sarkotchad: perspicacite de voltaire

Arche de Zoé : que faisaient Nicolas, Cécilia et François dans cette galère ?

par Thierry Meyssan*

Des citoyens français intoxiqués par la propagande atlantiste ont été convaincus qu’un génocide se déroulait au Darfour et qu’ils pouvaient sauver des enfants d’une mort certaine. Ils ont financé l’équipée de « l’Arche de Zoé » qui a tenté d’enlever des enfants au Tchad. Étrangement, lorsque la presse s’est emparée de cette affaire, le président Sarközy n’est pas venu au secours des enfants victimes, ni des familles d’accueil abusées, mais des voleurs d’enfants. Pour protéger qui ?

6 novembre 2007

La presse française ne manque pas un éditorial pour brocarder le président tchadien Idriss Déby qui a accusé sans retenue l’association humanitaire l’Arche de Zoé d’avoir tenté d’enlever des enfants pour satisfaire des pédophiles et se livrer à un trafic d’organes. Simultanément, elle loue le président français Nicolas Sarközy, qui s’est immédiatement déplacé au Tchad pour faire baisser la tension et rapatrier plusieurs prévenus.
L’ombre de Cécilia
Le Figaro s’est fait l’écho de la colère de la nièce d’un des bénévoles de l’Arche de Zoé incarcéré au Tchad : ce sapeur-pompier aurait été abusé par les dirigeants de l’association qui lui aurait fait croire que l’opération de sauvetage des enfants était patronnée par Cécilia Sarközy [1].
Mais le quotidien n’indique pas de quelle manière les dirigeants de l’Arche de Zoé avaient pu convaincre les bénévoles d’un tel patronage s’il n’existait pas.
Et si ce patronage était imaginaire, pourquoi le président Sarközy s’est-il cru obligé de monter immédiatement en première ligne ? [2]
Un Sarközy peut en cacher un autre
L’objet social de l’association l’Arche de Zoé est d’« intervenir en faveur des enfants victimes du tsunami du 26 décembre 2004, à Banda Aceh (Sumatra, Indonésie) pour leur permettre de retrouver des conditions de vie décentes par des programmes sanitaires, sociaux et éducatifs ; développer, mettre en œuvre et coordonner des programmes de réhabilitation de l’environnement familial et social de ces enfants ; développer tout programme en adéquation avec les besoins des enfants et de leur environnement de manière à favoriser le retour à l’autonomie, de façon plus générale ; mettre en œuvre toute action permettant de venir en aide aux enfants en difficulté, en détresse ou victimes de catastrophes naturelles ». Comme ne le laisse pas deviner cet énoncé humanitaire, l’association est une initiative d’un organisme semi-public français, Paris Biotech Santé. Celui-ci a été fondé conjointement par l’Université Paris-V Descartes, l’INSERM, l’École centrale de Paris, et l’ESSEC, et dispose de tous les agréments officiels nécessaires. Son objet est de soutenir des projets de création d’entreprises dans le domaine du médicament, des dispositifs médicaux et des services aux malades [3]. Paris Biotech Santé gère un immeuble de 3 200 m², dont 2 500 m² de laboratoires, à l’hôpital Cochin. Ces installations ont été inaugurées en grande pompe, il y a trois semaines par le maire de Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, le président de la région Île-de-France, Jean-Paul Huchon, et le président de l’université Paris-V Descartes, Jean-François Dhainaut [4].
Il résulte de ce montage que la finalité ultime de l’Arche de Zoé est de tester des programmes sanitaires sur des enfants en difficulté dans le tiers-monde en vue de leur développement commercial.
Les liens organiques de l’Arche de Zoé et de Paris Biotech Santé sont attestés par l’avis de création de l’association publiée au Journal officiel de la République française du 2 juillet 2005. Il précise : « Siège social : 23, rue Hallé, 75014 Paris. Courriel :
lefebvre.s@parisbiotech.org ».
Au demeurant, Stéphanie Dhainaut-Lefèbvre, contact légal de l’Arche de Zoé est aussi la directrice adjointe de Paris Biotech Santé et l’épouse du président de l’université.
En outre, l’Arche de Zoé est la déclinaison française de la Zoe’s Ark Foundation Inc. (154 A’Becket Street, Melbourne 3000, Victoria, Australie). Malgré le communiqué de la Fondation assurant n’avoir aucun lien avec l’association homonyme française, tous les responsables français sont membres de l’organisation-mère australienne, y compris Paris Biotech Santé qui figure parmi la liste fiscale en notre possession.
Contacté par téléphone, Paris Biotech Santé indique que seul son directeur, le professeur Olivier Amedée-Manesme, est habilité à répondre à la presse et que celui-ci n’est pas joignable. C’est dommage car il aurait été en mesure d’indiquer quel avis le Comité d’évaluation de Paris Biotech Santé a émis sur le programme Arche de Zoé ; un Comité d’évaluation où siège le docteur François Sarközy, médecin pédiatre. Contacté à son tour par téléphone, le secrétariat de François Sarközy nous assure qu’il transmet notre question et nous rappelera.
François Sarközy est politiquement proche de son frère aîné, le président Nicolas Sarközy, au point que celui-ci, lorsqu’il était maire de Neuilly et ministre de l’Intérieur, l’avait fait nommer médiateur dans le conflit social de l’hôpital américain de Neuilly [5].
Le Figaro le présentait au lendemain de l’élection présidentielle comme l’une des 100 personnalités qui compteraient désormais « au coeur de la future équipe de France » [6]. Le média sarközyste (excusez le pléonasme) précisait : « Ce pédiatre de 48 ans, vice-président du Conseil de surveillance d’une société de biopharmaceutique, s’est beaucoup rapproché de son grand frère Nicolas lors de la campagne, notamment à l’occasion de séjours brefs mais studieux dans la maison de François, en Provence. » De son côté, Le Nouvel Observateur indique : « Autant Nicolas Sarkozy entretient des relations orageuses avec son frère aîné Guillaume, un temps vice-président du Medef, autant il se sent proche de François, un pédiatre devenu manager. C’est chez lui que Sarkozy a reçu ses amis, le soir de son discours “fondateur” du 14 janvier, et c’est dans sa maison du Midi qu’il s’est parfois réfugié pendant la campagne » [7]. Le Monde note : « Le frère cadet de M. Sarkozy a été beaucoup vu au cours de la campagne. C’est chez lui, dans sa maison des Alpilles, que l’ex-ministre a passé de nombreux week-ends ces derniers mois. En l’absence de Mme Sarkozy - qui n’a été officiellement présente au côté de son mari que le 14 janvier et le 22 avril, et enfin dimanche 6 mai sur le podium dressé place de la Concorde, à Paris, au soir de la victoire -, il a symbolisé une présence familiale autour du candidat. Interrogé un jour sur le sens de sa présence, François Sarkozy, soucieux de lever toute ambiguïté, avait précisé : “Je ne le soutiens pas, je l’accompagne”. » [8]
François Sarközy est aussi une personnalité influente des médias. Ainsi Libération lui a attribué un rôle dans l’éviction de Robert Namias de la direction de TF1 au lendemain de l’élection présidentielle [9].
À la rubrique « François SARKÖZY de NAGY-BOCSA », le Who’s Who in France indique : « Interne des Hôpitaux de Paris en pédiatrie (1983-85 et 1987-89), Assistant au laboratoire de physiologie respiratoire de l’hôpital Trousseau à Paris (1989-90) ; aux laboratoires Roussel-Uclaf : Chef de projet international pour les antibiotiques (1990-93), Directeur du développement clinique international (1994-95), Responsable du développement international (1995) ; au groupe Hoechst Marion Roussel :
Vice-président, Directeur de la gestion du
portefeuille et des projets en développement
international à Bridgewater (États-Unis) (1996-98),
Directeur médical et pharmaceutique pour la France
(1998-99) ; Président-directeur général du Centre
international de toxicologie (1998-99) ; Directeur
médical pour la France à Aventis (1999-2000), Associé
du Cabinet de conseil en stratégie et en organisation
devenu AEC Partners (depuis 2001), Président d’AEC
Partners Inc. (depuis 2006) ; Vice-président, Membre
du conseil de surveillance de BioAlliance Pharma
(depuis 2005) »
Bio Alliance Pharma termine ses expérimentations humaines pour le lancement de médicaments luttant contre des maladies opportunistes du cancer et du HIV, Loramyc, Lauriad et Transdrug [10].
Le monde étant petit, en 2006, le principal client de François Sarközy à AEC Partners est le syndicat français de l’industrie pharmaceutique (LEEM), lequel emploie aussi Stéphanie Lefebvre de Paris Biotech Santé et de l’Arche de Zoé, via LEEM-Recherche.
Le président Idriss Déby ne s’est certainement pas exprimé à la légère. Le rapatriement des journalistes et des hôtesses de l’air impliqués dans cette opération a dû être chèrement négocié. Au demeurant, le Tchad, en traduisant en justice les responsables de l’Arche de Zoé, conserve un moyen de pression non-négligeable sur le président français.
[1] « La nièce d’un des Français détenus dénonce les mensonges de l’association », par Angélique Négroni, Le Figaro, 3 novembre 2007.
[2] « Nicolas Sarkozy en première ligne dans l’affaire de l’Arche de Zoé », AFP, 4 novembre 2007.
[3] « Paris Biotech : un cocon protecteur pour jeunes entreprises de la santé », AFP, 3 octobre 2006.
[4] « Inauguration de la pépinière d’entreprises Paris Santé Cochin », AFP, 17 octobre 2007.
[5] « Fin de la grève du personnel de nuit à l’Hôpital américain de Neuilly » et « Accord direction/personnel de nuit à l’Hôpital américain de Neuilly », AFP, 17 et 28 février 2006.
[6] « Les 100 noms qui vont compter » par Yves Derai, Le Figaro, 12 mai 2007.
[7] « Aujourd’hui, ce sont eux qui incarnent la fameuse « rupture » - Les 100 de Sarkozy », par Hervé Algalarrondo, Le Nouvel Observateur, 10 mai 2007.
[8] « Eux aussi ont fait gagner Sarkozy », Le Monde, 8 mai 2007.
[9] « ...Des rides, et c’est pas fini » par Raphaël Garrigos et Isabelle Roberts, Libération du 22 mai 2007.
[10] « BioAlliance Pharma Names Francois Sarkozy as Vice-Chairman of its Supervisory Board ; Healthcare Industry Professional Brings Further Operational and International Experience to Specialty Pharma Company », Business Wire, 5 janvier 2006.

food hyperinflation rocks the uk

The Scotsman Tue 6 Nov 2007

16% surge in food bills as supermarkets pass costs on
to customers

RAYMOND HAINEY

THE cost of the family shopping run has rocketed by up to 16 percent over the last year, according to a new survey.
Prices at Tesco on a selection of foods went up 16 per cent in the year to October - nearly 6.5 per cent above the average rate of inflation.
Click to learn more...
The cost of the same basket of shopping at Sainsbury’s went up by 11.8 per cent and by 8.6 per cent at ASDA.
The average increase across the three supermarkets was 12 per cent - nearly five times the average 2.5 per cent rate of inflation over the same period.
The shopping basket contained staple goods such as bread, milk, butter, cheese, potatoes, tea bags and corn flakes.
Tesco rang up the biggest increases for the basket of staple foods in the year up to last month, with the bill rising £3.55 to £25.70.
Scotland’s biggest retailer was followed by Sainsbury, which increased prices by £2.66 on the same items.
And ASDA - consistently voted the cheapest supermarket in polls - hiked its prices on the 24 item basket of necessities by £1.87.
The survey was carried out by consumer comparison site mySupermarket.co.uk, which checked price increases on a weekly buy of basics for a family of four for the year.
The news came after government statistics showed that prices for many food items had increased, partly due to bad summer weather in the UK and a poor wheat crop globally.
Johnny Stern, the director of the shopping website, said: « Raw commodity prices have gone up worldwide, which is having an effect on prices.
« Supermarkets in the UK have decided they are not going to absorb the rising cost and are passing it on to the consumer.
« Different supermarkets have chosen to do that in different ways and on different products. »
Mr Stern added: « It’s really what supermarkets think they can get away with and they are reacting on a daily basis to that. »
« There is a certain amount of smoke and mirrors - the challenge to the consumer is to work out how to deal with this smoke and mirrors. »
Mr Stern said that staple items were traditionally regarded as loss leaders and competitively priced to tempt shoppers through the doors.
He added: « That was certainly true several years ago and that is what makes these figures so interesting.
« People expect staples to be priced at a reasonable figure - no-one expects them to be expensive.
« And people are going to assume that if prices have gone up in one supermarket, they probably expect them to have gone up by the same in another supermarket, which is not always the case. »
A spokesman for Tesco agreed the that more expensive raw materials had played a part in increasing prices.
But he described the selection of goods in the survey as « small and arbitrary » and unrepresentative of the firm’s overall price policy, and said shoppers should check the company’s online price comparison site.
And he claimed: « This independently-compiled data proves that Tesco is consistently cheaper across a representative range of products. »
A spokesman for ASDA added: « Floods have definitely increased prices of things like vegetables and dairy products.
« It’s always as a last resort we would pass this on to our customers. This study illustrates that when we do that, we are lean in terms of passing the costs on. »
FAIR’S FAIR SAYS CHURCH
THE Church of England has urged shoppers to question who subsidises two-for-one offers in supermarkets.
The move came in a new report accusing major food retailers of selling cheap food at the expense of farmers.
The pursuit of low-cost food, coupled with the big supermarkets’ buying power, is putting farmers’ livelihoods at risk and could threaten our self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs, the report, Fair Trade Begins at Home, supermarkets and the effect on British farming livelihoods, has warned.
Launching the study, the Rt Rev Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter and chairman of the rural strategy group of the Church’s Mission and Public Affairs Division, said although the benefits of the supermarkets were widely recognised, he believed the costs and the risks of food production were not being equally shared.
He said: « Farmers seem to be unwilling to complain or to expose these practices for fear that their produce may be boycotted by the major retailers. »

new declassified cia ufos documents

source: sydney morning herald

November 3, 2007

In January 1979, The New York Times reported that despite repeated, feverish denials, the CIA had indeed investigated the UFO phenomenon: « CIA Papers Detail UFO Surveillance » screamed the headline. The report is said to have so upset the then CIA director, Stansfield Turner, that he reportedly asked his staff:
« Are we in UFOs? »
The answer was yes - since the late 1940s, apparently. But exactly how, what, when, why and who remained layered in mystery, leaving grist for the conspiracy mill.
But this year a raft of newly unclassified CIA documents revealed that the remote possibility of alien invasion elicited greater fear than the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack.
More interesting still, the CIA documents show that despite decades of repeated public denials, behind the scenes there raged a series of inter-agency feuds that involved the highest levels of the US government.
The subject of UFOs - and dabbling in psychological warfare techniques - not only focused the attention of the US government elite for 50 years, but of some of the greatest scientific and military minds of the era.
Throughout the 1950s CIA files clearly document an explosion of activity by US intelligence and military bodies concerned with studying every possible implication for the US, and other Western democracies, of UFOs. The phenomenon, so adored by the cinematic world, was reflected in the CIA’s fixations. Indeed, while highly educated CIA employees experimented by giving each other surprise LSD trips in 1953, there were others, in other parts of the agency, dealing with a flood of UFO reports.
But significantly, after a burst of intense scrutiny in the early ‘50s, the available documents effectively go cold. Why? The Kafkaesque explanation provided is that few files were kept because these would only confirm that the CIA was investigating UFOs. A 1995 CIA review stated: « There was no formal or official UFO project within the agency in the ‘80s, and agency officials purposely kept files on UFOs to a minimum to avoid creating records that might mislead the public if released. »
But the wildly eclectic UFO files cover everything from « flying saucers over Belgian Congo uranium mines » to Nazi « flying saucers ».
A 1953 memo shows that the physicist John Wheeler, while critically involved with Edward Teller in the creation of the hydrogen bomb, was available to the « CIA attack on the flying saucer » problem. The urgency of the H-bomb race was his priority, but he « would be pleased at any time to discuss the issue briefly », the memo said.
Wheeler recommended two « foreign nationals » who could help with the « problem », including the « mysterious problems of ion paths and magnetic focusing » and « cosmological electrodynamics ».
A secret 1995 report was titled: CIA’s role in the study of UFOs 1947-90: a diehard issue. Collated and written by Gerald Haines, the CIA’s National Reconnaissance Office historian, its detailed summary of CIA involvement inadvertently undermined its « UFOs-don’t-exist » conclusion. The document begins with a June 24, 1947, report from the pilot Kenneth Arnold, who spotted nine unidentified objects near Mount Rainier, Washington state, travelling at an estimated 1600 kmh. Haines did not mention that days later, on July 8, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record reported a US Army press release below the headline « RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region ».
The report noted that that controversy, coloured with Byzantine denials, dogged the CIA and its UFO investigations for decades. Using operational names like Project Blue Book, Story, Grudge, Sign, Saucer, Moon Dust and Twinkle, the US Air Force and other entities always looked into UFO sightings with the CIA peering over their shoulders.
The US Army, of course, promptly retracted the Roswell story but it and the « flying saucers » spotted by Arnold triggered a flurry of sightings and conspiracy theories that continue to this day.
The US Air Force finally admitted in 1994 that there had been a cover-up at Roswell - of a secret project known as Mogul, created to monitor Soviet nuclear tests using high-flying balloons - and that the « aliens » were crash-test dummies.
« Ufologists », naturally, were sceptical of this belated explanation. For 50 years now, right across the globe, people have been reporting sightings of giant, luminous flying saucers, cigars, globes, triangles and doughnuts. Aliens have allegedly abducted, probed and impregnated scores of hapless earthlings. Some believe that a top-secret entity, called Majestic-12, was formed in 1947 by the then president, Harry Truman, in an attempt to deal with the Roswell event. It was supposedly established to aid interaction with aliens. The FBI labelled the Majestic-12 documents a hoax, but the story persists to this day.
Intriguingly, the unclassified documents show that within the CIA, there was an uber-intelligence group called ONE, created by a CIA director, General William Bedell Smith. His tenure spanned the period between October 1950 and January 1953. These documents confirm that ONE was concerned with UFOs.
In 1978 the CIA came under strong pressure from a series of freedom of information requests about UFOs and reluctantly released about 800 documents. The reasonable claim by The New York Times at the time was that the files confirmed intensive government concern about UFOs.
This was branded by the CIA as the press being sensationalist. According to the CIA’s self-critique on the issue, bureaucratic clumsiness, charges that witnesses were being asked to keep sightings secret, and CIA officers talking to civilians about UFOs while wearing air force uniforms, had added « fuel to the growing mystery surrounding UFOs and the CIA’s role in their investigation ». The 1995 Haines report concluded: « The belief that we are not alone in the universe is too emotionally appealing and the distrust of our government is too pervasive to make the issue amenable to traditional scientific studies of rational explanation and evidence. »
My painstaking review of hundreds of unclassified documents reveals that the CIA at the highest level, far from being incompetent, displayed good faith in its efforts to examine the mystery of UFOs over a period of decades. These investigations covered a gamut of inquiries: scientific, political, cultural and military.
And although the air force was the agency given the task of investigating UFOs from 1948 onwards, the CIA remained deeply involved. This is best reflected in a memo to the agency’s deputy director for scientific intelligence, titled Flying Saucers and dated August 3, 1952: « It is recommended that CIA surveillance of subject matter (flying saucers), in co-ordination with proper authorities of primary operational concern at the Air Technical Intelligence Centre (ATIC), be continued. It is strongly urged, however, that that no indication of CIA interest or concern reach the press or public, in view of their probable alarmist tendencies to accept such interest as ‘confirmatory’ of the soundness of ‘unpublished facts’ in the hands of the US government. »
Although most reports were « phoney » or explainable, it said, « caution requires that intelligence continue coverage of the subject ».
On July 28, 1952, Winston Churchill wrote to his secretary of state for air: « What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth? » The minister’s response on August 9, 1952, provided the ground rules for most official responses that continue until today. These were that a 1951 study had found that all reports could be explained by astronomical or meteorological phenomena, mistaken identification of aircraft, balloons, birds, optical illusions and psychological delusions, or were deliberate hoaxes.
But in the CIA at the time, two other responses were countenanced: the need for vigilance and caution because extraterrestrial life could exist, and the potential for « psychological warfare », including fears that popular hysteria could be exploited by an enemy.
The sceptics are best represented in a memo in March 1949 from a Dr Stone in the CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence to a Dr Machle that states: « A rapid perusal of your [flying saucer] documents leaves one confused and inclined to supineness. »
Yet with a deluge of UFO reports over the next four years, the matter suddenly assumed a modicum of gravitas, reflected in many top-secret documents. General Smith said: « There was one chance in 10,000 that the phenomenon posed a threat to the security of the country, but even that chance could not be taken. » On July 1, 1952, there was an about-turn: General Smith wrote to the director of the Psychological Strategy Board established by Truman the previous year: « I am today transmitting to the National Security Council a proposal in which it is concluded that the problems associated with unidentified flying objects appear to have implications for psychological warfare as well as for intelligence and operations. I suggest that we discuss at an early board meeting the possible offensive and defensive utilisation of these phenomena for psychological warfare purposes. »
Searching for this « proposal », I found versions addressed also to the secretary of defence. Some of their highlights, quoting directly from the documents, include: « [Since] 1947 there have been about 1500 official reports of sightings and [of these] the air force carries 20 per cent as unexplained. » And:
« Operational problems are of primary importance and should be attacked at once [including] determination of what [use could] be made of these phenomena by US psychological warfare planners and what … defences should be planned in anticipation of Soviet attempts to utilise them. »
This memo suggested a plot that transcends Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove: the CIA, in the face of unknown phenomena - or even an attack from outer space - was seemingly more concerned about what the Russians might do with UFOs than with the objects themselves. The CIA’s interest in the Soviet and Chinese study of UFOs continued for decades. But on October 2, 1952, General Smith received this ominous note from his Office of Scientific Intelligence: « Flying saucers pose two elements of danger which have national security implications. The first involves mass psychological considerations and the second concerns the vulnerability of the US to air attack. » In January 1953 the Office of Scientific Intelligence convened a committee to review the UFO « problem ». Its members reviewed « 75 case histories of sightings », taking intense interest in a Tremonton, Utah, sighting that included a Kodachrome movie of « 1600 frames ».
At the air force’s request, the US Photo Interpretation Laboratory spent 1000 hours making « graph plots » of the film frames, concluding that the objects were not birds, balloons, aircraft or reflections and that they were « self-luminous ». In a tone of reasonable scepticism, it suggested that the public be educated to avoid hysteria.
But the Office of Scientific Intelligence panel dismissed the military conclusions, suggesting instead that the mysterious objects were seagulls reflecting sunlight.
On January 21, 1953, another memo concluded that the panel had found no evidence of « physical threat to the security of the US ». The convoluted memo stated: « The subject UFO is not of direct intelligence interest. It is of indirect intelligence interest only insofar as any knowledge about innumerable unsolved mysteries of the universe are of intelligence interest. » But it also noted the potential for « interference with air defence by intentional enemy jazzing », the possibility of interference by « overloading communication lines », or the possibility of « psychological offensive by the enemy timed with respect to an actual attack ».
This report and the original Tremonton « seagull » film were then made part of an Office of Scientific Investigation briefing on January 29, 1953, to the entity known as ONE. The air force briefed ONE on UFOs the next day and its 11 members included « Dr Edgar Hoover [sic], William Bundy, General H. Pull and Admiral B. Bieri [Eisenhower’s chief of staff] ».
These documents reveal that ONE was an elite think tank within the CIA and that General Smith created the Office of National Estimates on the issue.
But it was said its « ultimate approval should rest on the collective judgment of the highest officials in various intelligence agencies ». This was to give it the prestige of the best available and most authoritative advice from the government.
General Smith created the Office of National Estimates under the auspices of the National Security Act of 1947. His opinion was that ONE would form the « heart of the CIA and of the national intelligence machinery ».
William Langer, a Harvard historian, was its chairman, and while there is no record of whether ONE thought the Tremonton film showed seagulls or UFOs - or of what the air force told them the next morning - ONE is as close as we get to a documented version of the rumoured Majestic-12 group.
With the Cold War in full swing, the CIA was also watching for UFO activity behind the Iron Curtain. Field stations were to be alerted to any mention of flying saucers by Iron Curtain countries and the CIA discovered that the Soviet establishment mirrored its own ambiguity about UFOs.
The files spotlight Soviet articles in 1968 that show some scientists thought they were real, while others ridiculed the sightings as US propaganda.
One Soviet sceptic noted, with tongue firmly in cheek:
« The number of saucers always grows sharply on the eve of presidential elections. This is difficult to explain.
« Maybe people on other planets lay bets on who will win in the next elections - the Republicans or the Democrats. »

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/11/02/1193619145400.html

biofuel, food riots, global food crisis

Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel
shortages bite

Soaring crop prices and demand for biofuels raise
fears of political instability

John Vidal, environment editor

The Guardian

Saturday November 3 2007

Empty shelves in Caracas. Food riots in West Bengal and Mexico. Warnings of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa. Soaring prices for basic foods are beginning to lead to political instability, with governments being forced to step in to artificially control the cost of bread, maize, rice and dairy products.
Record world prices for most staple foods have led to 18% food price inflation in China, 13% in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10% or more in Latin America, Russia and India, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Wheat has doubled in price, maize is nearly 50% higher than a year ago and rice is 20% more expensive, says the UN. Next week the FAO is expected to say that global food reserves are at their lowest in 25 years and that prices will remain high for years.
Last week the Kremlin forced Russian companies to freeze the price of milk, bread and other foods until January 31, for fear of a public backlash with a parliamentary election looming. « The price of goods has risen sharply and that has hit the poor particularly hard, » said Oleg Savelyev, of the Levada Centre polling institute.
India, Yemen, Mexico, Burkina Faso and several other countries have had, or been close to, food riots in the last year, something not seen in decades of low global food commodity prices. Meanwhile, there are shortages of beef, chicken and milk in Venezuela and other countries as governments try to keep a lid on food price inflation.
Boycotts have become commonplace. Argentinians shunned tomatoes during the recent presidential election campaign when they became more expensive than meat. Italians organised a one-day boycott of pasta in protest at rising prices. German leftwing politicians have called for an increase in welfare benefits so that people can cope with price rises.
« If you combine the increase of the oil prices and the increase of food prices then you have the elements of a very serious [social] crisis in the future, » said Jacques Diouf, head of the FAO, in London last week.
The price rises are a result of record oil prices, US farmers switching out of cereals to grow biofuel crops, extreme weather and growing demand from countries India and China, the UN said yesterday.
« There is no one cause but a lot of things are coming together to lead to this. It’s hard to separate out the factors, » said Ali Gurkan, head of the FAO’s Food Outlook programme, yesterday.
He said cereal stocks had been declining for more than a decade but now stood at around 57 days, which made global food supplies vulnerable to an international crisis or big natural disaster such as a drought or flood.
« Any unforeseen flood or crisis can make prices rise very quickly. I do not think we should panic but we should be very careful about what may happen, » he warned.
Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute thinktank, said: « The competition for grain between the world’s 800 million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its 2 billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue. »
Last year, he said, US farmers distorted the world market for cereals by growing 14m tonnes, or 20% of the whole maize crop, for ethanol for vehicles. This took millions of hectares of land out of food production and nearly doubled the price of maize. Mr Bush this year called for steep rises in ethanol production as part of plans to reduce petrol demand by 20% by 2017.
Maize is a staple food in many countries which import from the US, including Japan, Egypt, and Mexico. US exports are 70% of the world total, and are used widely for animal feed. The shortages have disrupted livestock and poultry industries worldwide.
« The use of food as a source of fuel may have serious implications for the demand for food if the expansion of biofuels continues, » said a spokesman for the International Monetary Fund last week.
The outlook is widely expected to worsen as agro-industries prepare to switch to highly profitable biofuels. according to Grain, a Barcelona-based food resources group. Its research suggests that the Indian government is committed to planting 14m hectares (35m acres) of land with jatropha, an exotic bush from which biodiesel can be manufactured. Brazil intends to grow 120m hectares for biofuels, and Africa as much as 400m hectares in the next few years. Much of the growth, the countries say, would be on unproductive land, but many millions of people are expected to be forced off the land.
This week Oxfam warned the EU that its policy of substituting 10% of all car fuel with biofuels threatened to displace poor farmers.
The food crisis is being compounded by growing populations, extreme weather and ecological stress, according to a number of recent reports. This week the UN Environment Programme said the planet’s water, land, air, plants, animals and fish stocks were all in « inexorable decline ». According to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) 57 countries, including 29 in Africa, 19 in Asia and nine in Latin America, have been hit by catastrophic floods. Harvests have been affected by drought and heatwaves in south Asia, Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay.
This week the Australian government said drought had slashed predictions of winter harvests by nearly 40%, or 4m tonnes. « It is likely to be even smaller than the disastrous drought-ravaged 2006-07 harvest and the worst in more than a decade, » said the Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
According to Josette Sheeran, director of the WFP, « There are 854 million hungry people in the world and 4 million more join their ranks every year. We are facing the tightest food supplies in recent history. For the world’s most vulnerable, food is simply being priced out of their reach. »
Food for thought Possible scenarios
Experts describe various scenarios for the precarious food supply balance in coming years. An optimistic version would see markets automatically readjust to shortages, as higher prices make it more profitable once again to grow crops for people rather than cars.
There are hopes that new crop varieties and technologies will help crops adapt to capricious climactic conditions. And if people move on to a path of eating less meat, more land can be freed up for human food rather than animal feed.
A slowdown in population growth would naturally ease pressures on the food market, while the cultivation of hitherto unproductive land could also help supply.
But fears for even tighter conditions revolve around deepening climate change, which generates worsening floods and droughts, diminishing food supplies. If the price of oil rises further it will make fertilisers and transport more expensive, and at the same time make it more profitable to grow biofuel crops.
Supply will be further restricted if fish stocks continue to decline due to overfishing, and if soils become exhausted and erosion decreases the arable area.

This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday November 03 2007 on p27 of the International section.

the ten most anti american nations

rense.com

The Ten Most
Anti-American Nations

June 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project
11-2-7

Percentage surveyed with an unfavorable view of the US

1. Turkey ­ 83 %
2. Pakistan ­ 68 %
3. Morocco ­ 56 %
4. Argentina ­ 72 %
5. Jordan ­ 78 %
6. Egypt ­ 78 %
7. Malaysia ­ 69 %
8. Indonesia ­ 66 %
9. Germany ­ 66 %
10. Spain ­ 60 %

June 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project (Pewglobal.org)

litvinenko was a mi6 agent

.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-490007/Revealed-Poisoned-ex-Russian-spy-Litvinenko-WAS-paid-MI6-agent.html

Poisoned ex-Russian spy Litvinenko WAS a paid-up MI6 agent

STEPHEN WRIGHT and DAVID WILLIAMS

27th October 2007

Deathbed: Alexander Litvinenko in hospital shortly before his agonising death

The former Russian spy poisoned in a London hotel was an MI6 agent, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Alexander Litvinenko was receiving a retainer of around £2,000 a month from the British security services at the time he was murdered.

The disclosure, by diplomatic and intelligence sources, is the latest twist in the Litvinenko affair, which has plunged relations between London and Moscow to their lowest point since the Cold War.

On the day of the poisoning, November 1, former KGB agent Mr Litvinenko met prime suspect Andrei Lugovoy at the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square, London.

Mr Lugovoy claims that Mr Litvinenko tried to recruit him to supply information to MI6.

The businessman, another former KGB agent, also alleged that his ex-colleague asked him to find candidates for political asylum here. He left Britain for Russia soon after, and has never returned.

Mr Litvinenko had defected to Britain in 2000 and was granted political asylum the following year with his wife Marina, 44, and son Anatoly, 12.

Sir John Scarlett: Recruited Litvinenko for MI6

It is understood that Sir John Scarlett, now the head of MI6 and once based in Moscow, was involved in recruiting him to the Secret Intelligence Service.

The fact that the 43-year-old ex-Russian spy was actually working for Britain when he died could provide the key to his extraordinary killing.

After an exhaustive Scotland Yard investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service announced earlier this year that there was sufficient evidence to charge Mr Lugovoy with 'deliberate poisoning'.

Britain has called for his extradition so he can stand trial at the Old Bailey, but the Kremlin refused the request in July.

In an echo of the Cold War era, Britain then expelled four Russian diplomats from London.

Days later, Moscow responded with a tit-for-tat expulsion of four Britons.

Intelligence sources have told the Daily Mail that they do not expect a trial will ever take place.

They also said there remains a 'perceived threat' against Mrs Litvinenko, who lives with her son at a safe house in the Home Counties.

Mr Litvinenko died in hospital on November 23 after three agonising weeks in which his hair fell out, his skin turned yellow and his organs failed.

Suspect number 1: Russian agent Andrei Lugovoy

A photograph taken on his deathbed shows the devastating effect the poison had on his body.

Investigators believe that a fatal dose of radioactive polonium 210 was slipped into a teapot when the two men met at the hotel.

Significant traces of polonium were found on at least one aircraft boarded by Mr Lugovoy around the time of the murder, as well as in some of the hotel rooms where he stayed.

Mr Litvinenko was very critical of Vladimir Putin, and in the days before he died he accused the Russian President - another former KGB officer - of ordering his killing.

Moscow denies the claim.

Standing firm: Marina Litvinenko, 44, denies her husband was working for MI6

Mrs Litvinenko flew to Portugal last Thursday, on the eve of the EU-Russia summit, to call on European leaders to put pressure on Russia to hand over Mr Lugovoy.

'President Putin is providing Mr Lugovoy with his personal endorsement and backing in the eyes of the world,' she said.

'This indicates that Russia has something to hide and adds credence to Alexander's deathbed statement naming Mr Putin as the instigator of his murder.'

Associates of Mr Litvinenko have suggested his slow and painful death was a deliberate 'message' from the Kremlin to those in exile - warning them there could be no hiding place.

Moscow has accused Britain of harbouring some 16 Russian emigres including billionaire Boris Berezovsky, a fierce critic of the current Russian government.

He provided Mr Litvinenko with a home after his defection.

Mr Litvinenko fled to Britain after accusing the Russian security service of involvement in the 1999 bombings of two apartment buildings, in which 300 people died.

He had also been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who spoke out against the Putin government.

Russian dissident: Billionaire Boris Berezovsky gives a press conference

Mr Lugovoy has admitted meeting Mr Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel in the FSB, the re-styled KGB, several times in the months before his death.

But he claimed he was being made a scapegoat for the death.

He said that he believes MI6 was involved in the murder because agents had been unhappy at the way Mr Litvinenko had boasted of his links to them.

Mrs Litvinenko has dismissed the claim as 'nonsense' and also denied that her late husband was working for MI6.

A book about the murder, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, written by Mrs Litvinenko and a friend of her husband, Alex Goldfarb, was released this week. A film version is planned.

collapse of ussr better prepared than us collapse

http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=23259

Monday, December 4, 2006

Energy Bulletin

Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better
prepared for collapse than the US

By Dmitry Orlov

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.
My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the « Collapse Gap » – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.


Slide [2] The subject of economic collapse is generally a sad one. But I am an optimistic, cheerful sort of person, and I believe that, with a bit of preparation, such events can be taken in stride. As you can probably surmise, I am actually rather keen on observing economic collapses. Perhaps when I am really old, all collapses will start looking the same to me, but I am not at that point yet.
And this next one certainly has me intrigued. From what I’ve seen and read, it seems that there is a fair chance that the U.S. economy will collapse sometime within the foreseeable future. It also would seem that we won’t be particularly well-prepared for it. As things stand, the U.S. economy is poised to perform something like a disappearing act. And so I am eager to put my observations of the Soviet collapse to good use.


Slide [3] I anticipate that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.


Slide [4] The USA and the USSR were evenly matched in many categories, but let me just mention four.
The Soviet manned space program is alive and well under Russian management, and now offers first-ever space charters. The Americans have been hitching rides on the Soyuz while their remaining spaceships sit in the shop.
The arms race has not produced a clear winner, and that is excellent news, because Mutual Assured Destruction remains in effect. Russia still has more nuclear warheads than the US, and has supersonic cruise missile technology that can penetrate any missile shield, especially a nonexistent one.
The Jails Race once showed the Soviets with a decisive lead, thanks to their innovative GULAG program. But they gradually fell behind, and in the end the Jails Race has been won by the Americans, with the highest percentage of people in jail ever.
The Hated Evil Empire Race is also finally being won by the Americans. It’s easy now that they don’t have anyone to compete against.


Slide [5] Continuing with our list of superpower similarities, many of the problems that sunk the Soviet Union are now endangering the United States as well. Such as a huge, well-equipped, very expensive military, with no clear mission, bogged down in fighting Muslim insurgents. Such as energy shortfalls linked to peaking oil production. Such as a persistently unfavorable trade balance, resulting in runaway foreign debt. Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and an unresponsive political system.


Slide [6] An economic collapse is amazing to observe, and very interesting if described accurately and in detail. A general description tends to fall short of the mark, but let me try. An economic arrangement can continue for quite some time after it becomes untenable, through sheer inertia. But at some point a tide of broken promises and invalidated assumptions sweeps it all out to sea. One such untenable arrangement rests on the notion that it is possible to perpetually borrow more and more money from abroad, to pay for more and more energy imports, while the price of these imports continues to double every few years. Free money with which to buy energy equals free energy, and free energy does not occur in nature. This must therefore be a transient condition. When the flow of energy snaps back toward equilibrium, much of the US economy will be forced to shut down.


Slide [7] I’ve described what happened to Russia in some detail in one of my articles, which is available on SurvivingPeakOil.com. I don’t see why what happens to the United States should be entirely dissimilar, at least in general terms. The specifics will be different, and we will get to them in a moment. We should certainly expect shortages of fuel, food, medicine, and countless consumer items, outages of electricity, gas, and water, breakdowns in transportation systems and other infrastructure, hyperinflation, widespread shutdowns and mass layoffs, along with a lot of despair, confusion, violence, and lawlessness. We definitely should not expect any grand rescue plans, innovative technology programs, or miracles of social cohesion.


Slide [8] When faced with such developments, some people are quick to realize what it is they have to do to survive, and start doing these things, generally without anyone’s permission. A sort of economy emerges, completely informal, and often semi-criminal. It revolves around liquidating, and recycling, the remains of the old economy. It is based on direct access to resources, and the threat of force, rather than ownership or legal authority. People who have a problem with this way of doing things, quickly find themselves out of the game.
These are the generalities. Now let’s look at some specifics.


Slide [9] One important element of collapse-preparedness is making sure that you don’t need a functioning economy to keep a roof over your head. In the Soviet Union, all housing belonged to the government, which made it available directly to the people. Since all housing was also built by the government, it was only built in places that the government could service using public transportation. After the collapse, almost everyone managed to keep their place.
In the United States, very few people own their place of residence free and clear, and even they need an income to pay real estate taxes. People without an income face homelessness. When the economy collapses, very few people will continue to have an income, so homelessness will become rampant. Add to that the car-dependent nature of most suburbs, and what you will get is mass migrations of homeless people toward city centers.


Slide [10] Soviet public transportation was more or less all there was, but there was plenty of it. There were also a few private cars, but so few that gasoline rationing and shortages were mostly inconsequential. All of this public infrastructure was designed to be almost infinitely maintainable, and continued to run even as the rest of the economy collapsed.
The population of the United States is almost entirely car-dependent, and relies on markets that control oil import, refining, and distribution. They also rely on continuous public investment in road construction and repair. The cars themselves require a steady stream of imported parts, and are not designed to last very long. When these intricately interconnected systems stop functioning, much of the population will find itself stranded.


Slide [11] Economic collapse affects public sector employment almost as much as private sector employment, eventually. Because government bureaucracies tend to be slow to act, they collapse more slowly. Also, because state-owned enterprises tend to be inefficient, and stockpile inventory, there is plenty of it left over, for the employees to take home, and use in barter. Most Soviet employment was in the public sector, and this gave people some time to think of what to do next.
Private enterprises tend to be much more efficient at many things. Such laying off their people, shutting their doors, and liquidating their assets. Since most employment in the United States is in the private sector, we should expect the transition to permanent unemployment to be quite abrupt for most people.


Slide [12] When confronting hardship, people usually fall back on their families for support. The Soviet Union experienced chronic housing shortages, which often resulted in three generations living together under one roof. This didn’t make them happy, but at least they were used to each other. The usual expectation was that they would stick it out together, come what may.
In the United States, families tend to be atomized, spread out over several states. They sometimes have trouble tolerating each other when they come together for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, even during the best of times. They might find it difficult to get along, in bad times. There is already too much loneliness in this country, and I doubt that economic collapse will cure it.


Slide [13] To keep evil at bay, Americans require money. In an economic collapse, there is usually hyperinflation, which wipes out savings. There is also rampant unemployment, which wipes out incomes. The result is a population that is largely penniless.
In the Soviet Union, very little could be obtained for money. It was treated as tokens rather than as wealth, and was shared among friends. Many things – housing and transportation among them – were either free or almost free.


Slide [14] Soviet consumer products were always an object of derision – refrigerators that kept the house warm – and the food, and so on. You’d be lucky if you got one at all, and it would be up to you to make it work once you got it home. But once you got it to work, it would become a priceless family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation, sturdy, and almost infinitely maintainable.
In the United States, you often hear that something « is not worth fixing. » This is enough to make a Russian see red. I once heard of an elderly Russian who became irate when a hardware store in Boston wouldn’t sell him replacement bedsprings: « People are throwing away perfectly good mattresses, how am I supposed to fix them? »
Economic collapse tends to shut down both local production and imports, and so it is vitally important that anything you own wears out slowly, and that you can fix it yourself if it breaks. Soviet-made stuff generally wore incredibly hard. The Chinese-made stuff you can get around here – much less so.


Slide [15] The Soviet agricultural sector was notoriously inefficient. Many people grew and gathered their own food even in relatively prosperous times. There were food warehouses in every city, stocked according to a government allocation scheme. There were very few restaurants, and most families cooked and ate at home. Shopping was rather labor-intensive, and involved carrying heavy loads. Sometimes it resembled hunting – stalking that elusive piece of meat lurking behind some store counter. So the people were well-prepared for what came next.
In the United States, most people get their food from a supermarket, which is supplied from far away using refrigerated diesel trucks. Many people don’t even bother to shop and just eat fast food. When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch. This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation’s girth, is visible, clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what comes next. If they suddenly had to start living like the Russians, they would blow out their knees.


Slide [16] The Soviet government threw resources at immunization programs, infectious disease control, and basic care. It directly operated a system of state-owned clinics, hospitals, and sanatoriums. People with fatal ailments or chronic conditions often had reason to complain, and had to pay for private care – if they had the money.
In the United States, medicine is for profit. People seems to think nothing of this fact. There are really very few fields of endeavor to which Americans would deny the profit motive. The problem is, once the economy is removed, so is the profit, along with the services it once helped to motivate.


Slide [17] The Soviet education system was generally quite excellent. It produced an overwhelmingly literate population and many great specialists. The education was free at all levels, but higher education sometimes paid a stipend, and often provided room and board. The educational system held together quite well after the economy collapsed. The problem was that the graduates had no jobs to look forward to upon graduation. Many of them lost their way.
The higher education system in the United States is good at many things – government and industrial research, team sports, vocational training... Primary and secondary education fails to achieve in 12 years what Soviet schools generally achieved in 8. The massive scale and expense of maintaining these institutions is likely to prove too much for the post-collapse environment. Illiteracy is already a problem in the United States, and we should expect it to get a lot worse.


Slide [18] The Soviet Union did not need to import energy. The production and distribution system faltered, but never collapsed. Price controls kept the lights on even as hyperinflation raged.
The term « market failure » seems to fit the energy situation in the United States. Free markets develop some pernicious characteristics when there are shortages of key commodities. During World War II, the United States government understood this, and successfully rationed many things, from gasoline to bicycle parts. But that was a long time ago. Since then, the inviolability of free markets has become an article of faith.


Slide [19] My conclusion is that the Soviet Union was much better-prepared for economic collapse than the United States is.
I have left out two important superpower asymmetries, because they don’t have anything to do with collapse-preparedness. Some countries are simply luckier than others. But I will mention them, for the sake of completeness.
In terms of racial and ethnic composition, the United States resembles Yugoslavia more than it resembles Russia, so we shouldn’t expect it to be as peaceful as Russia was, following the collapse. Ethnically mixed societies are fragile and have a tendency to explode.
In terms of religion, the Soviet Union was relatively free of apocalyptic doomsday cults. Very few people there wished for a planet-sized atomic fireball to herald the second coming of their savior. This was indeed a blessing.


Slide [20] One area in which I cannot discern any Collapse Gap is national politics. The ideologies may be different, but the blind adherence to them couldn’t be more similar.
It is certainly more fun to watch two Capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one Communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos. The latest innovation is the photo finish election, where each party buys 50% of the vote, and the result is pulled out of statistical noise, like a rabbit out of a hat.
The American way of dealing with dissent and with protest is certainly more advanced: why imprison dissidents when you can just let them shout into the wind to their heart’s content?
The American approach to bookkeeping is more subtle and nuanced than the Soviet. Why make a state secret of some statistic, when you can just distort it, in obscure ways? Here’s a simple example: inflation is « controlled » by substituting hamburger for steak, in order to minimize increases to Social Security payments.


Slide [21] Many people expend a lot of energy protesting against their irresponsible, unresponsive government. It seems like a terrible waste of time, considering how ineffectual their protests are. Is it enough of a consolation for them to be able to read about their efforts in the foreign press? I think that they would feel better if they tuned out the politicians, the way the politicians tune them out. It’s as easy as turning off the television set. If they try it, they will probably observe that nothing about their lives has changed, nothing at all, except maybe their mood has improved. They might also find that they have more time and energy to devote to more important things.


Slide [22] I will now sketch out some approaches, realistic and otherwise, to closing the Collapse Gap. My little list of approaches might seem a bit glib, but keep in mind that this is a very difficult problem. In fact, it’s important to keep in mind that not all problems have solutions. I can promise you that we will not solve this problem tonight. What I will try to do is to shed some light on it from several angles.


Slide [23] Many people rail against the unresponsiveness and irresponsibility of the government. They often say things like « What is needed is... » plus the name of some big, successful government project from the glorious past – the Marshall Plan, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo program. But there is nothing in the history books about a government preparing for collapse. Gorbachev’s « Perestroika » is an example of a government trying to avert or delay collapse. It probably helped speed it along.


Slide [24] There are some things that I would like the government to take care of in preparation for collapse. I am particularly concerned about all the radioactive and toxic installations, stockpiles, and dumps. Future generations are unlikely to able to control them, especially if global warming puts them underwater. There is enough of this muck sitting around to kill off most of us. I am also worried about soldiers getting stranded overseas – abandoning one’s soldiers is among the most shameful things a country can do. Overseas military bases should be dismantled, and the troops repatriated. I’d like to see the huge prison population whittled away in a controlled manner, ahead of time, instead of in a chaotic general amnesty. Lastly, I think that this farce with debts that will never be repaid, has gone on long enough. Wiping the slate clean will give society time to readjust. So, you see, I am not asking for any miracles. Although, if any of these things do get done, I would consider it a miracle.


Slide [25] A private sector solution is not impossible; just very, very unlikely. Certain Soviet state enterprises were basically states within states. They controlled what amounted to an entire economic system, and could go on even without the larger economy. They kept to this arrangement even after they were privatized. They drove Western management consultants mad, with their endless kindergartens, retirement homes, laundries, and free clinics. These weren’t part of their core competency, you see. They needed to divest and to streamline their operations. The Western management gurus overlooked the most important thing: the core competency of these enterprises lay in their ability to survive economic collapse. Maybe the young geniuses at Google can wrap their heads around this one, but I doubt that their stockholders will.


Slide [26] It’s important to understand that the Soviet Union achieved collapse-preparedness inadvertently, and not because of the success of some crash program. Economic collapse has a way of turning economic negatives into positives. The last thing we want is a perfectly functioning, growing, prosperous economy that suddenly collapses one day, and leaves everybody in the lurch. It is not necessary for us to embrace the tenets of command economy and central planning to match the Soviet lackluster performance in this area. We have our own methods, that are working almost as well. I call them « boondoggles. » They are solutions to problems that cause more problems than they solve.
Just look around you, and you will see boondoggles sprouting up everywhere, in every field of endeavor: we have military boondoggles like Iraq, financial boondoggles like the doomed retirement system, medical boondoggles like private health insurance, legal boondoggles like the intellectual property system. The combined weight of all these boondoggles is slowly but surely pushing us all down. If it pushes us down far enough, then economic collapse, when it arrives, will be like falling out of a ground floor window. We just have to help this process along, or at least not interfere with it. So if somebody comes to you and says « I want to make a boondoggle that runs on hydrogen » – by all means encourage him! It’s not as good as a boondoggle that burns money directly, but it’s a step in the right direction.


Slide [27] Certain types of mainstream economic behavior are not prudent on a personal level, and are also counterproductive to bridging the Collapse Gap. Any behavior that might result in continued economic growth and prosperity is counterproductive: the higher you jump, the harder you land. It is traumatic to go from having a big retirement fund to having no retirement fund because of a market crash. It is also traumatic to go from a high income to little or no income. If, on top of that, you have kept yourself incredibly busy, and suddenly have nothing to do, then you will really be in rough shape.
Economic collapse is about the worst possible time for someone to suffer a nervous breakdown, yet this is what often happens. The people who are most at risk psychologically are successful middle-aged men. When their career is suddenly over, their savings are gone, and their property worthless, much of their sense of self-worth is gone as well. They tend to drink themselves to death and commit suicide in disproportionate numbers. Since they tend to be the most experienced and capable people, this is a staggering loss to society.
If the economy, and your place within it, is really important to you, you will be really hurt when it goes away. You can cultivate an attitude of studied indifference, but it has to be more than just a conceit. You have to develop the lifestyle and the habits and the physical stamina to back it up. It takes a lot of creativity and effort to put together a fulfilling existence on the margins of society. After the collapse, these margins may turn out to be some of the best places to live.


Slide [28] I hope that I didn’t make it sound as if the Soviet collapse was a walk in the park, because it was really quite awful in many ways. The point that I do want to stress is that when this economy collapses, it is bound to be much worse. Another point I would like to stress is that collapse here is likely to be permanent. The factors that allowed Russia and the other former Soviet republics to recover are not present here.
In spite of all this, I believe that in every age and circumstance, people can sometimes find not just a means and a reason to survive, but enlightenment, fulfillment, and freedom. If we can find them even after the economy collapses, then why not start looking for them now?
Thank you.

UPDATE: Dmitri Orlov writes on March 4, 2007:
You wrote that « The Soviets had little chance to make
democratic institutions work. » That’s not entirely
true. Perestroika and Glasnost were all about
democracy, and in my opinion it had the same chance of
success as the hopelessly gerrymandered system that
passes for democracy in the US, (although much less
than any proper, modern democracy, in which the Bush
regime would have been put out of power quite a while
ago, after a simple parliamentary vote of no
confidence and early elections). The problem is that,
in a collapse scenario, democracy is the least
effective system of government one can possibly think of (think Weimar, or the Russian Interim Government) - a topic I cover in Post-Soviet Lessons.
Lastly, I don’t think calling me a cynic is exactly accurate: I’ve been in the US a long time, watching the system become progressively more dysfunctional with each passing political season. It seems to me that it is not necessarily cynical to be able to spot a solid trend, but that it could be simply observant.

geo engineering

http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/prn_the_industry_plan.071025.htm

Rachel's Democracy & Health News #930, October 25, 2007

INDUSTRY'S PLAN FOR US

[Rachel's introduction: The fossil fuel corporations have a plan for us, and it does not include any substantial investment in renewable solar energy. Their plan is focused on "geo-engineering" -- which means re-engineering the oceans, the atmosphere and the earth itself to make it possible to continue burning fossil fuels. U.S. EPA is on board with the plan.]

By Peter Montague

It now seems clear that the coal and oil industries are not going to allow the United States to curb global warming by making major investments in renewable sources of energy. These fossil fuel corporations simply have too much at stake to allow it.

Simple physics tells us that the way to minimize the human contribution to global warming is to leave the remaining fossil fuels in the ground -- stop mining them as soon as humanly possible. This obvious solution would require us to turn the nation's industrial prowess to developing solar power in its many forms as quickly as we can -- we would need a "'Manhattan Project' for Energy," as the strategy journal of the top U.S. military planners said recently.

Look at the relative size of our current government investments in solar vs. fossil fuels. In 2007 the federal Department of Energy spent $168 million on solar research. On the other hand each year since 1991 the U.S. government has spent 1000 times that amount -- $169 billion -- subsidizing the flow of oil from the Middle East, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our top military planners. And that figure doesn't include what consumers paid for the oil itself. If our solar investment remains one-tenth of one percent of our investment in oil, there will be no solar power to speak of in our future.

A rapid shift to renewables based on solar would not be easy and I don't want to minimize the effort required. It's stupendously large. But we've undertaken heroic industrial projects before -- and with notable success. We mobilized quickly and massively to defeat the combined industrial might of Germany, Japan, and Italy in less than five years after Pearl Harbor. The original Manhattan Project turned a physicist's theory into a working A-bomb in less than 6 years; just building the gaseous diffusion plant near Oak Ridge, Tennessee was a scientific, engineering and industrial feat of astonishing magnitude and complexity. The Marshall Plan successfully rebuilt Europe after WW II. Our Man-on-the-Moon program succeeded just 11 years after the Russians tweaked our national ego by launching Sputnik into orbit in 1957.

Yes, a shift to solar-powered renewables would be difficult, but it's doable. Unfortunately, any plan to shift from fossil fuels to solar has three fatal flaws, from the viewpoint of Big Oil and Big Coal:

1. The fossil fuel corporations have an enormous investment in fossil infrastructure and they own vast quantities of fossil fuels that they plan to exploit with little real effort over the next 50 years. They have been making excellent profits for a century and, as fossil fuels get scarcer, prices will only rise. In 2006, ExxonMobil reaped profits larger than any other corporation in history ($39.5 billion). If the U.S. does not invest seriously in renewable alternatives, we'll have no choice but to pay whatever price the fossil corporations demand. Just a few days ago oil hit $90 a barrel; eight years ago it was selling for $10 a barrel. No wonder ExxonMobil now has a book value larger than the national budget of France. Naturally, they intend to maintain their market share, even if it means doing everything in their power to thwart progress.

2. The fossil fuel business is 100 years old and fully understood. No surprises lie ahead. But renewables? Who knows which renewables will win out in the marketplace of ideas? If Uncle Sam were to invest as much money in solar power as it has so far invested in the Iraq war (roughly $800 billion), who knows what new technologies would emerge? (Incidentally, if we maintain our current solar research budget at $168 million per year, it will be 4761 years before we have spent as much on solar research as we have, so far, spent in Iraq.) New technical innovations could be very unsettling for complacent industries like coal and oil. For them, innovation spells trouble. Innovation could render them irrelevant in a decade or two and they could disappear just like the makers of whale-oil lamps and buggy whips 100 years ago.

3. Coal and oil are highly centralized. It's their nature. Whoever owns the fossil fuels, the big central power plants, and the distribution systems can call the shots. But solar? The sun shines everywhere and it's free. Suppose some woman at MIT develops a solar panel that you paint onto your roof (from a can you buy at Home Depot), attach some wires, and start generating your own electricity? Central control disappears. This would be like tossing a hand grenade into the current corporate/political structure. Of course even right- wing politicians love lefty-sounding slogans like "power to the people," but they don't mean real power like electricity or hot water or home-made hydrogen for transportation fuel. (Check out the Nova TV program, "Saved by the Sun," which briefly mentions paint-on solar panels.)

No, a serious plan to focus the nation's industrial prowess onto a solar-powered rebirth will not be allowed by the fossil corporations. Instead we'll be offered a rolling circus of technical fixes aimed at keeping coal and oil streaming out of the ground. The circus is already well under way.

A Sulfur Parasol to Blot Out the Sun

Just this week the New York Times published a proposal to attach a fire hose to some lighter-than-air balloons for the purpose of injecting at least a million tons of sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere, to create a giant parasol to cool the planet. Such a scheme might further deplete the Earth's ozone shield, which remains frayed from DuPont's earlier botched experiment with CFCs. And it could create large-scale acid rain. But contemplating these clownish Rube Goldberg solutions may at least relieve the stress of facing what really needs to be done.

A new word enters our vocabulary: Geo-engineering

Instead of allowing the U.S. to make the transition to solar power, the fossil corporations have evidently decided it's better to re-engineer the oceans and the atmosphere -- and perhaps even the planetary orbit of the Earth itself -- to make it possible to continue burning fossil fuels for another 50 years.

Grand schemes for re-engineering the planet now have their own special name -- geo-engineering. The word means, "global-scale interventions to alter the oceans and the atmosphere so fossil corporations can continue business as usual."

The fire-hose-and-balloon project is only one of many "geo- engineering" schemes in the works.

Fertilizing the Oceans with Iron

There are serious plans afoot to dump huge quantities of soluble iron into the oceans as fertilizer, intending to stimulate the growth of plankton, which will then eat carbon dioxide from the air. As the plankton die, their carcasses will sink to the bottom of the ocean, carrying all that carbon dioxide with them, where it will remain for... for... well, actually, nobody knows for how long. How long might it be before that dormant carbon dioxide comes back to bite us? Nobody knows. Would such a plan disrupt life in the oceans? Nobody knows. But private firms are pressing ahead with large-scale ocean- fertilization experiments as we speak. (They are hoping to get rich selling "carbon credits" to polluters so the fossil corporations can continue contaminating the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. We might well ask the ethical question, who gave these cowboys permission to run geo-engineering experiments in the world's oceans?)

This is all very reminiscent of earlier plans to bury nuclear waste in the floor of the Pacific Ocean, on the theory that the seabed has lain dormant for many millions of years. But that plan never caught on because few people could develop sufficient confidence that the future would unfold exactly like the past. There was that nagging doubt... what if we've missed something important and we turn out to be wrong? What if our understanding is flawed? There was too much at stake, and the plan was shelved. (With carbon dioxide, of course, there's far more at stake.)

Mirrors in Orbit

Now there's a new plan to rocket mirrors into orbit around the earth. Another parasol to block sunlight. The mirrors would consist of a mesh of aluminum threads a millionth of an inch in diameter, "like a window screen made of exceedingly fine metal wire," says Lowell Wood at Lawrence Livermore Lab, who dreamed up the idea. The only drawback to this plan mentioned so far is its enormous dollar cost: to reduce incoming sunlight by 1% would require -- get this -- 600,000 square miles of mirror, which is larger than the combined areas of Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Delaware and Rhode Island.

Of course the U.S. has a long history of large-scale interventions above the clouds. In 1962 we conducted an experiment called "Starfish Prime" in which we exploded a small nuclear weapon (equivalent to 1.4 million tons of TNT) 400 miles up in the atmosphere, just to see what would happen. What happened came as a complete surprise to the geniuses who set off the blast. The explosion left so much residual radiation trapped in space that the world's first communication satellite -- Telstar, which was launched after Starfish -- failed because it encountered crippling levels of radiation. Ultimately, one- third of all the low-orbit satellites in space at the time were disabled by the residual radiation from Starfish Prime. Another unanticipated cost of Starfish was the temporary shutdown of communications and electrical supply in Hawaii, 1300 kilometers from the blast. Who knew?

Project RBR

Despite lessons supposedly learned from Starfish, just last year the Pentagon proposed a project called RBR ("Radiation Belt Remediation"). The RBR project would generate "very low frequency radio waves to flush particles from the [Van Allen] radiation belts and dump them into the upper atmosphere over one or several days." (There are two Van Allen radiation belts; the one closest to earth lies 400 to 4000 miles in the sky.) The stated purpose of the RBR project is to "protect hundreds of low earth-orbiting satellites from having their onboard electronics ruined by charged particles in unusually intense Van Allen radiation belts 'pumped up' by high- altitude nuclear explosions or powerful solar storms." It seems the Pentagon is making plans for conducting nuclear warfare above the clouds. But I digress.

Luckily a small group of scientists from Britain, New Zealand and Finland (organized as the "British Antarctic Survey") caught wind of the RBR plan and actually gave it some thought. They concluded that RBR would "significantly alter the upper atmosphere, seriously disrupting high frequency (HF) radio wave transmissions and GPS navigation around the world." The world's commercial (and military) transport systems are now almost completely dependent upon GPS navigation, so disrupting the global GPS system would create economic chaos, not to mention loss of life. Who knew?

A Plan to Change the Earth's Orbit

As pressure builds on the fossil corporations to quit contaminating the atmosphere with CO2, plans for geo-engineering the planet grow ever-more grandiose and desperate. There is now talk of moving the Earth 1.5 million miles out of its orbit around the sun, to compensate for doubling carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Ken Caldeira of Stanford University has calculated that moving the Earth in this fashion would require the energy of five thousand million million hydrogen bombs (that's 5,000,000,000,000,000 hydrogen bombs). No doubt the Pentagon is studying it with considerable interest.

The Biggest Geo-engineering Project: Carbon Sequestration

Now, the biggest earth-based geo-engineering project of all is in the late stages of development by the coal and oil industries, and is about to be "regulated" by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This is the plan that convinces me that the fossil corporations have no intention of allowing the U.S. to make a rapid transition to solar power. This Big Fossil plan is called CCS, short for "carbon capture and sequestration" and it, too, closely resembles dozens of previous unsuccessful attempts to figure out what to do with radioactive waste.

Carbon sequestration is a fancy name for what used to be called the "kitty litter solution" to radioactive waste: bury it in the ground and hope it stays there. Carbon sequestration is a plan to capture gaseous carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants (and perhaps from other industrial operations as well), turn it into a liquid, and pump it into the deep earth or perhaps into the ocean, where it will remain for an unknown period of time. Professional optimists employed by the fossil industries claim the unknown period of time is "forever." But how can they be sure?

Saving the Coal Industry

The future of the coal industry, in particular, is at stake. Without carbon sequestration, the coal industry will not survive. Just this month the state of Kansas refused to license the construction of a new coal-fired power plant simply because of its carbon dioxide emissions. This is the first time a coal plant has been turned down merely because of its contribution to global warming. The hand writing is on the wall: Big Coal is doomed unless they can find some way to demonstrate that "clean coal" is more than an advertising slogan. This is what carbon sequestration geo-engineers are being paid to do.

Saving the Oil Industry (and the Automobile Industry)

But there's more at stake than just the coal industry. The oil industry, too, is depending on "carbon sequestration" to convince the public that continuing to burn fossil fuels is safe. Even the car companies have recognized that their future depends upon convincing us all that carbon sequestration will work -- and work forever.

We know this is really, really important to the fossil corporations because some of the biggest names in global industry are underwriting "geo-engineering" solutions for the carbon dioxide problem at some of the most prestigious U.S. universities. The Center for Energy & Environmental Studies at Princeton University is conducting geo- engineering studies (1.4 Mbyte PDF) funded by BP (the felonious oil corporation formerly known as British Petroleum) and by Ford Motor, the troubled manufacturer of SUVs. Geo-engineering work at Stanford University is being supported by ExxonMobil, by General Electric, by Schlumberger (the oil-drilling services giant), and by Toyota.

To convince the U.S. environmental community that geo-engineering carbon dioxide is the only way to go, the Stanford geo-engineering group has linked up with NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). Together, they are publishing clever propaganda masquerading as science. For example, in a recent letter to California legislators they say, "We only wish to address the science of CCS [carbon capture and sequestration] here." So we are expecting a scientific argument. Instead, the letter tries to persuade legislators to support carbon sequestration using arguments that have nothing to do with science.

The letter is peppered with distinctly unscientific language like "perfectly safe" to describe the fossil corporations' favorite geo- engineering solution. "Perfectly safe" is not a scientific concept. It is a political concept.

To be fair, deep in their letter NRDC and friends add a few caveats to their "perfectly safe" claim. For example, they say, "Leakage is conceivable but it is unlikely in well-selected sites, is generally avoidable, predictable, can be detected and remedied promptly, and in any case is extremely unlikely to be of a magnitude to endanger human health and the environment if performed under adequate regulatory oversight and according to best practices." [Emphasis in the original.]

So carbon sequestration will be "perfectly safe" if it occurs at "well-selected sites" and if performed under adequate regulatory oversight and according to best practices."

Let's examine these caveats. Are these scientific concepts? Do they even refer to anything in the real world?

Human History: Selecting Sites for Dangerous Projects

What experience do humans have siting dangerous facilities at only "well-selected sites"? I am thinking of the atomic reactor in Japan sited near an earthquake fault and recently shut down by serious earthquake damage. I am thinking of the U.S. radioactive waste site proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada where government and private engineers felt the need to falsify data to make the site appear acceptable. How do NRDC and Stanford propose to avoid a repeat of these fiascos when it comes time to select dozens or hundreds (perhaps thousands) of sites for pumping carbon dioxide into the ground?

Human history: Best practices with Dangerous Technologies

And that about "best practices"? Does this phrase take into account actual human experience with power plant operators photographed asleep in the control room of nuclear reactors? Or young men deep in missile silos relieving their boredom by getting drunk or taking drugs while standing ready to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with hydrogen warheads?

Will Every Nation Abide by the NRDC/Stanford Prescription?

After the U.S. begins injecting billions of tons of liquid carbon dioxide into the earth, won't China, India and other countries do the same? If they do, can they be counted on to choose only "well-selected sites" and to follow only "best practices" for the next hundred years? Who will oversee carbon sequestration in Nigeria or Uzbekistan?

How do NRDC and Stanford imagine that standards for site selection and "best practices" will be enforced around the globe? Have NRDC and Stanford published solutions to these problems? Or are they just putting empty words on paper hoping to fool clueless legislators into adopting untestable technical solutions that the fossil corporations are paying them to promote?

But the most dubious part of the NRDC plan to geo-engineer carbon sequestration is their claim that is will be "perfectly safe" if performed with "adequate regulatory oversight." Can NRDC and their friends at Stanford point to any instances of large-scale industrial enterprises that currently have "adequate regulatory oversight?"

Everyone knows that regulators quickly get captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate. There is a substantial body of social science literature on this point. Regulators are poorly paid, but if they look the other way at regulatory violations, they may find a lucrative job awaiting them when they retire from government. Less sinister but more pervasive is the simple fact that regulated corporations spend a lot of time befriending regulators, dropping by to say hello, asking about the kids, gaining their trust and ultimately their allegiance. Are NRDC and Stanford prepared to deny this indisputable history of regulatory collapse? Have they examined the dismal record of the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency? Are they prepared to design and describe regulatory institutions that do not suffer from these same fundamental human flaws? Or are they just blowing smoke?

So let's examine these caveats just a bit more.

1. What actual experience to do humans have designing anything to be kept out of the environment forever? Answer: None. Absolutely none. In this context, then, what can "perfectly safe" possibly mean?

2. What human regulatory institutions can NRDC and friends point to that have proven adequate? Let's see. The regulatory system for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons? Today, 40 years after the inception of the non-proliferation treaty, Israel, India, North Korea, Pakistan -- all have The Bomb despite heroic efforts to prevent its spread. The only reason Iraq and Syria don't have a nuclear weapon is because Israel bombed their nascent nuclear power plants to smithereens.

What about the regulatory system for controlling the discard of radioactive waste? Radioactive waste is loose at thousands of locations around the planet. In hundreds (perhaps thousands) of instances we do not even know where the stuff has been dumped. This technology was developed by the smartest people in the world with unlimited budgets -- yet at places like the gold-plated Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico (now renamed the Los Alamos National Laboratory), plutonium, americium-241, strontium-90 and other supremely dangerous radioactive elements were buried in shallow pits, or simply dumped into mountain canyons without any records kept of their whereabouts. The kitty litter solution. And this was a federal scientific laboratory under strict military surveillance and control at the time. Can we expect the fossil corporations under the watchful eye of EPA (wink, wink) to do better?

How about the regulatory system for curtailing the widespread destruction of wildlife and human health from hormone-disrupting, cancer-causing chlorinated chemicals? The arctic, which has no industrial enterprises to speak of, is among the most heavily contaminated places on earth because the chemical regulatory system failed to consider how chemicals migrate once they are released into the environment.

So where can we find real-world examples of this "adequate regulatory oversight" that NRDC and Stanford say will be necessary to make carbon sequestration "perfectly safe"?

Maintaining vigilance for hundreds or thousands of years?

Elsewhere in their letter, NRDC and the engineers from Stanford say they believe carbon sequestration can be maintained for millions of years, but they say, if something goes wrong, rapid response will be possible.

Is this really true?

Again, let's return to the debates over radioactive waste from the late 1970s. Back then scientists were a bit more candid: they admitted they knew of no way to pass information reliably to future generations describing the location of radioactive waste dumps. Given human history and the evanescence of human institutions, they could not imagine a way to reliably warn future generations about dangers buried in the earth. At one point they considered writing a huge warning across the face of the moon using graphic symbols because they had no idea which human languages would survive thousands of years into the future. Have NRDC and Stanford published their solution for this problem?

Why should we assume that humans a hundred years from now -- let alone 500 or 5000 years from now -- will be able to monitor for carbon dioxide leaks, locate them, and take rapid action to control them? The prudent assumption would be that humans will NOT have those capabilities. It seems to me it would be unethical to design our technologies based on untested and untestable (and wildly optimistic) assumptions about future humans and their social organizations. Who gave us the right to make decisions now based on assumptions, which, if they are wrong, could destroy the planet as a place suitable for human habitation -- which is precisely what the carbon sequestration researchers are intending to do.

With the future of the human species at stake, isn't a little humility in order? Will these geniuses find themselves staring into the mirror one day toward the end of their shameful careers muttering, "Who knew?"

But ordinary people who aren't subsidized by energy or automobile corporations are asking the same sorts of common-sense questions they asked 20 years ago when the same sorts of brainy university types were telling us it was "perfectly safe" to bury radioactive waste in the ground:

** What if these scientists and engineers turn out to be wrong?

** What if there's something important they haven't thought of?

** Are these people infallible or are they human? They can't be both.

** Isn't it unethical to claim that something will be "perfectly safe" when as a scientist you know you can't be perfectly sure?

** When the fossil corporations impose their plan on us and begin large-scale carbon sequestration, won't that become a powerful incentive to reduce federal funding for conservation, renewables, and solar power? Then won't we have all our eggs in one basket? And didn't our grandmothers tell us that was a bad idea?

** After the fossil corporations impose carbon sequestration on us, won't we be saddled with even more killer fly ash choking the air, and even more toxic bottom ash threatening groundwater supplies? Won't we have even more destruction from mountain-top-removal coal mining, plus the enormous waste of water and land in the mid-western and western coal states? "Clean" coal will still be one of the dirtiest and most destructive forms of energy. And oil will still keep dragging us into endless bloody resource wars because we will still need to funnel more and more of the world's remaining petroleum into our astonishingly wasteful and inefficient enterprises. Is this really the direction we want to be going? Is this a plan we can explain to our children with pride? Is this a plan that will give our children hope?

** Would carbon sequestration truly be reversible if we discovered far in the future that it was a mistake? If not, who can claim that it is ethical to proceed?

** If radioactive waste and carbon dioxide are so dangerous and so hard to manage, how does it make sense to steer the nation and the world onto a course that will guarantee continued production of these lethal substances far into the future?

** With the survival of humans at stake, isn't this a classic and urgent case for applying the precautionary principle?