This just in….Seaweed isn’t just for getting tangled in anymore.

According to a new report, this common, seemingly inexhaustible resource may be one, partial but important, answer to the impending decline in fossil fuel supplies.

You heard that right. A report published last week in the leading journal Science details how a team at the Bio Architecture Lab in Berkeley, California, modified the common gut bacteria E. Coli to take the smelly, salty sea plant and…produce ethanol.

The potential of this new-found energy source is vast, with some scientists predicting that global aquatic biomass could in theory provide the world’s energy needs many times over. The United States, with its enormous coastline, is in a particularly good position to develop seaweed as a low-carbon fuel alternative.

What makes seaweed special, besides its charms to small children frolicking in the surf, is that when you compare it to land-based biofuels such as corn and sugar cane, it can produce up to four times as much ethanol per unit.

Another attraction is that it renders irrelevant the conventional ‘food-versus-fuel’ debate, in which the use of arable land to produce biofuel has been identified as both a cause of skyrocketing food prices and of extensive environmental damage.

So, this seaweed business is popping good—a “ground-breaking achievement,” in the words of Yong-Su Jin of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois.

But, he warns, “We still face a huge technical gap for large-scale cultivation.” Costs would have to come down five-fold before this process could become commercially competitive with ordinary fossil fuels, though economies of scale should kick in as production ramps up. Another factor to consider is how best to ensure a proper ecological balance in areas with large-scale seaweed farming.

United States Exclusive Economic Zone

Even so, given our huge energy needs, seaweed could never realistically replace fossil fuels as our primary fuel source. However, if pilot projects already underway in the U.K. and in development off the coast of Chile prove successful, seaweed could well be a much needed stepping stone toward a multi-sourced sustainable energy economy.

Link: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6066/308

This video really shows that the GOP frontrunner is a guy who believes in….nothing.

GRAPHIC: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fmKO7WPDh1k/TlZr9ojCmSI/AAAAAAAAIvc/zGl0Qxb1eTg/s320/flipfloplr4.jpg

Is Twitter (a) a leading vehicle for freedom movements, or (b) primed to control and shut down open discourse throughout the world?

This question emerged recently when we learned that the global messaging service was planning to abide by the rules of each country in terms of content it carries. Here’s New York Times:

This week, in a sort of coming-of-age moment, Twitter announced that upon request, it would block certain messages in countries where they were deemed illegal. The move immediately prompted outcry, argument and even calls for a boycott from some users.

Twitter said it would also “give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world.””

Now, you may be one of those people who very proudly have not incorporated Twitter into your life, but this development is still of enormous relevance to you and your world. Why? Simply because Twitter, with its declared 175 million registered users (many of whom, it must be said, are inactive) has become one of the most powerful forces in communication today, arguably more relevant to more people than even traditional heavyweights like The New York Times, CNN, and the BBC.

That’s why we at WhoWhatWhy use Twitter as one of our basket of social media tools. It allows individuals and groups to communicate directly with other individuals, in groups, on an instantaneous basis. As such, it was a vital tool for activists in Egypt and elsewhere (including the Occupy Movement in the United States) to quickly mobilize and have an impact.

Thus, Twitter is viewed as a tremendous opportunity by those who seek to regain the upper hand from the small elites that dominate the political and economic systems throughout most if not all of the world. To those elites, however, Twitter spells doom.

Unless they can neutralize it.

***

Enter the Saudi royal family.

The Saudi royal family has been very, very lucky. So far, none of the ferment in the rest of the world has yet manifested itself on their home turf to the extent to which this dictatorial, brutal, Western-backed extended clan has an immediate crisis. A modest but significant uprising in their own country was dutifully ignored by the Western media, including the vaunted “alternative press.” Demonstrated connections to the 9/11 hijackers, arguably the biggest story in the world on the 10^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, were again studiously ignored by the Western media, again including the “alternative press.”

So the Saudi One Percent have it pretty good. Except for Twitter. If Twitter were to become a powerful tool in the hands of ordinary Saudis, one can pretty quickly figure out the consequences. The royal family would have to scramble to their villas in the South of France or their Park Avenue aeries.

***

With this background, it was interesting to note the news item that Saudi prince Walid bin Talal had invested $300 million in Twitter. Twitter, which is privately held, willingly chose to sell him this substantial stake.

Twitter’s market valuation is something like $10 billion (choose what huge number you prefer.) Given that, why would this company, which is all about empowering ordinary people to communicate unfiltered and thereby get control of their lives and their governments, sell a big chunk to a representative of one of the quintessential repressive forces—an element that has a stake in preventing exactly the sort of communication that defines Twitter?

The very, very little media interest in this development is yet another sign of the degradation of journalistic inquiry—which in turn surely has to do with exactly these kinds of problematical investments.

When the New York Times covered the Saudi Twitter investment back in December, it wrote:

While Prince Walid is known as an outspoken investor, few expect the Saudi royal to use his minority stake to influence the company’s politics. His wife seemed to back that sentiment on Monday, rebroadcasting messages from other Twitter users that described the deal as a financial — and not political — transaction.

“This seems to be more about good business,” said Michael Gartenberg, a Gartner analyst. “Clearly, he believes that Twitter is not a passing fad but a cornerstone of the consumer social network experience.”

Ayayay. This is a royal family dangling by threads, and they have no reason to want to control the very instrument that could see them overthrown? Well, it didn’t take very long for the other shoe to drop, did it?

In its recent article about the new Twitter restrictions, the Times did briefly visit both the Twitter restriction announcement and the Saudi investment, but chose to bury near the end of the article what matters most, and to water it down to “nothing here, folks”:

Critics on Twitter surmised that the company had been pressed to adopt country-specific censorship after a major investment by a Saudi prince, a theory that Mr. Macgillivray quickly dismissed.

You have to go back to near the top of the article to find out that Mr. Macgillivray is not some knowledgeable and independent expert, but “the general counsel at Twitter.” Exactly the guy who would rough the Times up if it published something Twitter did not like. ( I mean, at least re-identify the guy together with the denial!)

An opportunity to ask why Twitter chose a Saudi royal out of all the prospective investors was squandered. Good reporting—remember that?—would start with finding out if Twitter had no choice but to hold its nose and take this tainted money. (It’s true that Twitter is not the company with the informal motto “Don’t be evil,” but it does like to make itself out to be a good citizen.)

The Times’s weak-kneed approach to this potentially earth-rattling development can be explained. The paper made its own peace with another foreign source of funding—the Mexican billionaire (and possibly world’s richest person) Carlos Slim Helu, who made a good part of his fortune by swooping in on cheap pickings during Mexico’s economic crash in the early 80s. Slim now controls about seven percent of the Times. Just as there’s precious little hard-hitting reporting in the Times on Slim, we assume that Prince Walid’s investment in Twitter has not come without a price.

And the fact that Twitter made its announcement on a Friday, traditionally when folks are paying the least attention, is telling. Clearly, Twitter knew it was a problematical stance. But it has been extraordinarily lucky in how the world’s corporate media have played along.

***

Some commentators have dismissed any criticism of Twitter’s move, saying it was simply a sign of the young tech company’s maturation.

Well, sure, Twitter is a business, and needs to do whatever it can to have good business relationships in every country. But since so many countries are dominated by—and laws written to favor—small elites, the very fact of “country by country compliance” by default compromises the essential value of Twitter’s service.

In a world more wary than ever of the uses of money to thwart democracy and threaten freedom, outfits like Twitter need to be subject of the same scrutiny as, say, the Koch Brothers or the Burmese government.

The bottom line—and one that we trumpet regularly at WhoWhatWhy (which is itself a nonprofit)—is that the most essential elements of democracy, including education and information dispersal, should not be left only or even primarily in the hands of institutions out for a profit.

Tennis shoes, frozen yogurt, even air travel, ok. But when our ability to safeguard or increase our freedoms is dependent on people taking money from tyrants who wish to suppress speech, we’ve got a problem. If any elements with a philanthropic bent, nonprofit orientation and the requisite technical skills and resources would like to discuss an alternative to Twitter, we would certainly be interested.

In the meantime, please, Twitter, don’t cancel our account. Thank you.

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://siliconangle.com/files/2012/01/twitter-censored.jpg

That welcome bit of uplifting news came as our president shared with us the ongoing struggle that is the State of the Union.

Despite the continued difficulties many of us face in terms of daily survival, it was heartening to know that the country was still strong enough to venture and achieve such a mission in the most dangerous parts of the world.

It was stirring. It was downright inspirational.

***

Remember “Wag the Dog”? The 1997 hit comedy featured a spin doctor and Hollywood producer who, in order to distract the public from a presidential sex scandal, convince the public of a non-existent war. The tail wagging the dog. The art of power through distraction.

In light of the continuation of this sort of spectacle into the Obama era, I’d like to propose a new term for our time: “Wag the seal.”

For this is the second time—and presumably not the last—that Obama has gotten a lift from those daring fellows. And in both cases, close scrutiny raises the question of just who is being had.

Each produced a magnificently advantageous moment for a president sweating a tough and uncertain re-election. But Obama was hardly the only winner. Another beneficiary is surely the Pentagon, which is under severe pressure to restrain itself and cut its size and costs, and could use a favorable performance. Though the US military seems incapable of “winning” the complex and mind-bendingly expensive foreign adventures it launches almost like clockwork, it does seem able to execute small, limited operations that please the public.

And of course there is the retinue that profits from all this, the “one percent” who derive substantial profits from the permanent war economy. Not to mention the oil and mineral companies and all other foreign exploitation, er, exploration industries, whose continued high profits are largely dependent on the continued projection of American strength throughout the world.

Finally, as always, there is the media. For it is at root about good story-telling. And was there ever a better story than a pretty maiden rescued by dashing and clean-cut lads from drooling savages?

***

They tell us that the Somali mission was executed by the same Navy SEALs unit that carried out the biggest coup of the Obama administration if not the past decade: taking down the man who was America’s  most reviled, and perhaps feared, symbol of danger: Osama bin Laden.

Most people, reliant on the coverage of major news organizations, rest content that America justly and efficiently dispatched bin Laden. Only those with keen antennae—or those who read accounts questioning the contradictory, irrational and unnecessarily opaque explanations of exactly what happened, realize that something was wrong with that operation. Something more was going on. What exactly it was—whether that helicopter that crashed did not really manage to disgorge its SEAL occupants unscathed, whether the man who we are told was hurriedly dumped into the ocean before proper public verification of his identity was definitely the man who terrorized the world, whether the people living in that house in Abbottabad were unavoidable casualties or executed by design—these things we still do not know.

But one thing is clear: that raid did wonders for Obama and the military. No one dare call Obama a wimp.

***

When you look carefully at the Somali rescue, you see similarly troubling patterns of manipulation, and the pursuit of propaganda victories cloaked as legitimate policy.

Consider the circumstances: an American citizen, albeit one with seemingly the most admirable intentions, was kidnapped along with a foreign colleague while leaving a charity mission in a region with heavy pirate activity. The US began monitoring her situation, and when, we are told, signs indicated that her health was dangerously deteriorating, the authorities launched their operation.

What are the criteria for such operations? At any given time, some Americans may be being held by kidnapers in various parts of the world. As far as we know, most do not benefit from the attention of the US military. In fact, we don’t even know how many are being held because the numbers are kept under wraps—try asking the FBI. In any case, another American was kidnapped in Somalia recently, and his kidnappers have adopted dramatic measures to make sure that another raid is not attempted.

The stated reason for the timing of the rescue of 32-year-old American Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted, her 60-year-old Danish colleague, was that Buchanan’s health had declined precipitously. Yet concern for the health of Americans is not a settled notion at all. In fact, the majority of Republican candidates for the presidency, the same ones who cheered the rescue, oppose guaranteeing the most basic health needs of all American children.

That Buchanan was in captivity for some time, and that her release came at a propitious moment when Obama was under the maximum media spotlight, cannot be dismissed. Neither can the central role of Obama’s discredited counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, whose shifting narratives of the bin Laden raid remain unresolved and have lowered faith in Obama’s veracity among some Americans. It is important to note Brennan’s close relationship with the Saudi royal family, whose survival depends on keeping sea lanes open near the Horn of Africa where the Somali pirates ply the waters.

So, though as humans we cheer the good result of this particular adventure, we must concede that this is not really about health or even saving lives. It is about “sending a message.” But does the message really get sent to those who would harm Americans? There is little evidence that armed intervention is a deterrent. Indeed, the kidnappers of the other American being held in Somalia seem to have upped their threats of violence since the raid.

No, the message is being sent to us. It is no coincidence that these kinds of affairs always involve the most, pardon the expression, black and white of elements. How often do you hear about a person of color who is being held hostage, has gone missing, or was killed. Or of someone obese, or physically unattractive? Think back over the tabloid stories that have sustained the media for months at a time and riveted the American people. Jessica Lynch. Pat Tillman. Natalee Holloway and Robyn Gardner. When are the villains more nuanced, run-of-the-mill criminals without distinguishing stories? Pirates indeed. It’s almost as if the same fictional producer in Wag the Dog now shuttles permanently between Hollywood and the White House.

GRAPHIC: : http://vir4l.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/obama_i_got_this.jpg

Can we expect to find anything crooked in Romney’s filings?

You kidding? Smart rich people hire smart accountants to keep them out of trouble. It’s not the illegal things they do, it’s how they manage to rig things so that they get away, metaphorically, with murder.

Should Romney’s tax returns be the way to judge him?

To be sure, they do reveal how capital gains tax rates are highly advantageous to the rich and penalize those who work for their living. And that’s an important point. But what we should be interested in with regard to Romney in particular is his values, as shown by the strategies and tactics of his companies.

Are Romney’s recent tax filings the most important ones?

Because Romney left Bain Capital way back in 1999 to embark on a political career, it is the earlier tax filings that would likely reveal the most.

His seasoned political advisers would have been all over him to exhibit exemplary behavior–since ’99, and probably even earlier, when he may already have been considering politics. Also, as he was not actually working at Bain but just receiving passive income from it in recent years, we shouldn’t expect to see much that is worth assessing.

Thus, his 2010-11 release is definitely not very forthcoming.

Was Romney’s delay tactic part of a “limited hangout”?

One of the oldest tricks in the book is to resist disclosure, let anticipation build a bit, then release something that appears to answer questions, while not revealing anything very interesting. This pretty much ends debate.

Consider how long George W. Bush took to release National Guard service records, and how long Barack Obama took to release his birth records. In the end, these controversies fizzled, and people moved on.

Should Romney’s income from Bain even be treated as a capital gain?

No. He actually worked for that money, as a fund manager, plenty of hours every week. Thus, it should be taxed as normal earned income. But because of a loophole in the law (what a surprise!) engineered by the faithful lawyers, accountants and lobbyists of the one percent, it gets treated as capital gains, and therefore the lowest tax rate applies.

What’s with Romney’s having had money in the Swiss Bank UBS?

This looks pretty bad. (For more on UBS, its pernicious activities and how it gets its claws into politicians of both parties, see this, this and this.) There are very few legitimate, or public-spirited business reasons for having a Swiss bank account.

So why did Romney have that account? Someone should ask him. His trustee said he closed it in early 2010. That’s just a short time after UBS was forced to pay huge fines to the US government to settle a criminal investigation that established the bank had encouraged wealthy Americans to illegally hide their income abroad.

Could Romney have been one of those Americans? Possible, but doubtful, mostly because it would have been really dumb. Most of those caught doing that were largely in the “rich but dumb” category.

Could any of the tax shelter stuff turn out to be odious even if not illegal?

Sure, but you probably wouldn’t know unless you looked at, and compared, a whole bunch of different years’ tax filings. And so far, Romney has not agreed to provide that.

Can we trust Fred Goldberg’s clean bill of health?

When Romney released his tax filings, they came with a letter from former IRS commissioner Fred Goldberg saying he’d checked them out, and they looked…supah!

But who is Fred Goldberg? The same guy who, following an unscheduled visit from Scientology’s top leader, abruptly reversed policy to grant tax exempt status to the hyper-controversial, pyramid-style, service-selling enterprise. Worth taking a second look at this guy and why and how he is helping Mitt out.

Does the way Mitt released his taxes demonstrate good faith?

Definitely not. Though this was by far the biggest news out of his campaign on Tuesday, it was released the same day as the State of the Union address, guaranteeing that it would get second billing. Also, the campaign managed to bury it on their website, so much so that after a few minutes, I had still not found it there, and had to rely on the website of the Washington Post.

What about those domestic workers Mrs. Romney paid?

The filing, by Mrs. Romney (not Mr.). show that she paid around $20,000 in total during 2010 to four domestic workers. Sure would like to know more about that—and what it tells us about the rich vs. poor. The Romneys have at least three houses, some pretty substantial places. Assuming they only employ regular help at their main Massachusetts house, $20k is still a paltry total. That’s an average of $5,000 a year to four people. Wonder how much work they did. After all, Mrs. Romney is known to struggle with MS, and it’s doubtful Mitt does much sweeping, dusting, cooking, etc.

The Romneys should be queried about why Mrs. Romney takes legal responsibility for reporting payments to the help (beyond unfortunate stereotypes about stay-at-home wives), and why no payments show up for 2011.

In any case, it’s not a very good ratio of income to job creation, for a guy who talks about creating jobs: the year the Romneys paid their staff $20,000, they earned $27 million.

The worst thing of all is that, depending on their total income, those domestic workers may have paid a much higher tax rate for their hard physical labor at Romney’s house than Romney did on the millions in investment income that piled in while he pursued his political dream.

And that just seems really wrong.

GRAPHIC: http://media.thestate.com/smedia/2012/01/24/19/41/550-18kWE9.St.55.jpg

Which is the real president? And which is the real story?

As the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy approaches, there is a growing flurry of material about—or even from—the Kennedy clan. This includes “insider” accounts and what are described as exciting, must-read and must-watch revelations.

Yet, for some reason, little of it is truly revelatory, or if it is, it seems, almost by design, very, very small potatoes indeed.

Take for example a new documentary by Bobby Kennedy’s daughter, for HBO. What’s the big revelation? That Bobby feared…are you ready… that someone would throw acid in the face of his children. Who? The mafia. And when was this a threat? In the 1950s. When RFK was a Senate investigator, years before he and his brother ever got near the White House. And years before his brother and then he himself were killed under still-unresolved circumstances.

Got that? Nothing about elements other than “professional criminals.” Threat to his children, not him. And this was before RFK became Attorney General and started really going after the mob, and everyone else.

Oh—and nothing about who…killed him.

That’s Hollywood!

***

I subscribe to a newsfeed with articles related to JFK. It’s an endless stream of banality: the death of democracy packaged as consumer goods for collectors. For example, you could have bid in a recent auction for the hearse that carried JFK’s body, and of course, there are the requisite collector plates and supposedly valuable limited-edition coins.

Lots of people who “covered” the assassination are featured in interviews and panel discussions, but for some reason none of them seem to have real insight or have done original investigative reporting on what actually took place that day. It’s all surface recollections of emotions and empirical material gleaned from the official story.

Then there are the odd little accidents. Like this that came through Google Alerts:

Filmmaker denies JFK conspiracy theories
Indiana Daily Student
Wednesday, Union Board presented Barbour’s 1992 documentary “The JFK Assassination: The Garrison Tapes,” followed by a question-and-answer session with Barbour. The film features Barbour’s exclusive interviews with late New Orleans District Attorney …
See all stories on this topic »

Ok, so this tells us the filmmaker John Barbour “denies” JFK conspiracy theories. But the few who actually might click on this not-so-interesting sounding link come to this headline:

Filmmaker affirms JFK conspiracy theories with ‘The Garrison Tapes’

So let’s go to the dictionary. Does “denies” equal “affirms”? No, it is the opposite. Hmm….

***

Several major Hollywood productions are supposedly on their way to screens. Jonathan Demme has optioned Stephen King’s not-very-good and certainly irrelevant fantasy about Lee Harvey Oswald. Bold, sir!

Tom Hanks, always looking to take huge risks (er—not!), has optioned Vincent Bugliosi’s endless (1,612-page) and loyal re-confirmation of the widely-discredited Warren Report, again with HBO said to be in the picture.

A third, a book by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, optioned by Leonardo DiCaprio, at least explores some of the enormous amount of evidence of an organized hit beyond the lone kook. But it settles in nicely with “the mafia did it” despite the other enormous mass of evidence—of a far-ranging cover-up involving high military, intelligence and other officials—none of whom were mafia, last time I checked. Even this slightly bolder approach from DiCaprio comes under attack from a conventional media hack/gossip columnist, who lazily bandies about the term “crackpot conspiracy theories” (honestly, does this woman ever do any background research—or read books?)

In any case, none of the films that Hollywood seems willing to tackle touch on what the great, great mass of careful investigation, research and scholarship has shown over the years—the extremely high likelihood that JFK’s death was a covert operation engineered by exactly the kinds of people whose profession was to displace leaders and carry out military-precision operations under cover. (My own book, Family of Secrets, has four chapters of new, abundantly documented and heavily footnoted material on the Kennedy assassination, including the answer to why George H.W. Bush cannot remember where he was on Nov. 22, 1963—and there are many other fine books, both recent vintage and released over the years, which carefully lay out enough evidence to settle the matter to all but the most closed-minded. Examples here, here, and here.)

Nearly half a century after the death of a president who took bold steps against abuses by the one percent of the one percent, we are still in denial about how and why he died. Our leading institutions and individuals are not only scared to talk about the truth, but glad to cynically profit from tired lies and evasions.

So where are we when it comes to our own boldness and advanced self-awareness? This year, we may be headed toward a presidential general election contest between a wealthy predator and a putative reformer who has made his peace with the most powerful, wealthiest circles in America. If not that wealthy predator, then perhaps a demagogic blowhard of the extreme mercenary variety.

Wonder what Jack and Bobby would have to say?

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://cdn.buzznet.com/media-cdn/jj1/headlines/2010/11/leonardo-dicaprio-jfk-assassination-movie.jpg

WhoWhatWhy’s Karen Charman speaks with KGO San Francisco radio host Pat Thurston about Karen’s article updating us on the Fukushima disaster (Saturday, January 21, 2012)

Listen to Mp3

NOTE:  (Correction)

In her KGO interview, Karen Charman misspoke in stating that 60-80 percent of the fish in the Pacific Ocean may have been contaminated by the Fukushima disaster. The article she was referencing said that 60-80 percent of the Japanese fishing catches tested monthly since the disaster tested positive for contamination by Cesium 137, a radioactive isotope.

It’s exciting to see how a coordinated Web blackout this Wednesday got members of Congress to reverse themselves so quickly—and do the right thing. By the end of the day, the number of Senators publicly opposing PIPA (the anti-piracy legislation that threatens free speech) jumped to 35 from five the week before. By the time you read this, those numbers may have jumped again. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if, with the tidal wave of public anger, we see 100 senators scrambling to get on the bandwagon. (Well, probably not 100, but a lot.)

However, it’s important to remember that, no matter how many citizens expressed themselves on PIPA (or the House version, SOPA), it was corporations partially driving this—in competition with other corporations. Basically, it is a battle between companies that create original content (especially movie and music makers) and those who derive their living from providing communications platforms where pretty much anything goes, including “borrowing” imagery, film clips, songs and more from their owners and creators for the purposes of a vibrant dialogue.

Putting aside the complicated pros and cons of the issue, in which both sides have legitimate concerns, and the overriding conclusion that the legislation could cast a severe pall over free discourse and Internet innovation, there is another matter to consider.

Namely this: What would it take for a public movement to get a similar response from elected officials,  when billion-dollar interests were not lined up on the same side? Twitter, Reddit, Google, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, etc. may be cool, but they’re giant, or at least popular, for-profit enterprises with agendas of their own. Wikipedia and Mozilla are huge, albeit nonprofit, commercial-type enterprises with major brands to promote and protect. All of these and more were on the “free speech” side of this battle. And their role, up front and center, was indispensable in driving home the point, and making congress- members squeal.

As soon as the blackout went into effect, and these outfits got their users to begin a massive and immediate campaign of petitions, emails, and calls, elected officials reversed themselves faster than you can say “one term.”

But suppose the free-speech forces had to make their case without a turbocharging from interested parties? How would we get some other onerous piece of legislation blocked when there was no strong financial incentive for deep-pocketed corporations with slick marketing/publicity arms to mobilize?

For example, what about the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), with its onerous and vague provisions that could, under certain circumstances, potentially allow for the indefinite detention without charge of American citizens accused of connections with terrorist groups? Despite a public uproar, Congress went ahead and passed that bill. (Obama signed it, but in a “signing statement” said that his administration would not sanction indefinite detention of citizens – a proviso that offers no restraint on future administrations.)

The point is this: indefinite detention of citizens, even the remote threat of it, is surely as important a threat to our liberties as legislation that curtails our freedom to use copyrighted material on the Internet. Yet what corporations were troubled enough to join the ACLU and other liberties groups in opposing NDAA?

Before we get too self-satisfied over the SOPA/PIPA victory, we need to take a long, hard look at our increasing alliance with all manner of corporate entities to advance our own interests. We should ask ourselves: If we don’t believe that corporations should be treated as persons, why do we need to work with them as if they are? And how can we the people join together to attain political goals without an 800-pound corporate gorilla in our corner?

GRAPHIC: http://artwales.biz/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/stop-sopa-bill-300×300.jpg

After the catastrophic trifecta of the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan last March—what the Japanese are referring to as their 3/11—you would think the Japanese government would be doing everything in its power to contain the disaster. You would be wrong—dead wrong.

Instead of collecting, isolating, and guarding the millions of tons of radioactive rubble that resulted from the chain reaction of the 9.0 earthquake, the subsequent 45- to 50-foot wall of water that swamped the plant and disabled the cooling systems for the reactors, and the ensuing meltdowns, Japanese Environment Minister Goshi Hosono says that the entire country must share Fukushima’s plight by accepting debris from the disaster.

The tsunami left an estimated 20 million tons of wreckage on the land, much of which—now ten months after the start of the disaster—is festering in stinking piles throughout the stricken region. (Up to 20 million more tons of rubble from the disaster—estimated to cover an area approximately the size of California—is also circulating in the Pacific.) The enormous volume of waste is much more than the disaster areas can handle. So, in an apparent attempt to return this region to some semblance of normal life, the plan is to spread out the waste to as many communities across the country as will take it.

At the end of September, Tokyo signed an agreement to accept 500,000 metric tons of rubble from Iwate Prefecture, one of eight prefectures designated for cleanup under a new nuclear decontamination law passed on January 1. The law allows for much of the radioactively contaminated rubble to be incinerated, a practice that has been underway at least since the end of June.

But the sheer amount of radioactive rubble is proving difficult to process. The municipal government of Kashiwa, in Chiba Prefecture to the west and south of Tokyo, recently shut down one of its main incinerators, because it can’t store any more than the 200 metric tons of radioactive ash it already has that is too contaminated to bury in a landfill.

According to the California-based Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN), burning Fukushima’s radioactive rubble is the worst possible way to deal with the problem. That’s because incinerating it releases much more radioactivity into the air, not only magnifying the contamination all over Japan but also sending it up into the jet stream. Once in the jet stream, the radioactive particles travel across the Northern Hemisphere, coming back down to earth with rain, snow, or other precipitation. Five days after the Fukushima meltdowns began, radioactive fallout from the disaster reached the West Coast of the United States. Approximately a week later, Fukushima fallout was measured as far away as France.

In October, the journal Nature reported that the Japanese government’s initial estimates of radiation from Fukushima were substantially less than what Scandinavian researchers calculated from a global network of radiation monitoring stations that the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization uses to detect nuclear weapons tests.

Radiation used to be a word that evoked serious concern in a lot of people. However, the nuclear industry and its supporters have done a masterful job in allaying public fears about it. They do this in significant part by relying on outdated and highly questionable data collected on Japanese atom bomb survivors, while at the same time ignoring and dismissing inconvenient but much more relevant evidence that shows the actual harmful effects of radiation exposure from nuclear accidents. Author Gayle Greene explains this well in a recent article here. In their attempt to win the public over to their viewpoint, nuclear proponents even trot out the dubious theory of radiation hormesis, which says that low doses of radiation are actually good for you, because they stimulate an immune response. Well, so does something that causes an allergic reaction. But I digress…

What Radiation Is

A great help to nuclear proponents is the fact that nuclear physics is complicated, and most people don’t understand even its most basic concepts. The blanket term “radiation” is used to describe all manner of radioactive contamination—as if it’s just one thing—when, in fact, there are different kinds, some much more damaging than others. It also matters exactly what is being exposed to radiation—i.e., exposure outside the body or inside it—and how long the exposure goes on.

In a nutshell, radioactive elements, also known as radioisotopes or radionuclides, are unstable atoms. They seek stability by giving off particles and energy—ionizing radiation—until the radioisotope becomes stable. This process occurs within the nucleus of the radioisotope, and the shedding of these particles and energy is commonly referred to as ‘‘nuclear disintegration.’’ Nuclear radiation expert Rosalie Bertell describes the release of energy in each disintegration as ‘‘an explosion on the microscopic level.”

This process is known as the “decay chain,” and during their decay, most radioactive elements morph into yet other radioactive elements on their journey to becoming lighter, stable atoms at the end of the chain. Some of the morphed-into elements are much more dangerous than the original radioisotope, and the decay chain can take a very long time. This is the reason that radioactive contamination can last so long.

To further complicate the issue, different radioisotopes give off different kinds of radiation—alpha, beta, gamma, X ray, or neutron emissions—all of which behave differently. Alpha emitters, such as plutonium and radon, are intensely ionizing but don’t penetrate very far and generally can’t get through the dead layers of cells covering skin. But when they are inhaled from the air or ingested from radiation-contaminated food or water, they emit high-energy particles that can do serious damage to the cells of sensitive internal soft tissues and organs. The lighter, faster-moving beta particles can penetrate far more deeply than alpha particles, though sheets of metal and heavy clothing can block them. Beta particles are also very dangerous when inhaled or ingested. Strontium-90 and tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, are both beta emitters. Gamma radiation is a form of electromagnetic energy like X rays, and it passes through clothing and skin straight into the body. A one-inch shield of either lead or iron, or eight inches of concrete are needed to stop gamma rays, examples of which include cobalt-60 and cesium-137—one of the radionuclides of most concern in the Fukushima fallout. Aside from use in medical diagnostics, X rays are also produced in nuclear fission, and their effects are similar to gamma radiation. Neutron emissions are the most penetrating of all types of radiation and require a shield of several feet of water or concrete to contain them.

The behavior of radioisotopes out in the environment also varies depending on what they encounter. They can combine with one another or with stable chemicals to form molecules that may or may not dissolve in water. They can combine with solids, liquids, or gases at ordinary temperature and pressure. They may be able to enter into biochemical reactions, or they may be biologically inert.

In her book No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, Bertell notes that if they enter the body either through air, food, water, or an open wound, “They may remain near the place of entry into the body or travel in the bloodstream or lymph fluid. They can be incorporated into the tissue or bone. They may remain in the body for minutes or hours or a lifetime.” To illustrate how different radioisotopes behave, she points out that: “Plutonium is biologically and chemically attracted to bone as is the naturally occurring radioactive chemical radium. However, plutonium clumps on the surface of bone, delivering a concentrated dose of alpha radiation to surrounding cells, whereas radium diffuses homogeneously in bone and thus has a lesser localized cell damage effect. This makes plutonium, because of the concentration, much more biologically toxic than a comparable amount of radium.”

Specific health effects from internal radiation exposure correlate with where radioisotopes land in the body. Bertell explains: “For example, radionuclides lodged in the bones can damage bone marrow and cause bone cancers or leukemia, while radionuclides lodged in the lungs can cause respiratory diseases. Generalized whole body exposure to radiation can be expressed as a stress related to a person’s hereditary medical weakness. Individual breakdown usually occurs at our weakest point.” In other words, the impact of radiation exposure also depends very much on each individual’s level of health and genetic make-up.

Fukushima’s Unending Fallout

Fetuses in utero, infants, and young children—all of whom have quickly dividing cells—as well as the elderly and people with compromised immune systems are most vulnerable to radiation exposure. “Official” sources like the Environmental Protection Agency and the UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Air Monitoring Station consistently downplay the health effects of the fallout. In fact, the EPA was so confident that Fukushima fallout would not be a problem for U.S. citizens that it stopped its specific monitoring of fallout from Fukushima less than two months after the meltdowns began.

But neglecting to monitor the fallout will not make it go away. In fact, another enormous problem with radioactive contamination is that it bioaccumulates in the environment, which means it concentrates as it moves up the food chain. (Think of mercury in fish.) Because many radionuclides are so long-lived, this can be a problem for a very long time. For example, the U.K. is only now considering lifting restrictions on the remaining 334 sheep farms in Wales that are still prohibited from selling any meat because of contamination from the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986.

In this video, FFAN member Kimberly Roberson points out that the first disaster at Fukushima Daiichi following the earthquake and tsunami was accidental: “However, by burning the millions of tons of radioactive rubble, it’s going to provide a brand new humanitarian crisis.” She observes that this crisis—“transgenerational DNA damage that’s passed well into the future”—is additional and intentional, and that everything possible must be done to stop it.

Roberson’s point is well taken. However, the desperate yearning among the Japanese to get past this disaster combined with the uncharted territory of dealing with a triple-whammy catastrophe of this magnitude—earthquake, tsunami, and three nuclear meltdowns—seems to be clouding their vision. The truth is, a nuclear disaster offers no easy or good choices. But some, like vaporizing the radionuclides throughout the atmosphere, will unnecessarily prolong the danger to the people and environment of Japan and spread the pain far and wide.

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A group of scientists that include the Nobel Laureate George A. Olah have discovered an improved method of ‘capturing’ carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In a recent report for the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Olah and his colleagues address what they view as ‘one of the most challenging issues of our century’: the management of CO₂ emissions. Their findings reveal a new solid material based on polyethylenimine that can be used as an absorbent to scrub CO₂ from the air. The results of their research could potentially counteract the effects of the ever increasing consumption of fossil fuels by mankind, which they cite as a leading cause of environmental problems such as climate change and ocean acidification.

This material can be used at both industrial sources, such as power plants and factories, as well as small distributed sources like car exhausts. It can even be used to capture CO₂ directly from the open atmosphere. Once captured, the carbon can be sequestered or recycled to manufacture other carbon based substances. The polyethylenimine material is regenerable, meaning it can be reused to capture carbon over and over again without loss of efficiency. Unlike existing methods of removing CO₂, it is also inexpensive, easy to prepare and far less energy intensive. Whether you’re a climate change alarmist or a skeptic, there is no doubt that this material could have a positive and far-reaching effect on our environment. In the future, CO₂ may no longer be considered a problematic and unusable byproduct. Instead, as the study suggests, it could be seen as a ‘valuable feedstock for the production of fuels and materials.’