For us, it’s a rollercoaster. For them, just a revolving door

Sometimes there are very, very good pieces in the New York Times. Usually, they don’t get nearly enough attention. One of the reasons is that the deliciousness of what is being reported is kept from the large audience who might act on the information because it has been packaged instead for the wrong crowd.

Writing about what’s wrong with Wall Street in an investor-oriented Times column called Dealbook is like writing about new developments in deadly weaponry for a publication aimed at maximum security prisoners: it just gives them new ideas.

Such it is with an article about subprime mortgages, bonds, and those who invest in them. The Times has a great little updater on this, about a character named Greg Lippmann who is straight out of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.

Some Wall Street investors made money as the mortgage market boomed; others profited when it fell apart.

Having reaped big gains during both of those turns, Greg Lippmann, a former star trader at Deutsche Bank, is now catching the next upswing: buying the same securities built from mortgages that he bet against before the financial crisis erupted.

Mr. Lippmann is joined by other big-money investors — mutual funds like Fidelity as well as hedge funds — in riding a wave of interest in the same complex loan pools that nearly washed away the financial system….

Ahem! But instead of this being read by those independents trying to decide what they think of Occupy Wall Street, or by teetering homeowners who are thinking of voting for Mitt Romney because he promises lower prices at the tank, it will be read primarily by the same amoral miscreants gaming the system—like the guy in the article.

The underlying point of the piece is this: There’s no stopping these SOBs. They can ruin people’s lives, and ruin the country….and they just keep on merrily chugging.

As if to underline the point about the moral depravity and utter blindness to the misery caused by this kind of speculation, how does this man spend his free time? Not passing out blankets to the poor, presumably. No, passing judgment on which high-priced Manhattan sushi restaurants are up to his exacting standards. That about says it all:

Let ‘em eat sushi. But why let ‘em destroy our lives with impunity?

GRAPHIC: http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/2010/0416/0416-goldman-sachs/7744338-1-eng-US/0416-Goldman-Sachs_full_600.jpg

Was this young man killed by Saudi police?

The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt may have mixed results thus far, but they had an authenticity to them. Then, the cynical manipulators, always looking to ride popular waves to personal gain, latched on. And we had big oil and big intelligence giving a huge boost to dissenters in Libya. And now in Syria.

But there are other uprisings where those interests are not invested. In fact, they want them to fail.

Real journalism does not take sides. But it does try and accurately cover everything that is going on—not just those examples that serve one particular agenda.

Some time back, we told you about the uprising in Saudi Arabia that the media ignores. That continues. Another is in Bahrain. And another is in Yemen.

Let’s check in with the Unauthorized Arab Spring, Saudi style:

SAUDI SPRING

Recently, we heard from someone in the area. He wrote (in good but imprecise English, so the following has been minimally edited for clarity):

Hello Russ,

This is Hussain. I’m from Qatif, east Saudi Arabia. I read your article ”The Saudi Arab Spring Nobody Noticed” and I thought that you would be interested following the updates of the pro-democracy protest. Because nobody, or few non-Arabs, know details about Qatif, we recently opened an English page in Facebook for updating international community.

http://t.co/5j0Rmhf5

Of course, since you published the article, the protests didn’t stop. Recently, 4 more people were martyred in Qatif by the live bullets of Saudi Forces. They don’t use water or tear gas to stop the protestors, they use live bullets, shooting with a kalashnikov!  They didn’t come to my beloved city with police, they came with tanks as if they were going to war!

As you know, Shi’a is a minority comparing to the whole country. But, they are a majority in the Eastern rich-oil Province where their population is almost 4-5 million.

Unfortunately, ministry of interior is always lying, always, to smokescreen their crimes with stupid reasons. They said there were wounded policemen. There weren’t! Because, logically, they are the only side which is armed. They don’t even come near protestors unless inside their tanks. Protestors are armed by the bravery of shouting the word, holding the banners.

Please, watch these videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr0yr8V7IVw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PTSjzJhMmk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

Regards,
Hussain

By the way, Occupy Qatif says its Twitter account was suspended, and that it had to start a new one. Hmmm. Nothing to do with that Saudi prince buying $300 million in Twitter insider shares?

Oh, and be sure and check out this Facebook page for Occupy Qatif. You can read claims (and see possible supporting evidence) that activists and civilians are being arrested, kidnapped, shot. Where is the world press on this? What does the State Department have to say?

A lighter note from their Facebook page: The activists in Eastern Saudi Arabia, perhaps surprisingly (and perhaps not!) like the work of the late comedian and social commentator George Carlin. So do we. Wonder how popular Carlin’s critique, and his skepticism toward authority and organized religion, is with the Saudi royals? Hey, now that’s the kind of soft feature the corporate media might enjoy covering.

WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.

Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

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Watch Video Interview Two
 

More and more people angrily declare Climate Change a fraudulent concept. Apparently, all environmental groups and scientists are in cahoots to rob us of our very comfortable current lifestyle….Or not.

This handy chart offers a handy little exercise in logic.

GRAPHIC: http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/395940_842169154111_1010664_37712606_1688554057_n.jpg

***

In Twitter’s disturbingly brief and bland announcement post, they mentioned “retroactively withholding” tweets in countries “when required to do so in response to what we believe to be a valid and applicable legal request.”

Twitter stressed that it would not delete the tweets outside the country involved, and would also announce the act of censorship. It insisted that this “granular” approach was preferable to blacking out messages to the entire world (though it doesn’t seem clear that they’ve ever actually done that). At best, the granular approach does benefit secondary audiences, but is of no consolation to those who lose their voices while perhaps advocating for just causes like liberty or human rights to their own fellow citizens.

What exactly does retroactive withholding mean? Further study showed that they meant they would not filter tweets as they are posted. Instead, they will, upon receiving complaints, block them in such a way that after that point no one in the complaining country could read the offending posts.

Assuming that authoritarian, totalitarian and just way-too-sensitive governments are monitoring all tweets from certain people or those with certain keywords, the complaints could theoretically be almost instantaneous. If Twitter places a priority on pleasing the governments in these countries, then the deletion of those tweets could also come fast, before too many people had seen them or perhaps even retweeted them. Twitter presumably has a way to block not only the tweets, but also straight retweets from others, and even tweets with comments added.

This all will be being watched closely in authoritarian places like Saudi Arabia, which as we previously noted, recently bought a sizable stake in Twitter via its wealthiest prince, with the company insisting—of course—that this was strictly business. Nothing to do with the censorship announcement.

What You Calling “Valid”?

As in most things, the details are all-important.

What constitutes “a valid legal request” to quash a tweet? Isn’t saying anything against the existing government illegal in many countries? And if so, isn’t Twitter just enabling oppression and illegitimate governments? And what about comments regarding rich and powerful individuals, companies and entities? If these interests can get a judge in a particular country to label something illegal, isn’t that all that’s needed for a “valid” request? Does Twitter have a lot of confidence in the purity of legal systems worldwide, in the efficacy of democracy everywhere?

Who decides what is or should be “illegal”? Each government? So as soon as there is a coup in a country and a different faction comes into power, then that faction sets the new Twitter policy?

Twitter has cited as an example that neo-Nazi statements, Holocaust denial, and so forth, are illegal in Germany and so Twitter seeks to comply with that. Is Twitter comparing hate speech of that magnitude, on which Germany has particular sensitivity with regard to its own history, with tweets that advocate for democracy in places where there is none?

Censorship Goes Viral?

Is Twitter concerned about a slippery slope here, where this could turn into an avalanche of censorship? Here are just a few examples of recent censorship requests: In India, a nonprofit seeking to test the situation sent in a bunch of deliberately frivolous complaints, and got posts removed fast. These were Web postings, not tweets, and the Indian government did so directly. But what if they had been tweets, and the Indian government had turned to Twitter? Presumably the same censorship would have occurred—if  the government there deemed the posts “illegal.”

A Saudi writer had to flee his country after several tweets that were deemed apostasy put him under a potential death sentence. In a theocratically-dominated society like that, these tweets would be deemed “illegal” under Twitter’s criteria. Would Twitter then censor tweets that express controversial religious views, or that take a new or fresh approach to some official position?

Where else is this policy going to take us? In Brazil, they want to ban tweets that alert drivers to speed traps. In South Korea, a young man faces up to seven years in prison for retweeting something coming from the North Koreans—even though he was simply mocking the North. Is that then Twitter’s policy—to let South Korea dictate whether humor is ok? Where does Twitter see this all ending?

A One-Way Tweet?

We wanted to ask them about all this, so we went to their media inquiry website, and requested an interview.

The site says that they will get back to members of the media “in a few days.” Huh! For an instant-communication service, they sure don’t take some communications with much urgency. And after we posted our request, we got an email saying:

Thanks for your inquiry. We are a small communications team based in San Francisco and are quite busy. We’ll get back to you if we’re able to.

“…if we’re able to [!]

They may be a “small communications team,” but how responsible is that for a giant company that impacts the whole world? Outfits that are serious about fostering accurate information (or just protecting their corporate image) have a decent sized media team, and are capable of responding quickly.

This raises another question. Why is their “communications team” so small—can’t a company with a valuation of billions of dollars and eager investors spend more on this? Is this a deliberate tactic to stonewall legitimate questions? How else to explain it?

Twitter doesn’t seem to have yet begun withholding tweets. So perhaps the announcement is just a trial balloon, to see what kind of public outcry results. So far that seems very muted. Maybe the “limited capacity” of the company to handle press inquiries is no coincidence. In any case, this might be a good moment for those a sustained interest in Internet freedom to let Twitter know—in a sustained way.

WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.

Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

Graphic by Peter Kuper—www.peterkuper.com

Heist Trailer from Tony Laidig on Vimeo.

An awful long time has elapsed since the media began frenetically covering the uprising in Syria—long enough for more truth to have emerged by now.

At WhoWhatWhy, we’ve had our suspicions that pressworld was getting it wrong (as usual)—but held off from any serious analysis to see what else might come out. A development the other day seemed to mark the right moment to weigh in.

Here’s the New York Times:

Three gunmen ambushed a military general on a residential street in Damascus on Saturday, the Syrian government reported, in an assassination of a government stalwart that was the first of its kind in the Syrian capital and another step away from the nonviolent roots of the antigovernment protests.

In fact, there’s good reason to think that what was originally presented as a peaceful indigenous uprising by ordinary people now involves a very sophisticated and professional apparatus with its own agenda.

What could that be? Well, consider the eagerness with which almost all the leading countries in the West and their allies elsewhere have condemned the Syrian regime—in dramatic contrast to their silence toward comparably repressive but pro-Western governments like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.  They can’t wait for the Syrian government to fall.

They can’t wait: literally. This Western coalition has made clear that it wants Bashar Assad out, and a new, much more compliant leader in his place.

We saw a near-identical situation in Libya, replete with similar attempts to build world support for action to protect ordinary people. To be sure, ordinary people were rising up against Qaddafi, but it wasn’t just ordinary people. A massive propaganda campaign, alarming the world with one outrage and atrocity after another, was most definitely not the work of these ordinary people. Remember Qaddafi purportedly ordering his troops to commit mass rape, and fortifying these young men with Viagra (and condoms!)? Never verified—and never mentioned again once Qaddafi was toast. Remember the defecting cabinet minister who promised proof that Qaddafi had personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing? Proof never emerged, never mentioned again. That was followed, only shortly before Qaddafi was ousted, by a lot of bragging from the West about all the covert intervention without which the rebels could never have succeeded. Plus the revelation that the Western darling, Qatar, had covertly sent in its troops to Libya. We are also seeing a similar situation in Iran, replete with denials and surrogates.

Meanwhile, most of the media—even more foul than in their previous foulness, docility and lack of initiative—have dutifully reported the propaganda line that is being handed to them regarding Syria, without any serious effort to raise legitimate doubts. This is just a bunch of normal Syrians, peacefully protesting, and a savage and unconscionable response from their government. The headlines range from the regime torturing children to today’s from CNN, about government troops “shelling randomly.” (The sources, as in Libya, are the murky “opposition” –not the most reliable and neutral of observers.)

What they have trouble saying is this: Yes, the Syrian regime has always been brutal and determined to hold on to power at all costs—just like the Libyan. And the Egyptian and the Saudi and the Bahraini. But only some governments are told by foreign governments that it is time to go. And only some governments face the wrath of the unified diplomatic and covert military/intelligence apparatuses of countries with a stake in the game. Thus, it is impossible to say if the accounts of snipers firing on people in Homs is true—even assuming it is, then who is actually behind this activity, and with what objectives.

As for the violent reaction by—or ascribed to—the Syrian regime (and Qaddafi), well, those are exactly what any authoritarian or totalitarian government would do that does not want to give up power and end up with a sharp instrument up their orifices. Do you believe that the West’s factory, aka China, would do differently? Anyone pay attention to goings-on in Tibet? Even more relevantly, do you believe for a second that the government in the United States or Britain or France would simply abdicate in the face of an armed uprising calling for an entirely different regime—and one supported by foreign powers—without a fight? Just look at the way the American power structure has reacted to a comparatively minor disruption like the Occupy movement.

So there are two main points here: outsiders are heavily involved in the uprising, and any response from Syria is to be expected.

Department of Double Standards

The evidence is everywhere that the uprising comprises a geo-strategic agenda grafted upon legitimate domestic grievances and aspirations for liberty. Let’s consider the last two paragraphs of that Times article:

Speaking at the open session of the minister’s meeting, the Tunisian foreign minister, Rafik Ben Adessalam, said the Syrian people had the same right to freedom that has already been achieved by the people of Tunis, Libya and Egypt.

The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said that international armed intervention in Syria had to be ruled out, but those responsible for killing innocent civilians had to be held accountable.

What’s left unsaid is that the Saudi people, too, presumably have the same right to freedom. So the Saudi official has to be careful of what he says. Not the Tunisian, coming from a post-Arab Spring country.

Here, a new Tunisian government, almost as friendly to the West as the old Tunisian government overthrown in Arab Spring, is saying what the Saudi couldn’t say because it would be rank hypocrisy of the Saudi to say it. But this construction makes clear that the Saudis are supportive of the effort to remove the Syrian government.

And why shouldn’t they be? The repressed majority in Syria are Sunnis, potential allies of the Saudi royal family, while the ruling Syrian clique is a Shiite sect with ties to….Iran. And there are restive Shiites (with ties to Iran) in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province involved with uprisings against the Saudi royal family. Uprisings you may not know about simply because the media has failed to cover them—they’re one incarnation of Arab Spring that the Western establishment does not want covered.

The reason is simple enough: The Saudis are the West’s chief partner in the oil business and elite wealth-sharing generally. They’re threatened by Shiites. Iran and its partner Syria are leading players in the Shiite league. From this, it’s not hard to figure who might benefit both from toppling the regimes in Tehran and Damascus—other than ordinary citizens.

Connecting the Dots

It is therefore interesting to note the following development, as reported by the Associated Press:

Al Qaeda’s chief has called on Muslims from other countries to support rebels in Syria seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad, saying they cannot depend on the West for help.

Ayman al-Zawahri, in a videotaped statement released late Saturday, asked Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to join the uprising against Assad’s “pernicious, cancerous regime.” All four states border Syria.

A senior Iraqi security official also told the Associated Press on Saturday that intelligence over the last four months has revealed a flow of al Qaeda-linked fighters from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul into Syria….

Ho-HO! It’s our old friends, the Saudi-connected, staunchly pro-Sunni Al Qaeda. That’s right. The same enemies of the American people whose leader needed to be very publicly hunted down and killed by those Navy SEALs in that strange raid whose media coverage never made any sense. Now, everyone’s on the same side.

We can be reasonably certain that this story will be a blip, largely unnoticed, although it for very good reason could outrage an awful lot of people, starting with the families of 9/11 victims who sense that the true (and ongoing) relationship between the Saudis and Al Qaeda has been deliberately covered up.

Oil, Oil, Toil and Trouble

Then there’s another intriguing development, another blip, another unconnected dot. This from the BBC:

The head of the suspended Arab League observer mission to Syria has resigned as League foreign ministers meet to decide their next move in the crisis….

Controversial Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, who led the month-long Arab League observer mission to Syria, submitted his resignation on Sunday.

Human rights groups criticised him for his actions in Darfur, where Sudan is accused of genocide by the International Criminal Court.

The Arab League suspended its mission in Syria at the end of January, after it failed to halt the violence.

To which dot should this one be connected? Sudan, it turns out, is virtually at war with its former southern half….over oil. As we noted at the time, The New York Times practically forgot to mention oil in its celebration of the independence of South Sudan. Now, when no one is paying attention anymore, they mention it. So the guy who was supposed to prevent atrocities in Syria (with an unstated back story that is all about oil) is removed because of atrocities in his own country (with an unstated back story that is all about oil.)

And then this dot

Here’s The Times, again:

The Arab League asked the United Nations Security Council on Sunday to send a peacekeeping mission to Syria, and called on Arab nations to sever diplomatic relations with the country in an effort to pressure it to end the violence there.

As the Arab League sought to speed an end to a conflict that appears to be escalating toward civil war, several Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda, sought to ramp it up, calling on their followers around the globe to join a jihad against the Syrian government.

At a meeting of the Arab League’s foreign ministers in Cairo, after the League’s own observer mission to Syria failed to end the bloodshed last month, the organization adopted a resolution asking the Security Council to authorize a joint Arab-United Nations force to “supervise the execution of a cease-fire.”

The resolution also called on Arab League members to “halt all forms of diplomatic cooperation” with representatives of the Syrian government. As it has before, the League also called for Syrian military forces to withdraw from the cities, and an immediate end to the killing of Syrian civilians.

So, instead of noting that Al Qaeda, the Saudis, the US, et al are all on the same side, this reportage misleadingly stresses the “conflict” between Al Qaeda and the UN over how to resolve the Syrian situation. It is certainly true that the UN—however one thinks of that institution as embodying a particular viewpoint—supports negotiations, and Qaeda does not. But as usual, the elephant in the room is missing: the United States and its European allies, desperate—desperate—for oil. And the Saudis, desperate to neutralize all sources that might foment a Shiite-led rebellion in Saudi Arabia’s oil heartland.

A final thought: At this rate, and with this behavior, and the media’s incompetence (or willful ignorance?), don’t expect the United States government to launch a crash Manhattan Plan—to generate alternative energy sources— any time soon.

WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.

Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

GRAPHIC: http://www.indiavision.com/news/images/articles/2012_02/275892/u8_China-paper-defends-Syria-veto-doubts-West-motive.jpg

Russ Baker talks about deep history, the origins of the intelligence establishment, the military-industrial-financial-oil complex, the JFK assassination, and his book Family of Secrets, with Craig Barnes on KSFR-FM, Santa Fe, NM, January 27, 2012

From the heyday of the environmental movement in the late 1960s through the late 1970s, many people were openly skeptical about the destructive potential of the nuclear power industry. After the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in central Pennsylvania in March 1979 and the explosion of Chernobyl’s unit four reactor in the Ukraine in April 1986, few would have predicted that nuclear power could ever shake off its global pariah status.

Yet, thanks to diligent lobbying efforts, strong government support, and a full public-relations blitz over the past decade, the once-reviled nuclear industry succeeded in recasting itself in the public mind as an essential, affordable, clean (low carbon emission), and safe energy option in a warming world. In fact, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has just cleared the way for granting the first two licenses for any new reactors in more than 30 years. The new reactors will be built at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, southeast of Augusta.

Even so, the ongoing crisis following meltdowns in three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan nearly a year ago has shined an unwanted spotlight on the dark side of nuclear power, once again raising questions about the reliability and safety of atomic reactors.

In response, the nuclear industry and its supporters have employed sophisticated press manipulation to move the public conversation away from these thorny issues. One example is PBS’s recent Frontline documentary, Nuclear Aftershocks, which examines the viability of nuclear power in a post-Fukushima world.

What follows is a detailed critique of many of the issues raised in the program, which initially aired January 17, 2012.

***

In the program, NASA’s celebrated chief climate scientist, James Hansen—who has a penchant for getting arrested protesting the extraction and burning of the dirtiest fossil fuels—says that the Fukushima accident was “really extremely bad timing.” Though it was at the end of a statement about the harm of continuing to burn fossil fuels, Hansen’s comment begs the question: Is there ever a good time or place for a nuclear catastrophe?

Under the cloud of what some experts believe is already worse than Chernobyl, the nuclear industry and its supporters are scrambling to put as good a face on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster as possible.

Fukushima’s triple meltdowns, which are greatly complicating and prolonging the cleanup of the estimated 20 million metric tons of debris from the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami last March, present a steep public relations challenge.

The strategy seems to be: 1) to acknowledge the undeniable—the blown-up reactor buildings that look like they were bombed in a war, the massive release of radionuclides into the environment, the fact that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes and livelihoods, and that some areas may not be habitable for generations, if ever. But then, 2) after coming clean about those harsh truths, downplay or dismiss the harm of the ongoing radiation contamination, invoking (irrational) “fear” as the much greater danger. And 3) frame discussion of the need for nuclear power in the even scarier context of global warming-induced catastrophic climate change (this despite the irony that the reality of global warming is still rejected by fossil fuel industry partisans and growing numbers of the public who have been swayed by the industry’s media-amplified misinformation). Whether consciously or not, Frontline’s Nuclear Aftershocks adheres to this PR strategy.

The program begins with a harrowing view of nuclear power at its most destructive. Viewers see close-ups of the three destroyed Fukushima Daiichi reactors with the tops of their buildings blown off amidst the wreckage around the plant. Real time video captured on cell phones shows the precipitating earthquake, and there is film of the ensuing tsunami that engulfed the plant.

Frontline also captures the dystopian scene of an utterly destroyed landscape littered with seemingly unending tracts of twisted and broken buildings, infrastructure, and the various trappings of modern Japanese life—much of it now radioactive detritus. A member of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission who toured the plant six weeks after the beginning of the disaster sums it up with this simple comment: “This scenery is beyond my imagination.”

Frontline clearly explains how, without electricity to run the valves and pumps that push water through the reactors’ cooling systems, the intensely radioactive and thermally hot fuel in three of the six General Electric Mark 1 boiling water reactors (BWRs) then in operation quickly began to melt. (Loss of all electricity is one of the most dangerous situations for a nuclear reactor, and is known as a station blackout.) This in turn led to a build-up of hydrogen, which is highly combustible, in the reactor buildings where any small spark could—and did—trigger explosions.

“It was an unprecedented multiple meltdown disaster,” Frontline correspondent Miles O’Brien reports. “For the first time since the Chernobyl accident in 1986, large quantities of dangerous radioactive materials—about one-tenth of the Chernobyl release—spewed into the atmosphere from a stricken nuclear power plant.”

As bad as that was, O’Brien says the problems for plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco,) were only just beginning. That’s because Tepco had to try to keep the reactors cooled with enough water in order to prevent the absolute worst, what is popularly but misleadingly referred to as “The China Syndrome.”

According to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, a China Syndrome accident is a three-stage progression. In stage one, all of the fuel inside a reactor melts and turns into a blob at the bottom of the reactor core (the “meltdown”). In stage two, the molten radioactive blob eats through the nuclear reactor vessel (“a melt-through”), which in the case of GE Mark 1 BWRs is an eight-inch steel encasement. Housing the reactor vessel is the containment structure, three feet of concrete lined with two inches of steel. If the melted nuclear fuel were to bore through that and hit the natural water table below the plant, it would result in a massive steam explosion that would send most of the reactor’s deadly contents into the air, where they would disperse far and wide.

Although CUNY physics professor Michio Kaku said on ABC’s Nightline, that Tepco’s efforts were “like a squirt gun trying to put out a forest fire,” the company was able to get enough water in to keep the fuel cool enough to prevent the absolute worst case.

Gundersen says that was the good news.

The bad news is that the water that has come into direct contact with the melted fuel in the three destroyed reactors (including water that is still covering them) is leaking out the side through cracks in the containment structures, filling other buildings at the plant, and seeping down into the groundwater below and around the plant and directly into the Pacific Ocean. Frontline acknowledges the problem, pointing out that because of the high levels of radiation, it will be “a long time” before the site is decontaminated enough for anyone to be able to get inside the reactor to see exactly where the cracks are and to fix them.

As significant a problem as this ongoing contamination is, the biggest discharges of radioactivity into the Pacific—considered the largest ever release of radioactive material into the sea—occurred within the first seven weeks of the accident. At its peak concentration, cesium-137 levels from Fukushima were 50 million times greater than levels measured before the accident, according to research by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution chemist, Ken Buesseler and two Japanese colleagues.

It’s impossible to know exactly how much radioactivity contaminated the Pacific or what the full impact on the marine food chain will be. A preliminary estimate by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency reported in the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun in October said that more than 15 quadrillion becquerels of radioactivity poured into the ocean just from the Fukushima Unit 1 reactor between March 21^st and April 30^th last year. (One quadrillion equals 1,000 trillion.)

A report in January in the Montreal Gazette noted that Japanese testing for radioactive cesium revealed contamination in sixteen of 22 species of fish exported to Canada. Radioactive cesium was found in 73 percent of the mackerel tested, 91 percent of the halibut, 92 percent of the sardines, 93 percent of the tuna and eel, 94 percent of the cod and anchovies, and 100 percent of the carp, seaweed, shark, and monkfish. These tests were conducted in November and indicate that the radioactivity is spreading, because tuna, for example, is caught at least 900 kilometers (560 miles) off shore.

Real Health Concerns or Just Fear?

In summing up the disaster, Frontline’s O’Brien says: “The earthquake and tsunami had stripped whole towns from their foundations, killing an estimated 18,000 people. Life is forever changed here.”

But then he shifts from documenting the undeniable devastation to speculating on how big a problem remains: “[T]he big concern remains the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear explosions. People here are fearful about how much radiation there is, how far it has spread, and the possible health effects.”

Japanese citizens have decried their government’s decision to allow radiation exposures of up to 20 millisieverts a year before ordering an evacuation. O’Brien equates this level with “two or three abdominal CAT scans in the same period” but nevertheless characterizes it as “conservative.” What follows is his exchange with Dr. Gen Suzuki, a radiation specialist with the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission.

MILES O’BRIEN: [on camera] So at 20 millisieverts over the course of a long period of time, what is the increased cancer risk?

GEN SUZUKI, Radiation specialist, Nuclear Safety Comm.: Yeah, it’s 0.2— 0.2 percent increase in lifetime.

MILES O’BRIEN: [on camera] 0.2 percent over the course of a lifetime?

GEN SUZUKI: Yeah.

MILES O’BRIEN: So your normal risk of cancer in Japan is?

GEN SUZUKI: Is 30 percent.

MILES O’BRIEN: So what is the increased cancer rate?

GEN SUZUKI: 30.2 percent, so the increment is quite small.

MILES O’BRIEN: And yet the fear is quite high.

GEN SUZUKI: Yes, that’s true.

MILES O’BRIEN: [voice-over] People are even concerned here, in Fukushima City, outside the evacuation zone, where radiation contamination is officially below any danger level.

Missing from the above exchange is both established and emerging radiation biology science, as well as the fact that radiation exposure is linked to numerous other health problems from immune system damage, heart problems and gastro-intestinal ailments to birth defects, including Down’s syndrome.

Gundersen points out that, according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences 2006 BEIR report (BEIR stands for Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation), an annual exposure of 20 millisieverts will cause cancer in one of every 500 people. Since this is an annual exposure rate, the risk multiplies with each year of exposure. So, for example, five years of exposure to 20 millisieverts will result in an additional cancer in one in 100 people.

Gundersen notes that the risk is not the same for all population groups. According to Table 12-D in BEIR VII Phase 2, the younger the person exposed, the greater the risk of cancer.

Girls are nearly twice as vulnerable as boys of the same age, while an infant girl is seven times and a five-year-old girl five times more likely to get radiation-induced cancer than a 30-year-old male. Using BEIR’s risk data, one in 100 girls will develop cancer for every year that they are exposed to 20 millisieverts. If they are exposed for five years, the rate increases to one in twenty.

New radiobiology science shows even more cause for concern. Numerous studies of nuclear workers over the last six years—including one authored by 51 radiation scientists that looked at more than 400,000 nuclear workers in 15 countries—found higher incidences of cancer at significantly lower exposure rates than what Japan is allowing.

This finding is important because it challenges the application of the highly questionable data from the Japanese atom bomb survivors that authorities use to set radiation exposure limits.

Nuclear reactors emit low doses of radionuclides into the air as part of their normal operation. Because workers are generally exposed to repeated low doses over time, compared to an initial very high dose from a nuclear bomb, this data is a much more accurate predictor of radiation-induced cancer in people in fallout zones, or downwind of nuclear reactors, than records of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.

Despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences accepts that there is no safe dose of radiation, nuclear proponents have long insisted that low doses provided very little, if any, risk from cancer. (Some even say it’s beneficial.)

But new evidence shows otherwise. Chromosomal translocations (or aberrations), a kind of genetic injury that occurs when DNA molecules damaged by genotoxic chemicals or radiation don’t properly repair themselves, are well documented in cases of medium to high radiation exposure. Chromosomal translocations are also known to increase the risk of many forms of cancer.

Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether low-dose exposures caused chromosomal translocations. A 2010 study looking at the impact of medical X rays on chromosomes not only found that this chromosomal damage occurs with low dose radiation exposure, but that there were more chromosomal translocations per unit of radiation below 20 millisieverts (the Japanese limit) and—surprisingly—“orders of magnitude” more of this kind of damage at exposures below 10 millisieverts.

Frontline’s complacent assessment of the “small increment” of increased cancer risk to Japanese citizens from the ongoing Fukushima fallout contrasts sharply with an assessment by the Canadian Medical Association Journal. That peer-reviewed journal quotes health experts who say the levels of radiation the Japanese government has set before requiring evacuation, combined with a “culture of cover-up” and insufficient cleanup, is exposing Japanese citizens to “unconscionable” levels of radiation.

CMAJ notes that instead of expanding the evacuation zone around the plant to 50 miles, as international authorities have urged, the Japanese government has chosen to “define the problem out of existence” by raising the allowable level of exposure to one that is twenty times higher than the international standard of one millisievert per year.

This “arbitrary increase” in the maximum permissible dose of radiation is an “unconscionable” failure of government, contends [chair of the Medical Association for Prevention of Nuclear War, Tilman] Ruff. “Subject a class of 30 children to 20 millisieverts of radiation for five years and you’re talking an increased risk of cancer to the order of about 1 in 30, which is completely unacceptable. I’m not aware of any other government in recent decades that’s been willing to accept such a high level of radiation-related risk for its population.”

Frontline’s take epitomizes a longstanding pattern of denying radiation health effects, even in the most dire nuclear disasters (though Fukushima is arguably the most dire to date) and blaming it on the victims’ personal habits or their levels of stress from fear of radiation. This was done to the victims of the March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in central Pennsylvania, to Chernobyl victims, and it is happening again with Fukushima.

Nuclear TINA

But what about alternatives? Are there any, or does Margaret Thatcher’s famous slogan regarding capitalist globalization, “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) apply?

Frontline answers this question by going to Germany, where correspondent O’Brien probes the German psyche in an attempt to learn why nuclear power elicits such a strong negative reaction there.

He questions several German citizens, including an adorable little boy, on why they are so afraid of nuclear power. He speaks with the head of the German government committee tasked with considering how to phase out nuclear power, as well as a German energy economist, who says the decision is not likely to change.

And he expresses astonishment that an industrial nation the scale of Germany has decided to shut down all seventeen of its reactors, which account for 23 percent of its electricity generation, within a decade.

Standing in a field that he identifies as the world’s largest solar farm with solar panels as far as the eye can see, O’Brien says Germans support this “seemingly rash decision” because they have faith that there is an alternative.

He then informs viewers that over the past 20 years, Germany has “invested heavily in renewables, with tax subsidies for wind turbines and solar energy,” adding, “It’s kind of surprising to see [the world’s largest solar farm] in a place like this with such precious little sunshine.”

Though he says there is plenty of wind, he characterizes Germany’s target of producing 80 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050 as a “bold bet” whose success will depend on technological breakthroughs to store enough wind or other renewable energy (presumably through improved battery technology) so that it can provide a steady source of power. He notes that the steady production of power is something “nuclear energy does very well.”

Atomiconomics

Any honest discussion of nuclear power—especially when raising the issue of tax subsidies and other government support for renewable sources like wind and solar—must include information on the many hundreds of billions of dollars of public support thrown its way. Despite the highly publicized recent bankruptcy of Solyndra, this support dwarfs what has been given to renewables.

In the executive summary to his February 2011 report on nuclear subsidies, energy economist Doug Koplow says the “long and expensive history of taxpayer subsidies and excessive charges to utility ratepayers…not only enabled the nation’s existing reactors to be built in the first place, [they] have also supported their operation for decades.”

Every part of the nuclear fuel chain—mining, milling and enriching the uranium fuel; costs associated with the construction, running, and shutting down and cleaning up of reactors; the waste; and even the lion’s share of the liability in the case of an accident—has been subsidized to one degree or another.

Koplow says that because the value of these subsidies often exceeded the value of the power produced, “buying power on the open market and giving it away for free would have been less costly than subsidizing the construction and operation of nuclear power plants.”

One of the most important gifts to the nuclear industry is the pass on financial responsibility for a serious accident. This was legislated during the Cold War in the Price-Anderson Act of 1957. In fact, without this protection, it’s highly unlikely the commercial nuclear power industry could or would exist.

In a recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists arguing for the end of Price-Anderson, nuclear industry economic analyst Mark Cooper points out that 50 years ago General Electric and Westinghouse, the two largest reactor manufacturers, said they wouldn’t build reactors without it.

Although Price-Anderson was initially rationalized (along with many of the other subsidies) as necessary protection to help get the fledgling industry going, Congress has repeatedly renewed it over the years.

Today, reactor owners have to carry a small amount of private insurance, and Price-Anderson creates an industry-wide pool currently valued at around $12 billion. Accounting for inflation, Cooper puts the estimated costs of Chernobyl in excess of $600 billion. In Japan, the Fukushima accident is projected to cost up to $250 billion (though it could well be more). Here in the U.S., Cooper says, a serious accident at, say, Indian Point, just 35 miles north of Manhattan, could cost as much as $1.5 trillion.

If such an accident were to happen in the U.S., taxpayers would be left with the tab for the difference.

But even with all of the subsidies, the cost of building a new reactor—pegged at between $6 billion and $12 billion apiece—is still so expensive that reactors only get built with substantial government help.

To jumpstart a new round of nuclear construction, the Obama administration is trying to offer $54.5 billion in loan guarantees (only $18.5 billion is actually authorized by Congress). This means that if a project is delayed or cancelled for some reason—including for concerns over safety—taxpayers pick up the tab for that delay or cancellation.

Although the U.S. Department of Energy is expected to approve $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for the two new reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia any day now, significant concerns remain over the lack of transparency regarding the federal loan guarantees.

Besides the massive federal subsidies, the nuclear industry has also succeeded in getting three states so far, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, to pass legislation mandating “advanced cost recovery.” This allows nuclear utilities to collect the cost of building a reactor from their customers before it is built.

Advanced cost recovery programs have existed in the past, but Morgan Pinnell, Safe Energy Program coordinator at Physicians for Social Responsibility, says the new ones the nuclear industry is pushing are particularly irresponsible from a public-interest point of view.

For example, in December 2011, a resolution was offered to the St. Petersburg City Council to repeal the 2006 legislation, F.S. 366.93, citing, among other things, that the two reactors that Progress Energy proposed for Levy County would raise Progress Energy customers’ bills more than $60 a month. Even if the reactors are never built, it’s not clear whether the utility would have to pay the money back.

Are Nukes Green?

Back in the 1980s, when nuclear power was widely considered a pariah, growing concern about global warming in government circles provided an opportunity for the beleaguered industry. Since it was recognized that nuclear power plants, unlike coal plants, did not produce carbon emissions when generating electricity, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency and some policymakers began to promote nuclear energy as a necessary power source in a warming world.

By the early nineties, the nuclear industry began casting itself as the clean, green “fresh air” energy source, a description that goes unchallenged in today’s mainstream media. Towing this line, Frontline’s Nuclear Aftershocks argues that nuclear power is needed to combat climate change.

It bears asking how true, or even realistic, this claim is. In order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming, many climate scientists have been saying for at least the better part of a decade that by 2050 humanity needs to reduce global carbon emissions 80 percent from what was emitted in 2000.

An MIT task force report, The Future of Nuclear Power, written ostensibly to figure out how to do that, calls for 1,000 to 1,500 thousand-megawatts electric (MWe) capacity reactors to be up and running by 2050 to increase the share of nuclear-generated electricity from 20 percent to 30 percent in the U.S. and 17 percent to 20 percent globally. (Currently there are 435 reactors operating in the world and 104 at 60 different locations in the U.S.)

The first page of the executive summary of the report says that such a deployment would “avoid 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon emissions from coal plants, about 25 percent of the increment in a business-as-usual scenario.”

But displacement of 25 percent of the expected growth in carbon emissions does not square with the need to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2050. That aside, the 2009 update of the report notes that progress on building new reactors has been slow, both globally and in the U.S.

The 2003 report reveals another hitch in this plan: in order to deal with the nuclear waste from that many new reactors, an underground repository the size of the highly controversial and cancelled Yucca Mountain would have to be built somewhere in the world every four years. It bears noting that we are in the sixth decade since commercial nuclear power generation began and not one permanent repository has been completed anywhere in the world.

Some people are calling for fuel reprocessing, which takes spent nuclear fuel and uses a chemical process to extract plutonium and uranium to make more nuclear fuel. Aside from the fact that reprocessing wouldn’t actually reduce the volume of spent nuclear fuel very much, it’s dangerous, expensive, and irresponsibly polluting (the West Valley reprocessing plant in Western New York, which ran for six years between 1966 and 1972, is still a huge toxic mess).

Reprocessing also creates lots of weapons-grade plutonium that can be made into atomic bombs, a feature that one might question in our increasingly tense and politically unstable world.

Other nuclear enthusiasts see a magic bullet in thorium reactors, but according to a 2009 Department of Energy study, “the choice between uranium-based fuel and thorium-based fuels is seen basically as one of preference, with no fundamental difference in addressing the nuclear power issues.”

One specific design, the “liquid fluoride thorium reactor, or LFTR (pronounced “lifter”) has attained cult status as a “new, green nuke” that its promoters say will produce a virtually endless supply of electricity that is “too cheap to meter” in “meltdown proof” reactors, creating miniscule quantities of much shorter-lived waste that is impossible to refashion into nuclear bombs.

But critics say these claims are fiction. Thorium technology is significantly more expensive than the already exorbitant uranium-fueled reactors, so there are serious doubts it could ever be commercially viable without much higher subsidies than the nuclear industry already receives.

There are also serious safety concerns with reactors that run on liquid fuel comprised of hot, molten salt, as the LFTR design does.

Ed Lyman, senior scientist in the Global Security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says a small prototype of the LFTR that operated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s remains “one of the most technically challenging cleanup problems that Oak Ridge faces.”

Nukes in a Warming World

The need for nuclear power has been sold to the public as a way to prevent the existential threat of catastrophic climate change. But that argument can be turned the other way. In a world of increasingly extreme weather events, we need to question the wisdom of having more potential sources of widespread, deadly radiological contamination that could be overwhelmed by some Fukushima-style natural disaster.

In a presentation to the San Clemente City Council, home of the troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant, which is right on the Pacific Ocean halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen points out that U.S. nuclear plants are designed to meet whatever industry designers think Mother Nature is expected to throw at them. This requirement—their “design basis”—is found in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix A, No. 2.

Different locations have different risks, so the requirements for plants vary. For example, nuclear plants in California are designed to be able to withstand stronger earthquakes than, say, the reactor in Vermont. Likewise, plants built in Florida are designed to handle more severe hurricanes than plants in upstate New York.

The requirements are set for a one-in-a-thousand year event. Considering that four events exceeded the design basis of nuclear reactors in the past year—the 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan, the tsunami that followed, the flooding of the Missouri River around the Ft. Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska, and the 5.8 earthquake centered near the North Anna plant in Virginia (two of which resulted in disaster)—how confident can we be that either nuclear operators or the NRC have anticipated the worst nature can throw at us?

Using the thousand-year scenario, Gundersen points out that for any one reactor running for 60 years, there’s a 6 percent chance that it will see an event as bad as or worse than what it was designed for. Multiplying that 6 percent by the 60 nuclear plant locations bumps it up to a 360 percent chance.

“In other words,” Gundersen says, “it’s a near certainty that some plant in the U.S. over its lifetime will experience an event worse than designers had anticipated. As a matter of fact, it’s more like three or four plants…”

As the impacts from global warming worsen, the risks will undoubtedly increase.

Consider that 2011 broke all records for billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S. AP science writer Seth Borenstein recently described it this way: “With an almost biblical onslaught of twisters, floods, snow, drought, heat and wildfire, the U.S. in 2011 has seen more weather catastrophes that caused at least $1 billion in damage than it did in all of the 1980s, even after the dollar figures from back then are adjusted for inflation.”

But it wasn’t just the U.S.: 2011 also saw record-breaking extremes all over the world throughout the year. Ross Gelbspan, whose 1997 book The Heat is On chronicled the fossil fuel lobby’s remarkably successful campaign to deceive the public and derail any action to address global climate destabilization, catalogues a hefty list of meteorological calamities from floods, torrential rains and massive mudslides, colossal snowstorms, ripping windstorms, and tornadoes to withering heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires here and here.

With or without nuclear power, the escalation of global warming isn’t likely to slow any time soon. Though a recent discovery of the effectiveness of polyethylemimine at capturing CO₂ sounds promising (researchers say it sequesters carbon at large industrial sources, small individual sources like car exhausts, and can even pull it directly from the air), it remains to be seen how quickly scrubbers from this material can be manufactured and deployed and how well they will actually work.

In any case, fossil fuel companies are doubling down on their pursuit of  “unconventional” fossil fuels like natural gas from shale, coalbed methane, and tight gas sands (fracking), and oil from deepwater wells and tar sands—all in all, the dirtiest (in terms of greenhouse gas and other pollution), riskiest, and most energy-intensive sources.

And in the absence of policies to reduce greenhouse gases, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook 2011 projects global coal use to rise 50 percent between 2008 and 2035 from 139 quadrillion Btu to 209 quadrillion Btu.

Despite the increasing urgency to tackle global warming, the most recent global climate talks in Durban failed to reach agreement on extending the Kyoto Protocol, which laid out the world’s only legally binding (but subsequently ignored) carbon emissions reductions.

It’s time to reexamine a lot of the assumptions that lurk beneath the nuclear-power-is-necessary-to-deal-with-climate-change narrative. There was no mention in Frontline’s Nuclear Aftershocks program or any other mainstream media that I have seen about the big elephant in the room: the voracious energy-gobbling economy—which creates the need for enormous, centralized power sources—that’s making the planet (and us) sick.

When junk-food addicted smokers get diabetes, cancer, heart disease, or any number of other maladies considered “lifestyle diseases,” the admonishment that they need to change their lifestyle is typically accepted without question.

We would do well to start applying that same logic to the way our societies use energy and the kind of economy such energy use powers, rather than blindly accept the Hobson’s choice of either turning the Earth into Venus because of global warming or poisoning large swaths of it with radioactivity.

Graphics:  Dave Channon

Now, all of a sudden, the narrative has shifted.

Now, we are told that the West wishes to avoid war, but that a belligerent, reckless Israel is intent on taking Tehran out. We are also told that the US has warned Israel to do no such thing.

What is going on here? Can these reports be trusted?

In a word, No. When one considers all of the available information in context, it looks more like this: Netanyahu may have come under intense pressure to threaten or launch a unilateral attack on Iran—by Western forces who care more about oil and other strategic issues than they do about  the welfare of Israelis.

***

Since the fall, we’ve seen a calculated effort by the US and its allies to vilify and isolate Iran—as if that country’s mullahs didn’t do a good enough job of that on their own. Gradually, this campaign has evolved into a message that there may be no choice but to take preemptive action against Tehran.

In the past we’ve described the propaganda campaign, which has included strong declarations that Iran will soon have WMDs—despite a widely acknowledged lack of certitude among independent experts. (Shades of Iraq.)

It has included attempts to tie Iran to terrorism on American soil—with a purported plot, so laughable that almost no one believed it, to hire a Mexican drug cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington. (Remember the false allegations about Saddam’s involvement with 9/11?)

It has involved endless provocations against the regime in Tehran, including economic sanctions that make life very, very difficult for Iranians of every political persuasion. (Remember the similar measures against Iraq?) The US has long had anti-Iran sanctions in place, and recently persuaded the EU, a crucial customer for Iran, to launch a boycott of its oil and other products. On Monday Obama added new sanctions.

But it’s not just talk and paper. In late January, the US, Britain and France sent six warships and an aircraft carrier through the Strait of Hormuz, and some units are still there. We’re told that this show of force is necessary because Iran threatens the Strait’s strategically crucial shipping lanes. No mention is made of the fact that Iran is deliberately being put in an increasingly desperate situation and virtually invited to lash out.

This fast train to war was sidetracked, however, as Russia and China succeeded in blocking concerted United Nations action against both Iran and its ally, Syria (itself facing a massive propaganda campaign alleging atrocities that cannot be independently or fully verified). This is a big problem for Obama, since his core supporters would never sanction his taking aggressive military action unless he (a) had what appeared to be a really good excuse—for reference, see Libya, and (b) could claim that the United States, ever responsible, was going to war reluctantly, as part of a consensus of allies. Even George W. Bush knew he needed a “coalition of the willing.”

As the UN option fizzled, a new narrative emerged: a frustrated Israel, famous for rejecting UN guidance anyway, was threatening to go it alone. And Obama was sending a top general to lecture the Israelis that this was unacceptable.

***

It’s always interesting when the military-industrial complex finds a creative new way to get its message out. In building support for war with Iraq, Fox News was indispensable with its trademark jingoistic/alarmist/patriot thing. But now, a “liberal” Democrat is in the White House. So what does he do? He feints to the Left.

It was in a report from the liberal/left-oriented Inter Press Service, that I and many others first learned that the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had warned the Israelis privately against unilateral action:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders Jan. 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers.

Dempsey’s warning, conveyed to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, represents the strongest move yet by President Barack Obama to deter an Israeli attack and ensure that the United States is not caught up in a regional conflagration with Iran.

But the Israeli government remains defiant about maintaining its freedom of action to make war on Iran, and it is counting on the influence of right-wing extremist views in U.S. politics to bring pressure to bear on Obama to fall into line with a possible Israeli attack during the election campaign this fall….

Okay, now let’s look at this with a little healthy skepticism.  First of all, “well-placed senior military officers” do not go around leaking information on their own. They only do it with the express consent of their superiors (unless of course the “senior officers” are the superiors, e.g. if they are Dempsey himself or one of his professional leakers).

Furthermore, the Pentagon leaks two ways: (1) in accord with the White House, or (2) in attempts to influence the White House. We have written about the latter, particularly with regard to cooperation with Bob Woodward and other reliable members of the press, in pressuring Obama over Afghanistan policy.

In the case of Iran, though, these leaks are being presented in such a way as to convey an Obama in control, making the decisions, rather than one at battle with his own military. The reality is that the military is probably taking the lead on this— so either they really do not want a war with Iran, which is unlikely (when was the last time professional warriors ached to beat swords into plowshares?), or they want one with Israelis on the leading edge, i.e., the ones to take the rap.

History, and current pressures on the Pentagon to justify its budget in a time of austerity, suggest that the Pentagon is not really opposed to an attack on Iran, only very shrewdly letting someone else get the music started.

Make Israel the villain. If there’s one thing that the Left relates to even more than suspicion of the Pentagon: it’s default vilification of Israel as the world’s leading lone wolf miscreant.

***

Today, Israel has three possible courses of action. (1) It doesn’t take action against Iran, and nobody else does. (2) It takes unilateral action against Iran, and weathers universal condemnation. (3) It pretends to go it alone, or does go it alone initially as a means of applying pressure for a “coalition” response to the alleged Iranian threat.

I’d wager on option #3.

Here’s why: Israel has no real reason to want to go it alone. It’s not really Israel’s fight. Don’t take my word for this: The former heads of Israel’s top intelligence agencies have stated that going to war with Iran is a “stupid idea” and characterized Netanyahu’s apparent preparations for an attack as both unnecessary and risky for Israel itself.

The battle between the Prime Minister and the former spymasters got so intense that Netanyahu ordered an investigation into leaks about an impending Israeli attack on Iran, which he believed had been perpetrated by the retired spooks. How do we know about this secret leak investigation? The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz picked up a report from a Kuwaiti newspaper which cited an unnamed Israeli source. Such arcane telegraphs reek of covert struggle. The public is the last to know what’s really going on, or why.

But one thing is certain. If Israel takes the brunt of the criticism for getting things started with Iran, it is not Israel that will gain. In country after country, we’ve seen that it is the West, principally the key Western European powers, working with the United States, that operates through surrogates, and fosters indigenous uprisings to create strategic gains. We saw that with Iraq, then Libya, now Syria, and….next Iran Each time, there’s an offensive move trumpeted to secure a resource like oil or regional stability, and fueled by the perception of a unique window of opportunity.

Israel’s Motives

It probably is true that some members of the American military rightly fear what would happen if the situation was pushed to the point of war. The US literally cannot afford to keep spreading itself so thin. Add to that, financial pressure to slim down the military, and an Iranian adventure becomes even more problematical.

But note that the most likely scenario here doesn’t have to involve an organized conspiracy. Rather, loosely aligned forces, each with its own unique objectives, appear to be coalescing to seize the moment and unseat the Iranian regime.

Advocates of human and women’s rights and of religious freedom, among others, would understandably love to see the brutal and primitive Ayatollahs carted away. Iranian exiles, who in many cases emigrated with great wealth (and in others acquired it abroad along with considerable political influence) would love to be able to return home. Other countries in the region don’t want such a powerful and volatile neighbor. Oil companies, seeing dwindling reserves around the world, look enviously at Iran’s petroleum deposits. European nations, in particular, rely on unpredictable and difficult suppliers for their oil and urgently need to stabilize that supply situation. The Saudi royal family sees its very survival threatened by Shiite elements in its oil-rich Eastern Province who have close ties to Iran; change the government in Tehran and that particular threat recedes. The American military and US defense contractors are facing severe cuts in their budgets, and need to constantly re-justify themselves. The media makes good money covering wars. On and on…name your preferred reason to take on, or take out, the Iranian regime.

But Israel? The Iranian leadership has its own internal life-and-death skirmishes, with the Iranian president Ahmadinejad in a nasty ongoing power struggle with others, most notably religious conservatives and his own military. Neither he nor his internal opponents have an incentive to launch a nuclear attack on Israel. Probably never did, but certainly not now. While some countries have used offensive military actions as a distraction, to do so against Israel or any Western nation would be to invite a calamitous response.

Nevertheless, we see constant evidence of Israel covertly moving against Iran, including the assassinations of key Iranian scientists. US government sources were quick to point out to journalists that Israel must have been behind the hits. And there have been leaks that Israel told the Obama administration it would not give it more than 12 hours advance notice before launching an attack on Iran. Why leak such incredibly sensitive information? Well, perhaps because it was supposed to be leaked, in order to shield Obama from blame.

***

Here’s the official spin, by the wired Washington Post military columnist David Ignatius (his father was once secretary of the Navy):

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months.

Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June — before Iran enters what Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon — and only the United States could then stop them militarily.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action, which would be triggered by intelligence that Iran is building a bomb, which it hasn’t done yet.

And now we have, according to an “ABC News exclusive,” a leaked report that Israel is warning that Jewish-connected sites like schools and synagogues in the US and worldwide could be targets of Iranian reprisals because of Iran’s belief that Israel is behind those attacks. Yet there’s no real basis for believing that Iran would target American Jews. All this leak does is make Iran seem more threatening, and thereby build more political support in the US for intervention.

As for the claim that the US warned Israel, perhaps it did. But the very fact that the warning was leaked suggests it may have been more for public consumption than anything else. All pointing to the US and other allies preparing to create “plausible deniability,” that is, to let Netanyahu himself launch some kind of operation against Tehran.

The result would be that Israel alone would face the ire of the world. With so much of the world already furious at Israel, the last thing that country’s leadership should be doing is taking the heat for Western imperial adventures.

In a sense, getting Netanyahu to be the front guy for this dangerous gambit is yet another way that, in the end, the West really does find Israel and the Israelis expendable. Anyone who thinks that the $3 billion in military aid to Israel does not come with a price is very, very naïve. Those who extrapolate Israel’s heavy-handedness with the Palestinian issue into evidence of worldwide, unilateral skullduggery by Israel are headed down the wrong path—and a very dangerous one at that.

All you need to understand is that Netanyahu’s political success is largely dependent on support from  particular Americans. These Americans claim to “support Israel,” but the reality is that their own financial well-being is sometimes correlated with particular Israeli policies, like taking out the Iranian regime.  Those selfish motives, or even well-meaning but misguided understanding of what is “good for Israel,”  actually make life more, not less, difficult for ordinary Israelis. How much this factors into Netanyahu’s calculation, we can only guess. He’s not likely to share his most candid thoughts on the matter.

One thing, however, is certain: the victors in this deadly game. Elites—princes, oil executives, military chieftains, rich foreigners—win. And ordinary people—at least in Iran, in Israel, in the United States—lose.

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