Steven Rockford's Open Salon Blog

Japan to restart reactors?

Thu, 31 May 2012 09:05:19 -0400

Japan Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda met with key ministers yesterday to discuss re-starting certain nuclear power facilities in the country. After last year’s Fukushima disaster, all 54 of Japan’s nuclear power plants were shut down. As noted in this article in Japan Today, Noda is seeking to re-start at least two plants on the west coast of Japan to help alleviate summer power shortages.

Japanese officials have been considering re-starting a portion of their nuclear power capacity since the beginning of the year. There has been much resistance to these efforts from many environmental groups, especially Green Peace which has been protesting this move from the beginning. In fact, Green Peace used the one year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster and the overall shutdown of the nuclear power program in Japan as a basis for an open letter to all world leaders to “end the threat of nuclear power.” As stated by Green Peace:

The (open letter) signatories include: Archbishop Dr. Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate; Marina Silva, former Brazilian Environment Minister; Senator Bob Brown, Australian Green Party Leader, Ralph Nader, US environmental activist; John Hall, former US Congressman; Richard Harvey, international Human Rights lawyer; several artists; leaders of human rights, labour, development and environment organisations, such as Action Aid International, Health Care without Harm, Greenpeace International, World Team Now, Friends of the Earth US, CIVICUS, the Feminist Task Force of the Global Call to Action against Poverty, and many national non-governmental organisations.

Prior to the Fukushima disaster, Japan relied on nuclear power to provide 30% of its electricity. It is understandable that they would consider bringing nuclear plants back onto the grid that they feel are in “safe” seismic zones.

But, are any of their nuclear plants in “safe” seismic zones?

This map shows the seismic fault lines that surround Japan:

And this map shows the location of nuclear reactors in that country:

The two plants that the Japanese government would like to initially re-start, owned by Kansai Electric Power, are located on the Sea of Japan on the opposite side of the island from Fukushima. It is generally felt that a tsunami is unlikely in the Sea of Japan because of its small oceanic footprint.

As has been reported in many engineering studies, and as I noted in an earlier post, Fukushima was designed to withstand at least a 9.5 magnitude earthquake. But, it wasn’t designed to withstand a ten foot high wall of water created by a tsunami.

As the seismic map illustrates above, there are two fault zones located in the Sea of Japan not far from the Kansai plants.

Should Japan roll the dice and hope that potential earthquake and tsunami damages at that site are impossible?

Our fallen soldiers

Sun, 27 May 2012 13:05:17 -0400

Memorial Day

Image source – wordpress.com

Recently I read that the coalition death toll in Operation Enduring Freedom had passed 3,000. There was nothing about this reported in the mainstream media. This made me think of how casualty-reporting was handled so much differently during the war in Vietnam where we lost 58 thousand American lives.

Many of us remember the “daily casualty reports” that were broadcast on the evening news of every network. I served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam conflict, and when I returned home my heart would sink whenever I would hear those daily reports, knowing that one of the nebulous numbers may have been one of my friends.

The reason our military does not openly publish these statistics anymore is to keep our wars “out of sight & out of mind.” But, is that a good thing?

These numbers represent patriotic Americans who are fighting and dying for our country. A published casualty report puts a human face on warfare, and reminds us that there are “real” people involved in these conflicts.

I was a teenager when I entered the Army, too young to understand the broad meaning of warfare. My Army friends would often talk about how wars are fought by young men who are sent into battle by old men with hidden agendas and no real understanding of what it is like being on a battlefield.

This appears to be true of Operation Enduring Freedom. I have yet to hear anyone tell us what the true definition of “victory” is in that war.

To gain a better understanding of the human cost of war, our leaders should read a “Victory” poem written by Ron Willis, a Vietnam War veteran. In his closing lines, Willis portrays the victory path of an enemy "Bullet" after “he” tore into the "Helmet" of a fallen comrade:

Victory

..then Bullet nosed through soft gray-white stuff
hardly hard as butter
First he cut through the memory of Mom
then a small gray dog
through a first car, a wreck, but what the hell
it ran
through a huge area of scraped knees and
pulled pigtails
a little bit of fear...about this
about
about bullets
then through a first kiss and the warm soft
skin of a girl and
plans for a boat--someday
and tear--
of acrid wine first tasted--
the remembrance of raucous birds calling in
the soft gray dawns of winter
of food cooking warm and pungent--
of sex and school and sandwiches and sorrows
then he was through that map of life and out
the other side easy as punch
flicking Helmet's edge
continuing on
erractic now, partly flattened
going 662 feet per second
slowing down until 853 feet on he
rests himself in a palm tree
sitting there warmly--
duty done--
to map Hell where Paradise had been.

Taken from “Victory” a poem by Ronald J. Willis

Gigline – El Paso (Fort Bliss), Texas - 1969

____________________________________________________

Update - 6/27/12:

Yes Chris Hayes, each one of these fallen soldiers is a hero.

Update 2 - 6/28/12:

Chris Hayes posted a very poignant clarification of the “hero” comment that he made yesterday. He closed by saying:

“But in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don't, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war. And for that I am truly sorry.”

Very well spoken Chris. Peace be with us all my friend.

Racial profiling - Arizona style

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:05:14 -0400

Unbalanced Justice

Two women, Jessica Davenport and Jovana Renteria, were arrested last month in Phoenix during a SB 1070 protest rally. They both put themselves in a position to be arrested as an act of civil disobedience. They are both American citizens. Neither of them carried any form of identification when arrested, and neither of them resisted arrest.

Renteria is Latino. Davenport is not.

This ethnic difference accounted for the difference in treatment that they received during their 18 hours of detention.

Ms. Renteria was asked where she was born, fingerprinted, and booked under the name “Jane Doe,” even though she provided the authorities with her name, social security number, place (Phoenix) and date of birth. She was locked in a jail cell.

Ms. Davenport was never asked where she was born. She was not fingerprinted and was not questioned about her identity or citizenship. Nor was she placed in a jail cell.

Racial Profiling?

As Daniel González reported last week in the Arizona Republic:

"This seems to me to be the logical consequence of SB 1070, which pretty clearly was aimed at the unauthorized immigration population from a particular country," said Gabriel "Jack" Chin, a University of California-Davis School of Law professor who studied SB 1070 while teaching at the University of Arizona. "SB 1070 was in some fundamental way about Mexican immigration and so it's certainly not surprising that law-enforcement agencies responsible for enforcing SB 1070 would focus on the population it was meant to deal with."

State Senator Russell Pierce was thrown out of office last year primarily because of citizens’ concerns about the racial profiling language he wrote into SB 1070. In addition, groups like the Arizona Repeal Coalition, an organization seeking to repeal over 60 anti-immigration laws in this state, are becoming more and more effective in gaining public support.

Even if SCOTUS does decide in favor of SB 1070 (which we all know the Roberts' court will do), the growing public outcry for “fair” immigration rules in this state may eventually force the repeal of discriminatory legislation.

Bush torture team found guilty

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:05:16 -0400

Last week an international tribunal ended an extensive investigation and trial into the torture allegations brought against the Bush administration. It concluded that the Bush torture team (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Yoo, Haynes and Bybee) is guilty of war crimes.

Most Americans heard nothing about this.

Despite considerable international media coverage of this trial, especially in Asia and the Middle East, the American media have been silent on this verdict. Granted, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal’s guilty verdict was mostly symbolic, since the tribunal cannot force extradition for prosecution. However, it does move this case one step closer to being tried in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The evidence against the Bush torture team has been overwhelming and very well documented. The Malaysian tribunal included stunning testimony from a British man who was detained and severely tortured at Guantanamo and an Iraqi woman who was tortured at Abu Ghraib. In 2008, McClatchy conducted an extensive investigation into the U.S. torture program. As I pointed out in an earlier post, this investigation uncovered at least five legal memos that clearly outlined instructions for torture from the Bush administration:

(1). “A Jan. 9, 2002, memorandum for Haynes, co-author Yoo opined that basic Geneva Convention protections known as Common Article Three forbidding humiliating and degrading treatment and torture of prisoners didn't cover alleged al Qaida or Taliban detainees.”

(2). “A memorandum to Bush dated Jan. 25, 2002, Gonzales said that rescinding detainees' Geneva protections "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

(3). “A Feb. 7, 2002 Bush memorandum declared that alleged al Qaida or Taliban members wouldn't be considered prisoners of war and, further, that they wouldn't be granted protection under Common Article Three.”

(4). “A memorandum that Gonzales requested from the Justice Department (on August 1, 2002) defined torture as ‘injury such as death, organ failure or serious impairment of body functions,’ a high bar for ruling interrogation techniques or detainee treatment illegal.”

(5). “A memorandum that Yoo prepared (on March 14, 2003) at Haynes' request concluded that even if an interrogation method violated U.S. criminal statutes — such as the one against war crimes — the interrogators involved most likely couldn't be prosecuted because they were operating within the scope of Bush's constitutional authority to wage war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. Nothing, however, was said about the potential guilt of those who instructed them to perform these actions."

Other international courts have looked into allegations of the torture of U.S. detainees. In the past two years Spain has initiated two investigations into the U.S. torture program. In addition, Switzerland considered legal action in regard to U.S. torture as evidenced by Bush’s cancellation of his trip to Geneva last year.

Thus far, however, U.S. diplomatic efforts have managed to squelch these investigations. As noted in a U.S diplomatic cable disclosed by WikiLeaks, the U.S. asked Spain to call off its torture investigations because “the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the U.S. and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship.”

Spain subsequently stopped its legal proceedings.

It is this pressure by the U.S. government against our international allies that is keeping the Bush torture team out of jail. Some members of the team have become so emboldened and confident by these efforts that they are now publicly bragging about their torture tactics. We have all seen Dick and Liz Cheney on the talk show circuit pontificating on the profound positive impact of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Plus, many of us painfully watched the former director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriquez, on 60 Minutes as he pimped his new book and proudly described the torture program he helped implement:

As we move farther and farther away from the Bush era torture incidents it appears that the U.S. government and the American people are becoming less and less interested in pursuing justice in regard to these international war crimes. However, there are two inherent long-term problems associated with letting these war crimes vanish down the memory hole.

First, it is almost inevitable that sometime in the future a U.S. soldier or civilian will be captured by one of our enemies and will suffer under the same torture techniques that were prescribed by the Bush torture team.

America has always taken the high-road in regard to defending prisoners’ rights in these situations. We actively pursued the war-crime trials against the Nazis at Nuremburg, for example. And we tried and convicted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners in the Pacific.

Can we rightfully prosecute foreign torturers in the future if we’re unable to prosecute known torturers in our own country today?

Second, our democracy was established under the highest principles of the rule of law. Included in these principles is the basic premise that no one is above the law. If an international law is broken by any person, regardless of his/her economic, social, religious or political standing in this country, that person must be brought to justice.

Along with the failure to bring to justice the Wall Street perpetrators of our economic collapse, the failure to prosecute our known war criminals has greatly diminished the public’s faith in our government’s ability to fairly enforce the rule of law in America.

The political pendulum keeps moving right.

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:05:09 -0400

The village media continually insist that Obama needs to move more to the center. But, what isn’t mentioned is that this “Center” has been continually moving “Right.” This is not to say that the average person’s political position has become more conservative. Rather, the right-wing noise machine has successfully shifted the Beltway thinking in that direction.

I found a simple, but illustrative, example of this rightward shift in a New York Times crossword puzzle.

Each NYT crossword puzzle has a theme that can be found in a few key synonymous words within the puzzle itself. In this particular puzzle, the key words (representing the overall theme of the puzzle) were:

“Left”

“Progressive”

“Liberal”

“Radical”

When I finished the puzzle, I thought how odd it was for the puzzle designer to include “Radical” as a natural synonym for the other three words. Would it have been equally as acceptable to have the following words be considered as being synonymous?:

“Right”

“Conservative”

“Radical”

Probably not. In today’s environment our mainstream thought has been so distorted by wingnut pundits that even crossword puzzle makers think that what used to be considered as reactionary right-wing thinking is "Normal", while anything that is moderately conservative to progressive thinking is considered “Radical.”

Our political pendulum is a long way from a “real” center.