Decoding Warmongering: Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Whom?
THAT is the question. The global 1% (not ‘the American People,’ not Syrian kids) is the answer.

In this edition [UPDATED], we share several articles that, taken together, make clear what’s really going on behind the current push to bomb Syria and oust Assad.

What’s Really What
It’s not about enforcing an international chemical weapons ban, or ‘the Responsibility to Protect’ civilians. It’s about the Responsibility to Protect American hegemony in the Middle East, the U.S. oil and weapons industry and, most of all, the fat, flaccid behinds of international banksters who are pillaging the planet.

It’s a plan that has been in operation for twenty years regardless of which party is in power in the U.S., or who is currently president. At stake is not only the future of globalized corporate capitalism and its perpetrators, but very possibly, the fate of the planet itself and all its lifeforms. And that’s not hyperbole. That is what is actually going on here.

Great Games – The Planet as Playing Field
As any wikipedist knows, it used to be that the term ‘Great Game’ referred to the 19th century competition in Central Asia between the British and Russian empires. Now, it is said to refer to ‘…a conceptualization of modern geopolitics in Central Eurasia as a competition between the United States, the United Kingdom and other NATO countries against Russia, the People’s Republic of China and other Shanghai Cooperation Organisation countries for “influence, power, hegemony and profits in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus.”‘

But, from the planetarian perspective, ‘the New Great Game’, as Michael Klare terms it in his eponymous book, is ‘The Race for What’s Left‘ of the whole planet’s dwindling and polluted resources – including oil, minerals, land, water, wealth and the global food supply.

So, with this as the meta-frame, what’s with the current obsession with Syria?

It’s about oil and pipeline routes. It’s about global banking, monetary policy and finance. It’s about the petro-dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It’s about dominance of the global cyber ‘battlespace.’ It’s about the Zionist agenda for a ‘Greater Israel.’ It’s about the survival of the Saudi Arabian monarchy and its allied satrapies. It’s about private banking v. public banking. It’s about shifting multilateral power bloc relationships around the world. It’s about energy policy, nuclear power and its equally-evil conjoined twin – nuclear weaponry. Its about equality v. inequality, justice v. injustice, democracy v. tyranny and, ultimately, about sanity v. insanity.

We invite you to check out the following list of articles and videos and draw your own conclusions. We’re hoping they will help you resist succumbing to the barrage of mis-, dis-, and mal-information fallout that’s raining on our heads in this post-Fukushima, pre-World War III environment.

Plans for Redrawing the #MiddleEast: The Project for a “New Middle East”
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research, January 27, 2013
Global Research 18 November 2006

“…This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

The “New Middle East” project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos.” This “constructive chaos” –which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region– would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives.”

US and Allied Warships off the Syrian Coastline: Naval Deployment Was Decided “Before” the August 21 Chemical Weapons Attack
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research, September 02, 2013

A strike against Syria in the immediate short-term is unlikely. Obama announced on August 31st that he would seek formal approval of the US Congress, which reconvenes on September 9.

With independent news reports providing firm evidence that the US sponsored Al Qaeda rebels (recruited and trained by Allied Special Forces) have chemical weapons in their possession, this delay does not favor the president’s political credibility.

Moreover, there is evidence that the US sponsored rebels used chemical weapons against civilians. (see image right)

In providing those chemical weapons to al Qaeda “rebels”, the US-NATO-Israel alliance is in violation of international law, not to mention their own anti-terrorist legislation.

Overtly supporting Al Qaeda has become the “New Normal”. Read more…

Senator John McCain, Foreign Relations “Adviser” to Al Qaeda Death Squads in Syria
By Julie Lévesque – Global Research, September 06, 2013

Those who refuse to fight “Obama’s War in support of al Qaeda” are America’s heroes.

In contrast, John McCain’s “heroes” are known to be or have links to terrorist organisations designated by the US State Department as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and Al-Nusra now fighting against the government of Bashar Al Assad in Syria.

These actions are far more scandalous than slacking on the job playing poker on a cell phone. Yet, this is what makes the news: focus on what is irrelevant and trivial while excluding the “forbidden truth” on the criminal nature of US foreign policy.

Senator John McCain is a criminal who provided support to terrorist groups. He belongs in jail, not in the US Senate. And certainly not in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations which has granted Obama the “Green Light” to bomb Syria.
Read more…

Saudi Arabia’s “Chemical Bandar” behind the Chemical Attacks in Syria?
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

An Israeli-Saudi-US conspiracy?
The US-supported anti-government forces fighting inside Syria are the ones that have a track record of using chemical weapons. Yet, Obama and company have said nothing…
Despite the anti-government forces accusations that the Syrian military launched a chemical weapon attack on Homs at Christmas in December 2012, CNN reported that the US military was training anti-government fighters with the securing and handling of chemical weapons. Under the name of the Destructive Wind Chemical Battalion, the insurgents themselves even threatened to use nerve gas and released a video where they killed rabbits as a demonstration of what they planned on doing in Syria.

According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, two brigades of anti-government fighters that were trained by the CIA, Israelis, Saudis, and Jordanians crossed from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan into Syria to launch an assault, respectively on August 17 and 19, 2013. The US must have invested quite a lot in training both anti-government brigades. If true, some may argue that their defeat prompted the chemical weapons attack in Damascus as a contingency plan to fall back on.

However, how they came by chemical weapons is another issue, but many trails lead to Saudi Arabia. According to the British Independent, it was Saudi Prince Bandar “that first alerted Western allies to the alleged use of sarin gas by the Syrian regime in February 2013.” Turkey would apprehend Syrian militants in its territory with sarin gas, which these terrorists planned on using inside Syria. On July 22 the insurgents would also overrun Al-Assal and kill all the witnesses as part of a cover-up.

A report by Yahya Ababneh, which was contributed to by Dale Gavlak, has collected the testimonies of witnesses who say that “certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack.”

The Mint Press News report adds an important dimension to the story, totally contradicting the claims of the US government. It quotes a female insurgent fighter who says things that make a link to Saudi Arabia clear. She says that those who provided them with weapons “didn’t tell them what these arms were or how to use them” and that they “didn’t know they were chemical weapons.” “When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she is quoted.

Read more…

Obama Warned on Syrian Intel by Veteran Intelligence Professionals
Consortium News – September 6, 2013

Exclusive: Despite the Obama administration’s supposedly “high confidence” regarding Syrian government guilt over the Aug. 21 chemical attack near Damascus, a dozen former U.S. military and intelligence officials are telling President Obama that they are picking up information that undercuts the Official Story.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap?

Precedence: IMMEDIATE

We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”
…The Intelligence

There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war.

According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured.

We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons.
Read more…

Making the World Safe for Banksters: Syria in the Cross-hairs

https://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/09/making-the-world-safe-for-banksters-syria-in-the-cross-hairs.html

Posted on September 4, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
Guest post by Ellen Brown, https://www.WebofDebt.com.

“The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.” —Prof. Caroll Quigley, Georgetown University, Tragedy and Hope (1966)

Iraq and Libya have been taken out, and Iran has been heavily boycotted. Syria is now in the cross-hairs. Why? Here is one overlooked scenario….

In an August 2013 article titled “Larry Summers and the Secret ‘End-game’ Memo,” Greg Palast posted evidence of a secret late-1990s plan devised by Wall Street and U.S. Treasury officials to open banking to the lucrative derivatives business. To pull this off required the relaxation of banking regulations not just in the US but globally. The vehicle to be used was the Financial Services Agreement of the World Trade Organization.

The “end-game” would require not just coercing support among WTO members but taking down those countries refusing to join. Some key countries remained holdouts from the WTO, including Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. In these Islamic countries, banks are largely state-owned; and “usury” – charging rent for the “use” of money – is viewed as a sin, if not a crime. That puts them at odds with the Western model of rent extraction by private middlemen. Publicly-owned banks are also a threat to the mushrooming derivatives business, since governments with their own banks don’t need interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, or investment-grade ratings by private rating agencies in order to finance their operations.

….To make the world safe for usury, these rogue states had to be silenced by other means. Having failed to succumb to economic coercion, they wound up in the crosshairs of the powerful US military.

Read more

To some, US case for Syrian gas attack, strike has too many holes
By Hannah Allam and Mark Seibel | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Among chemical weapons experts and other analysts who’ve closely studied the Syrian battlefield, the main reservation about the U.S. claims is that there’s no understanding of the methodology behind the intelligence-gathering. They say that the evidence presented points to the use of some type of chemical agent, but say that there are still questions as to how the evidence was collected, the integrity of the chain of custody of such samples, and which laboratories were involved.

Eliot Higgins, a British chronicler of the Syrian civil war who writes the Brown Moses blog, a widely cited repository of information on the weapons observed on the Syrian battlefield, wrote a detailed post Monday listing photographs and videos that would seem to support U.S. claims that the Assad regime has possession of munitions that could be used to deliver chemical weapons. But he wouldn’t make the leap.

On the blog, Higgins asked: “How do we know these are chemical weapons? That’s the thing, we don’t. As I’ve said all along, these are munitions linked to alleged chemical attacks, not chemical munitions used in chemical attacks. It’s ultimately up to the U.N. to confirm if chemical weapons were used.”

Holes in the case already have allowed Russia to dismiss the U.S. evidence as “inconclusive,” with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying in a speech Monday that Moscow was shown “some sketches, but there was nothing concrete, no geographical coordinates, or details…and no proof the test was done by professionals,” according to the state-backed RT news agency.

“When we ask for further clarification, we receive the following response: ‘you are aware that this is classified information, therefore we cannot show it to you,’” Lavrov said. “So there are still no facts.”

Read more here

10 Chemical Weapons Attacks Washington Doesn’t Want You to Talk About
by Wesley Messamore in World

Washington doesn’t merely lack the legal authority for a military intervention in Syria. It lacks the moral authority. We’re talking about a government with a history of using chemical weapons against innocent people far more prolific and deadly than the mere accusations Assad faces from a trigger-happy Western military-industrial complex, bent on stifling further investigation before striking.

Here is a list of 10 chemical weapons attacks carried out by the U.S. government or its allies against civilians.
Read more…

Ben Swann Reality Check: What The Media Isn’t Telling You About Syria

US Foreign Policy “Script” on Syria, Who Wrote It?
by Michaela Hertkorn –
Global Research News
September 01, 2013

The script followed by most of US foreign and security policy establishment can be grasped through books,

such as Zbigniew Brzezisnski’s ‘The Grand Chessboard. American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997) – published just a few years prior to the Balkan wars.

The script aims at ‘redrawing’ the wider Middle East, which solidly places US plans to now militarily intervene in Syria – following protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and military interventions in Lebanon (2006), Libya (not to forget Mali), which no-where brought long-term stability, nor peace – into the context of geo-politics, rather than ‘RTP’ – the so-called ‘responsibility to protect’. Had it been US policy to protect civilians in Syria, the most promising strategy in US foreign policy had had to be to abstain from logistically and militarily supporting an opposition that has had ties to Al-Qaeda. Read more.

Dangerous Crossroads. A War on #Syria, Prelude to a World War III Scenario?
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, August 31, 2013

Syria occupies a strategic location in the Middle East. The war on Syria is part of a roadmap of military undertakings. It is an integral part of a broader US-NATO-Israel military agenda directed not only against Iran, but also against Russia and China. Moreover, it is part of an extended military agenda which consists in establishing control over Middle East-Central Asian oil reserves as well as strategic oil and gas pipelines.

It is a component part of a broader process of war and of country level political destabilization in the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia.

The failures of the US sponsored Al Qaeda insurgency in Syria (launched in March 2011) integrated by mercenary forces and supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel have set now the stage for a conventional theater war involving the deployment of air force as well as boots on the ground. Read more…

Target Iran: What Bombing Syria Is Really About
by Ray McGovern – FreePress.org – August 30, 2013

“A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm [3],” a policy document prepared in 1996 for Benjamin Netanyahu by a study group led by American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, laid out a new approach to solving Israel’s principal security challenges. Essentially, the point was to shatter the frustrating cycle of negotiations with the Palestinians and instead force regime change on hostile states in the region, thus isolating Israel’s close-in adversaries.

Among the plan’s features was “the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting their possession of ‘weapons of mass destruction.’” The following “Clean-Break” paragraph is, no doubt, part of the discussion in Iran’s leadership councils:

“Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War [4].”]

Against this background, what is Iran likely to think of the two-year old mantra of Hillary Clinton, repeated by Obama that “Assad Must Go?” Or what to think of Obama’s gratuitous pledge a half year later, on Super Bowl Sunday 2012, that the U.S. will “work in lockstep” with Israel regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Assuming they checked Webster’s, Iran’s leaders have taken note that one primary definition offered for “in lockstep” is: “in perfect, rigid, often mindless conformity or unison.”
Read more…

Kerry’s Claims on Syrian Opposition Don’t Hold Up: Experts

Though he spent much of the week trying to convince lawmakers about the solidity of the Obama administration’s case for war against Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry and his testimony before Congress have become the target of pushback Thursday as experts on the situation took issue with his overly “optimistic” characterization of the opposition forces inside the war-torn country.

Specifically, as Reuters reports, “Kerry’s public assertions that moderate Syrian opposition groups are growing in influence appear to be at odds with estimates by U.S. and European intelligence sources and nongovernmental experts, who say Islamic extremists remain by far the fiercest and best-organized rebel elements.”

Pressed by many members of the House Foreign Relations Committe on Wednesday about the dominance of Al-Qaeda-affiliated militias within the ranks of the anti-government forces and amid repeated questions about “who exactly” the U.S. would be supporting if it deepened its military involvement in Syria’s civil war with military strikes, Kerry made assurances in his testimony that the Syrian opposition had “increasingly become more defined by its moderation.”

However, as an explosive story on the frontpage of the New York Times on Thursday illustrates, key factions within those forces have been shown to use brutal tactics—including summary executions—in their attempts to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Though well-documented elsewhere, the Times offered a newly surfaced video to exemplify some of the atrocities carried out by opposition during the more than two-year long civil war.

That video, smuggled out of Syria by a former member of the unit and obtained by the Times, which can be viewed below, shows captured Syrian soldiers being shot in the back of the head, following orders from a unit commander.

Read more…

Exclusive: Top Chemical Weapons Expert Highly Skeptical of U.S. Case Against Syrian Government
Posted on September 5, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Q: What other indications weaken the American, British and French argument that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack?

Zanders: The extreme focus on sarin – as if only government forces would be able to have sarin – doesn’t make sense. If the UN team were to come up with evidence that toxic chemicals other than sarin were used, does that prove that it was not the Syrian government which is responsible?

I personally don’t think that we have all the facts in right now to be absolutely certain. And I think this is reflected in the U.S. document with the terminology “high confidence” and David Cameron saying it’s his “judgment” or the government’s “judgment”, which reflects an interpretation of the facts.

In the U.S. document, there is not a single reference to physiological samples.

Postscript: Zanders says we must wait for the results from the U.N. weapons inspection before reaching any conclusions about who is responsible for the August 21st tragedy. [Background]
Read more…

Bombshell: Syria’s “chemical weapons” turn out to be fluoride
The Health Ranger – Published on Sep 2, 2013
Bombshell: Syria’s “chemical weapons” turn out to be sodium fluoride, the same chemical dumped into municipal water supplies across the USA under “water fluoridation” schemes. www.NaturalNews.com

Crisis in Syria (PDF)
WESTERN STATES LEGAL FOUNDATION Briefing Paper – September 2013
The Rush to Bomb Syria: Undermining International Law and Risking Wider War
by Andrew Lichterman, Western States Legal Foundation Senior Research Analyst, with contributions from Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director, and Dr. John Burroughs, Board member. Western States Legal Foundation is affiliated with the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
Key Findings and Recommendations
● Chemical weapons are viewed almost universally as abhorrent, and their use as a crime. All states should cooperate in identifying the perpetrators of the apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria and in pursuing their apprehension and prosecution.
● Under the current circumstances there is no basis in the United Nations Charter, the Chemical Weapons Convention, or other international law for the United States to launch strikes against Syria absent authorization by the UN Security Council or, if the Council is deadlocked, the UN General Assembly under its Uniting for Peace procedure.
● International law provides no exception for the ad hoc use of force by states in cases involving the actual or possible use of prohibited weapons, such as chemical weapons, by states with which they are not at war. Standing alone, the allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government do not provide a legal basis for military action by any non-party to the conflict.
● Unilateral punitive strikes justified as a defense of the global norm against chemical weapons are unlikely to actually protect Syrians or others against use of chemical weapons and other attacks, may do little to reinforce the norm or even undermine it, and could lead to a significant increase in the level of violence throughout the region.
● There are viable international ways and means to respond to the apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria that should be vigorously pursued before the use of force is considered.
● The U.S. should present its evidence regarding use of chemical weapons in Syria to the Security Council. The Security Council should condemn any use of chemical weapons, forbid further use of chemical weapons, expand the scope of the UN investigation to include the issue of responsibility for attacks, refer the Syrian situation to the International Criminal Court for further investigation and adjudication, and call for convening of a peace conference.
● If the Security Council remains unable to act, the General Assembly should assume responsibility under the Uniting for Peace procedure.
● The U.S.-Russian effort to hold a conference to bring the Syrian conflict to an end should be reinvigorated. The U.S., Russia, and other powers that provide direct or indirect military and logistical support to the warring parties in Syria should use all available means, including cessation of support, to bring about an immediate cease-fire and a negotiated peace.
● The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the most comprehensive instrument concerning chemical weapons, provides for investigation of alleged violations by specialist bodies constituted by the Convention, collective measures by states parties in response to activities prohibited by the Convention, recourse to the UN General Assembly and Security Council in cases of particular gravity, and referral of disputes to the International Court of Justice. Almost all states, 189, are party to the CWC. Syria is among the handful that are not. The agreement governing the relationship between the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, however, makes provision for instances where chemical weapons are used by actors other that CWC parties. Pursuant to CWC procedures, the Executive Council or the Conference of States Parties of the CWC should convene a special meeting to consider the situation in Syria and recommend appropriate responses by states parties and the United Nations.
● For U.S. elected officials, saying no to the easy, violent options offered by a national security and military industrial complex too long ascendant would be the hard choice, the courageous choice, and the right choice.
Full PDF here.

Why America Cannot Live without Wars
by Chidanand Rajghatta – The Times of India/Common Dreams

By one count, the United States has fought some 70 wars since its birth 234 years ago; at least 10 of them major conflicts. “We like war… we are good at it!” the great, insightful comedian George Carlin said some two decades ago, during the first Gulf War. “We are not good at anything else anymore… can’t build a decent car or a television, can’t give good education to the kids or health care to the old, but we can bomb the shit of out any country…”

Similar sentiments have been echoed more recently. “America’s economy is a war economy. Not a manufacturing economy. Not an agricultural economy. Nor a service economy. Not even a consumer economy,” business pundit Paul Farrell wrote during this Iraq War. “Deep inside we love war. We want war. Need it. Relish it. Thrive on war. War is in our genes, deep in our DNA. War excites our economic brain. War drives our entrepreneurial spirit. War thrills the American soul. Oh just admit it, we have a love affair with war.”

And so, America will be off to another (limited) war shortly. Read more…

Since 9/11, US 1% killed over 100 million children from poverty: they don’t care about ‘innocent lives’ in Syria
Posted on September 4, 2013 by Carl Herman on Washingtons Blog

US 1% spin to save “innocent lives” in Syria is refuted by that same 1% reneging on every promise to save innocent children’s lives from preventable poverty. Since 9/11, US reneged promises to end poverty have killed over 100 million children, twice the number of children enrolled in pre-kindergarten to 12th grade in the US….

My assignment for high school students on ending poverty with all of the documentation: The Economics of Ending Poverty
Read more…

‘Nobody Wants This Except the Military-Industrial Complex’
by John Nichols – The Nation

What is especially notable about the polling data is the intensity of opposition to any sort of intervention—including missile strikes targeted at suspected chemical weapons sites—among groups that lean Democratic at election time.

* Sixty-five percent of women surveyed for The Post/ABC poll oppose missile strikes, while just 30 percent favor them. (The Pew survey found an even lower level of support among women: just 19 percent)

* Among Americans under age 40 who were surveyed for the Post/ABC poll, 65 percent are opposed.

* Among Hispanics, 63 percent are opposed.

* Among African-Americans, 56 percent are opposed.

Read more…

Jon Stewart: The ‘red line’ Syria crossed is actually a ‘d*ck-measuring ribbon’

Should We Fall Again for ‘Trust Me’?
September 3, 2013 – Consortium News

Exclusive: Forgetting lessons from the Tonkin Gulf to the Iraq War, the U.S. news media has mostly elbowed past doubts about whether the Syrian government launched the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack and now is focused on the political drama of congressional approval for war, a big mistake says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern

In a dazzling display of chutzpah, the White House is demanding that Congress demonstrate blind trust in a U.S. intelligence establishment headed by James Clapper, a self-confessed perjurer.

That’s a lot to ask in seeking approval for a military attack on Syria, a country posing no credible threat to the United States. But with the help of the same corporate media that cheer-led us into war with Iraq, the administration has already largely succeeded in turning public discussion into one that assumes the accuracy of both the intelligence on the apparent Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria and President Barack Obama’s far-fetched claim that Syria is somehow a threat to the United States.

James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence.

Here we go again with the old political gamesmanship over ”facts” as a prelude to war, a replay of intelligence trickery from Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq’s nonexistent WMD. Once more, White House officials are mounting a full-court press in Congress, hoping there will be enough ball turnovers to enable the administration to pull out a victory, with the corporate media acting as hometown referees. Read more…

Syria: The White House Keeps Us in Fear to Preserve Military Dominance Over Oil
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Ironically, although the US has been reducing its chemical weapons stockpile over the years due to treaties, it is still the superpower of WMDs when you include nuclear and biological weapons.

In fact, the most recent celebrated biological weapons attack in the US (which potentially are really not much different in widerange impact than chemical weapons, if not more deadly) came from anthrax developed at Fort Dietrick Maryland under the auspices of the US military — and it was that anthrax that was used post 9-11 to attack Congress and kill Americans, and according the FBI (although still disputed by others), by an American researcher who committed suicide.

When it comes to WMDs and toxic agents that can kill US citizens, Obama should start attending to what is inside his borders first — and located at arsenals around the world.

Obama may get his Congressional vote, but all that it will authorize — should it pass — is that the president gets to show the US projects military power on behalf of control of the largest regional oil supply under the guise of fear.
Read more…

How the US Could Cyber Attack Syria, Too
By Fruzsina Eördögh – Vice.com

So how exactly could the US military hack Syria?

As the Free Beacon suggests, attacking Syria’s infrastructure—be it the electricity grid, military radar, telecommunications, Internet, water pipes, petroleum and oil refineries, or even heavy industry—is within the realm of possibility, considering official sources say the United States has the technological prowess to do so.

Three years ago, the Stuxnet virus—confirmed to be co-written by Israel and the United States​ by the The New York Times—physically assaulted Iran’s nuclear program. The worm shut down automatic systems (and hid that it was doing this so workers wouldn’t notice) on centrifuges suspected of enriching uranium, effectively destroying the centrifuges in the process.

Stuxnet was able to do this because it was specifically designed to target the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system used by the Iranian nuclear facility. SCADAs are notoriously vulnerable, but they are still used for everything from energy distribution and communication to airport operations and the air conditioning in private buildings.

Now that Syria disconnected its power grid from Egypt, Turkey and Jordan, it relies on Iran to import power—and is therefore feasibly vulnerable to a cyber attack. Syria’s oil refineries and pipelines, one of the most important pieces of Syria’s economy, could similarly be potential targets. Again, the experts contacted by Foreign Policy state that such an attack is unlikely, given the low level of involvement the US hopes to maintain in the conflict.
Read more...

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Democracy Conference in Democracy-Deficient Wisconsin
The EON team recently traveled to Madison, Wisconsin to participate in and document the Election Integrity/Representative Democracy conference of the nine-stream ‘Democracy II’ Convention organized by the Liberty Tree Foundation in coalition with a long list of progressive groups (see below).

There were nine different conferences within the convention: Media, Economic, Local, Defense, Constitutional Reform, Education for Democracy, Earth, Race and Representative Democracy.

There we were, citizens from across the country converging to passionately discuss threats to various aspects of democracy and how to respond, while just around the corner in the Wisconsin Capitol Building Gov. Scott Walker’s police were brutally arresting elderly Veterans for Peace and their supporters for daring to sing in the Peoples’ House despite Walker’s orders to the contrary. [see here and here and here.] This brutality continues the Wisconsin oppression that ensued with Walker’s election and questionable recall vote. [see this]

Walker is largely carrying out the ALEC agenda. Wisconsin, together with 26 other states such as North Carolina, is being controlled by legislatures dominated by extreme right wingers. Though the extreme right wing is a minority and would never win in honest elections, they are taking over many states through a variety of complex manipulations and distortions of our electoral systems. That’s exactly why many of us have focused on Election Integrity issues and came together at this convention to assess what is needed and possible now.

EON co-director Jim Heddle was on the Univ. of Wisconsin faculty in Madison for seven years back in the late’60s/early’70s when it was known as ‘the Berkeley of the Mid-West.’ [Remember the ‘Dow Demonstrations‘ and the bombing of Stirling Hall? and here.] It was a sleepy college/state capitol town then, with a radically progressive aura in politics and the arts. [Remember Paul Soglin and Ben Sidran?] Quite a change to the over-built bastion of chic consumerism and corporate fascism it appears to now be becoming.

Legendary Wisconsin progressive Sen. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette must be turning in his grave at current developments in Wisconsin. But ‘Fighting Bob’ would be proud that the grassroots pushback is strong and persistent.

Some of that is shown below in a series of our video reports (more to come if we receive funding).
For more on this topic visit our Election Protection playlist.

Fighting Democracy’s Hidden Threats – Election Integrity Panel – Pt. 1
From ‘Democracy Convention II,’ held in Madison Wisconsin Aug. 7-11, 2013, this is Part 1 of a panel in Election Protection section of the Convention, organized by Victoria Collier and Ben Ptashnik.
Speakers: Ben Ptashnik, Victoria Collier, Jonathan Simon, Mimi Kennedy.

From the program: The Election Integrity (EI) movement is working non-stop behind the scenes against loss of citizen control over U.S. election and therefore self-government. The right to vote and to oversee the ballot chain of custody, the ability to watch the vote-count, has disappeared inside the electronic processes of a privatized electronic election system whose accountability to election officials, law enforcement, or citizens is negligible. What is the state of EI today? How threatened are American election by insider/outsider fraud and hacking? Why did Karl Rove insist there’d be a GOP victory in the 11th hour of vote counting in Ohio in 2010? What does the plan for nationwide Internet Voting mean for America? Leading EI activists discuss their recent work, immanent threats to democracy, and building the movement to demand transparency and citizen oversight of elections.
For more information:
ElectionIntegrityCoalition.org
LibertyTreeFoundation.org
FreePress.org
ElectionDefenseAlliance.org
pdamerica.org

Fighting Democracy’s Hidden Threats – Election Protection Panel – Pt. 2
From ‘Democracy Convention II,’ held in Madison Wisconsin Aug. 7-11, 2013, this is Part 2 of a panel in the Election Protection section of the Convention, organized by Victoria Collier and Ben Ptashnik.
Speaker: Bob Fitrakis

The FIGHT of OUR LIVES – Representative Democracy Plenary
From ‘Democracy Convention II,’ held in Madison Wisconsin Aug. 7-11, 2013, this is the closing plenary of the Election Protection section of the Convention, organized by Victoria Collier and Ben Ptashnik of the National Election Protection Coalition.
Speakers: Ben Ptashnik, Mike McCabe, Cindy Sheehan, Jonathan Simon, Bob Fitrakis, Jill Stein, Richard Monje and Greg Palast.

From the program: We face an unprecedented crisis in American democracy; attacks against community self-government, undermining of government accountability, the reign of Big Money over representative politics, total lack of transparency in how we process our own votes, and a choke-hold on the electoral system by two major parties increasingly under the control of nefarious corporate interests. How did we get here, and how do we get out? Leading democracy activists discuss the need for a citizen-driven Democracy Movement to bring our society back from the brink.
For more info:
ElectionIntegrityCoalition.org
LibertyTreeFoundation.org
FreePress.org
GreenShadowCabinet.us
WISDC.org
CindySheehansSoapbox.blogspot.com
ElectionDefenseAlliance.org
SEIU.org/division/workers-united
GregPalast.com

No Secret Trade Deals for the 1%! – No TPP!
Excerpts from the ‘Rally to Derail Fast Track and Stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP),’ held on the steps of the Capitol in Madison, WI, Saturday, August 10, 2013 as part of the ‘Democracy Convention II’ organized by the Liberty Tree Foundation and a coalition of progressive organizations.

Speakers expose the anti-democratic details of a trans-national trade agreement being secretly negotiated behind doors so closed that even U.S. Congress Members are blocked from oversight – in effect, an international ‘corporate bill of rights’ about to be railroaded through Congress on a ‘fast track’ allowing no changes to the secret draft legislation.
For more information:
FlushTheTPP.org
CitizensTrade.org
WISDC.org
SEIU.org/division/workers-united

Post-Constitutional America – Bob Fitrakis
From ‘Democracy Convention II,’ held in Madison Wisconsin Aug. 7-11, 2013, this is Bob Fitrakis’ address at the closing plenary of the Election Protection section of the Convention, organized by Victoria Collier and Ben Ptashnik.

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What’s Good for the Planet is Good for America
by James Heddle

“…[I]ndividuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.”
The International Tribunal at Nuremberg

“[A] supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers … is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries”
David Rockefeller at the June 1991 Bilderberg meeting in Baden Germany

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is among the most powerful, and one of the most secretive international bodies on earth. It is rapidly assuming the role of global government, as 134 nation-states, including the U.S., have ceded to its vast authority and powers…. The central operating principal of the WTO is that commercial interests should supersede all others.
Debi Barker and Jerry Mander – INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT—The World Trade Organization: Global Government For The New Millennium ?

“Democratic world government is possible in the near future now ….”
George Monbiot – The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order.

Of Treaties, Trade and Treason
July 4, 2013 – As Independence Day USA rolled around again with its parades, fireworks and flag-waving oratory celebrating America’s greatness and exceptionalism, the levels of irony and hypocrisy – as expressed in current headlines – had never been higher. Examples are legion, but just a few suffice to give the picture. (Feel free to add your personal favorites.)

Ed Snowden, “the World’s Most Wanted Man,” reportedly remains holed up in the Moscow airport’s transit lounge searching for asylum for the alleged ‘treason’ of blowing the whistle on America’s blatant violation of domestic and international laws, while the countries of the EU vacillate between outrage at and collusion with the newly revealed US system of universal global surveillance. At US behest, France, Spain and Portugal, denied airspace to the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales, which was forced down in Austria for 14 hours while Austrian officials searched his aircraft for the “fugitive” Snowden, who was rumored to be on board. He wasn’t, but the incident of US-instigated ‘air piracy’ inflamed outrage throughout Latin America, with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa threatening to close down the American embassy. As the 4th of July weekend wound down, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia appeared to offer Snowden asylum…if he could get there without the US hijacking his plane.

The Snowden melodrama has given Xinhua, China’s official news agency, the opportunity to label the US “…the biggest villain in our age,” a characterization increasingly shared – and not without proliferating justifications – around the world.

Daily reports of US drone strikes killing innocent civilian men, women and children in country after country have become the ho-hum norm, as the Obama administration claims the right to indefinitely imprison or execute American citizens and anyone else the President chooses without charge, trial or right of appeal, anywhere in the world.

International jurists have labeled Bush, Jr., Obama, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in both administrations international war criminals ripe for prosecution for their wars of aggression and crimes against humanity. Attorneys have advised them not to travel abroad for fear of arrest and prosecution.

Dozens of US lawmakers are revealed to have signed on to the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers ‘pledge’ to not approve legislation to address climate change without cutting taxes on polluting corporations.

Economically and socially suicidal, self-imposed ‘sequestration’ slashes social programs and vital infrastructure maintenance and development, while the military, ‘defense,’ ‘intelligence’ and ‘security’ ‘communities’ dominate domestic and foreign policy and suck-up the lion’s share of the national budget.

‘Too-big-to-fail’ and ‘too-big-to-jail’ banks and financial corporations avoid taxes and violate laws with impunity, while receiving bottomless bailouts from the public purse.

Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations, conducted by anonymous, unelected lawyers and bureaucrats, continue behind closed doors – inaccessible to democratic public oversight even by Members of Congress with national security clearances – despite the fact that they are known to be intentionally designed to supercede local, state and national US laws as well as those of nine other countries.

Traders, Traitors and the Corporate Security State – “Turnkey Tyranny” v. Open Source Democracy
So, what’s wrong with this picture, and just who are the real miscreants here? And how could millions of sleep-walking Americans possibly celebrate their ‘independence,’ ‘liberty,’ and rapidly eroding ‘freedoms’ with toxic explosives and mindless jingoistic rhetoric when they have just been made aware that they are the main targets of their own government’s global surveillance and militarized population control apparatus on behalf of corporate-driven ‘full-spectrum dominance’ of land, sea, air and space?

Go figure.

Could it be that communication and ‘news’ media, virtually all the institutions of governance, agencies of regulation and mechanisms of imperial military domination are in a state of terminal corporate capture, un-reformable corruption and unsustainable over-extension? The late, great commentator on international affairs, Chalmers Johnson, identified these three symptoms as the unmistakable markers of an empire’s systemic collapse.

The work of Nobel Laureate chemist Ilya Prigogine , as well as that of general systems theory originators Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Irwin Lazlo, Ernest Jansch and others showed that, when systems – whether physical, chemical, biological, social, political, economic or cultural – are in a state of fibrillation and instability, ‘far from equilibrium,’ small inputs can result in sweeping systemic change. Sociologist and world-systems analyst Immanuel Wallerstein has applied these insights to our current civilizational system and concluded in a series of seminal works that we are at ‘the end of the world as we know it.’

Whether this will signal an evolutional leap to a higher level of organization, or a devolutionary regression to social, economic, political and ecological collapse and chaos is an open question, subject in large part to the human crisis response, especially in this pivotal decade.

Yes, Polyanna, We May Still Have A (Slim) Chance
Despite the multiple converging crises of climate chaos, transnational banksterism, proliferating technologies of repression and the peaking of virtually all resources – to mention only a few – there are signs of a mobilizing immune response in the planetary body politik. Better late than never.

Uprisings against ‘austerity’ measures and corporate-driven government repression are spreading across the globe, with Egypt being the latest and largest example.

Multi-national trade and defense alliances to counter NATO and various ‘free trade agreements’ like GATT and the TPP are beginning to form. Some examples: BRICS, the acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa; the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (in Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Alternate energy technologies like solar, tidal, wind, and co-generation are beginning to be economically competitive with – and even more economical than – fossil fuels and nuclear power.

The technocratic wetdream of a ‘nuclear renaissance’ is fading. In the wake of the on-going Fukushima disaster most of Japan’s reactors remain shut down; Germany is phasing out its fleet of reactors; France is talking about following suit; and, even in the US, four of its 104 nukes are closing, with California’s San Onofre being the latest announced permanent shutdown.

More activists are at work on more issues on every level from village to national to transnational than ever before in history.

Surely even the most depressed and despairing cynics (like me) should be able to take heart from these developments and redouble their efforts, whatever their sphere of activism.

One World Government v. Democratic Planetarian Governance – Globalization or Planetization? THAT is the Question.

This is the time – if there is ever to be one – to shift our primary allegiances from our siloed issues and nationalistic agendas to planetary concerns and issues.

Its time to abandon both the official US government fantasy of ‘full-spectrum dominance’ of air, land, sea and space, and David Rockefeller’s preferred agenda of rule by bankers and an intellectual elite.

The existing western power-dominated, post-WWII Breton Woods institutions – the IMF, World Bank, WTO and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) – have all proven themselves to be obsolete, dysfunctional and illegitimate; sooo 20th century.

The need for new, 21st century processes and institutions of democratic planetary governance has never been greater – and there is no shortage of ideas and models for such desperately needed evolutionary developments.

I commend for your consideration two useful examples:

The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order by George Monbiot (although Mr. Monbiot has recently quaffed the nukes-are-necessary-to-combat-climate-change cool-aide, his thoughts on planetary governance are worth paying attention to.)

Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible by John Cavanagh, Jerry Mander, et al. [Download the Global to Local: What You Can Do section from the Alternatives book – It describes steps you can take as a consumer, worker, depositor and investor, and as a citizen to help transform the global economic system and create a better world. ]

As the race between planetization and oblivion intensifies, its time for a planetarian Declaration of Inter-Dependance.

We are honored to devote this edition to an in depth interview with our beloved friend Eva Quistorp.

Eva Quistorp is a remarkable woman who has been a major actor in the events of the last half-century. She is a Co-Founder of the German and European, the Honolulu and Brasilian Green Parties between 1979 and 1986.

She also co-founded:
Women for Peace in Germany and Europe 1980.
The Heinrich Boell foundation in1987.
The Global Platform on Gender and Climate Justice 1995.
ATTAC Germany in the year 2000.

In this 3-part interview, conducted in Bolinas, California in 2009, she shares the learnings, perspective and wisdom gained in a still-on-going life of committed and effective international political activism. She lays out her vision of an holistic agenda for a planetary civil society.

Eva Quistorp Pt. 1 – Education of a Planetarian

Eva Quistorp Pt.2 – Creating a Planetary Civil Society

Eva Quistorp Pt. 3 – Evolution of the German Greens

The Evolution of a Planetarian
Eva points out that she is a relative of the mother and wife of Wernher von Braun. In 1973 she began to write about Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller and the scientists with responsibilities for the nuclear age and HIroshima bombing. In 1977 she started to organise against nuclear power and nuclear weapons and Cruise and Pershing II missiles, and went into action again in 1979 with the NATO double track decision. That was the year Wernher von Braun died and left a heritage which Eva sees as fully contrary to her family’s life as an anti-Nazi family.

Eva observes that, “In the end of their high level carriers, scientists like Einstein and others, often get more moral views when death is coming near and they look back. So Wernher von Braun has written when he had cancer about 1977, ‘Maybe we should have looked more into the misery and conflicts on earth and tried to solve the problems of poverty, war and keep the earth a livable place for all.’ ”

This became the task of Eva Quistorp and her friends in the global womens,ecology and peace movements and reform politics for a global new green deal. Her work continues.

Eva Quistorp has been a major actor in the events of the last half-century in different social movements. “Especially,” she says, “around 1968 and the womens’ movement in the 70ties, and with the peace and ecology movements in the ‘eighties, solidarnocs and charta in ‘77, Swords to Plowshares in Eastern Europe before the falling down of the wall in 1989. Then working on building a new Europe and a better UN ever since.”


She is a Co-Founder of the German and European Greens 1979/1980;
 the Honolulu and Brasilian Green Parties between 1984-1986; 
was member of the European Parliament from 1989-1994; representative of the German and European Peace Movement against nuclear weapons with Petra Kelly, Heinrich Boell, Günter Grass, Claude Bourdet, Solange Fernex, Luciana Castellina and Emma Bonino, of END.

She worked on European nuclear disarmament with Mary Kaldor, Edward THompson, Rudolf Bahro. As a result of that work, she met Gorbatschov.

Eva worked on Women for a Meaningful Summit with Margarete Papandreou of Greece, and also with Freeze with Randall Forsberg and Cora and Peter Weiss. 


She also co-founded or is linked with:
the Chile Committee in 1973, and Latin America newswomen against nuclear energy in Gorleben, Wyhl, Kalkar, Fessenheim, in1977.


She was involved in organizing Women for Peace in Germany and Europe 1980, organising women peace marches through EUrope and in Japan.


The Heinrich Boell foundation https://www.boell.de/ in 1987 funded
Women in Development and Environment, WEDO, where she worked with Bella Abzug and Mim Kelber of the USA.

In 1992, Eva worked with the global commission to fund and reform the UN. Since 1992, she has been working with Hazel Hendersen, looking for ethical markets and organizing
the Womens Network around the UNCED in RIo de Janeiro.

She worked on chapter 24 within the agenda 21;
the action platfrom of Beijing Womens World Conference and the Chapter on Women and Environment and Women in Conflict Zones;
the global platform on Gender and Climate Justice between 1995 (Berlin ) AND 2009 (Copenhagen UN climate summit). She was involved in
Medica Mondiale during the war in Bosnia 1992/93, and was 
part of the Forum 2000 of Vaclav Havel. She is 
now counselling UNWOMAN and the World Future Council with Jakov von Uexkuell & Vandana Shiva.


She is a member of Greenpeace and Amnesty International , the trade union Verdi ,the Protestant Church in Germany, and is an
Honorable Member and Prize Winner of the Society for Endangered People.

Eva is
co-founder of the old greens, and says she is still looking for dignity for old and honorable people in what she calls ‘our crazy internet turbocapitalism speed and facebook times,’ which she says are
enslaving us to electronic machines and using slavery work in Bangladesh or China for cheap consumer goods.

She is a
co-founder of ATTAC Germany in the year 2000 , warning about the financial crises coming www.attac.org; 
and an orgaizer of the 24 May International Womens Action Day for Peace and Disarmament www.ipb.org

In this 3-part interview, conducted in Bolinas, California in 2009, she shares the learnings, perspective and wisdom gained in a still-on-going life of committed and effective international political activism. She lays out her vision of an holistic agenda for a planetary civil society.

As a ‘Child of Hope,’ born in 1945 – the year WWII ended and the Atomic Age began – Ms. Quistorp studied German literature, protestant theology and political science at the Free University of Berlin, and was part of the student movement in the ‘60’s.
She then became active in the new womens movement and building up, with many others, of the anti-nuclear energy movement in Germany around 1973-1977. That movement has finally resulted in the phasing out of nuclear energy in Germany after the Fukushima accident and disaster in 2011.

She had become a member of the (group) presidency of the German Green Party around the time of the Chernobyl disaster (April 26, 1986), and just in time to support the eastern European democratic opposition in the time of Gorbatschov and Vaclav Havel.
She became Member of the European Parliament from 1989 to1994, participating in the RIo conference and the Beijing Womens’ Conference and the Vienna Human Rights Conference of the UN.

She met Kennedy as a student in Berlin in June 1963. She invited Jesse Jackson to a peace rally against nuclear weapons in Berlin in 1984. She met Obama in Boston 2004 and still believes in the citizen rights movements of the USA, from which many young Germans learned in the last 40 years.

Eva is now part of Grandmothers for Peace, Abolition 2000, the Mayors for Peace, and the global commission to fund and reform the UN

She says she is trying to walk what she talked…as her friends Wanghaari Mathai and Petra Kelly and many unknown wise women and honest citizens have done.”We shall overcome..we shall live in peace,deep in my heart ,I do believe…..”
www.berlin-declaration.org

www.boell.de

www.europeangreens.org

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To help keep EON’s work going, please check out all the support options on our Donation Page or you can also send a check made out to EON to EON, POB 1047, Bolinas, CA
Or…just:

MOANA NUI 2013
Peoples of the Pacific—Confronting Militarization, Resource Theft, Globalization & America’s “Pacific Pivot”
45 SPEAKERS/ 20 NATIONS: JUNE 1 & 2 Berkeley, Martin Luther King Auditorium, 1781 Rose St. [Scroll down or click here for more info]
UPDATED

EON Docs Screened at Moana Nui 2013
We are proud to let you know that our ‘Pacific issue’ documentary film productions (two PBS sponsored) spanning our coverage of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement in the ’80’s and ’90’s will be honored by being screened in Room 108 of the Moana Nui 2013 Teach-In this weekend in Berkeley.
As a preview:
You can check out the viewer below to come with us now to the days of Yesteryear when naive activists believed they could actually influence policy by intervening at the U.S. Congress and the U.N. with verbal and video testimonies.

In this 1986 archival video Right Livelihood Foundation founder Jakob Johann von Uexküll, late Greenpiece activist Sebia Hawkins, Mary Beth Brangan and Jim Heddle present verbal and video testimony in favor of Palau’s seminal nuclear free national constitution before the late Rep. John Seiberling’s House Committee.

Listen Up Bay Area People!
Welcome to the Pacific Century. U
Just a reminder…we live on the Pacific ocean, you know, all that water out there. It’s a region that is re-emerging as a major geo-strategic focus point for corporate trade regimes, military deployments, ecological devastation and grassroots activism. Granted, it’s a complex, even bewildering, mix of factors, actors and flashpoints – the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement; Obama’s ‘Pacific Pivot;’ disputes over oil-rich ocean areas between the Japanese and Philippine island chains and the Asian mainland; drifting radioactive Fukushima debris; declining fish stocks, rising sea levels – to name just a few. Pacific issues impact us all.

The key issues confronting humanity are present in mesocosm in the Pacific Basin (circled as it is by the literal volcanic ‘Ring of Fire’ of potentially catastrophic seismic activity on all Pacific shores).

From Jeju Island to TPP boardrooms, from Vanuatu to North Korea, from the Straits of Malaca to the South China/Philippine Sea, human rights and ecological systems are under seige by the forces of profit-making without regard for national sovereignty, human rights or the life-support systems of the planet.

If the Pacific and its challenges – which powerfully affect our collective future – are unfamiliar to you, you need to attend a wonderful opportunity to become informed and empowered – the Moana Nui Teach-In on Pacific issues being presented June 1 and 2 by the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) in Berkeley, CA at the Martin Luther King Auditorium, 1781 Rose St..

International panels featuring 45 speakers from 20 nations will address the following issues in the two-day teach-in.
Pacific Resource Wars
Globalization – Impacts from ‘Free Trade’& Development Agreements: TPP, APEC, ASEAN, EU-ACP, Pacific Plan, et al.
Indigenous Rights, Local Sovereignty, and “Free, Prior & Informed Consent”
Militarization—The New “Pacific Pivot”
60 Year Anniversary of Endless U.S. War in Korea: To Control the Pacific
Hegemonic Battles for Pacific Domination: U.S., China, Russia, Indonesia and Japan vs. Pacific Peoples
Pacific Island Resistance Movements
Cross-Pacific Collaborations—A New Pacific Monitoring Authority & Other Proposals

Detailed Program here.
Tickets here.

Download poster here and please distribute widely.

An Evolution of Consciousness
Guest blog by Rachel Gertrude Johnson – EON Board Member

Not Just a ‘Hallmark Holiday’
Many of you already know this, but I always like to take the opportunity on Mother’s Day to remind myself and my friends about the progressive roots of Mother’s Day- that it started as an occasion to honor women working for a better world, and to encourage women to join our voices together to work for issues about health & survival & peace, about not sending our sons off to fight the sons of other mothers in other places. It was definitely not a greeting card moment, or a day for mom to lie in bed to be fed, but a day to get out there and speak our minds about the issues of our times.

In 1858 in the heat of pre-Civil War patriotism, Julia Ward Howe wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” glorifying the mythical glory and heroism of warfighting.

But, she evolved over time, for which we can be grateful!

Twelve years later, Howe had become so distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War that she called on Mother’s to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their “Sons killing the Sons of other Mothers.”

“Arise, then, women of this day!”
In 1870, she wrote “A Mother’s Day Proclamation”, which helped to conceptualize the first North American Mother’s Day. The movement grew over time, and in 1914 Mother’s Day was finally made a day of national observance in the US. Most people today don’t realize that Mother’s Day has radical roots, that it is really about peace and the honoring of women’s values. And even if you are not a biological mother, this day is for you, too.

For one, we all have mothers, whether or not they are still alive, and we all have the sacred charge of protecting the earth, the mother of all of us. This is a day to let the feminine, nurturing side of us speak out, and I’m talking about men, too! It was a joy this morning to read this to my son Orie, who really seemed to take it in, and who gave me a supportive hug as I asked to bow out of the pancake breakfast and be allowed to stay home to finish sending this out.

So here is the amazing “Mother’s Day proclamation”, which called women to pacifism and political resistance:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:

“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.

“We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.

Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.
~Julia Ward Howe

Please forward this to whoever you can think of who would appreciate it, or who might be open to learning about the roots of Mother’s Day.
And here’s hoping that we can all find some new meaning in this day.

Love to all,
Rachel

ps…and here’s a photo from yesterday of Mary Beth Brangan and me, celebrating Mother’s Day in advance; I couldn’t be more fortunate than to have Mary Beth as a soul-sister and co-worker in speaking out about the issues we care deeply about! (Photo by our wonderful feminine-supporting Jim Heddle.)

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CA’s MORONIC INTERNET VOTING BILL CLEARS 1st HURTLE

Let’s Stop it Before More U.S. Elections are Stolen

(Not that Gore or Kerry would object.)

By James Heddle and Mary Beth Brangan

Technocrats’ New, Hackable Cyber Craze
Poopooing a long list of science-based objections laid out by a spokesperson for Secretary of State Debra Bowen, as well as a cyber-security expert from Lawrence Livermore Lab followed by an experienced election watchdog, and echoed by a long line of informed citizens and organizational representatives from up and down the state, the California Assembly’s Elections and Redistricting Committee gave its approval Tuesday to a bill introduced by San Francisco’s 19th Assembly District Assemblyman Philip Ting that would open the way for internet-based voting in the Golden State.

Opposed only by Democratic Committee Chair Paul Fong and Republican Vice Chair Tim Donnelly, the bill aims to OK a ‘pilot study’ of on-line voting – a new techno-entheusiast, democracy-threatening madness that seems to be spreading across the country.

Passing Un-read Laws – The New Normal
Chair Paul Fong objected that amendments had been added at the last minute that most of the Committee Members had not had a chance to read, but the majority voted to approve the bill ‘as amended’ anyway. Shades of the Patriot Act, NDAA, and their multiplying successors.

Apparently, Democrats tend to favor web-voting as a way to boost turn-out, especially among the iGadget-addicted younger voters. Republican strategists seem to agree, which is why they oppose it – while pushing for voter ID laws that tend to reduce voter turn-out in the demographic groups favoring the Dems.

The supreme hackability of internet-voting, ON TOP OF privately-owned, proprietary ( read ‘secret’ ) electronic voting systems gets pushed into the background by both these short-sighted partisan mind-sets.

It’s the same moronic technophelia that afflicts advocates of a wireless-based so-called ‘smart’ energy grid, which would be completely vulnerable to hacking – not to mention its serious risks to privacy, fire safety and human health.

Dr. David R. Jefferson, a computer scientist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing, who specializes in cyber security, is a a board member of the California Voter Foundation, and a consultant to Sec. Bowen’s office, detailed the many factors that make ‘pilot studies’ worthless from a scientific basis.

Seasoned election integrity campaigner Tom Courbat related his real-world experiences in attempting to get an independent, hand-counted recount in his home district – blocked by local registrar-of-voters resistance in the form of exorbitant and unjustifiable recount expense demands.

Arguments Against Internet Voting
The long line of opposing testifiers repeated a litany of common-sense objections to web-voting which included this summary by long time election integrity activist Gail Work:

• Internet Voting would be open to hacking from around the world: Al qaeda, Chinese military, all global hackers
• If Google, big banks and the Pentagon are getting hacked what makes us think our elections can be protected from hacking?
• Who ever controls the servers controls the elections
• No transparency, it’s all in the cloud and no privacy for your vote choices – once a keystroke is made, it’s traceable
• No chain of custody to follow the steps in the elections process
• No role for citizens, just large corporations and government running the show
• The United Nations considers paper ballots to be the “gold standard” for election integrity
• Loss of civic engagement and democracy: loss of the polls, poll workers, election day, the momentum the grassroots benefits from leading up to election day, loss of many people involved (eyes on the prize)
• Loss of local control of elections leading to state control
• Projected costs are high (per Secretary of State Bowen’s speech at the Democratic Party convention April 2013:

• No ability to recount
• No ability to audit
• Elimination of the paper ballot means a loss of the official record of the vote
• No ability to reconcile the numbers or verify the tally in any way
• Centralized control of elections
• Electronic control of elections
• Alienation of the voters: central, electronic control with no ability to appeal the results
• All based on the argument of “convenience” however do we trade convenience for security?
• If Internet Voting leads to a more fascist state and there is no democratic process to appeal, this could literally destroy our democracy
• This is a radical change that changes the entire premise of our elections and could create many unintended consequences

“We can get this thing done”
Deaf to the evidence presented by the crowd of opponents, Assemblyman Henry Perea expressed his certainty that all problems would be overcome by American Know-How. “We can get this thing done,” he said.

He seemed not to remember, if he ever was aware, that back in 2010, the Board of Elections and Ethics in Washington D.C., who has a sophisticated IT department, invited hackers to test vulnerabilities within its pilot online voting program that was intended to help overseas voters easily place votes without the absentee ballot process. Prof. J. Alex Halderman and a team of University of Michigan students hacked into the system within minutes and left their school’s fight song as a prank. [ Here’s a PDF of how they did it ] And it was discovered that the system rejected ballots from Macs. So much for ‘pilot studies.’

In Quest of Deep Democracy
Having reported on election integrity issues in 48 videos so far, we are saddened to see the already-broken U.S. electoral system being further weakened by the current internet voting fad.

Here’s what our reporting has taught us: Election integrity is not rocket science. It is known how to steal elections, and how to keep them from being stolen.

Investigative reporter Greg Palist has tracked the corporate ‘election theft’ industry that operates in this country and around the world – often in the employ of Washington, that great ‘spreader of democracy.’ At one point, he shared what he knew with the late Hugo Chavez.

Chávez himself read my findings on potential elections theft – to his nation on his TV show – and then he moved swiftly, establishing an election system that Jimmy Carter, who has headed vote observer teams in 92 nations, called, “an election process that is the best in the world”.
Here’s how it works: every Venezuelan voter gets TWO ballots. One is electronic, the second is a paper print-out of the touch-screen ballot, which the voter reviews, authorises, then places in a locked ballot-box. An astounding 54 percent of the boxes are chosen at random to open and check against the computer tally. It’s as close to a bulletproof count as you can get.
[ For more see Palist’s “Nicolas Maduro did not Steal the Venezuelan Elections”

High Stakes
So, bottom line, what’s at stake with internet voting? Jim Soper of CountedAsCast.org puts it this way,
“Internet voting constitutes a real threat to how we form our government, and as such, should be treated as a serious national security risk.” https://countedascast.org/internet-voting-risks/

Better Solutions to Increase Turnout
If the real motivation is to boost public participation in elections – the GOP’s worst nightmare – here’s how Gail Worth and other election integrity activists suggest we do it.

• Register young people when they get their driver’s license
• Make Election Day a holiday
• Allow high school seniors and college students to get school credit for volunteering to help hand count and assist at the election polls.
• Refuse to allow minority voter disenfranchisment, eliminate voter suppression (paper ballot shortages, long lines at the polls, voting machines that flip votes)
• Minimize electronic voting which is seen as privatization of elections, controlled by private vendors thus alienating the voters
• Showcase paper ballot voting and hand counting as the gold standard; educate the public about why this is so critical
• Make it easier for college students to vote (i.e. residence can be college or home with parents Fed Ex’ing the absentee ballot, etc.). College students have been targeted by the GOP efforts to make voting more difficult as they are more progressive and democratic in general

Not A Done Deal
AB 19 has cleared one hurtle, but it still has to work its way through the legislative process. Here’s where to find more info and how you can get involved in stopping it.

CountedAsCast.org

VerifiedVoting.org

BlackBoxVoting.org

BradBlog.com

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This [updated] edition of Planetarian Perspectives brings you:
Steiglitz on Fukushima and nuclear capitalism
America’s 104 aging reactors unfixable
As nuke pollution rises, safety standards drop
Lovins debunks new nukes
Nuclear power’s deep dependance on fossil fuels
Wasserman on San Onofre restart maddness
Caldicott on lowered safety standards
SHUTDOWN:The Case of San Onofre ‘preview interview’ series launched
and more…

Published on Thursday, April 7, 2011 by Al Jazeera
Gambling With the Planet
by Joseph Stiglitz

The consequences of the Japanese earthquake – especially the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant – resonate grimly for observers of the American financial crash that precipitated the Great Recession. Both events provide stark lessons about risks, and about how badly markets and societies can manage them.

Of course, in one sense, there is no comparison between the tragedy of the earthquake – which has left more than 25,000 people dead or missing – and the financial crisis, to which no such acute physical suffering can be attributed. But when it comes to the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, there is a common theme in the two events.

Experts in both the nuclear and finance industries assured us that new technology had all but eliminated the risk of catastrophe. Events proved them wrong: not only did the risks exist, but their consequences were so enormous that they easily erased all the supposed benefits of the systems that industry leaders promoted….

…[W]hile Germany has shut down its older nuclear reactors, in the US and elsewhere, even plants that have the same flawed design as Fukushima continue to operate. The nuclear industry’s very existence is dependent on hidden public subsidies – costs borne by society in the event of nuclear disaster, as well as the costs of the still-unmanaged disposal of nuclear waste. So much for unfettered capitalism! Read more.

Ex-Regulator Says Reactors Are Flawed
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: April 8, 2013

WASHINGTON — All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday. Shutting them all down at once is not practical, he said, but he supports phasing them out rather than trying to extend their lives. read more

Nuclear Is NOT a Low-Carbon Source of Energy
Posted on April 14, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
Why Do People Claim that Nuclear Power is a Low-Carbon Source of Energy?

Even well-known, well-intentioned scientists sometimes push bad ideas….

…some scientists are under the mistaken impression that nuclear power is virtually carbon-free, and thus must be pushed to prevent runaway global warming. (If you don’t believe in global warming, then this essay is not aimed at you … although you might wish to forward it to those who do.)

But this is a myth.

Amory Lovins is perhaps America’s top expert on energy, and a dedicated environmentalist for close to 50 years. His credentials as an energy expert and environmentalist are sterling.

Lovins is a former Oxford don, who taught at nine universities, most recently Stanford. He has briefed 19 heads of state, provided expert testimony in eight countries, and published 31 books and several hundred papers. Lovins’ clients have included the Pentagon, OECD, UN, Resources for the Future, many national governments, and 13 US states, as well as many Fortune 500 companies, major real-estate developers, and utilities. Lovins served in 1980-81 on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Research Advisory Board, and in 1999-2001 and 2006-08 on Defense Science Board task forces on military energy efficiency and strategy.

Lovins says nuclear is not the answer:

Nuclear plants are so slow and costly to build that they reduce and retard climate protection.

Here’s how. Each dollar spent on a new reactor buys about 2-10 times less carbon savings, 20-40 times slower, than spending that dollar on the cheaper, faster, safer solutions that make nuclear power unnecessary and uneconomic: efficient use of electricity, making heat and power together in factories or buildings (“cogeneration”), and renewable energy. The last two made 18% of the world’s 2009 electricity, nuclear 13%, reversing their 2000 shares–and made over 90% of the world’s additional electricity in 2008.

Those smarter choices are sweeping the global energy market….

An International Forum on Globalization report – written by environmental luminaries Ernest Callenback, Gar Smith and Jerry Mander – have slammed nuclear power as catastrophic for the environment:

Nuclear energy is not the “clean” energy its backers proclaim. For more than 50 years, nuclear energy has been quietly polluting our air, land, water and bodies—while also contributing to Global Warming through the CO2 emissions from its construction, mining, and manufacturing operations. Every aspect of the nuclear fuel cycle—mining, milling, shipping, processing, power generation, waste disposal and storage—releases greenhouse gases, radioactive particles and toxic materials that poison the air, water and land. Nuclear power plants routinely expel low-level radionuclides into the air in the course of daily operations. While exposure to high levels of radiation can kill within a matter of days or weeks, exposure to low levels on a prolonged basis can damage bones and tissue and result in genetic damage, crippling long-term injuries, disease and death.

Read more.

Does nuclear power produce no CO2 ? You Betcha!

See this excellent photographic depiction of the huge amounts of fossil fuel which goes into building and operating a nuclear power plant.
by Dave Kimble, originally published by www.peakoil.org.au | May 11, 2006

Proponents of nuclear power always say that one of the big benefits of nuclear power is that it produces no Carbon dioxide (CO2).

This is completely untrue, as a moment’s consideration will demonstrate that fossil fuels, especially oil in the form of gasoline and diesel, are essential to every stage of the nuclear cycle, and CO2 is given off whenever these are used. Read and see more.

Government Reacts to Fukushima Radiation Crisis By Raising Acceptable Radiation Standards … Instead of Fixing Anything
Posted on April 14, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
Just Like the Financial Crisis, the Gulf Oil Spill, and All Other Crises, Government Covers Up Instead of Addressing the Real Problems

[For this excellent article in full with embedded reference links click here. ]

2 weeks after the Fukushima accident, we reported that the government responded to the nuclear accident by trying to raise acceptable radiation levels and pretending that radiation is good for us.

Since then, massive radiation has been released on a daily basis from Fukushima… for years.

And there are so many new leaks that even the mainstream press is starting to admit that Fukushima was never fixed.

Radiation from Fukushima is slamming Tokyo, as well as the West Coast of North America.

Fukushima radiation is showing up in fish on the West Coast of the United States. Scientists are starting to sound the alarm as to additional human deaths and health problems on the U.S. West Coast due to Fukushima radiation, and an epidemic of injuries to sealife.

And it’s not just Fukushima …

An investigation by Associated Press found that 75 percent of all U.S. nuclear sites have leaked radioactive tritium.

In fact, whistleblowers at the Nuclear Regulator Commission say that the risk of a major meltdown at U.S. nuclear reactors is much higher than it was at Fukushima.

And an accident in the U.S. could be a lot larger than in Japan … partly because our nuclear plants hold a lot more radioactive material. Radiation could cause illness in huge numbers of Americans, and a major nuclear accident could literally bankrupt America.

So what has the American government done to protect us?

It has pressured the Japanese government to re-start its nuclear program, and is allowing Fukushima seafood to be sold in the U.S.

And U.S. nuclear regulators actually weakened safety standards for U.S. nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster.

And as we noted 6 months after Fukushima melted down:

American and Canadian authorities have virtually stopped monitoring airborne radiation, and are not testing fish for radiation. (Indeed, the EPA reacted to Fukushima by raising “acceptable” radiation levels.)

***

The failure of the American, Canadian and other governments to test for and share results is making it difficult to hold an open scientific debate about what is happening.

And it’s happening again …

Forbes reported last week:

The acting EPA director on Friday signed a revised version of the EPA’s Protective Action Guide for radiological incidents, which critics say radically relaxes the safety guidelines agencies follow in the wake of a nuclear-reactor meltdown, dirty-bomb attack, or other unexpected release of radiation.

***

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) [a government whistleblower support group], that means agencies responding to radiation emergencies may permit many more civilian fatalities.

“In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems,” PEER advocacy director Kirsten Stade said in a press release. “This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period.”

Medical doctor Helen Caldicott notes:

The radiation guides (called Protective Action Guides or PAGs) allow cleanup many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These guides govern evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions following a wide range of “radiological emergencies.” The Obama administration blocked a version of these PAGs from going into effect during its first days in office. The version given approval late last Friday is substantially similar to those proposed under Bush but duck some of the most controversial aspects:

In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems. This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period;

In water, the PAGs punt on an exact new standard and EPA “continues to seek input on this.” But the thrust of the PAGs is to give on-site authorities much greater “flexibility” in setting aside established limits; and
Resolves an internal fight inside EPA between nuclear versus public health specialists in favor of the former. The PAGs are the product of Gina McCarthy, the assistant administrator for air and radiation whose nomination to serve as EPA Administrator is taken up this week by the Senate.
Despite the years-long internal fight, this is the first public official display of these guides. This takes place as Japan grapples with these same issues in the two years following its Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“This is a public health policy only Dr. Strangelove could embrace. If this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms. McCarthy, then EPA is in for a long, dirty slog,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the EPA package lacks a cogent rationale, is largely impenetrable and hinges on a series of euphemistic “weasel words.”

“No compelling justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold.”

Reportedly, the PAGs had been approved last fall but their publication was held until after the presidential election. The rationale for timing their release right before McCarthy’s confirmation hearing is unclear.

Since the PAGs guide agency decision-making and do not formally set standards or repeal statutory requirements, such as the Safe Drinking Water Act and Superfund, they will go into full effect following a short public comment period. Nonetheless, the PAGs will likely determine what actions take place on the ground in the days, weeks, months and, in some cases, years following a radiological emergency.

As we noted right after Fukushima happened, this is standard operating procedure for government these days….
…In other words, this is a concerted propaganda campaign to cover up the severity of a major nuclear accident by raising acceptable levels of radiation and saying that a little radiation is good for us. Read more

Published on Saturday, April 13, 2013 by The Progressive
San Onofre to the Public: DROP DEAD!
by Harvey Wasserman Full article here.

The bitter battle over two stricken southern California reactors has taken a shocking seismic hit.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ignored critical questions from two powerful members of Congress just as the Government Accountability Office has cast serious doubt on the emergency planning at the San Onofre nuclear plant.

At a cost of some $770 million, Southern California Edison and its partners installed faulty steam generators at San Onofre Units 2 and 3 that have failed and leaked.
Those reactors have been shut since January 2012 (similar defects doomed Unit 1 in 1992).

They’ve generated zero electricity, but SCE and its partners have billed ratepayers over a billion dollars for them.

SCE wants San Onofre reopened by June 1. The idea is to experiment with Unit 2 at 70% of full power for five months, despite widespread concerns that the defective generators will fail again.

That would require a license amendment, about which the NRC staff has asked Edison 32 key preliminary questions. But there’s been no official, adjudicated public hearing on Edison’s response….

Boxer (202-224-3553) and Markey (202-225-2836) are now being asked to hold those adjudicated public hearings in southern California, and to investigate the GAO’S findings on evacuation, before any new license is granted at San Onofre. Full article here.

Obama Approves Raising Permissible Levels of Nuclear Radiation in Drinking Water. Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket

Rollback in Nuclear Radiation Cleanup

By Helen Caldicott
Global Research, April 14, 2013
nuclearfreeplanet.org

Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket Following Radiological Incidents

The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following “radiological incidents,” such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication as soon as today, is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a “new normal” for radiation exposure among the U.S population, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the radiation guides (called Protective Action Guides or PAGs) allow cleanup many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These guides govern evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions following a wide range of “radiological emergencies.” The Obama administration blocked a version of these PAGs from going into effect during its first days in office. The version given approval late last Friday is substantially similar to those proposed under Bush but duck some of the most controversial aspects:

In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems. This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period…. Read more

EON, in co-operation with WomensEnergyMatters.org, launches ‘preview interview’ series based on exclusive material from their forthcoming documentary SHUTDOWN: The Case of San Onofre, a look at the resurgent Nuclear Free California movement.

Here’s the first in the series:
S. David Freeman, legendary former Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) administrator, who has shutdown many a nuke in his career – and is now working in his 85th year to help local residents and Friends of the Earth decommission San Onofre – explains why we have to ‘kill nuclear power before it kills us.’

The SHUTDOWN ‘Preview Interviews’ will include SanOnofreSafety.org Founder, Donna Gilmore; San Clemente Green co-founders Lauri & Gary Headricks; Emergency Response Expert Deanna Polk; Investigative Reporter Harvey Wasserman; Urban Planner Torgen Johnson; WomensEnergyMatters.org Founder Barbara George and others-to-be-posted.
You can find them on our sister blog eon3EMFblog.net and on our YouTube Channel.

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Guest Filmmaker
EON is pleased to share this film by Doug Tompkins. ( www.deepecology.org )

Doug Tompkins is a longtime wilderness advocate, mountaineer, organic farmer, activist, and philanthropist. But his first career was in business. He founded The North Face outdoor gear retailer in the 1960s, and then cofounded Esprit clothing, retiring from that in 1990 to concentrate on conservation work.

In 1992, Tompkins founded the Foundation for Deep Ecology, a philanthropic effort devoted to root causes of environmental crises; soon after, he started the Conservation Land Trust and, with his wife Kris, Conservacion Patagonica, focused on creating large-scale protected natural areas in Chile and Argentina. Tompkins has also helped produce numerous campaign-related exhibit format books on topics ranging from industrial forestry, factory farming, coal mining, and global energy crises, among others.

A consistent principle that informs Tompkins activities is that the “present eco-social crisis demands a response—that individuals who recognize the great unraveling of natural and human communities across the globe have a responsibility to act to stop it.” Working to reverse the extinction crisis and build a more sane and sustainable culture requires both defensive and proactive strategies.
Tompkins’s earliest conservation activism sprang from his love for wilderness and experience as a mountaineer. Climbing trips around the globe provided a disturbing view of how wild nature everywhere was under assault by human activity. His ecological worldview deepened during the 1970s and 1980s through a self-guided immersion in ecological literature including the writings of Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer Arne Naess, father of the deep ecology movement. Tompkins has written, “that the influences of Arne Naess, John Muir, David Ehrenfeld, Paul Shepard, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold and many others put me so firmly on a ‘deep’ ecological path.”

By the late 1980s Tompkins saw that the consumer culture that he’d helped promote was a destructive manifestation of an industrial growth economy toxic to nature. He decided to devote his wealth to endow an environmental foundation with an activist orientation. The foundation has embodied the idea that strategic philanthropy can support innovative, biocentric activists tackling root causes—not merely symptoms—of ecological destruction; vigorous and uncompromising advocacy on behalf of wild nature.

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[Scroll down for videos of Dr. Bello’s inspiring report to a San Francisco audience on recent significant political progress in the Philippines.]

Excerpts from article below:
Is This Why the Pope Resigned?
“In his acceptance speech after bring conferred the degree by Terry Budge, Chancellor of the University, Bello told the assembled graduates and faculty members that he was proud to have participated in the passage of the historic Reproductive Health Act in the Philippines.

“The new law will not only advance women’s rights,” he noted. “It will also allow us to finally undertake rational population management for sustainable national development, an objective that the vast majority of our people have long desired.”

To much laughter in the audience, he took the occasion to “deny the rumor” that “the Pope decided to resign because the Philippines had passed a bill that gives poor women access to methods of artificial contraception.”

Bello said he was honored to have participated in the crafting of the historic Marcos Human Rights Violations Compensation Act, which “established the Philippines as one of the few, if not the only, government in the world to pass legislation to compensate citizens whose fundamental human rights were violated by its agencies.“

Australia’s Murdoch University awards Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello Honorary Doctorate for Advocacy on Social Justice and Human Rights

At its commencement exercises in Perth, Australia, on February 19, Murdoch University conferred a doctorate degree, honoris causa, on Akbayan Representative Walden Bello.

One of the country’s leading institutions of higher learning, Murdoch University was founded in 1970 and named after Sir Walter Murdoch, a preeminent Australian philosopher and advocate of free speech.

According to the university citation read by Professor Gary Rodan, “Dr Bello masterfully combines the roles of legislator, activist, humanitarian and professor in a career spanning almost five decades. He has harnessed courage, conviction and intellectual creativity in championing social justice and supporting others to the same end.”

“A member of the House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines,” the citation continued, “Congressman Bello spends much of his time crafting legislation and assisting the marginalized social sectors that comprise the constituencies of the political party Akbayan (the Citizens’ Action Party).”

“Dr Bello’s professional career,” concluded the citation, “has been remarkable for its sustained, diverse and inspirational leadership on behalf of those least powerful who are most in need of advocacy and support.”

In his acceptance speech after bring conferred the degree by Terry Budge, Chancellor of the University, Bello told the assembled graduates and faculty members that he was proud to have participated in the passage of the historic Reproductive Health Act in the Philippines.

“The new law will not only advance women’s rights,” he noted. “It will also allow us to finally undertake rational population management for sustainable national development, an objective that the vast majority of our people have long desired.”

To much laughter in the audience, he took the occasion to “deny the rumor” that “the Pope decided to resign because the Philippines had passed a bill that gives poor women access to methods of artificial contraception.”

Bello said he was honored to have participated in the crafting of the historic Marcos Human Rights Violations Compensation Act, which “established the Philippines as one of the few, if not the only, government in the world to pass legislation to compensate citizens whose fundamental human rights were violated by its agencies.“

The Akbayan Congressman devoted most of his speech, however, to urging action on climate change.

“Australia has honored its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and it is one of the few countries, if not the only country, that has passed a carbon tax,” he said.

“But you need to do more, since Australia still has one of the world’s highest per capita emissions of greenhouse gases,” Bello added.

Pushing for coordinated action on the climate front by the Philippines and Australia, he said that there is “a vital space that our two countries can fill in pushing forward the stalemated global climate negotiations.”

“Possessing moral authority because they are willing to do what it takes to save the planet would give the Philippines and Australia the power to punch above their weight. This partnership for an effective climate regime can be extended to the many other countries and societies that are dismayed by the reigning stalemate as the world burns and are simply waiting for bold new initiatives for decisive action,” said Bello.

Admitting that “my generation has not done a good job when it comes to meeting our responsibilities in addressing the climate crisis,” he concluded his address to Murdoch’s graduating class of some 1200 students saying, “It is left up to you and your counterparts in the Philippines and throughout the world to rise to the occasion and leave your children a better planet than that we are leaving you.”

This is Bello’s second honorary doctorate, the first coming from Panteion University in Athens in 2006. He was also the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in Stockholm in November 2003 for his work in producing critical analyses of globalization and the Outstanding Public Scholar Award of the International Studies Association in San Francisco in February 2008.

The Murdoch citation noted Bello’s “prolific” output of 17 books and more than 1,000 articles in career as a public intellectual that began with his obtaining his PhD in sociology from Princeton University in 1975.

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An Evening in San Francisco with Philippine Congressman Walden Bello

Walden Bello Report – Pt. 1
This is the first of two segments of An Evening in San Francisco with Walden Bello, sponsored by Friends of Akbayan, U.S.A. and the Asian Pacific-American Labor Alliance. Dr. Bello, an internationally known political economist and university professor, is currently a member of the Philippine House of Representatives. He reports on the significant and world precedent-setting bills just passed in the Philippines to a San Francisco audience Feb. 15, 2013.

Walden Bello Report – Pt. 2
This is the question and answer segment of the program An Evening in San Francisco with Walden Bello, sponsored by Friends of Akbayan, U.S.A. and the Asian Pacific-American Labor Alliance. Dr. Bello, an internationally known political economist and university professor, is currently a member of the Philippine House of Representatives. He talks about reform accomplishments and opportunities in the Philippines.

Viewer Embed Code:

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