2050. And it plans to do that without relying on nuclear power. The country has invested heavily in wind power, and last year, for the first time, wind supplied more than 50 percent of the country’s energy consumption for an entire month. How much will this 40-year transition cost? The estimate is roughly 1 percent of the country’s GDP. By the end, Denmark will have cut its carbon emissions by 80 percent.
The Denmark model requires a few caveats. The entire scheme involves significant investment in new technologies and infrastructure upgrades. It also depends on a critical variable—the increasing cost of fossil fuels. If oil and gas and coal remain cheap, capital will not flow into the new technologies. In other words, the possibility of the earth burning up is not sufficient to concentrate our minds and mobilize our efforts. It comes down to a pocketbook issue. Only astronomical prices at the gas pump will force us to change our behavior, individually and collectively.
We could wait for the market to push up these prices, but that will likely be too late. Instead, we need to artificially raise the costs of fossil fuels, and that brings us back to some form of carbon tax. Another part of that strategy would be to leave some of that ancient, liquefied plant and animal matter in the ground and at the bottom of the ocean, forgoing deep sea drilling, refusing to rip up forests for the treasures beneath, and leaving the tar sands be.
But perhaps the most important caveat is this: Denmark will only succeed if we are all on board. We don’t have the luxury of sitting back, seeing if the calculations involved in Denmark’s fossil-free scenario work out, and then following suit if we like the results. By that time, it would be too late.
As with our individual lives, there is no reset button for the human race (Noah’s flood notwithstanding). Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska put it well in her poem “Nothing Twice” (translation by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh):
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is That we arrive here improvised And leave without the chance to practice
Even if there is no one dumber, If you’re the planet’s biggest dunce, You can’t repeat the class in summer: This course is only offered once.
If humanity fails this particular science class, we’re done. It doesn’t matter whether we’re straight-A students from Denmark or flunkards like congressional climate change denier James Inhofe. We won’t be given another chance at the global joystick.
Earth: game over. For us at least.
John Feffer
 John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories, 2003) among other books.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Mother Earth Day 2014: Time for a Paradigm Change

Rights for Mother Earth, not Corporations

With each day’s headlines it becomes more and more clear that our modern, industrialized culture is a suicide machine. Not only has our consumption of fossil fuels polluted our air, land, and water to an extent that threatens the long-term survival of humans and other species, but our political system has evolved into a Frankenstein monster. Corporations, institutions created by people, have gained so much power they threaten our very survival.(Photo via Flickr / Royce Blair / NASA)
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court re-asserted corporations’ right to free speech by lifting caps on campaign spending. This move further amplifies the voices of these “legal persons” in our so-called democratic process. Actual human beings now have even less influence on political decisions that affect them than they had before—which, according to a forthcoming study of oligarchy in U.S. politics, was not very much.
This extreme polarization comes at a time when environmental and financial crises are having increasingly devastating impacts on people and communities. Thus, at a time when we need our political institutions to be even more responsive to rapidly changing and uncertain conditions, they have become deaf to the voices of people they are –in theory—supposed to serve.
In response to these multiple crises of our democracy, ecology, and economy, people’s movements around the world have been coming together to challenge the dominant paradigm of global capitalism and corporate power. These movements helped re-name “Earth Day” in 2009 to “International Mother Earth Day”—recognizing both the international dimension of our environmental responsibilities and, more importantly, the intrinsic connections between humans and the natural world. They are calling for the legal recognition of rights for Mother Earth.
Reference to “Mother Earth” signifies a radical shift in paradigms. To view the Earth as our mother—as the source of all life, health, and sustenance, means that our own well-being depends on our respect and care for her. To see nature as a living being commands a reverence that prevents her exploitation for monetary gain. Indigenous cultures have preserved this ancient knowledge and, through popular movements, they have been bringing this knowledge to a wider public.
In 2010, one of the most important international environmental meetings took place in Cochabamba, Boliva. Frustrated by the persistent failures of the UN climate negotiations, Bolivian president, Evo Morales called upon fellow heads of state and social movements to join him for the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.
The People's Agreement generated by the conference of more than 30,000 representatives of governments and civil society put forward several promising proposals for addressing the climate crisis. These include a resolution of the “ecological debt” the rich countries of the global North owe to the countries of the global South, the establishment of a global Climate Justice Tribunal, and a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.
What is most promising about these proposals is not their likelihood for immediate policy impact, but rather their radical departure from the prevailing policy proposals which will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These proposals require the mass mobilization of popular movements around the kind of paradigm-shifting solutions that are required to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis.
As the Cochabamba People’s Agreement points out: “The corporations and governments of the so-called ‘developed’ countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.” Such language is unthinkable in the policy arenas dominated by governments. Yet, it is our only hope for survival.
The leadership of global social movements can help bring about the alternative ways of thinking and living that are possible. But only if we all play our parts in these movements.
Many U.S. liberals resist the language of “Mother Earth” because it conjures up images of new-age spiritualism or otherwise diminishes the seriousness and legitimacy of environmental agendas. Yet, decades of environmental activism have failed to deter practices that threaten the viability of our ecosystems. Conventional approaches to environmental activism have failed to target the dominant consumerist culture that depends upon constantly expanding consumption. Thus many “Earth Day” activities are no more than green consumer fairs.
The Cochabamba Agreement declares that “[u]nder capitalism, Mother Earth is converted into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are.”
Those seeking a better world for us and for future generations must embrace the language and ideas of our indigenous brothers and sisters and help change our civilizational paradigm. We can start by helping tell the story of International Mother Earth Day—the new name for the old “Earth Day.”
Jackie Smith
Jackie Smith is professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. She is also a member of Sociologists without Borders and a delegate to the United States Social Forum’s National Planning Committee. Her most recent books include Social Movements in the World-System: The Politics of Crisis and Transformation (pdf), Social Movements for Global Democracy and, with multiple co-authors, Global Democracy and the World Social Forums.

Monday, April 21, 2014

California Snowpack Melts With Breathtaking Speed as Drought Continues in Most of the Western United States 2014


April 18, 2014 
California snowpack
Much of the Western United States is visible in this photograph shot from the International Space Station. (Source: NASA)
Severe drought continues in a large portion of the West, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor report, issued yesterday.
In California, already particularly hard hit by drought, the situation is worsening. Temperatures there were 9 to 12 degrees above normal, which caused breathtakingly rapid melt of the California snowpack. Some areas of the Sierra Nevada lost half of the water locked up in snow in just one week. Yet, there was little change in inflows into the state’s starved reservoirs.
California snowpack
Click for an animation of the change in the water content of snow in California’s Sierra Nevada. (Source: NOHRSC)
With the exception of parts of the Pacific Northwest, and some areas of Wyoming and Colorado, the West overall experienced yet another dry week. Warm temperatures were also the norm. And drought conditions worsened in eastern New Mexico and the southwestern corner of Colorado.
The photograph at the top of this post, taken by astronaut Koichi Wakata aboard the International Space Station in late March, looks north from the finely etched Grand Canyon at bottom. Much of the interior West is visible in this single dramatic image.
At the extreme left of the photo you can make out the Sierra Nevada Range, where some snow is still evident, and the Central Valley of California beyond. Also clearly visible in the photograph are parts of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Idaho and the Pacific Northwest are visible in the upper part of the frame, and possibly a bit of Montana.
In the lower right quadrant you can make out Lake Powell upstream of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. In the lower left quadrant is Lake Mead, downstream of the canyon. These are the two giant reservoirs that act as hydrologic savings banks, helping to insure water supplies to some 30 million people. Other dams also store water in the Colorado River Basin, a fair portion of which is visible in the photo.
According to the Bureau of Reclamation, overall storage of water in the basin now stands at just 47 percent of capacity, down from 53 percent last year at this time.
But there is a bit of good news — or perhaps I should say less bad news: Winter has brought a healthy amount of snow to the Colorado River Basin overall. As of April 14, the basin snowpack stood at 114 percent of normal. And the bureau is forecasting above normal inflows into Lake Powell through July.
But it won’t be even remotely enough bring water storage back to some semblance of normal.

Killing of environmental activists rises globally

Killing of environmental activists rises globally


As head of his village, Prajob Naowa-opas battled to save his community in central Thailand from the illegal dumping of toxic waste by filing petitions and leading villagers to block trucks carrying the stuff — until a gunman in broad daylight fired four shots into him.
A year later, his three alleged killers, including a senior government official, are on trial for murder. But the prosecution of Prajob’s murder is a rare exception.
A survey released Tuesday — the first comprehensive one of its kind- says that only 10 killers of 908 environmental activists slain around the world over the past decade have been convicted.
The report by the London-based Global Witness, a group that seeks to shed light on the links between environmental exploitation and human rights abuses, says murders of those protecting land rights and the environment have soared dramatically. It noted that its toll of victims in 35 countries is probably far higher since field investigations in a number of African and Asian nations are difficult or impossible.
The rising deaths, along with non-lethal violence, are attributed to intensifying competition for shrinking resources in a global economy and abetted by authorities and security forces in some countries connected to powerful individuals, companies and others behind the killings.
“Many of those facing threats are ordinary people opposing land grabs, mining operations and the industrial timber trade, often forced from their homes and severely threatened by environmental devastation,” the report said. Others have been killed over hydro-electric dams, pollution and wildlife conservation.
Three times as many people died in 2012 than the 10 years previously, with the death rate rising in the past four years to an average of two activists a week, according to the non-governmental group. Deaths in 2013 are likely to be higher than the 95 documented to date.
The victims have ranged from 70-year-old farmer Jesus Sebastian Ortiz, one of several people in the Mexican town of Cheran killed in 2012 while opposing illegal logging, to the machine-gunning by Philippine armed forces of indigenous anti-mining activist Juvy Capion and her two sons the same year.
Brazil, the report says, is the world’s most dangerous place for activists with 448 deaths between 2002 and 2013, followed by 109 in Honduras and Peru with 58. In Asia, the Philippines is the deadliest with 67, followed by Thailand at 16.
“We believe this is the most comprehensive global database on killings of environment and land defenders in existence,” said Oliver Courtney, senior campaigner at Global Witness. “It paints a deeply alarming picture, but it’s very likely this is just the tip of the iceberg, because information is very hard to find and verify. Far too little attention is being paid to this problem at the global level.”
Reports of killings, some of them extensive, from countries like Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar, where civil society groups are weak and the regimes authoritarian, are not included in the Global Witness count.
By contrast, non-governmental organizations in Brazil carefully monitor incidents, many of them occurring in the Amazon as powerful businessmen and companies move deeper into indigenous homelands to turn forests into soya, sugar cane and agro-fuel plantations or cattle ranches.
Clashes between agribusiness and the Guarani and Kuranji people in the Amazon’s Mato Grosso do Sul province accounted for half of Brazil’s killings during 2012, the report said. Human rights groups and news reports say killings are often carried out by gunmen hired by agricultural companies.
In Thailand, Sunai Phasuk of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch echoed the report’s assertion that an “endemic culture of impunity” was prevalent, and that governments and their aid donors must address this.
Prosecution of Prajob’s suspected killers, Sunai said, was a “welcome rarity” in a country where investigations have been characterized by “half-hearted, inconsistent, and inefficient police work, and an unwillingness to tackle questions of collusion between political influences and interests and these killings of activists.”
“The convicted tend to have lowest levels of responsibility, such as the getaway car driver. The level of impunity is glaring,” he said.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

The US Is the World’s Worst Human Rights Violator


human rights us style
The US government has always been the first to call out other nations with poor track records on human rights abuses. Invariably they are the two nations viewed most threatening to America’s global hegemony and power – rivals Russia and China. Other loudly criticized countries are those less powerful Third World nations that most defy US dominance. Any nation on earth is at risk of America’s wrath that fights to protect its own self-interest over and above the American Empire’s in a noble effort to minimize economic exploitation in the plundering of precious natural resources and subjugating and locking its native population into permanent Third World serfdom. But any country going against the world’s most powerful nation is automatically deemed an enemy of the Empire and subject to such labels as axis-of-evil and a serious affront to human rights. No surprise that countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea are all targeted in the crosshairs of the next war or next regime change living under decades of heavy-handed economic sanctions designed to break the will of these independent smaller nations bold enough to resist US aggression, superpower control and full frontal dominance.
On the other hand, when a country’s government encourages and willingly allows a strong US presence with active duty military installations numbering over 1000 globally accompanied by an army of private contractors and transnational corporations, corrupt dictators with the worst human rights records in the entire world are merely given a free pass, immune from any US criticism. As long as you succumb and are minimally complicit in the raping and pillaging of your own nation and people by the global bully, be assured America will have your back and always turn a blind eye to your heinous crimes against humanity and human rights violations of the most vile kind – that is until the US ultimately uses you up and turns on you (like it predictably does with all its past tyrannical friends Mubareck, Hussein and Gaddafi just to name a few).
The ethics card is arbitrarily used only out of self-serving, psychopathic convenience. Like the psychopathic corporations that exploit people around the world into cheap labor bondage, likewise the psychopathic US government’s only interest (aside from its own) is the corporate interests it is most beholding to and sworn to protect. Instead of our government operating “of the people, by the people and for the people,” since 9/11 no longer sworn to uphold the Constitution, the US government is now sworn to operate in the sole interest “of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation” – since higher courts have given corporations all the rights that used to belong to the people. Lincoln must be turning over in his grave now to see what his United States have become.
Since 2008 evaluating countries annually throughout the world on various human rights violations, a UK company called Maplecroft has been assessing and ranking nations for the most serious human rights offenses. In that first year 20 nations were listed as “extreme” offenders. Freedom of speech, press, religion and movement along with freedom from death, torture and slavery are all considered basic human rights. Another important criteria used is employment and work conditions. A total of 31 indices of measurement were generated to produce 197 individual nations’ scores and rankings from low in human rights violations to medium, high and extreme.
In December the group released its 2014 findings announcing a 70% increase in nations falling into the extreme category of worst human rights offenders. That original list of 20 rose to an alarming 34 countries this year. According to Maplecroft, the ten worst offenders of human rights around the globe in descending order are Syria, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Yemen and Nigeria. Of all nations assessed, those measured with the most significant spikes this year in violating human rights are Syria, Egypt, Libya, Mali and Guinea-Bissau.
The US falls into the medium range for human rights while only Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Scandinavian countries, United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany are rated low on human rights abuse. Aside from the already specified ten worst offenders, other nations classified in the extreme category of abusers are Mexico and Columbia in the Western Hemisphere largely due to drug cartels, a number of small African nations along with global giants India, Russia and China. Maplecroft puts out its annual findings as valuable information as much for transnationals considering global expansion and investment as well as for public consumption. Prior to analyzing this particular data, it then seems worth exploring other findings and measures that may shed further light on this complex but important examination of current global trends in human rights.
Within the spectrum of nations systematically engaging in state sponsored executions of its own citizens, every year the US ranks within the top five nations in the world. Considering that many states have suspended their policy of executing death row prisoners due to DNA evidence proving that too many innocent people are convicted, it reflects an arrogant callousness to go on killing possibly innocent victims of a broken barbaric system of injustice. Yet the state of Texas continues to lead the way with 514 since 1976, nearly five times the number of the next state.
The top offender amongst national governments killing its own population by execution is China, although its secrecy in refusing to disclose numbers makes for a best guessed estimate of up to 5000 people a year. Amnesty International reports that China puts more people to death than the rest of the world combined. Other countries promoting capital punishment in recent years include the stalwart US ally Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen and North Korea.
With more than 2.2 million Americans currently in prisons, the incarceration rate of the United States is the highest in the entire world at 743 out of every 100,000 people, comprising 25% of the world’s total inmate population and near four times the rate of the next nation. All other countries on earth imprison far less with the next highest nation’s rate at just over 200 out of 100,000 people.
As of late an extremely hot topic in the news is the international human rights offense of torture. Last week’s US Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings are accusing the CIA under the Bush-Cheney regime from 2002-2006 of regularly engaging in a litany of appalling, internationally banned torture techniques on thousands of “war on terror” detainees. Though the committee can declassify its own report, it is urging President Obama to declassify and release the findings to the public charging the CIA with gross deception in holding back both the frequency and severity of its torture practices in dozens perhaps hundreds of secret detainment centers throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, Europe and of course Guantanamo.
Some of the Congressional report’s findings from its four year investigation were released to McClatchy, indicating that the CIA had previously lied to the committee in efforts to cover up its widespread use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that included waterboarding, electrode shock to genitals, ripping out of fingernails, hanging upside down for hours on end.
Predictably the CIA still insists that its methods never constituted torture nor were ever illegal. But the Senate findings refute the CIA’s claims, concluding that the CIA willfully evaded all oversight mechanisms operating without approval from either the Department of Justice or even its own CIA headquarters. The bottom line to all the torture and abuse inflicted on so many innocent victims throughout the world is that the US produced next to no useful information in its war on terror.
Back in 2004 when General David Petraeus was first sent to Iraq to train Iraqi security forces, he was directly involved in Iraqi death squad commando units marauding through city streets engaging in sectarian killings and operating hundreds of police commando centers for torture and death. The story broke in March last year when the Guardian and BBC Arabic released a documentary with both American officers and Iraqi generals and government officials interviewed linking and implicating Petraeus’ direct and active involvement.
The Pentagon assigned to Iraq an infamous veteran of the 1980’s dirty wars in El Salvador and the Iran-Contra fiasco, an American Army colonel named James Steele to help train, consult and coordinate systematic murder, detainment and torture of thousands of Iraqis, many innocent civilians, contributing to Iraq’s descent into full blown sectarian civil war.
Another Army officer, Colonel Coffman, who reported directly to Petraeus, worked in unison with Colonel Steele in setting up Iraqi death squad commando units. Torture has always been believed to be a useful military tactic in counterinsurgency warfare to learn critical information about the enemy. So it was simply business as usual to the one who literally wrote the book on US counterinsurgency (the COIN Manual). The fact that conducting such torture in murderous dirty wars constitutes serious Geneva and human rights violations made no difference to the general, the Pentagon that sent the dirty war expert to Iraq, or the Bush administration that endorsed the use of torture and Iraqi death squads.
A spokesman for the ex-CIA Director Petraeus last year responded to the charges stating that everything the general learned and knew was passed onto to his chain of command in Washington as well as to top Iraqi leadership, thereby deploying the typical CYA strategy, when in doubt conveniently spread the blame onto others in order to make yourself look least bad. Clearly Bush, Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld all knew international laws that expressly forbid torture were being regularly violated. But then as proven liars and war criminals many times over, what else can be expected?
In the face of this latest incriminating evidence from the Senate, even the CIA’s historic ally and protector the Intelligence Committee chair Diane Feinstein believes the CIA has finally gone too far. Of course she only admitted this last month upon learning the CIA bugged her own committee. But up until that moment she had given the NSA and CIA carte blanche rights, endorsing all the invasive unconstitutional surveillance that for years has been systematically tracking all Americans. And only when she too felt violated herself did she begin to criticize the CIA at all.
Clearly these latest revelations show that the CIA systematically disregarded all protocol as well as international and Geneva convention rules prohibiting torture and inhumane treatment of detainees. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2005 Iraq was just one tip of the iceberg, illustrating high profile example of US human rights abuses that have long been embedded as standard US foreign policy throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
But since those in the CIA, Pentagon and Washington all lie for a living every single day, the American public is not so naïve as to actually believe that the brutally illegal US torture practices ended in 2006. After all, a recent poll found that Americans believe that 75% of US politicians are corrupted by campaign donations and lobbyists. And with his track record, there is little reason to think anything has changed under Obama who from the get-go campaigned on the false promise to close down Guantanamo prison. But of course it is still operating today and in all likelihood so are all those secret hidden unlawful US torture chambers around the world. Torture is as serious a human rights violation as any, and in this regard, undoubtedly the United States is guilty amongst the world’s worst offenders.
In 2012 the Committee to Protect Journalists ranked the most censored nations in suppressing and imprisoning journalists to include many of the same top offenders in human rights already identified in other studies earlier. They are North Korea, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Myanmar.
But the Obama administration is gravely undermining freedom of press here in America as well. Last year by aggressively harassing and threatening formal arrest of a number of AP reporters, confiscating computers and phone records, placing even mainstream journalists under high surveillance, Obama sent a clear message to independent journalists that printing the truth that might incriminate the US government will be met with severe negative consequences. Obama also failed to deliver on his campaign promise for transparency that he was elected on. His policy of secrecy and intimidation toward those responsible for accurate news coverage is only surpassed by his policy of violating whistleblowers’ rights, harassing, demonizing and charging them with violating the espionage act more than all other previous administrations combined.
In summary of the above findings, since the US has chiefly been responsible for escalating the civil war in Syria by financing and arming America’s supposed enemy al Qaeda to overthrow Syrian leader Assad, is also responsible for the 2011 regime changes in both Libya and Egypt leaving those two nations in chaotic shambles, and already spent well over 4 trillion dollars draining the US economy while laying waste to both Afghanistan and Iraq in decade long wars, leaving the nations in far worse shape than prior to US invasion and occupation, a solid case can be made that the United States is also a major human rights offender.
Additionally, with frequent drone strikes killing innocent civilians in our supposed ally Pakistan along with Somalia and Yemen (latest Yemen estimate 300-430 deaths), America bears much of the blame for the majority of these most notorious human rights offenders. It should be noted that many of these nations have maintained poor track records long before any major US intervention. But with all the human tragedy that such an aggressive US foreign policy has caused in the majority of these worst human rights offenders, US culpability has made life far worse for citizens living in most top 10 human rights violating nations.
After all, in Iraq alone the US has killed a million and a half of its citizens. With the sectarian civil war in Iraq that the US created still raging, at least 4000 more deaths each year continue nonstop to this day, destroying property into the billions, surging rates of cancer and birth defects that have left still floundering economies led by corrupt weak puppet governments. The sheer and utter destruction the US has brought to so many of the globe’s most notorious human rights offenders, with no sign of improvement, merely adds another dark blemish to the already overwhelming evidence that America has miserably failed every nation where it intervenes. But despite inflicting so much pain and devastation on so many nations’ populations around the world, regularly violating their sovereign rights, the February coup in Ukraine the latest example, while breaking every international law, Geneva Convention and UN Charter rule, an overwhelming case can be mounted against the United States as the planet’s worst human rights violator of them all.
That is why when Obama accuses Russia and China of unjustified unilateral military aggression, defying and violating all international laws, disregarding other nations’ sovereignties, and maintaining horrendous human rights records, the entire world laughs at America’s blatant hypocrisy and double standard. Since the US has enjoyed it sole global superpower status for near a quarter century now, it has relentlessly taken advantage of less powerful nations citing US exceptionalism as its inflated sense of entitlement and self-justification. The US as the world’s bully can commit transgression after transgression anywhere on earth whenever it wants with complete impunity and unaccountability because its Empire dominance and strength permit getting away with it.
A quick final review places America near the top in killing and at the top in locking up its own citizens, especially if they are darker-skinned. It also ranks number one in the world in killing foreigners as well as ranks very high torturing those same foreigners especially if they happen to be darker-skinned non-Christians. Based on recent global events, the US has threatened and bullied the rest of the world into submission for so long now that the tables may finally be turning. It appears that the geopolitical chessboard might have America the big loser when the petrodollar no longer rules. Russian President Putin is currently seeking to set the precedent to trade in rubles. As America’s chief creditor, China along with Russia are leading the revolt to overthrow the US dollar as the standard international currency. Europe usually gives into US demands but needs Russia’s natural gas piped in more than it does America’s war with Russia. Obama’s latest war drumming rhetoric and negative sanctions simply may not stick. The US government’s long history of violating others’ human rights justified by its own inflated sense of entitlement and exceptionalism appears to be rapidly catching up, and soon American citizens may be joining the rest of the world paying a very heavy price for the sins of its leaders.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former Army officer. His written manuscript based on his military experience examines leadership and national security issues and can be consulted at http://www.redredsea.net/westpointhagopian/
After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in psychology and became a licensed therapist working in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now focuses on writing. 

Wildfires in the Face of Climate Change: Increasing and Intensifying

Wildfires in the Face of Climate Change: Increasing and Intensifying

Past three decades have seen steady increase in fires, drought in Western US due to climate change

- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer
View of the 91 Freeway Fire, California (Via Flickr / Eric Nielson / Creative Commons license)Over the past 30 years wildfires have consistently become larger and more frequent in the Western U.S.—increasing by a rate of seven fires each year, a problem that shows no sign of stopping any time soon, according to research conducted by the University of Utah.
Using satellite images, the researchers found the total breadth of these fires has grown by a rate of nearly 90,000 acres per year—roughly equivalent to the size of Nevada.
This increasing problem is most likely tied to rising temperatures and extreme drought related to climate change, according to the report, which will be published in Geophysical Research Letters by the American Geophysical Union.
"These trends suggest that large-scale climate changes, rather than local factors, could be driving increases in fire activity," the scientists write. "The study stops short of linking the rise in number and size of fires directly to human-caused climate change. However, it says the observed changes in fire activity are in line with long-term, global fire patterns that climate models have projected will occur as temperatures increase and droughts become more severe in the coming decades due to global warming."
"Most of these trends show strong correlations with drought-related conditions which, to a large degree, agree with what we expect from climate change projections," said Max Moritz, a co-author of the study and a fire specialist at the University of California-Berkeley Cooperative Extension.
"But we are seeing a trend across the region. We are seeing it in deserts and grassland. The fact that we are seeing it in so many different ecosystems tells us something bigger is going on here," said the report's lead author Philip Dennison.
Earlier this week, as climate expert Jeff Masters notes, another group of Utah researchers detailed how this year's "remarkably extreme jet stream pattern" in North America, known as the "polar vortex," not only brought cold air to the Midwest and Eastern U.S., but also a "ridiculously resilient ridge" of high pressure over California, bringing the worst winter drought in record to California.
That same study found that this "vortex" was the most extreme on record, "and likely could not have grown so extreme without the influence of human-caused global warming," writes Masters.
"There is a traceable anthropogenic warming footprint in the enormous intensity of the anomalous ridge during winter 2013-14, the associated drought and its intensity," the study notes.
Looking ahead, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said this week that California could have its most severe fire season of all time this year, issuing warnings to homeowners to prepare earlier than usual for the fire season.
“Over the next couple of months almost all of Northern California's gonna be at an above average potential for large and damaging wildfires," Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant told the station. “These drought conditions that we're seeing are absolutely playing a huge factor in the size and the number of wildfires we're responding to.”

Friday, April 11, 2014

21st Century's First Decade Saw Doubling of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: IPCC

21st Century's First Decade Saw Doubling of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: IPCC

Leaked draft of latest IPCC report obtained by Guardian sheds light on drastic gas emissions from coal-fired plant

- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer
Centralia coal-fired power plant, Washington State (Photo via Flickr / Kid Clutch / Creative Commons license)Greenhouse gas emissions grew in the first decade of the 21st century at a rate almost double that of the previous 30 years, despite the 2008 economic downturn, a leaked portion of the UN's International Panel on Climate Change's latest research reveals.
"Global GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions have risen more rapidly between 2000 and 2010," says the leaked portion of the the draft report obtained by the Guardian, adding, "Current GHG emissions trends are at the high end of projected levels for the last decade."
According to the report, the drastic upswing in emissions is largely due to an increased reliance on coal-fired power plants.
As Suzanne Goldenberg at the Guardian reports, there are over 1,000 new plants under construction around the world, with most arising in China and India. As the IPCC research highlights, those plants are largely supplying power for factories making goods for the U.S. and Europe.
Countries such as Germany, Britain and France have also significantly increased coal burning.
The latest draft says emissions grew 2.2% per year between 2000 and 2010, compared to 1.3% per year over the previous three decades.
And between 2010 and 2011 emissions grew 3%.
This noted increase in emissions coincides with a recent report released by the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which said 13 of the 14 warmest years on record occurred in the 21st century.
That report said the extreme weather systems wreaking havoc across the world would have been "virtually impossible" without man-made climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
The IPCC's leaked draft comes as the third part of the the panel's extensive climate change assessment, which has been released in portions over the past year.
The scientists are in Berlin this week finalizing the research and will release a "Summary for Policymakers" of the "Working Group III contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)" in a press conference in Berlin on Sunday.
"This third part was supposed to be focused on solutions," writes Goldenberg. "Instead, the report made increasingly clear the large and growing gap in the scale of the threat and the readiness of those solutions."
What little solutions are offered in the report were criticized earlier this week by a British environmental organization, which also recently reviewed the draft. The group said many of the climate fixes suggested by the IPCC, such as bioenergy and carbon capture, are "largely untested" and "very risky" and could "exacerbate" climate change, agricultural problems, water scarcity, soil erosion and energy challenges, "rather than improving them."

Monday, April 7, 2014

Solartopia! Winning the Green Energy Revolution

Solartopia! Winning the Green Energy Revolution

High above the Bowling Green town dump, a green energy revolution is being won. It’s being helped along by the legalization of marijuana and its bio­fueled cousin, industrial hemp.
But it’s under extreme attack from the billionaire Koch Brothers, utilities like First Energy (FE), and a fossil/nuke industry that threatens our existence on this planet.
Robber Baron resistance to renewable energy has never been more fierce. The prime reason is that the Solartopian Revolution embodies the ultimate threat to the corporate utility industry and the hundreds of billions of dollars it has invested in the obsolete monopolies that define King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas).
The outcome will depend on your activism, and will determine whether we survive here at all. Four very large wind turbines in this small Ohio town are producing clean, cheap electricity that can help save our planet. A prime reason they exist is that Bowling Green has a municipal­owned utility. When it came time to go green, the city didn’t have to beg some corporate­owned electric monopoly to do it for them.
In fact, most of northern Ohio is now dominated by FirstEnergy, one of the most reactionary, anti-­green private utilities in the entire US. As owner of the infamous Davis­Besse reactor near Toledo, FE continually resists the conversion of our energy economy to renewable sources. Except for the occasional green window­ dressing, First Energy has fought fiercely for decades to preserve its unsafe reactors while fighting off the steady progression of renewable generators.
FE’s obstinance has been particularly dangerous at Davis­Besse, one of the world’s most profoundly unsafe nukes. To the dismay even of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other notoriously docile agencies, undetected boric acid ate nearly all the way through a reactor pressure vessel and threatened a massive melt­down/explosion that could have irradiated the entire north coast and the Great Lakes. FE’s nuke at Perry, east of Cleveland, was the first in the US to be substantially damaged by an earthquake.
Both Perry and David­Besse are in the stages of advanced decay. Each of them is being held together by the atomic equivalent of duct tape and bailing twine. A major accident grows more likely with each hour of operation.
Small wonder the nuclear industry has been shielded since 1957 by the Price-­Anderson Act, which limits corporate liability in any reactor disaster to less than $15 billion, a drop in the bucket compared to what has already happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima, and could happen here.
Should either of those reactors blow, FE and other investors will simply not have to pay for the loss of your home, family or personal health. Should that federal insurance be removed, the reactors would shut soon thereafter since for the last 57 years, no private insurers have stepped forward to write a policy on these reactors.
As for the wind turbines in Bowling Green, there are no such problems. With zero federal insurance restrictions, they initially came in ahead of schedule and under budget. They have boosted the local economy, created jobs and produced power is that is far cheaper, safer, cleaner and more reliable than anything coming out of the many nearby trouble­plagued burners of fossil and nuclear fuels.
Throughout the world similar “miracles” are in progress. According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 92 percent of the new electrical generating capacity installed in the US in the first two months of 2014 was renewable.
That includes six new wind farms, three geothermal facilities, and 25 new solar plants. One of those wind installations is a 75 megawatt plant in Huron County, Wisconsin.
Four solar arrays will produce 73 megawatts for Southern California Edison, which was just forced by a grassroots upsurge to shut its two huge reactors at San Onofre, between Los Angeles and San Diego.
SoCalEd and the people of southern California are now in the process of filling that void with a wide range of renewable installations. Many home owners will be doing it by installing solar panels on their rooftops, a rapidly advancing technology that is proving extremely cost-­effective while avoiding production of millions of tons of greenhouse gases and radioactive waste.
By comparison, according to one report, new development in “fossil fuel ­based infrastructure was almost non­existent for January and February, with only one natural gas facility brought on line.”
Across the nation, public opinion polls show an accelerating embrace of renewables. According to a Gallup Poll taken last year, more than 70 percent of Americans want more emphasis put on solar and wind power, well over twice as many as embrace coal (31 percent) and nearly twice as many as those who support new nukes (37 percent).
And here Wall Street agrees with Main Street. Despite gargantuan federal subsidies and its status as a legal fiefdom unto itself, major investors have shunned atomic energy. The smart money is pouring toward Solartopia, to the tune of billions each year in new invested capital.
There have been the inevitable failures, such as the infamous Solyndra which left the feds holding more than a half-­billion in bad paper.
But such pitfalls have been common throughout the history of energy start­ups, including all aspects of the fossil/nuke industry. And in solar’s case, Solyndra has been dwarfed by billions in profits from other green investments.
Ironically, one of the biggest new fields ­­­advanced bio-­fuels ­­­is being opened by the legalization of marijuana and its industrial cousin, hemp. Hemp was the number two cash crop (behind tobacco) grown in the early American colonies. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were enthusiastic cultivators. Jefferson wrote passionately about it in his farm journal, and Washington took pains to import special seed from India.
As a crop with many uses, hemp has been an essential player in human agriculture for 50 centuries.
In early America, hemp’s primary early service was as feedstock for rope and sails for ships. But it was also used to make clothing and other textiles. Ben Franklin processed it in his first paper mill. And it has wide applications as a food crop, especially thanks to the high protein content of its seeds, which are also a core of the bird feed business.
Some of the early colonies actually required farmers to grow hemp. During World War II the military commandeered virtually the entire state of Kansas for it, using it primarily for rope in the Navy.
But since then it has been almost everywhere illegal.
There are many theories behind why, including a belief that the tree ­based paper industry does not want to compete with hemp feedstock, which­­­ as Franklin knew­­­ makes a stronger paper, and can be grown far more cheaply and sustainably.
China, Japan, Germany, Rumania and other nations have long been growing hemp with great profit. Canada’s annual crop has been valued at nearly $500,000,000. Estimates of its domestic consumption here in the US run around $550,000,000, all of it imported.
The US hemp industry is widely regarded as an innocent by­stander in the insane war against marijuana. (Some believe that because it threatens so many industrial interests, hemp is actually a CAUSE of marijuana prohibition).
But because marijuana prohibition seems finally to be on the fade, the laws against hemp cultivation are falling away. The national farm community is in strong support, for obvious reasons. Hemp is extremely easy to grow, does not require pesticides or herbicides (it’s a weed!) and has centuries of profitability to back it up.
When Colorado legalized recreational pot it also opened the door for industrial hemp, with the first full­ on crop now on its way in. Washington state is following suit. In Kentucky, right ­wing Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell both strongly support legalization. The federal law against its cultivation in states where it’s being legalized has now eased.
Hemp’s role in the Solartopian revolution is certain to be huge. The oil content in its seeds make it a prime player in the booming bio-­fuels industry. The high cellulosic content of its stems and leaves mean it might also be fermented into ethanol. (The stalks and stems are also highly prized as building materials and insulation).
There has been strong resistance to bio-­fuels now derived from corn and soy, for good reason. Those are food crops, and their use for industrial fuel has pitted hungry people against automobiles and other combustion technologies, bringing on rising prices for those who can least afford them.
Corn and soy are also extremely inefficient as fuel stocks (corn is far worse). In a world dominated by corporate agri­business, they are generally raised unsustainably, with huge quantities of pesticides, herbicides and petro-­based fertilizers. None of those are required for hemp, which is prolific, sustainable and can be raised in large quantities by independent non­corporate growers.
Along with on­going breakthroughs in other feedstocks (especially algae) hemp will be a major player in the Solartopian future. As pot inches its way toward full legalization, we can reasonably expect to see a revolution in bio­-fuels within a very few years.
Likewise wind and solar. Windmills have been with us for at least five centuries. Coming from the plains of Asia, they covered our own Great Plains in the Great Depression and have rapidly advanced in power and efficiency. Newly installed turbine capacity is far cheaper than nukes and has recently surpassed all but the dirtiest of fossil fuels. As at Bowling Green, installation can be quick and efficient. Actual output often exceeds expectation, as do profits and job­creation.
But the real revolution is coming in photo­voltaics (PV). These technologies ­­­and there’s a very wide range of them ­­­convert sunlight to electricity. Within the next few decades, they will comprise the largest industry in human history. Every home, office, factory, window, parking lot, highway, vehicle, machine, device and much more will be covered and/or embedded with them. There are trillions of dollars to be made.
The speed of their advance is now on par with that of computing capability. Moore’s Law ­­­which posited (correctly) that computing capacity would double every two years ­­­is now a reality in the world of PV. Capacity is soaring while cost plummets.
It’s a complex, demanding and increasingly competitive industry. It can also be hugely profitable. So there’s every technological reason to believe that in tandem with wind, bio-­fuels, geo­thermal, ocean thermal, wave energy, increased efficiency, conservation and more, the Solartopian revolution in clean green PV power could completely transform the global energy industry within the next few years.
“Only flat­earthers and climate­deniers can continue to question the fact that the age of renewable energy is here now,” says Ken Bossong, executive director of the Sun Day Campaign.
But there’s a barrier ­­­King CONG, the Robber Baron energy corporations. In fact, the Koch Brothers and their fossil/nuke cohorts are conducting a vicious nationwide campaign against renewables. It puts out all sorts of reasons for the bloviators to blurt.
But the real motive is to protect their huge corporate investments.
Because what’s really at stake here is the question of who will control the future of energy ­­­King CONG, or the human community.
Though it would seem it could also be monopolized, Solartopian energy is by nature community ­based. Photovoltaic cells could be owned by corporations, and in many cases they are.
But in the long run PV inclines toward DG (distributed generation). The nature of roof­top collectors is to allow homeowners to own their own supply. The market might incline them at various stages to buy or lease the solar cells from a monopoly.
But in real terms, the price of PV is dropping so fast that monopolization may well become moot. As futurist Jeremy Rifkin puts it more generally his “Rise of Anti­Capitalism.” “The inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring those costs to near zero.”
But that’s what’s starting to happen with photovoltaic cells, where fuel is free and capital costs are dropping low enough that the utility industry and its fossil/nuke allies can’t quite grab control.
When individual building owners can generate their own PV power, when communities like Bowling Green can own their own windmills, when small farmers can grow their own hemp­based fuel, who needs King CONG?
We know this powerful beast will fight against the renewable revolution right down to its last billion, especially now that American elections are so easily bought and stolen. Defending the green ­powered turf will not be easy.
But sooner or later, if we can survive fracking, the next few Fukushimas and the oil spills after that, Solartopia must come.
Our economic and our biological survival both depend on it.
See you there!
Harvey Wasserman
Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show is at www.progressiveradionetwork.com, and he edits www.nukefree.org. Harvey Wasserman's History of the US and Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth are at www.harveywasserman.com along with Passions of the PotSmoking Patriots by "Thomas Paine."  He and Bob Fitrakis have co-authored four books on election protection, including How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election, at www.freepress.org.

Dear Humanity, Time Is Running Out

Next and final chapter in IPCC climate change assessment will say window is fast closing for society to respond to worst impacts of fast-warming planet

Avoiding dangerous climate change will require not just rapid reductions in fossil fuel use but also a revolution in the structures of our economies and societies, according to a momentous UN scientific report on climate change to be released next week in Berlin. (Photo: Shutterstock)The next chapter of the UN climate panel's scientific report on global warming is due out next week in Berlin, but a draft of the document seen by the Reuters news agency reveals that the main message for humanity and society is simply this: time is running out.
According to Reuters:
Government officials and top climate scientists will meet in Berlin from April 7-12 to review the 29-page draft that also estimates the needed shift to low-carbon energies would cost between two and six per cent of world output by 2050.
It says nations will have to impose drastic curbs on their still rising greenhouse gas emissions to keep a promise made by almost 200 countries in 2010 to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times.
This third chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fifth Assessment Report will move away from the causes and scientific consensus of climate change (covered in the first chapter) and the impacts of global warming and changing climate patterns (covered in the second), and focus on the possible steps that can be taken to avoid the very worst case scenarios that scientists have set forth.
To avoid these dangers, the report will say, society will not only need to rapidly reduce use of fossil fuels, but also revolutionize the structures of its economies, food systems, and energy grids.
"Climate change is global-scale violence, against places and species as well as against human beings." —Rebecca Solnit
What this next chapter will highlight is that for all the alarming warnings generated by the scientific community and confirmed by the IPCC's comprehensive analysis of that science, is that world government's and the powerful private sector have done next to nothing to meet the challenge now before humanity.
“So far, world leaders have sorely lacked the political will to make the shift to low-carbon societies," said Dipti Bhatnagar, Friends of the Earth International Climate Justice and Energy coordinator, as she responded to the latest IPCC draft.
According to Agence France-Presse, which also saw a draft of the chapter, the panel suggests there is a 15-year window for affordable action to safely reach the UN's warming limit of two degrees Celsius.
“Scientists confirm that we must take urgent steps to avoid triggering catastrophic climate change and its irreversible impacts on humans and ecosystems. Real solutions to the climate crisis are already available. We need community-based energy solutions, energy efficiency and reduced consumption levels, not dangerous energy sources like fossil fuels or nuclear power,” said Inga Roemer of Friends of the Earth Germany / BUND.
Roemer was responding to potentially controversial aspects of the IPCC recommendations, which may include the use of nuclear energy to offset the imperative of scaling back reliance on fossil fuels. Environmentalists have largely rejected those in the scientific community who have suggested that nuclear power —even if "done right" and safer—is a realistic and responsible solution to the carbon-based energy system.
For all the warnings, however, what environmentalists and climate activists are calling for is the paradigm shift that the science—and the economic implications of the fossil fuel industry—have long been showing is necessary.
As green activist and author Rebecca Solnit writes at the Guardian on Monday, the consistent and current refusal by governments and industry to address the crisis of human-caused climate change should be called what it is: violence against humanity and planet Earth itself.
Solnit writes:
Climate change is anthropogenic – caused by human beings, some much more than others. We know the consequences of that change: the acidification of oceans and decline of many species in them, the slow disappearance of island nations such as the Maldives, increased flooding, drought, crop failure leading to food-price increases and famine, increasingly turbulent weather. (Think Hurricane Sandy and the recent typhoon in the Philippines, and heat waves that kill elderly people by the tens of thousands.)
Climate change is violence.
So if we want to talk about violence and climate change – and we are talking about it, after last week's horrifying report from the world's top climate scientists – then let's talk about climate change as violence. Rather than worrying about whether ordinary human beings will react turbulently to the destruction of the very means of their survival, let's worry about that destruction – and their survival. Of course water failure, crop failure, flooding and more will lead to mass migration and climate refugees – they already have – and this will lead to conflict. Those conflicts are being set in motion now.
What comes next, Solnit says, is entirely up to humanity's capacity to admit the problem, call it by its true name, and then systematically and aggressively address it.
"That's a tired phrase, the destruction of the Earth," admits Solnit. "But translate it into the face of a starving child and a barren field – and then multiply that a few million times."