Author: Atheo « Aletho News

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

By Aletho News | January 9, 2012

This article examines some of the connections between the US and UK National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile Island.

In the mid 1970s “climate cooling” was the topic of articles in popular magazines such as Newsweek with reports of meteorologists being “almost unanimous” that the trend could lead to catastrophic famines, another little ice age or worse. In 1974 Time magazine published an article titled “Another Ice Age?.” In 1975 the New York Times ran an article titled “Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable,” while in 1978 they reported that “an international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Of course, it may be true that the “newspaper of record” is not the best source for topics that go beyond the pronouncements of official or “off the record” statements from government agents. However, it is instructive that the message changed by the end of the decade, after the March 28, 1979 accident at Three Mile Island which had sounded the death knell for the nuclear power industry that is.

Daniel Yergin writes that by the early 1980s “a notable shift in the climate of climate change research was clear-from cooling to warming.”1 Yergin reports that the Department of Defense’s JASON committee had found “incontrovertible evidence that the atmosphere is indeed changing and that we ourselves contribute to that change,” adding “a wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.” Political action was now being called for. That action would entail reducing carbon emissions, something which could be achieved through increased reliance on the now unpopular nuclear power industry.

Nuclear weapons programs rely on the existence of large nuclear processing facilities including mining, milling and enrichment of uranium as well as a highly specialized and experienced labor pool. While it is possible to produce nuclear weapons without a nuclear power industry it is far preferable to have a dynamic nuclear industry in place. The nuclear facilities that existed in 1979 would not last forever and the industry was seen as an essential component of the military industrial complex. These factors may well have been over-riding considerations in the DoD JASON committee report.

One of the principle scientists engaged in formulating the AGW theory was Roger Revelle, a US Navy oceanographer who was employed at the Office of Naval Research. The US Navy was actually central to the development of the civilian nuclear power industry in the US due to its reactor designs for nuclear powered submarines and ships.

Another outspoken early proponent of AGW theory was Britain’s Margaret Thatcher who also sought the construction of new nuclear power plants as well as Trident nuclear submarines along with new nuclear weapons. Her Conservative party also sought to crush the coal miner’s unions with which they had intractable disputes. Britain went on to build new nuclear power plants during the 1980s while firing tens of thousands of coal miners.

In the US, the Carter administration sponsored the establishment of the solar energy industry, another carbon free energy source. George Tenet (later named as director of the CIA) became the promotion manager of the Solar Energy Industries Association which included companies such as Grumman, Boeing, General Motors and Exxon. The proposed ‘renewable’ and ‘green’ energy legislation over the decades consistently facilitated the viability of the development of new nuclear power plants. Other ‘alternative’ energy technologies were never seriously expected to become significant sources of electric power generation.

In 2008 another CIA director, James Woolsey, would also become involved in promoting “a Fortress America of tanks and solar panels, plug-in hybrids and nuclear reactors,”2 only in his case the service to the carbon free industry would come after the CIA stint rather than before. Woolsey has recently appeared in an anti-oil print ad for the American Clean Skies Foundation.

The Institute for Policy Studies reports on Woolsey’s focus as an energy security advisor to the John McCain presidential campaign:

A founding member of the Set America Free coalition, a pressure group aimed at highlighting the “security and economic implications of America’s growing dependence on foreign oil,” Woolsey sees himself as helping pioneer a new political coalition that combines his militarist security ideology with green politics. He says, “The combination of 9/11, concern about climate change, and $4 a gallon gasoline has brought a lot of people together. I call it the coalition of the tree-huggers, the do-gooders, the cheap hawks, the evangelicals, and the mom and pop drivers. All of those groups have good reasons to be interested in moving away from oil dependence.”3

The Set America Free coalition includes liberal groups such as the Apollo Alliance, the American Council on Renewable Energy and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

There is another significant bloc of support for the low carbon paradigm which has a foreign policy orientation. In promoting the reduction in reliance on Middle Eastern oil imports Woolsey is joined by prominent hawks such as Senator Joseph Lieberman, former Senator Sam Brownback, Representative Eliot Engel, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former national security adviser Robert McFarlane, Thomas Neumann of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, Frank Gaffney head of the neoconservative Center for Security Policy (CSP), Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), Gary Bauer of American Values and Meyrav Wurmser of the Hudson Institute.

An outcome of energy independence would be greater freedom to initiate wars of aggression across the Middle East region that would destroy any potential resistance to the greater Israel project. Woolsey’s positions as an advisor to the neoconservative-led Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; and advisory board member of the Likudnik Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs might shed some light on his aims. The low carbon paradigm serves both the nuclear goals as well as the geo-political goals of the neoconservatives.

Update, May 22, 2013:

The WSJ has distilled the message into just five words: Going Green? Then Go Nuclear

Update, July 11, 2013:

Obama’s Climate Action Plan: Nuclear Energy?

… nuclear energy forms a crucial component of President Obama’s climate action plan.

Notes

1Daniel Yergin, The Quest, Penguin Press

2 Jackson West, “R. James Woolsey and the Rise of the Greenocons”

3 Tim Shipman, “John McCain Hires Former CIA Director Jim Woolsey As Green Advisor,” Daily Telegraph, June 21, 2008.

Also by Aletho News:

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

‘A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance’

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

January 8, 2012 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Militarism, Nuclear Power, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | American Clean Skies Foundation, CIA, Global warming, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Middle East, R. James Woolsey Jr., Solar Energy Industries Association, Three Mile Island, United States, Woolsey | 14 Comments

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | November 13, 2011

The Obama regime is now involving US military forces in yet another African conflict in which the US has no apparent defense imperative. The use of military power has seen a relentless increase across the continent under Obama’s reign with no consideration for pursuit of conflict resolution by any other means.

The single minded focus on military dominance is reflected in this recent bizarre report in the Nigerian Village Square:

In very strong terms the US government is speaking out against Nigeria’s government’s efforts at negotiating with Boko Haram, insisting that it might be impossible for the federal government to convince Boko Haram to end their violence, which the Americans consider as “absolutely unjustifiable,” because many of such terror groups are “absolutely unreconcilable,” [sic] according to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. […]

According to her, terror groups like Boko Haram “cannot be convinced to end their violence and participate in society,” stressing that there is no set or principles or beliefs that can justify taking the lives of innocent people.

One is left to wonder how it is that US military force, which does take the lives of countless innocent people, is justified on so many foreign continents and so ceaselessly. Perhaps in Clinton’s warped view US drone attacks and special operations raids don’t illicit terror in their victims.

The BBC report on the current situation is less shrill, in fact, it makes the point that the insertion of foreign forces could very well be destabilizing for Nigeria:

Many now believe that the heavy military presence in Borno and neighbouring states is the biggest single factor hindering any chance of a negotiated settlement and peace.

Abubakar Kari, a political scientist from the University of Abuja, says he believes Nigeria is still feeling the consequences of the government’s attempt to destroy the group in 2009.

Boko Haram’s headquarters in Borno state capital Maiduguri was destroyed and their founder and leader Muhammad Yusuf captured and then killed in custody.

Hundreds of members of the group died and ever since it has been attacking government targets in retaliation.

“The rise of Boko Haram is largely as a result of incompetence, lack of foresight and insensitivity from the Nigerian state,” Mr Kari said. […]

Respected human rights activist Shehu Sani was involved in the first attempt to talk with Boko Haram.

He organized a meeting in September between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Boko Haram members…

“Boko Haram said they wanted their leaders who have been kept in captivity to be released,” he said, “And they want justice done for their members that were killed and they also want the military to withdraw from Maiduguri.”

Mr Sani said that they had made it clear that they were not fighting for an Islamic state, ruled by Sharia law but because of what they see as the injustice that has been done to them.

For those hoping for a negotiated solution, that will come as a relief.

The mediation stalled when one of Boko Haram’s interlocutors was killed shortly after the meeting, but Mr Sani remains optimistic that given the right attitude from the government they could restart.

Opposition parties and in particular those in the north, such as the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), say the government is underestimating the amount of support Boko Haram has among the population. […]

Congress for Progressive Change national secretary Bubu Galadima said many people in the north felt marginalized and excluded from wealth and opportunity.

The resistance group’s leader, Muhammad Yusuf, who was murdered while in government custody had been widely ridiculed in the Western media as having claimed that the “earth is flat”. In fact, he had merely stated that if the Koran said that the earth was flat he would have faith in its teaching, a rhetorical point meant to stress his faith.

Boko Haram translates* from Hausa/Fulani as ‘no Western education’. Nigerian authorities have in the past referred to the movement as ‘Taliban’ in much the same way that U.S. military spokespersons use the term ‘al-Qaida’ to label any resistance fighters:

“The deputy leader of the Taliban by the name Abubakar Shekau was in the early hours of today killed along with 200 followers by Nigerian troops,” a police officer told the AFP news agency.

An AP report on the military assault describes tactics developed by the Israeli occupation forces in Palestine such as home invasion searches, demolition of homes and mosques with bulldozers, executions, mass displacement of civilian populations and indiscriminate firing at non-combatants.

Looking beyond the recent reporting by the AFP and AP one finds that it was reported in 2009 that an expulsion effort had been undertaken against Hausa/Fulani pastoralists by state officials seeking to deport “nomads [that] did not obtain official permission to settle down”. However, Nigerian law does not require residency permits and nomadic pastoralism has existed in the region for centuries. Nonetheless deportation actions were taken:

“… a combined team from the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Police Force, and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) stormed the affected five villages, purportedly “acting on orders from above”, to identify and deport all aliens who had settled down in the area. All the aliens in question happened to be Fulani herdsmen and under heavy security supervision, they were deported to the neighbouring states of Bauchi, Gombe, Katsina, and Jigawa.”

Described as “aliens”, the state Government “deported” the Fulanis to neighboring states which means there was no doubt about their Nigerian citizenship. The state action violated the constitutional rights of the pastoralists who are guaranteed freedom of movement within Nigeria. The 2009 report goes on to state:

“to descend on innocent people, with a combined team of security operatives in three armoured tanks and 15 trucks, simply because these are Fulani herdsmen who arrived in trucks and not on foot as their kind is wont to do, lays the state government open to charges of ethnic cleansing.”

An older report from a committee of Sahel region governments sheds some light on the possible motives of the state:

“These populations represent a heavy social, economic and political drain for their countries… They don’t take care of anything, refuse to do manual labor, evade taxes, sell their animals only reluctantly, and therefore do not contribute as much to the economic life of the country as we have a right to expect…” (1)

The problem in Nigeria seems to be that the unwanted Fulanis are difficult to tax and don’t participate in the market economy.

Notes

(1) Comite Information Sahel, Qui se nourrit de la famine en Afrique? (Paris: Maspero, 1974) p. 162.

They couldn’t pinpoint the members of the Boko Haram sect, so they rounded up innocent civilians in the Gwange ward of Maiduguri and took them to the barracks, the Nigerian police beat them with service sticks, rods and koboko.

One of the leaders of boko haram killed in Maiduguri police headquarters by Nigerian police after capture.

* Update:

‘Boko Haram’ doesn’t really mean ‘Western education is a sin’

By Dan Murphy | Christian Science Monitor | May 6, 2014

What’s the real meaning of “Boko Haram?” I’ve been wondering about this recently since news articles are constantly informing me (including ones on this website) that it means “Western education is a sin.”

I was surprised that Nigeria’s Hausa language, spoken by the mostly Muslim group that is dominant in the northern half of the country, would have a four letter word that meant “western education.” Haram has always been obvious – a borrowed word from Arabic that refers to things that are forbidden in Islam (as opposed to things that are halal, or permitted).

I wondered if it was an acronym, or a mash-up of two other words. So I started looking around and struck gold with a paper by Paul Newman, professor emeritus in linguistics at Indiana University and one of the world’s leading authorities on the Hausa language.

It turns out the Hausa language doesn’t have a four-letter word that means “Western education.” It isn’t a mash-up or an acronym. What it has is a word that came to be applied to a century-old British colonial education policy that many Hausa-speakers saw as an attempt, more-or-less, to colonize their minds.

First, some information needs to be dispensed with. The word is often described as being borrowed from the English word “book.” Not so, as Dr. Newman’s work makes clear.

Starting in 2009, Wikipedia’s article on the Hausa “Boko alphabet” incorrectly asserted that the word derived from “book.” […]

Newman writes about the history of the word’s use in this context:

The correct answer was implicitly presented by Liman Muhammad, a Hausa scholar from northern Nigeria, some 45 years ago. In his study of neologisms and lexical enrichment in Hausa, Muhammad (pp. 8-10) gives a list of somewhat over 200 loanwords borrowed from English into Hausa in the area of “Western Education and Culture”. Significantly, boko is not included. Rather one finds boko in his category for western concepts expressed in Hausa by SEMANTIC EXTENSION of pre-existent Hausa words.

According to Muhammad, boko originally meant “Something (an idea or object) that involves a fraud or any form of deception” … Read full article

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

‘A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance’

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

November 12, 2011 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Boko Haram, Borno, Borno State, Maiduguri, Nigeria | 2 Comments

Zelikow’s Key Role in 9/11 Cover-Up

By argonium79 on October 18, 2010

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | September 19, 2011 – Scroll down for video

President Obama has appointed Philip Zelikow to serve on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board the White House announced this past week.

Zelikow served on the same presidential board between 2001 and 2003 under Bush during which time he revealed the perceived threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq which necessitated preemptive invasion.

“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?” asked Zelikow. “I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts.

Apparently a war, sold to the world on false pretenses, for the sole benefit of Israel presented no dilemma for Zelikow. But then, Zelikow’s academic background places him squarely in league with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) proponents of wars for Israel as reported at Wikipedia.

In writing about the importance of beliefs about history, Zelikow has called attention to what he has called “‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events [that] take on ‘transcendent’ importance and, therefore, retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene.” […]

In the November-December 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs, Phillip D. Zelikow co-authored an article with Ashton B. Carter, and John M. Deutch entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism” describing a “Pearl Harbor” type of event that might occur in the United States that would result in the suspension of civil liberties and the increased surveillance of citizens. It seemed to describe exactly what has come to pass under the Bush Administration. They speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, “the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks.”

Of course Zelikow was indispensable in heading up the 9/11 commission, an appointment which was opposed by the 9/11 Family Steering Committee which cited his “close ties” to the Bush administration. Zelikow had an obvious conflict of interest, having previously worked on the Bush transition team, which recommended candidates for Cabinet positions and other top national security appointments. Many Bush administration security positions had been filled by people associated with the PNAC (such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) which advocated for war on Iraq, and lamented that the goal would take a long time, unless there was a catalyzing event like “a new Pearl Harbor.” After completing his work with the 9/11 Commission, Zelikow was hired by Condoleezza Rice as Counselor at the State Department until 2007.

Zelikow authors Bush Doctrine of preemptive war

David Ray Griffin points out another conflict of interest in Zelikow’s appointment to the 9/11 commission, “the document in which the Bush Doctrine was first fully articulated—the 2002 version of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS 2002) —was written by the same person who was primarily responsible for the 9/11 Commission’s report: its executive director, Philip Zelikow.”

Griffin describes the connection between the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Bush Doctrine:

People known as neoconservatives (or simply neocons), the most powerful member of whom has been Dick Cheney, did not like the idea that America’s use of military power could be constrained by the prohibition against preemptive-preventive war. In 1992, Cheney, in his last year as secretary of defense, had Paul Wolfowitz (the undersecretary of defense for policy) and Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby write the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, which said that the United States should use force to “preempt” and “preclude threats.” In 1997, William Kristol founded a neocon think tank called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). In 1998, a letter signed by 18 members of PNAC—including Kristol, Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and James Woolsey—urged President Clinton to “undertake military action” to eliminate “the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.”

Only after 9/11, however, were the neocons able to turn their wish to leave international law behind into official US policy. As Stephen Sniegoski wrote, “it was only the traumatic effects of the 9/11 terrorism that enabled the agenda of the neocons to become the policy of the United States of America.” Andrew Bacevich likewise wrote: “The events of 9/11 provided the tailor-made opportunity to break free of the fetters restricting the exercise of American power.”

The idea of preemptive-preventive war, which came to be known as the “Bush doctrine,” was first clearly expressed in the president’s address at West Point in June 2002, when the administration began preparing the American people for the attack on Iraq. Having stated that, in relation to “new threats,” deterrence “means nothing” and containment is “not possible,” Bush dismissed preemption as traditionally understood, saying: “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.” Then, using the language of preemption while meaning preemptive-prevention, he said that America’s security “will require all Americans . . . to be ready for preemptive action.” […]

This unprecedented doctrine was, as we have seen, one that neocons had long desired. Indeed, neocon Max Boot described NSS 2002 as a “quintessentially neo-conservative document.” And, as we have also seen, the adoption of this doctrine was first made possible by the 9/11 attacks. Halper and Clarke themselves say, in fact, that 9/11 allowed the “preexisting ideological agenda” of the neoconservatives to be “taken off the shelf . . . and relabeled as the response to terror.”

The 9/11 attacks, we have seen, allowed the Bush-Cheney administration to adopt the doctrine of preemptive-preventive war, which the neocons in the administration—most prominently Cheney himself—had long desired. One would assume, therefore, that the 9/11 Commission would not have been run by someone who helped formulate this doctrine, because the Commission should have investigated, among other things, whether the Bush-Cheney administration might have had anything to gain from 9/11 attacks—whether they, in other words, might have had a motive for orchestrating or at least deliberately allowing the attacks. Amazing as it may seem, however, Philip Zelikow, who directed the 9/11 Commission and was the primary author of its final report, had also been the primary author of NSS 2002.

Lying behind Zelikow’s authorship of NSS 2002 was the fact that he was close, both personally and ideologically, to Condoleezza Rice, who as National Security Advisor to President Bush had the task of creating this document. Zelikow had worked with Rice in the National Security Council during the Bush I presidency. Then, when the Republicans were out of power during the Clinton years, Zelikow and Rice co-authored a book together. Finally, when she was appointed National Security Advisor to Bush II, she brought on Zelikow to help with the transition to the new National Security Council.

The Obama regime has expanded upon the Bush doctrine, claiming unchecked executive privilege to assassinate perceived enemies, even US citizens. Drone attacks are now occurring in six different countries. These operations are not being subjected to any outside scrutiny whatsoever. While the US regime claims that Yemen and Pakistan for example are “terrorist sanctuaries” there is little or no evidence that any threat to the US or even to its interests could be emanating from these places. What we are actually seeing is the methodical subjugation and terrorizing of the global Islamic population whom seem to have been reduced to having no human rights at all as well as having been marked for dispossession.

Military dominance over any nation which might attempt to resist this new order is a primary goal with Iran in particular in the cross hairs, though regime change is being pursued by State Department associated entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy through various non-military means as well in any nation which has supported the Hamas or Hezbollah resistance movements in any manner.

The background that Zelikow brings into the Obama regime bodes ill for the prospects of peace or the restoration of any respect for US or international law and frankly suggests that the Obama regime is headed toward further escalation of aggression and violence wherever threats or subversion fail to achieve Israel’s aims.

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

‘A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance’

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

September 18, 2011 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | 20 Comments

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

Chaos and strife create the revolutionary atmosphere in which opportunity abounds

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | March 8, 2011

Investment banking is usually thought of as a field that values stability. Yet the greatest rewards are often attained through destabilization.

North African regimes and leaders have their obvious faults and flaws. Autocracies have an inherent weakness in their tendency to ossification. This basic reality is reflected not just in the obvious lack of democratic institutions, but also in the economic structures of the North African states. Regimes which have persisted for many decades tend to retain many of the economic characteristics of the era in which they were formed.

In the developing economies, during the decades prior to the neo-liberal reforms of the 1990’s, state owned industries were fostered in order to provide basic services such as telecommunications, transport and public utilities. Local manufacturing industries were protected from offshore competition as a means of furthering development goals and enhancing balance of trade accounts. These well established practices have come to be seen by today’s promoters of ‘free trade’ and privatization as an impediment to maximizing profits. Once established, these industries are in many cases difficult to dislodge.

Therefore, a clean break is required for restructuring primary domestic industries in order for international investors to reap a greater share of locally generated profits. This process is referred to as ‘creative destruction’. To facilitate the emplacement of the new order, the old order must first be swept aside. This requirement of upending the existing order explains why Western neoconservatives have been promoting the revolutionary uprisings in North Africa. Neoconservative think tanks and publications are closely associated with the banking interests. Evidence of their designs on North Africa is abundant.

A 2010 Bertelsmann evaluation titled Transformation Tunisia reported:

Tunisia’s decision makers have once again advanced transformation too sluggishly. Despite the formal abolition of trade barriers for industrial goods with the European Union as of 1 January 2008, in practice, Tunisia has seen too little progress in terms of trade liberalization [emphasis added].

[The] Tunisian banking sector and capital market are regularly cited as one major hindrance to the country’s economic modernization. Although they have been formally brought up to international standards, financial supervision and regulation remain subject to political influence. This is partly due to direct state control over financial flows and partly to the state’s direct involvement therein. Although it sold its stakes in two banks in 2002 and 2005, respectively, the state remains the controlling shareholder in at least four other banks because it controls 50% of their assets. Under these conditions, top-rank bank executives are de facto appointed by the president through a controlling body.

On January 7, 2011, Elliott Abrams wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations:

“Tunisia, whose literacy rate has long been the highest in Africa at nearly 80% and whose per capita GDP is about $8,000, should have the ability to sustain a democratic government—once the Ben Ali regime collapses [emphasis added].

“Tunisians are clearly sick of looking at all the giant photos and paintings of Ben Ali that appear on walls, posters, and billboards all over the country. […]

“If Tunisia can move toward democracy, Algerians and Egyptians and even Libyans will wonder why they cannot. This kind of thing may catch on [emphasis added]. In fact, in Algeria it may already be catching on.” (Elliott Abrams: Is Tunisia Next?)

On February 13, the New York Times described Robert Kagan as “a Brookings Institution scholar who long before the revolution helped assemble a nonpartisan group of policy experts to press for democratic change in Egypt.” [emphasis added]

Maidhc Ó Cathail has noted that:

Arianna Huffington … was prescient in a December 13, 2010 op-ed in Lebanon’s Daily Star titled “Social media will help fuel change in the Middle East.”

And also that:

Robert Kagan, who co-founded the Project for a New American Century with William Kristol in 1997, was joined on that “nonpartisan group” by PNAC founding member Elliott Abrams and PNAC deputy director Ellen Bork. Bork is currently “democracy and human rights” director at PNAC’s successor, Foreign Policy Initiative, where Kagan and Kristol are directors. Not surprisingly, Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard on January 29 that he was “in complete agreement” with his fellow PNACers’ Working Group on Egypt in its demands that the U.S. suspend aid to Mubarak. […]

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Kagan looked positively sanguine about the prospects for a post-Mubarak Egypt. Like George Soros, he seems confident that Israel has “much to gain from the spread of democracy in the Middle East.”

It should be recalled that many of these same individuals and institutions were principle actors in the promotion of the ‘color revolutions’ in many of the former Soviet Republics as well as in Iran’s failed ‘green revolution’ during the summer of 2010.

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi points out that the direction that events take is not being left to local forces:

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Rachel Maddow several weeks ago and revealed that Washington has already begun meddling. Albright denounced Egyptian ex-president Mubarak … and then confirmed that the National Endowment for Democracy was already hard at work in Egypt, even though Mubarak had not yet stepped down, building up infrastructure and supporting party development. Recall for a moment that Albright believes that a heavy fist is an essential part of diplomacy and that US interests always trump whatever suffering local people have to endure. […]

Those who are aware of the insidious activities of the National Endowment for Democracy or NED, an ostensibly private foundation that spreads “democracy” and is largely funded by the government, will not be surprised to learn that it is already active in North Africa because it is almost everywhere. NED, which has a Democratic Party half in its National Democratic Institute, and a Republican Party half in its International Republican Institute, was the driving force behind the series of pastel revolutions that created turmoil in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. Remember when the Russians and others complained about the activities of NGOs interfering in their politics? NED was what they were referring to.

Albright is in charge of the NED Dems while John McCain leads the NED GOP. […]

Neoconservative Ken Timmerman has identified the core NED activity overseas as “training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques,” surely a polite way to describe interfering directly in other countries’ politics.

On February 27, John McCain and Joe Lieberman visited Cairo. As reported by Politico:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who’s on a quick trip through the Middle East, said Sunday he found Cairo to be a “very exciting place.”

“We went to Tahrir Square today. Got a warm, enthusiastic welcome,” he said of his visit to Cairo with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Of course, to suggest that the uprisings have been orchestrated solely by these interests would ignore genuine grassroots concerns. Nothing here is meant to suggest that conditions for unrest were not present or that sacrifices for social change have not been made by the peoples of North Africa. This article is only meant to inform as to the activities of the interventionists. The real accomplishments of the uprisings may yet predominate.

Within a month after demanding cessation of military aid to Mubarak, the very same neocon cabal was demanding military intervention in the less pliable Libya. Jim Lobe reports for IPS:

In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage U.S. intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to “immediately” prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.

The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organised and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Warning that Libya stood “on the threshold of a moral and humanitarian catastrophe”, the letter, which was addressed to President Barack Obama, called for specific immediate steps involving military action, in addition to the imposition of a number of diplomatic and economic sanctions to bring “an end to the murderous Libyan regime”.

In particular, it called for Washington to press NATO to “develop operational plans to urgently deploy warplanes to prevent the regime from using fighter jets and helicopter gunships against civilians and carry out other missions as required; (and) move naval assets into Libyan waters” to “aid evacuation efforts and prepare for possible contingencies;” as well as “(e)stablish the capability to disable Libyan naval vessels used to attack civilians.”

Among the letter’s signers were former Bush deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Bush’s top global democracy and Middle East adviser; Elliott Abrams; former Bush speechwriters Marc Thiessen and Peter Wehner; Vice President Dick Cheney’s former deputy national security adviser, John Hannah, as well as FPI’s four directors: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol; Brookings Institution fellow Robert Kagan; former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor; and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman.

It was Kagan and Kristol who co-founded and directed PNAC in its heyday from 1997 to the end of Bush’s term in 2005.

The letter comes amid growing pressure on Obama, including from liberal hawks, to take stronger action against Gaddafi.

Two prominent senators whose foreign policy views often reflect neo-conservative thinking, Republican John McCain and Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman, called Friday in Tel Aviv for Washington to supply Libyan rebels with arms, among other steps, including establishing a no-fly zone over the country.

By March 6, Reuters was already reporting the hoped for results:

As entrenched monopolies and patronage give way in the Middle East and North Africa, governments in the region could open their markets further and divest some state assets.

Wealthy Gulf states such Kuwait and Qatar have little cause to sell, but post-revolutionary states such as Tunisia will likely lower protectionist barriers…

“… this crisis is going to reveal some opportunities as structures linked to old regimes will be unwound,” said Julian Mayo, investment director at Charlemagne Capital. […]

“When you have an economy moving from socialist dictatorship to full-fledged free market, the spider in the web of that transformation will be the banks,” [emphasis added] said Bjorn Englund, who runs an investment fund focused on Iraq.

Related video post:

Alliance for Youth Movements: The State Dept.’s New Vehicle for Regime Change

Update March 13, 2011:

US training quietly nurtured young Arab democrats

Update March 15, 2011:

A regional strategy for democracy in the Middle East

Zalmay Khalilzad | Washngton Post | March 15, 2011

… The Middle East uprisings that hold the greatest promise are in anti-American dictatorships. The immediate challenge is to ensure the ouster of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. […]

… Gaddafi’s overthrow and the consolidation of a liberal, pro-American regime would bolster prospects for reform in Iran and Syria by countering Iranian propaganda that the current revolts are Islamist in character and directed only at partners of the United States.

We can follow up with a variety of steps to foment democratic revolutions against Tehran and Damascus, beginning with clarion calls for change. These include: training and support for opposition forces in and outside the countries; pressure directed against regime officials who attack their own people, including targeted sanctions and referrals in international tribunals; surrogate broadcasting and other pro-democracy messaging; funds for striking workers; and covert efforts to induce defections by regime and security officials. …

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

January 2, 2010

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

‘A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance’

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

March 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Deception, Economics, Timeless or most popular | 13 Comments

US vetoes UN resolution on Illegal Jewish only settlements

Aletho News | February 19, 2011

Despite receiving the backing of 14 out of 15 members of the United Nations’ security council, a UN resolution branding Israeli settlements illegal was vetoed by the United States Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice.

Susan Rice is not related to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice but there is a connection between Condoleeza Rice and Susan Rice’s godmother, Madeleine Albright. Condoleezza Rice was Dr. Joseph Korbel’s star student at the University of Denver. Madeleine Albright is Korbel’s daughter. Rice has said that her role at the U.N. will be to battle “the anti-Israel crap.”

Rice has been involved with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) a hawkish pro-Israel think tank which has been a home for many of the neocon architects of the invasion of Iraq. WINEP’s advisory board has included militarists such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Edward Luttwak, James Woolsey (who is also ostensibly a Democrat), and Mort Zuckerman. Susan Rice took part in a WINEP “2008 Presidential Task Force” study which resulted in a report entitled, “Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen US-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge”. WINEP was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Al Jazeera spoke with Susan Rice about the Obama administration’s veto of the Security Council resolution:

February 19, 2011 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | 11 Comments

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | January 2, 2011

Finally, light is being shed on the purpose of the massive new airbase in western Afghanistan distant from the Pashtun areas of major insurgency but within easy striking distance of Iran.

It appears that there is more to the occupation of Afghanistan than merely ‘fighting the terrorists over there so that we don’t have to fight them here’ or other such inane catch phrases.

In a Sunday morning interview Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stated that it would be “enormously beneficial” to maintain air bases in Afghanistan “in perpetuity.”

“I think it would be enormously beneficial to the region as well as Afghanistan,” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The ongoing military threat to the region would also serve to help Israel maintain it’s monopoly of nuclear weapons force in relation to Pakistan which also lies within striking distance of the permanent US air bases.

Graham continues “It would be a signal to the whole region that Afghanistan is going to be a different place.”

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

October 10, 2010

‘A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance’

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

January 2, 2011 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | 11 Comments

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

Written by Atheo – Aletho News – May 9, 2009

This past week, U.S. President Barak Obama announced a plan to displace 11 percent of U.S. oil consumption with biofuels by 2022, offering $786 million in subsidies to energy corporations for new refineries in an ethanol industry that is far from being economically viable.

Under the new Obama plan the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will require fuel refiners and importers to guarantee that a percentage of their fuel is from renewable sources. The percentage will increase each year until the country is using 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.

“It’s another opportunity for producers to profit” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says, but the fact that the plan is being marketed as such might suggest cause for caution in an industry that exists almost wholly due to federal mandates.

“Our economy is at the mercy of foreign oil producers, and everybody feels that when it hits us at the pump,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in support of the new plan. In fact though, recent events in the oil markets reveal that it was market activity rather than suppliers that caused the oil price bubble. Just as with real estate, there never was a lag in supply and prices were boosted by speculative trading with some shipments exchanging hands dozens of times while en route to their destinations. Hedge funds gambled with highly leveraged portfolios of oil futures in a bubble market fed by alarmist fears of ever compounding rates of growth in oil demand balanced against projected future oil production data that didn’t recognize unconventional oil.

The reality is that energy producers, whose economies are reliant on exports for as much as 95% of their income, are much more at the mercy of the demand-side driven market. Entire national government budgets are funded by nothing else but oil receipts. Energy production and supply is an industry that is characterized by interdependence between importer and exporter, this is why Europe and China are engaging in long term supply contracts that offer stability for all involved.

Left unaddressed by the Obama team is the harsh reality of globalized commodity markets which will see basic food prices sustain price rises that result in starvation for hundreds of thousands or as many as tens of millions of the world’s poorest, often landless, populations. It takes 232 kilos of maize to fill a standard gas tank with fuel. In this case, supply and demand are actually at work affecting market prices and economic choices such as which type of use land is put to.

Hilaire Avril of Inter Press Service writes:

Responding to European hunger for biofuel, many African countries have expanded single-crop farming surfaces. But only large businesses have the resources and capital to reach the critical size that allows for economies of scale which make the venture profitable.

Smallholders, which in countries like Benin account for the majority of land use, and up to 80 percent of employment opportunities, do not benefit from the biofuel windfall. In addition, land, water and other limited resources are being diverted from scarce food-producing crops.

Several international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, have acknowledged in recent years that the increasing demand for biofuel crops has catastrophic social, economic and nutritional impacts on developing countries and their already tense food resources.

In Senegal, which was affected by food riots a year ago, up to 200,000 hectares (10 percent of the country’s arable lands) might be set aside for jatropha crops for biofuels.

Second and third generation biofuels are supposed to limit environmental and social impacts because of either the use of non food-producing crops or biomass such as algae and fungus.

“That’s a sham,” insists Ambroise Mazal of the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development, “because second generation fuels made from non-edible crops still take up arable lands and the research is far from developing sustainable biomass in laboratories.”

Why did Obama choose to exceed both the Bush and E.U. mandates? Even the Congressional Budget Office has reported that ethanol mandates drive food prices higher. While Obama’s connections with corporate agriculture are well documented and widely reported, less discussed is the Israel lobby’s interest in “energy independence”. It seems that as in so many other crucial areas of U.S. policy, the Israel lobby has been influencing the energy agenda as well. Nancy Pelosi perceives a need (for America?) to “achieve independence from Middle East oil.” Even though imports from Middle East sources account for only a small percentage of U.S. oil imports. One wonders just what scenario of hers results in a cessation of oil exports from the Middle East, Israeli aggression on Iran perhaps?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a 2007 AIPAC conference:

“With innovation, we broaden our horizons, and expand our vision, in order to create a better world. That is why House Democrats have introduced our Innovation Agenda: A Commitment to Competitiveness to Keep America Number One. I know this is an area where the United States and Israel can work together.

“At the end of February, the House passed legislation to foster joint projects between the United States and key allies such as Israel, which offer the promise of using the best new innovation to improve security for all of us.

“In energy policy, the United States and Israel have another opportunity to combine our best innovative ideas. The U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation Act would help fund joint ventures between United States and Israeli businesses and academic institutions for the development and commercialization of alternative renewable energy sources.

“American and Israeli ingenuity can be put to work to achieve energy independence from Middle East oil. A sustained investment in research and development is crucial to creating cutting-edge technologies to develop these clean, sustainable alternatives and capitalize on vast renewable natural resources, including solar energy and wind power.

At the recent AIPAC conference the program featured Mr. Andy Karsner Former Assistant Secretary of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Mr. Jonathan Baron Founder and Principal, Baron Communications LLC giving a report titled:

Middle East Spotlight – Energy Independence: How National Energy Policy Impacts Our Security

The majority of the world’s oil sits beneath the sands of unstable nations and under the control of hostile authoritarian leaders. Is there still an American appetite for energy independence? If so, what will it take to achieve, and can such a move secure our nation? [emphasis mine]

Are biofuels really a sensible way for the U.S. to address the “hostility” of Middle Eastern leaders or would it be more in America’s interests to remedy the cause of anger? The biofuels “energy independence” policy offers a grim view of a future so warlike that America’s trade relations with entire, economically significant, regions are shut off. Is this Obama’s “forward looking” vision?

The Israel Lobby’s War on America’s Middle East Oil Dependence

Articles written by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010 – Updated February 16, 2010:

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

September 26, 2010 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Africa, Biofuel, Energy, Human rights, Israel, Middle East, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Tom Vilsack, United States | 4 Comments

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

21rst Century Removal of Indigenous Peoples

By Atheo | Aletho News | July 5, 2010

The energy industry is aligning with government of the Philippines in reducing the burden of suppression of the insurgency in Mindanao.

Divide and rule tactics pitting Christians and Muslims against one another have failed to cement state power. Military occupation has proved ineffective. The intractable conflict with the rebels has persisted for decades despite the presence of US military advisers as well as generous provision of the latest, most lethal, weapons.

During the Vietnam war, the US used napalm and agent orange in an attempt to isolate and expose the Viet Cong. Now a new and progressive method of fracturing the links between the insurgency and the population in which the insurgents move is appearing.

Tropical rainforests can now be cleared and converted into biodiesel. All the while, the stripped areas can be replanted with palm oil plantations. Local, newly dispossessed, people can be readily hired to provide plantation labor. What’s more, consumers in Europe will have to pay the premium cost of the biodiesel because the mandates for biodiesel sales are already established.

All these benefits for transnational investors accrue from meeting carbon reduction goals!

For countless centuries slash and burn agriculture provided a sustainable subsistence in harmony with the environment in tropical rain-forests due to ample rotation cycles. But this practice is simply impossible to exploit for the export of cash crops.

Forests are now being converted into energy farms around the world at an unprecedented rate.

Proposed changes to the Brazilian Forest Code, if accepted, will double deforestation in the Amazon. As a result of lobbying by the alternative energy sector, 85 million hectares of the Amazon could be destroyed. An area equivalent to the size of England and France together and more than the total that has been destroyed until now.

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

Older articles by Atheo

July 4, 2010 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Environmentalism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | 2 Comments

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | February 25, 2010

Obama’s provision of $54 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry will cost Americans much more than the probable 50% default rate that the Congressional Budget Office anticipates. While the federal government will guarantee the profits of investors, rate payers will suffer the inevitable rate hikes.

Higher electric rates will appear, not when plants begin operating, but years, if not decades, before they come on line. Several states allow customers to be billed for expensive new nuclear plants in advance. Naturally, these are the states where the initial, new, entirely untested, plants are proposed for construction. This arrangement further reduces investor exposure to cost over-runs or rising interest rates that are imposed due to the downgrading of credit ratings for facilities with deteriorating economic prospects.

It should be noted, that relieving investors of exposure to risk results in the elimination of incentives for sound management.

Although ‘prudence’ on the part of utility managers is a legal requirement, once sunk costs are waiting to be recovered it becomes quite elastic. Good money is thrown after bad. Rate payers, whose dollars are committed, will have little to no oversight, or input, into the administration of their investment dollars.

The interest burden of the staggering sums of capital that are tied up for years, or decades, while problems arise with the ‘new generation plants’ will ultimately be borne by the rate payers.

Initial rate hikes to cover ‘advance costs’ were to have gone into effect in Florida by January 1st, but Harvey Wasserman reports that:

Two Florida Public Service commissioners, recently appointed by Republican Governor Charlie Crist (now a candidate for the US Senate), helped reject over a billion dollars in rate hikes demanded by Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy, both of which want to build double-reactors at ratepayer expense. The utilities now say they’ll postpone the projects proposed for Turkey Point and Levy County.

The Associated Press reports that Georgia Power customers will see $9/month billing increases for nuclear power plants that many of them won’t live to see completed. Once the utility is committed, costs escalate, doubling or tripling original projections.

A recent study by Craig A. Severance* puts the generation costs for nuclear power generation (based on the higher cost of current plant designs) at 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour—more than triple present U.S. electricity rates. The study details the ruses that the nuclear industry employs in presenting fraudulent assertions of competitive pricing.

Public Citizen has collected state-by-state data from the U.S. Department of Energy. Using this data they find:

States that rely on nuclear power have significantly higher electricity rates than states that do not. In fact, our research shows that the higher the reliance on nuclear power, the higher the electric rates will be. That’s because nuclear power is significantly more expensive than coal or natural gas due to the higher capital, operation and maintenance costs necessary to protect Americans from radiation releases.

In the 20 non-nuclear states, the 1999 average cost of electricity was 5.52 cents per kilowatt/hour. The average cost of electricity in the 31 states that use nuclear power was 6.88 cents per kilowatt/hour. In other words, consumers in states that use nuclear power pay 25% more for their electricity than consumers in states that do not use nuclear power.

Furthermore, electricity rates increase in proportion to the states reliance on nuclear power. In the five states that get more than half of their electricity from nuclear power, electricity prices were 37% higher than in non-nuclear states.

Higher electric rates are a factor in the selection of business sites. Once the full costs of the new plants are realized, higher rates will drive some existing industries to less expensive locations, exacerbating the de-industrialization of the US. Lost jobs will be another hidden cost experienced by communities that allow new nuclear plants.

The possibility that higher rates could destroy the projected future increase in demand that the new power plants are intended to serve is very real. This is the very scenario that unfolded in India where Enron was provided with subsidies to build power generation capacity that turned out to be too expensive to sell. In fact, US demand for electricity is currently declining as it is, even without rate hikes. Whether or not the new generation of nuclear plants are needed by future consumers, utilities will recover the open-ended costs of their construction from rate payers.

Of course, some of the costs are entirely beyond estimation. For example the burden on future generations for plant decommissioning and waste ‘disposal’. There is always the possibility of an accident resulting in widespread, immediate exposure to radioactive material as well as long term contamination.

The obvious question is: why is Obama inducing investors and utilities to take risks that the market won’t embrace on its own?

One answer would be that the same motive applies for the new generation of nuclear facilities as for the first. Nuclear power plants are part of the fabric of the larger nuclear industry which is a key element of the military industrial complex.

While it is theorized that the reliable lifespan of today’s nuclear weapons might be extended for decades there is no existing back up if the theories fail. Obama does not appear to foresee a future that includes a reduced number of nuclear warheads. An examination of the US Department of Energy fiscal year 2011 budget shows that funds earmarked for nuclear weapons production are increasing at an alarming pace over the fiscal year 2010 budget while funding for dismantling warheads retired from the current stockpile is being cut by 40%. Energy supply takes only a 15% priority:

Graph by Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at Institute for Policy Studies, where he is currently focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies.

The greatest cost of the $54 billion in loan guarantees that Obama is putting forward may very well be that our children will live in a world teeming with nuclear warheads. Obama is aggressively developing missile ‘defense’ systems, and he is also initiating a new arms race that will require a vibrant nuclear industry composed of all aspects of uranium exploration and mining, processing, enrichment, and weapons production along with the pool of expert technicians that will form the basis of US military dominance (at least in raw destructive power) for the rest of the 21rst century.

*A practicing CPA, Craig A. Severance is co-author of The Economics of Nuclear and Coal Power (Praeger 1976), and former assistant to the chairman and to commerce counsel, Iowa State Commerce Commission.

Permalink

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010 – Updated February 16, 2010:

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

Older articles by Atheo

February 25, 2010 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Economics, Militarism, Nuclear Power | 12 Comments

Ethnic Cleansing Escalation in Jerusalem

Aletho News | February 8, 2010

Israeli occupation forces manning a military checkpoint at the Shu’fat refugee camp in Jerusalem set off protests Saturday due to the humiliating conditions inflicted on Palestinians on a daily basis. The residents, whom were displaced from their homes across Jerusalem, have been denied access to the city by the apartheid wall as well as various military checkpoints.

There have also been recent protests against home demolitions in the area. Palestine Information Center reports:

In the city’s Sheikh Jarrah suburb, an armed Israeli settler wearing military uniform pointed his rifle at Palestinian lady Refqa Al-Kurd, 85, in a bid to frighten her and force her out of what is remained of her house after the settlers occupied most of it.

Refqa Al-Kurd, aged 85, after assault

The incident prompted clashes between the Palestinian neighbors, who rushed for the help of the elderly woman, and the settlers.

Another Israeli settler in the same suburb dropped a big stone at Palestinian teenager Murad Ateyyah, 14, prompting angry Palestinian citizens to intervene and clash with the settlers before the Israeli occupation police arrived and broke up the clashes.

Palestinian Jerusalemites asserted that attacks by Israeli settlers against them increased rapidly with the aim to force them out of the city.

Tensions were raised further by army raids on private residences in the Anata camp early on Monday. Packs of soldiers ransacked homes at daybreak in surrounding villages abducting residents for torture interrogations. House to house searches without search warrants resulted in the seizure of one homemade rifle.

File photo

Ma’an reports that over 60 Palestinians were seized in the raids. Young Palestinians confronted the intruding forces by throwing stones. Journalists that attempted to record the clashes were fired upon with tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades. Eyewitnesses also report the use of live ammunition. Several journalists were injured.

Occupation forces then attacked the local clinic and detained the doctors working there, preventing them from attending to the injured. The camp is now under military control, curfew has been imposed.

February 8, 2010 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

The “Coca Cola conspiracy” and the obesity epidemic

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | February 7, 2010

In the late 1960’s the US, through conventional hybridization techniques, succeeded in creating new types of corn, dramatically increasing yield per acre by reducing the space required per plant as well as increasing the number of ears per stalk. This development was seen as a phenomenal opportunity for the nation with the world’s greatest capacity of corn production. All that was needed was a way to increase demand for corn. Although shifting the Western diet to grits was not likely, there were other options.

Corn fed hogs and Chicken would now become less expensive to produce in confined animal feeding operations which would later proliferate. But due to the inherent inefficiency of converting grain calories into animal calories the development of processed foods that use corn itself and not animal products would be far more profitable than selling pork or chicken.

Corn syrup and corn syrup solids had seen their uses multiply under the post WWII “better living through chemistry” paradigm. Now they would also be much cheaper to produce. In 1973, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, altered US farm policy to permanently subsidize the increased production of corn, opening a new era in which corn-based processed foods would become far cheaper than their rivals. The convenience and fast food industries were poised to take off. Soft drinks that cost pennies to produce could be marketed at fantastic profit. Corn derivatives would find their way into virtually every processed food.

In the video below, Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the physical damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) are the cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.

The processed foods industry knew that their products would cause an epidemic of obesity among their customers, but they also realized that their bottom line would grow exponentially. The FDA and USDA provided all the cover needed and then some by pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Saturated fat was demonized as a health hazard despite the fact that it had been a major part of traditional diets for the entirety of recorded history among most European cultures.

Subsequently, while Americans reduced the percentage of calories from fats in their diets to 30% from 40%, rates of obesity and cardio-vascular disease steadily increased.

The “low-fat” foods fad was a complete fraud. Convincing consumers to choose “lite” products allowed producers to substitute high fructose corn syrup for the relatively expensive saturated fat content in their products. The industrial trans-fats which were combined with the corn syrup turned out to actually increase the risk of cardio-vascular disease when compared to the consumption of saturated fats. These developments would have enormous implications for public health not just in the US but worldwide over the ensuing decades. The damage would eventually become too great to conceal.

In April 2009 Harvard School of Public Health issued a press release revealing the following research results:

Strong evidence developed at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and elsewhere shows that sugary drinks are an important contributor to the epidemic rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes in the United States. Faced with these growing public health threats, experts from the Department of Nutrition at HSPH believe beverage manufacturers, government, schools, work sites and homes must take action to help Americans choose healthier drinks. They propose that manufacturers create a class of reduced-calorie beverages that have no more than 1 gram of sugar per ounce-about 70 percent less sugar than a typical soft drink-and that are free of non-caloric sweeteners. They also propose that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) require beverage manufacturers to put calorie information for the entire bottle-not just for a single serving-on the front of drink labels. […]

Americans consume sugary beverages in staggering amounts. On a typical day, four out of five children and two out of three adults drink sugar-sweetened beverages. Teen boys drink more than a quart of sugary drinks, on average, every day. A 12-ounce can of soda or juice typically has 10-12 teaspoons of sugar and 150 or more calories; the popular 20-ounce bottle size now prevalent on store shelves and in vending machines carries nearly 17 teaspoons of sugar and 250 calories. According to research at HSPH and elsewhere, sugared beverages are the leading source of added sugar in the diet of young Americans. If a person drank one can of a sugary beverage every day for a year and didn’t cut back on calories elsewhere, the result could be a weight gain of up to 15 pounds.

Consuming sugary drinks may have other harmful health outcomes: The latest research from HSPH published in the April issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, followed the health of 90,000 women over two decades and found that women who drank more than two servings of sugary beverages each day had a nearly 40 percent higher risk of heart disease than women who rarely drank sugary beverages.

They make the following recommendations:

Individuals: Choose beverages with few or no calories; water is best. Call manufacturers’ customer service numbers and ask them to make sugar-reduced drinks.

Food shoppers: Purchase less juice and cross the soda off your home shopping list. Skip the “fruit drinks” too, since these are basically flavored sugar-water.

Schools and workplaces: Offer several healthy beverage choices and smaller serving sizes. Also make sure water is freely available.

Government: The FDA should require companies to list the number of calories per bottle or can-not per serving-on the front of beverage containers.

In January of 2010 the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition released the following abstract of a newly completed study which finds no link between saturated fat intake and heart disease:

Background: A reduction in dietary saturated fat has generally been thought to improve cardiovascular health.
Objective: The objective of this meta-analysis was to summarize the evidence related to the association of dietary saturated fat with risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and cardiovascular disease (CVD; CHD inclusive of stroke) in prospective epidemiologic studies.
Design: Twenty-one studies identified by searching MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and secondary referencing qualified for inclusion in this study. A random-effects model was used to derive composite relative risk estimates for CHD, stroke, and CVD.
Results: During 5–23 y of follow-up of 347,747 subjects,11,006 developed CHD or stroke. Intake of saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD.The pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of saturated fat intake were 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.19; P = 0.22)for CHD, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.05; P = 0.11) for stroke, and1.00 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.11; P = 0.95) for CVD. Consideration of age, sex, and study quality did not change the results.
Conclusions: A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat.

###

Update:

Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

By Hilary Parker | News at Princeton | March 22, 2010

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”

In results published online Feb. 26 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.

The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

The second experiment — the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals — monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet.

“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,” said Princeton graduate student Miriam Bocarsly. “In humans, these same characteristics are known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes.” In addition to Hoebel and Bocarsly, the research team included Princeton undergraduate Elyse Powell and visiting research associate Nicole Avena, who was affiliated with Rockefeller University during the study and is now on the faculty at the University of Florida. The Princeton researchers note that they do not know yet why high-fructose corn syrup fed to rats in their study generated more triglycerides, and more body fat that resulted in obesity.

High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are both compounds that contain the simple sugars fructose and glucose, but there at least two clear differences between them. First, sucrose is composed of equal amounts of the two simple sugars — it is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose — but the typical high-fructose corn syrup used in this study features a slightly imbalanced ratio, containing 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose. Larger sugar molecules called higher saccharides make up the remaining 3 percent of the sweetener. Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.

This creates a fascinating puzzle. The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.

In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.

“Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,” Avena said.

The new research complements previous work led by Hoebel and Avena demonstrating that sucrose can be addictive, having effects on the brain similar to some drugs of abuse.

In the future, the team intends to explore how the animals respond to the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in conjunction with a high-fat diet — the equivalent of a typical fast-food meal containing a hamburger, fries and soda — and whether excessive high-fructose corn syrup consumption contributes to the diseases associated with obesity. Another step will be to study how fructose affects brain function in the control of appetite.

###

Update #2:

The Brutally Honest Coca-Cola Commercial You’ll Never See On Television

By Arjun Walia | Collective Evolution | September 17, 2013

Coca-Cola plans to run its very first ad defending aspartame and the safety of artificial sweeteners. This move comes as a result of a dramatic drop in diet cola sales within the past year. This is great news as it goes to show how much of an impact we can really make by raising awareness about the health effects of aspartame. More people around the world are making better choices and you can read more about that and the dangers associated with the Coke here.

I came across this video and thought it would be appropriate to share in light of Coca-Cola’s recent move to bring awareness to and “join together” in fighting obesity. This comes before their more recent ad campaign to defend artificial sweeteners like aspartame. It’s the brutally honest Coca-Cola commercial you’ll never see on television. This is a voiced over version of the original Coke commercial which you can see here.

Update #3:

FDA Bans Trans Fats

Bloomberg | June 16, 2015

Artificial trans fat will be removed from the U.S. food supply over the next three years under a ruling by regulators that the products pose health risks that contribute to heart disease.

There’s no longer a scientific consensus that partially hydrogenated oils, the main source of trans fat, are generally recognized as safe, according to a final decision released Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration. The oils are used for frying and in baked goods as well as in confections.

Food companies will be able to petition the FDA to gain approval of specific uses of partially hydrogenated oils if they have data proving the use isn’t harmful. Companies will have until June 2018 to comply with the FDA’s determination, either by removing trans fat or gaining a waiver. The FDA said it hasn’t seen any data to prove that even low levels of partially hydrogenated oils are safe. … Full article

###

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

January 5, 2010 – Updated February 16, 2010:

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

February 6, 2010 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Earl Butz, Food and Drug Administration, Harvard School of Public Health, Richard Nixon, Robert H. Lustig, United States | 29 Comments

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | January 5, 2010

Andy Singer

The future of biodiesel fuel looks highly uncertain as federal tax credits that provided refiners $1 for every gallon produced expire with the new year. While many fleet vehicles have been manufactured to use the fuel, few will continue to do so since they are convertible to traditional fuel.

The National Biodiesel Board reports that the industry is currently operating at 15% of capacity. The largest US refinery, located in Houston, is sitting idle.

Prospects for extending the tax credit have been hampered by a major scandal involving Alabama’s Cello Energy, a “next-generation” biofuel company specializing in plants-to-fuel technology. A federal jury found that it had defrauded investors and ordered a $10.4 million payment for plaintiffs. Cello had claimed that it could produce $16/barrel fuel at its refinery using hay, switchgrass and wood chips. The Alabama Press-Register reports that “a string of witnesses testified that samples of the fuel allegedly produced at Cello’s facility… were derived entirely from fossil and not renewable sources”. Grassoline it was not. The EPA had been counting on a tripling of Cello’s refining operations to meet 70% of its target of 100 million gallons for 2010 production. Lawmakers have lost confidence in the entire biofuel industry, including biodiesel which happened to have the immediate need for subsidy renewal.

Biodiesel production, which uses soy beans produced through industrial agriculture, is simply not economically viable. Leaving aside the moral implications of dedicating arable land to fuel production, which results in higher market prices for basic foods, the higher production cost of biodiesel reflects a likely net energy loss once the entire process is accounted for.

The economic hope for soy-biodiesel had been predicated on promised cost advantages in GMO crops which turned out to be largely hyperbole and wishful thinking. With oil and gas prices stable, and with new non-conventional production methods that are vastly increasing economically recoverable oil reserves, it is unlikely that biodiesel of any type could be competitive any time in the foreseeable future.

Update #1:

Reuters | February 16, 2010

WASHINGTON – Senate leaders have dropped from a jobs creation bill a U.S. tax credit for biodiesel, creating uncertainty for biodiesel makers, who say they need the incentive to keep running.

A $1-a-gallon tax credit, which expired at the end of 2009, was in the first draft of the bill. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pared back the bill on Thursday, dropping the biodiesel tax credit, among other tax measures. […]

The American Soybean Association has said biodiesel production has essentially stopped since the tax credit expired at the end of 2009. – source

Update #2:

6/28/2010

The Senate has voted down a bill that would have reinstated the $1 per gallon biodiesel tax credit through the end of 2010… source

Update #3:

Investors left in the dark: Two energy companies pull the plug on biodiesel plants

July 26, 2010

Investor Jim Berliner estimates altogether some 123 investors made payments to Canadian-based Sunx, which had planned on building up to 330 small-scale biodiesel processing plants in North America, according to a former version of the now-defunct Sunx website. In a brochure for potential investors, Sunx had touted securing more than 100 owner/operator agreements worth more than $60 million.

Update #4:

Biodiesel industry fails yet again on subsidy

Des Moines Register | September 19, 2010

The biodiesel industry’s wait for the return of its subsidy continues.

The Senate turned back an effort Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia., to revive the $1-a-gallon tax credit as part of a small-business bill. The subsidy lapsed at the end of 2009 and repeated efforts to attach it to bills in the Senate have failed.

Grassley’s move needed 67 votes but received only 41…

Update #5:

Obama signs tax pact; ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel credits restored

December 17, 2010

Last night, the US House of Representatives voted by a 277 to 148 margin to approve the Obama tax deal, which extends the ethanol tax credit through 2011, and retroactively extends the biodiesel tax incentive and the renewable diesel incentive through 2011. The bill also renewed the 54-cent tariff on Brazilian ethanol through 2011.

Kate McMahon, Biofuels Campaign Coordinator, Friends of the Earth

“Shoveling out billions of dollars for oil companies to blend dirty corn ethanol into gasoline – if even for just another year – is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Extending these subsidies is simply bad policy hidden within the political mess of a trillion dollar tax package.”

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

Older articles by Atheo

January 4, 2010 Posted by aletho | Author: Atheo, Corruption, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | 27 Comments

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Book Excerpt

World War Two Was Not a Just War

By David Swanson | September 20, 2016

Excerpted from the just released book War Is Never Just.

World War II is often called “the good war,” and has been since the U.S. war on Vietnam to which it was then contrasted. World War II so dominates U.S. and therefore Western entertainment and education, that “good” often comes to mean something more than “just.” The winner of the “Miss Italy” beauty pageant earlier this year got herself into a bit of a scandal by declaring that she would have liked to live through World War II. While she was mocked, she was clearly not alone. Many would like to be part of something widely depicted as noble, heroic, and exciting. Should they actually find a time machine, I recommend they read the statements of some actual WWII veterans and survivors before they head back to join the fun.[i] For purposes of this book, however, I am going to look only at the claim that WWII was morally just. … continue

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