Climate Concerns Spur Changes in U.S. Military

By Matthew Berger

WASHINGTON, Apr 29, 2010 (IPS) - Though some conservative politicians and activists in Washington remain unconvinced of the need for action, the U.S. military is taking the effects of climate change increasingly seriously.

Addressing a crowd of about 400 people gathered to hear about the significance of climate change to U.S. national security Wednesday, Nathaniel Fick, CEO of the Washington-based think tank Centre for a New American Security, pointed out how the first event CNAS hosted on this topic drew only about 50 attendees in June 2008.

"Natural security issues are clearly taking hold, growing in importance, reaching new audiences, and becoming more mainstream. And rightfully so," said Christine Parthemore, who directs the think tank's Natural Security Programme, which analyses the interrelationship of natural resources and national security.

Wednesday's event launched two new reports from CNAS examining this relationship. These join a growing body of reports by civil society and government alike on the importance of climate change to military operations - and the importance of militaries in addressing and responding to aspects of climate change.

The impacts from extreme drought, heat waves, desertification, flooding, and extreme weather events like hurricanes are all expected to continue to escalate as a result of climate and are cited in CNAS's report as reasons why the military needs to be prepared for a climate change-impacted world.

The 105-page report, titled 'Broadening Horizons: Climate Change and the U.S. Armed Forces', says the effects of these environmental events will be amplified by existing socio-political factors. "Countries and regions of strategic importance - from Afghanistan to the Arctic, China to Yemen - are likely to confront major environmental pressures on both their societies and ecosystems," it says.

Counterinsurgency expert and CNAS non-resident senior fellow David Kilcullen also pointed Wednesday to such phenomena as desertification leading to humanitarian situations like mass migrations. "These changes are happening now and they're impacting national security issues now," he added.

Due to increasing humanitarian crises, including the January earthquake in Haiti, the role of the military has moved far beyond combat, said Rear Admiral Philip Cullom, who heads the U.S. Navy's task force on energy issues. The acceleration of climate change will only exacerbate those crises.

"Due to the scale of natural catastrophes, we are facing the militarisation of humanitarian relief" since militaries are the only institutions with the capacity to deal with disasters of such massive scale, Cullom said.

And even on a practical, day-to-day level, adapting to climate change will impact the armed forces. Transportation of fuel in combat zones is treacherous and requires personnel and money that could otherwise be used elsewhere.

The U.S. military has not been blind to this mountain of reasons why they should take steps to both address their preparation for the impacts of climate change and their own contributions to these impacts.

In February, the U.S. Department of Defence released its Quadrennial Defence Review and, for the first time ever, identified climate change as a having an impact on its operations around the world.

"While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world. In addition, extreme weather events may lead to increased demands for defence support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster response both within the United States and overseas," it said.

The report also laid out how the military is addressing climate-related issues, both in its own operations - in terms of reducing the military's reliance on fossil fuels, for instance - and in helping develop energy efficient and renewable technologies.

The Pentagon sees energy security - "assured access to reliable supplies of energy and the ability to protect and deliver sufficient energy to meet operational need" - as a strategic priority, and one which greener energy can help it secure.

A report released last week by the Washington-based Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate commended the U.S. military for its clean energy programmes. It pointed to the Department of Defence's goal of getting 25 percent of its electric energy from renewable sources by 2025, the U.S. Air Force's goal of meeting 25 percent of base energy needs with renewable energy sources by 2025, and the U.S. Marine Corps' 10X10 campaign, which aims to reduce energy intensity and water consumption and increase the use of renewable electric energy.

Along the way to those goals, the U.S. Navy is developing a "green" carrier strike group that will run on alternative fuels by 2016. Last week, they successfully tested their "Green Hornet" jet, which runs on 50 percent biofuel and 50 percent fossil fuel. The "Green Hornet" more directly addresses energy independence that environmental impacts due to the energy and resources required to produce the biofuels, but it does also mean fewer emissions from military operations.

Fort Irwin, in south-eastern California's Mojave Desert, has been ground zero for many of the Department of Defence's green initiatives. Most notably, it is expected to become energy independent by 2022, when the military's largest solar installation is expected to be completed at the base.

But one key difficulty in bringing the military up to date with the realities of a changing climate remains, says another report released Wednesday by CNAS.

National security professionals "currently lack the 'actionable' data necessary to generate requirements, plans, strategies, training and material to prepare for future challenges" related to climate change, the report says. "Though the scope of and quality of available scientific information has improved in recent years, this information does not always reach - or is not presented in a form that is useful to - the decision makers who need it."

That gap in information may have been partly addressed at the event Wednesday. For about 40 minutes, Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, spoke and then answered questions on a variety of climate change-related issues before the largely national security-focused audience.

(END)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51259

U.S. States Consider Starting Their Own Banks

By Matthew Cardinale

ATLANTA, Georgia, Apr 30, 2010 (IPS) - At least eight U.S. states are considering proposals to start state-run banks in the wake of an economic crisis where many private banks ceased or greatly decreased their lending, literally shrinking the money pool available in state economies.

Economist Ellen Brown, author of "Web of Debt", has been writing commentaries on various websites and runs a Google Group that has been pushing the idea of state-run banks for a couple of years, efforts which she says have made a lot of state legislators aware that a state-run bank was even a possibility.

North Dakota is the only one out of the 50 U.S. states that is still operating with a fiscal surplus, and some economists argue it is in part due to the state-owned Bank of North Dakota - the only bank of its kind in the U.S. - which has been able to pump money into its own economy by making loans to farmers, small businesses and families.

Numerous states are beginning to consider the idea of starting their own bank, since the issuance of credit is one of the main ways that money enters the economy.

The George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations have pumped trillions of dollars into private banks through the federal bank bail-outs, with the hope that they will begin lending again. Yet any entity can start a bank, including a corporation, university, nonprofit, or even a governmental entity like a state, city, or county.

Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington each have proposals on the table in their respective state legislatures considering the formation of a state-run bank in one way or another.

In addition, current candidates for political office in eight states - California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington State - are pushing a state-run bank as part of their platform.

"I researched this for several months," State Sen. Hanson Clark of Detroit, Michigan, told IPS. "I spoke to the president of the Bank of North Dakota in early February. It's a way to get our economy going in the region and the state, to create more jobs. Time and time again business people would tell me they were ready to expand, do projects, but they didn't have financing."

"This is really a market-based approach to create jobs," Clark said, adding that he has drafted legislation but that he is not optimistic about its passage. "Even though we're in a dire economy, this legislature is so paralysed on doing the status quo."

Washington State Rep. Bob Hasegawa is more optimistic about the bill that he's introduced. "We had a hearing last Session. It was very well-received by the Committee. The Speaker of the House is a supporter. In the interim we will speak to stakeholders. Next session we'll have something to pass," he said.

Even a Republican in the Conservative-leaning state of Missouri is pushing a state-run bank in his legislature, at least for the purpose of lending money to the state and possibly to local governments.

"It strikes me as somewhat unique and interesting," said State Rep. Allen Icet.

"Missouri has bonds... indebtedness we have to pay. Like all sister states, we face financial challenges. We, the state of Missouri, could benefit by following the path of North Dakota by creating a state bank, thereby avoiding interest payments on bonded indebtedness," Icet said.

There are numerous advantages to a state running its own bank, each premised upon the little-known practice called fractional reserve lending. Put simply, private banks in the U.S. and many countries lend money that they do not have, but that they literally create as an entry in their accounting books at the moment the loan is made. In the U.S., banks are allowed to lend up to 10 times the amount of money they have on deposit with the Federal Reserve.

Therefore, by starting a bank, states can multiply the power of the money they have from tax revenues by 10, by making loans to farmers, small businesses, and others.

"The state bank partners with other banks. It serves as back-up capital of those banks, taking loans off banks' books, making room for more," Brown said.

Brown also noted that state-run banks could lend the state money, whereas private banks lend money to the state at six percent interest.

Currently, the U.S .Congress is holding hearings regarding the investment firm Goldman Sachs, which, among other things, apparently made investments that wagered against the success of their own clients.

"None of that was happening in North Dakota. They're trying to make honest loans, they're not trying to cheat the system. Their mission is to serve the state. Their function is to serve the farmers that develop agriculture and [to serve] alternative energy sources," Brown said.

"They're there to take the long view of what's good for the community," Brown said.

(END)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51277

The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth

By Dianne Dumanoski

Crown Publishers, 2009, 320 pages, $25

Go to your local bookstore or buy online.

It’s time for each of us to have a talk with our inner economist. If humanity is to survive the hardships that lie ahead due to climate change, we’ve got to abandon the now universal, but originally Western, ethos of economic growth. That onward-and-upward, more-is-better paean to the accumulation of individual wealth and to the idea of Earth-as-tool has led us blindly into a very tight spot. If we don’t abandon those notions and change the way our societies operate, we may face utter collapse.

So argues veteran environmental journalist Dianne Dumanoski in The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth. The book skillfully weaves evidence from climatology, biology, history, anthropology, economics, and other fields to dispel any feel-good misconceptions about global warming, explain its causes, and try to prepare us for what’s ahead.

If you were picturing a gradual climb in Earth’s temperatures potentially making northern areas more hospitable, think again. “Volatile” is the key word here.

Before the last 12,000 years of nearly unprecedented climate stability—the period known as “the long summer” that allowed complex civilizations to develop—chaotic climate swings were the norm. Climate varied more from decade to decade than it has in the past 12,000 years. Picture an ice age developing in the span of a lifetime, or even a decade—this scenario may confront us, depending on how the Earth reacts to our toxic influences.

The Earth’s volatility is a key point, Dumanoski stresses. Science does not (and cannot) predict all, and she says that in the century ahead, we need to prepare for swift, wild surprises. “Nature is not like a mechanical escalator but like a leaping dragon,” she writes. We’ve got to prepare for the worst even as we try to stop our ongoing damage to the Earth.

It’s not an original notion, but only a few have acted on it so far. For example, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that in California, known for its regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a panel of leaders is forming a “Plan B” to deal with the disruptive effects of climate change.

The End of the Long Summer helps readers get the big picture and think globally, but it is less clear on how we should act locally. The idea that we must redirect Western civilization is daunting, so Dumanoski suggests strategies drawn from human history of surviving past climate crises.

She advocates a two-pronged strategy of “survivability” (which she differentiates from individualistic, run-for-the-hills survivalism): Reduce the activities that are “disrupting the Earth’s metabolism,” she says, and improve the resilience of our communities and institutions by changing systems that make us vulnerable to climate change.

Dumanoski urges us to transform our global, must-keep-growing, too-big-to-fail economy and social systems.These systems prioritize the accumulation of financial capital over the generation of social capital. In the future, they will need to be based on trust and cooperation. There may be no one to bail us out if climate change interrupts international trade. We must revise our systems of producing food and “essential” goods to incorporate principles of functional redundancy, diversity, and compartmentalization. In crudely simple terms, we can’t rely on apples from Washington or clothing and steel from China being delivered on demand if climate change rapidly destroys croplands and interrupts transportation. Strong communities will be partially self-sufficient yet rely on multiple sources. They will have allies willing to help, and will warehouse a variety of foods and goods to get through hard times.

Dumanoski offers a number of policy suggestions—her own and others’—toward these ends. We could reinstitute grain stockpiles, which have largely disappeared from countries around the world since the 1990s, due to the policies of the United States, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Governments could mandate that manufacturers use diverse sources of raw materials, components, and services, and require companies to disclose their sources and suppliers, so that investors reward those who spread their risk.

Given the weak agreements that came out of the Copenhagen climate talks, however, it’s hard to imagine world leaders agreeing to change the underpinnings of the world economy. When the economy is mentioned in the same breath as climate change, it’s usually in reference to climate policies potentially hurting “the economy” or kick-starting a “green economy.” Dumanoski suggests that the fundamental ideas that drive economic theory have to change in order to cope with the climate crisis.

What would it look like to have a resilient community that functions in cooperation with the Earth? Could some indigenous societies serve as models? Notably, the idea is not explored in the book. Dumanoski does point to some encouraging trends in the growing activism for organic and locally grown food, the preservation of seed and farmland, crop diversity, and the acknowledgment of Earth as Gaia, a living organism.

The End of the Long Summer gives us another in a string of much-needed wake-up calls. While it may be hard to imagine humanity responding as Dumanoski very convincingly says we should, she emphasizes that we have the capacity to surprise ourselves. “The only certain thing about the coming century is its immense uncertainty,” she writes. It’s time to embrace that uncertainty and start preparing for climate change as best we can.

Sherry Boschert is author of Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars That Will Recharge America (New Society Publishers) and a cofounder of Plug In America.

Interested? Climate Heroes: Meet some of the people on the front lines of climate action.

http://www.countercurrents.org/boschert300410.htm

Warning shots

Thu, Apr 29, 2010

Warning shots - How many do you need?

I still keep hearing, “If things get bad, I’ll move to ….” And then fill in the blank with your favorite fantasy or nightmare, including these and many more:

“my sister-in-law’s property in Kansas”

“Mexico”

“the wilderness”

“a central America country”

“southern Europe”

“the coast”

First, let’s consider how “bad” things have to get. The first significant warning shot came in the 1970s, when people in the industrialized world felt the impacts of the U.S. losing its status as the world’s swing producer of crude oil. We were visited by expensive gasoline and long lines at the pumps, simultaneous inflation and economic contraction, a president who encouraged conservation, and many other consequences of relying heavily on crude oil for economic growth. More recently, we’ve witnessed a housing crash, bank failures, oil priced at nearly $150/bbl, near-collapse of the industrial economy, sovereign debt crises throughout the industrialized world, and hundreds of other symptoms of passing the world oil peak.

If you keep your eyes closed, you’re going to run off the road. This society has already driven into a ditch, but you are not required to join the crash. Again, then: How many warning shots do you need?

We could spend a lot of time pointing out the lunacy of all the safe havens listed above. Moving in with the in-laws? Have you even asked? Isn’t there a reason you don’t live with them already? Have you discussed economic collapse with them, or do you continue to ignore the most important topic in the history of western civilization, opting instead for polite conversation?

How ’bout them Red Sox? Nice weather we’ve been having, doncha think?

Stop me if I’ve mentioned this one before: If you keep your eyes closed, you’re going to run off the road.

And Mexico? Do you speak Spanish? Fluently? Do you think you’ll be welcome there, gringo? Do you think continuing our history of occupation is a good idea, even at the personal level? Again, as before, why don’t you live there already, if it’s such a great place to be?

The wilderness? Really? Without a grocery store?

And so on, down the list of ludicrous options.

Here’s a thought: How about starting to prepare for a world without ready access to cheap fossil fuels? That would entail securing a personal supply of water and food for you and your family. For the rest of your life, and theirs. If that’s simply too daunting a task for your lizard-like brain, you can take the route pursued by about half the people to whom I speak: “I’ll save a bullet for myself.”

Really? Evolution suggests otherwise. I foresee a lot of my “friends” showing up at the mud hut, unprepared and unrepentant, but too consumed with personal survival to take the promised Hemingway out. A friend in need, ….

Better days lie ahead for those of us who desire to see the living planet make a comeback. But if you believe life is not worth living in the absence of empire — in the absence of our unrelenting intent and ability to destroy every non-industrial culture and non-human species — why wait? Why not take the Hemingway out now, while you still can get a decent imperial funeral?

http://guymcpherson.com/2010/04/warning-shots/

Dems spark alarm with call for national ID card

By Alexander Bolton
04/30/10 06:00 AM ET

A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation’s immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday.


Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure.


The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).


The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment.


It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.


“The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer,” states the Democratic legislative proposal.


The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.


“Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy — one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA,” said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel.


“America’s broken immigration system needs real, workable reform, but it cannot come at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms,” Calabrese added.


The ACLU said “if the biometric national ID card provision of the draft bill becomes law, every worker in America would have to be fingerprinted.”


A source at one pro-immigration reform group described the proposal as “Orwellian.”


But Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), who has worked on the proposal and helped unveil it at a press conference Thursday, predicted the public has become more comfortable with the idea of a national identification card.


“The biometric identification card is a critical element here,” Durbin said. “For a long time it was resisted by many groups, but now we live in a world where we take off our shoes at the airport and pull out our identification.


“People understand that in this vulnerable world, we have to be able to present identification,” Durbin added. “We want it to be reliable, and I think that’s going to help us in this debate on immigration.”


Implementing a nationwide identification program for every worker will be a difficult task.


The Social Security Administration has estimated that 3.6 million Americans would have to visit SSA field offices to correct mistakes in records or else risk losing their jobs.


Angela Kelley, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the biometric identification provision “will give some people pause.”

But she applauded Democrats for not shying away from the toughest issues in the immigration reform debate.


“What I like about the outline is that Democrats are not trying to hide the ball or soft-pedal the tough decisions,” Kelley said. “It seems a very sincere effort to get the conversation started. This is a serious effort to get Republicans to the table.”


Reform Immigration for America, a pro-immigrant group, praised Democrats for getting the discussion started but said the framework fell short.


“The proposal revealed today [Thursday] is in part the result of more than a year of bipartisan negotiations and represents a possible path forward on immigration reform,” the group said in a statement. “This framework is not there yet.”


Democrats and pro-immigration groups will now begin to put pressure on Republicans to participate in serious talks to address the issue. The bipartisan effort in the Senate suffered a serious setback when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pulled back from talks with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).


“We call on Republican Senators to review this framework and sit down at the negotiating table in good faith,” Reform Immigration for America said in a statement. “This is a national problem that requires a federal solution and the input of leaders in both parties.”


Durbin said Democratic leaders are trying to recruit other Republican partners.


"We’re making a commitment to establishing a framework to work toward comprehensive immigration reform, and I think it’s a good framework and now we’re engaging our friends on the other side of the aisle to join us in this conversation,” Durbin said.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/95235-democrats-spark-alarm-with-call-for-national-id-card

God, Golem, UID: Singularity As An Object In The Mirror

By Binu Karunakaran

30 April, 2010

Countercurrents.org

"In societies of control the individual is doubled as code, as information, or as simulation such that the reference of the panoptic gaze is no longer the body but its [digital] double, and indeed this is no longer a matter of looking but rather one of data analysis." B. Simon

Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram was right when he said the gravest threat to Indian democracy comes from within. There's a slight change though - the threat does not stem from the Maoists who are waging a war to ususrp state power by the year 2060. It comes from a super-panopticon project that aims to create a 12 digit UID/Aadhar number for the 1.2 billion citizens of India.

The UID/Aadhar, in reality a tracking, profiling and surveillance project fast-tracked post 26/11 attacks on Mumbai is being sold to us as an ICT panacea - a one-click fix for all the ills of a modern welfare state.

For Nandan Nilekani, the czar of India's silicon valley, who paratrooped straight from a corporate boardroom to the helm of the UIDAI and the UPA's neoliberal mandarins the UID project is nothing but the translation of the world into a problem in coding. The society re-interpreted as a cybernetic system with informational flows as control loops. A society subject to social and political control where privacy and dissent will remain - to borrow a phrase from Rondald Rumsfled - known unknowns.

It is to hide this real and devious intent that the UIDAI sings a lullaby of welfare and shows us its silicon (forgive the pun) mammaries. Who wouldn't love a technology that will plug the leaks in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and optimise the PDS delivery of food grains to the country's poorest of poor. All by de-duplication of identities of the 'fraudulent' Indian citizens, a good 37.2 per cent of population according to the Planning Commission falls under the Below Poverty Line (BPL).

Democracy can now cut the long story of its upstaging short. Why wait till 2060 for the gun-toting Maoists if you can cut five decades of crap with the UID that will roll out in early 2011? A bloodless coup in the digital realm.

The birth of UID also mean that the singularity so far discussed in the realm of science fiction is already here. Not the technological singularity of domination by a super-human intelligence, but a panopticon singularity described by Charles Stross, that arises from a situation in which the human behaviour is deterministically governed by processes outside their control. With the advent of the UID, citizens will cease to be individuals and their relation with the state will be drastically altered forever. From individuals with power over our destinies we will turn into dividuals in perpetual cybernetic slave mode. Our'databased selves' acting as our body doubles conditioning our behaviour in realtime and transforming our physical selves into zombies.

The metaphors of Orwellian Big Brother and Bentham's prison architecture pales in comparison. If in the Foucaultian vision of prison the object of surveillance was the physical body, in the panoptics of UID, the object of control is the digital representation of the body. It is no longer necessary to create a real cyborg - all you need is a virtual cybernetic double that can hold your biometric and other ID info and authenticate the Real You in all virtual and physical transactions.

UID should be opposed because it's an assault on our privacies which form the basis of freespeech, autonomy and personal dignity. Privacy is a solemn zone and a powerful right by which we form opinions and express them fearlessly. We concede in private, what cannot be said in a public sphere - often political opinions and radical thoughts germinate within the four walls of a room. Journalists know the volatile power of information that is shared in private conversations with bureaucrats and politicians and of the solitary acts of whistle blowers - all which help democracy to flourish.

The UID seen in the context of its linkages with the National Population Register and the NATGRID that involves sharing of information by 11 agencies which run over 20 different databases, ranging from IT returns to bank accounts, and telephone records to internet search histories is sure to undermine democracy by infringing on our privacy in a way not visualised before. When the row over illegal phonetapping by NTRO surfaced recently the opposition was indignant. If a foxy Rs.7 crore sophisticated snooping instrument can unnerve them what about the consequences of the UID whose potential for datamining and human rights infringement cross every imaginable threshold?

In his essay Future Map US born theorist Brian Holmes quotes from scientist Norbert Wiener's seminal workGod & Golem, Inc.: “Can God play a significant game with his own creature? Can any creator, even a limited one, play a significant game with his own creature?” The question we need to ask Nandan Nilekani and the UPA government is the same.

Please Endorse: Citizens Against UID

By Citizens Against UID

Government of India's Unique Identification number (UID) which is one of the greatest threat to Indian democracy. Please endorse the statement by clicking here

http://www.countercurrents.org/karun300410.htm

The Imminent Crash Of Oil Supply: Be Afraid

By Nicholas C. Arguimbau

23 April, 2010

Countercurrents.org

What is going to happen and how it came to pass that we weren't forewarned

Look at this graph and be afraid. It does not come from Earth First. It does not come from the Sierra Club. It was not drawn by Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it does not come from a progressive Democrat. And vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy, and the United States military's Joint Forces Command concurs with the overall picture.



What does it imply? The supply of the world's most essential energy source is going off a cliff. Not in the distant future,but in a year and a half. Production of all liquid fuels, including oil, will drop within 20 years to half what it is today. And the difference needs to be made up with "unidentified projects," which one of the world's leading petroleum geologists says is just a "euphemism for rank shortage," and the world's foremost oil industry banker says is "faith based."

The original graph is available here http://www.eia.doe.gov/conference/2009/session3/Sweetnam.pdf




This graph was prepared for a DOE meeting in spring, 2009. Take a good look at what it says, assuming it to be correct:



1`. Conventional oil will be almost all gone in 20 years, and there is nothing known to replace it.



2.. Production of petroleum from existing conventional sources has been dropping at a rate slightly over 4% per year for at least a year and will continue to do so for the indefinite future.




3. The graph implies that we are past the peak of production and that there are750 billion barrels of conventional oil left (the areas under the "conventionals" portion of the graph, extrapolated to the right as an exponentional). Assuming that the remaining reserves were 900 billion or more at the halfway point, then we are at least 150 billion barrels, or 5 years, past the midpoint.



4. Total petroleum production from all presently known sources, conventional and unconventional, will remain "flat" at approximately 83 mbpd for the next two years and then will proceed to drop for the foreseeable future, at first slowly but by 4% per year after 2015.



5. Demand will begin to outstrip supply in 2012, and will already be 10 million barrels per day above supply in only five years. The United States Joint Forces Command concurs with these specific findings. http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf, at 31. 10 million bpd is equivalent to half the United States' entire consumption. To make up the difference, the world would have to find another Saudi Arabia and get it into full production in five years, an impossibility. See The Oil Drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5154




5. The production from presently existing conventional sources will plummet from its present 81 mbpd to 30 mbpd by 2030, a 63% drop in a 20-year period.



6. Meeting demand requires discovering, developing, and bringing to full production 60mbpd (105-45) of "unidentified projects" in the 18-year period of 2012-2030 and approximately 25 mbpd of such projects by 2020, on the basis of a very conservative estimate of only 1% annual growth in demand. The independent Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has estimated a possibe development of 6.5mbpd of such projects, including the Canadian tar sands, implying a deficit of 18-19 mbpd as compared to demand, and an approximate 14 mbpd drop in total liquid fuels production relative to 2012, a 16% drop in 8 years.



7. The curve is virtually identical to one produced by geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere and published in "The End of Cheap Oil," in Scientific American, March, 1998, twelve years ago. They projected that production of petroleum from conventional sources would drop from 74 mbpd in 2003 (as compared to 84 mbpd in 2008 in the DOE graph) and drop to 39 mbpd by 2030 (as compared to 39 mbpd by 2030 in the DOE graph!).http://www.jala.com/energy1.php.Campbell and Laherrere predicted a 2003 "peak," and the above graph implies a 'peak" (not necessarily the actual peak, but the midpointr of production of 2005 or before.



So here we are, if the graph is right, on the edge of a precipice, with no prior warning from either the industry, which knows what it possesses, or the collective governments, which ostensibly protect the public interest. As Colin Campbell, a research geologist who has worked for many large oil companies and studied oil depletion extensively (http://www.peakoil.net/about-aspo/dr-colin-campbell) says, "The warning signals have been flying for a long time. They have been plain to see, but the world turned a blind eye, and failed to read the message." http://www.greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.html The world was completely transformed by oil for the duration of the twentieth century, but if the graph is right, within 20 years it will be virtually gone but our dependence upon it will not. Instead, we have

> zero time to plan how to replace cars in our lives

> zero time to plan how to manufacture and install milions of furnaces to replace home oil furnaces, and zero time toproduce the infrastructure necessary to carry out that task

> zero time to retool suburbia so it can function without gasoline

> zero time to plan for replacement of the largest military establishment in history, almost completely dependent upon oil

> zero time to plan to support nine billion peolple without the "green revolution," a creation of the age of oil

> zero time to plan to replace oil as an essential fuel in electricity production

> zero time to plan for preserving millions of miles of roads without asphalt.

> zero time to plan for the replacement of oil in its essential role in EVERY industry.

> zero time to plan for replacement of oil in its exclusive role of transporting people, agricultural produce, manufactured goods. In a world without oil that appears only twenty years away, there will be no oil-burning ships transporting US grain to other countries, there will be no oil-burning airlines linking the world's major cities, there will be no oil-burning ships transporting Chinese manufactured goods to the billions now dependent on them.

> zero time to plan for the survival of the billions of new people expected by 2050 in the aftermath of ":peak everything."

> zero capital, because of failing banks ansd public and private debt, to address these issues.

Why zero time?



Because if we at any time use more oil than allowed by the graph, we will have even less later..

Because we are already committed to supporting 2.5 billion more people on what we have.



Because every day we continue upward in our oil consmption, even though we continue to have more people who need it and billions who deserve to rise from abject poverty, we are making the future supply shortage worse.



If you believe the graph, demand will outstrip supply starting at the end of 2011, and severely outstrip supply in five years. What are we going to do, and how are we going to do it? We have no time to decide.



IS THE GRAPH RIGHT?




It is very unlikely that things can be better than the graph indicates. Why?



The great majority of authorities believe there is little more than 1 trillion barrels of conventional oil left. You can make a simple calculation from that: At the present rate of 30 billion barrels per year, 82 million barrels per day, it will all be gone in 33 years, and consumption has been rapidly increasing, not decreasing, so if anything it will all be gone sooner...

A closer look at the graph reveals that it was drawn on the assumption that the world's existing conventional fields contain only 750,000 barrels at this time, enough to keep us going only 25 years.

The graph assumes a decline rate of 4% per year. As long as the estimates of remaining reserves are right, that can't be far off. In fact, 4% is a relatively low decline rate compared to what has been observed in oil fields generally. Hold on, it's going to be a fast ride down!

The major oil companies, which presumably know better than we do how much oil is in their possession, "conspicuously fail to invest in new refining capacity, which would surely be needed if production were set to rise.'" Campbell, http://www.greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.html . The excess of refining capacity over demand remained close to 10 million bpd during the nineties, but dropped to almost nothing in the last decade as a result of failure to build new capacity. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2006/01/chp1pdf/fig1_21.pdf. The United States Joint Forces Command has also reported the failure of the oil industry to invest in the refining capacity necessary to permit expanded production, and that "Even were a concerted effort begun today to repair that shortage, it would be ten years before production could catch up with expected demand." "Joint Operating Environment 2010," at 26. http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf

The most frequiently discussed significant source of unexploited petroleum is the tar sands of Alberta, Canada. Because a high percentage of the energy value of the tar sands has to be expended in their extraction, the reported quantity of reserves is misleading, and two independent researchers have estimated respectively that production from the tar sands by 2020 may be expected of 3.3 milion bpd and 4 million bpd. Consequently, the likelihood of the tar sands making a significant contribution to the world's petroleum demand in the foreseeabe future is low.Phil Hart and Chris Skrebowski, "Peak oil: A detailed and transparent analysis," http://www.energybulletin.net/node/30537


The shortfall, labelled "unidentified projects," that needs to be filled in 20 years is an unprecedented 60 million barrels per day, equivalent to 3/4 of today's total production. We have never in history done anything comparable to that. Although there are large deposits of "unconventional" oil such as the Canadian tar sands, most are making only slow progress at development and consume as much or more energy in their production as they can generate. The independent Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has estimated a possibe development of 6.5mbpd of such projects, when we'll need more than that every two years just to keep our place. So the likelihood of anything at all making a significant dent in the shortfall is small. Indeed, the "unidentified projects" can be perceived as just a "euphemism for rank shortage" (Campbell http://www.greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.html) The United States Joint Forces Command has come to the similar conclusion: that of all potential future energy sources, "None of these provide much reason for optiimism," http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf Petroleum industry investment banker Matt Simmons calls them "faith-based."http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Northern%20Trust%20Bank.pdf at 4

The "Hubbert Peak" theory of oil field depreciation, which predicted the peak and subsequent demise of the US oil inudtry 15 years in advance and within 2 years of its occurence http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf, says that with normal production methods, a country reaches peak production in its oil fields when they are 50% depleted, with the production curve being bell-shaped. The peak can be postponed with innovative extraction techniques, but this only causes subsequent more rapid decline of the deposits and total extraction if anything decreasing. The world reached the midpoint of its reserves in the last decade, so the 2005 "peak" implied by the above graph is very close to what would be expected.

Astonishingly, Dr. Hubbert in the same 1956 paper predicted, based upon records of only 90 billion barrels of oil having been recovered worldwide, that the peak of world petroleum production would be approximately the year 2000; this apparently quite accurate prediction by Hubbert has largely been forgotten. http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf . One is tempted to ask why, if one man could predict the timing of the peak 44 years before it occurred, the United States Department of Energy is incapable of recognizing it after it occurred.

There's a common feeling that just becase we don't know where the oil is, doesn't mean the Mother Lode isn't right around the corner. But if you've looked everywhere, the chances are a lot slimmer. The lag time between discovery and bringing to full production of a field is 30-40 years, which means that even the virtually impossible discovery of another Saudi Arabia would barely change the graph above, of production between now and 2030. But no such discoveries are left to be made. The rate of discovery of new conventional oil has been steadily dropping now for FORTY years despite ever-more searching with ever-more-sophisticated technology. There have been two pivotal events: the peak of discovery around 1968, and the day in 1981` when discovery of new oil deposits no longer kept up with production. There is nothing complicated about this. As Campbell says, the warning sign there for anyone to see

"simply recognised two undeniable facts:

You have to find oil before you can produce it

Production has to mirror discovery after a time lag

"Discovery reached a peak in the 1960s - despite all the technology we hear so much about, and a worldwide search for the best prospects. It should surprise no one that the corresponding peak of production is now upon us." Indeed, Campbell's second point means that the inevitable peaking of oil production in the early 21st century, should have been clear for all to see since the peaking of discovery in the late sixties.

Campbell does not stand alone. As the US Joint Forces Command observes, "The discovery rate for new oil and gas fields over the last two decades (with the possible exception of Brazil) provides little reason for optimism that future efforts will find major new fields." "Joint Operating Environment 2010," at 31.

Saudi Arabia's largest field, the Ghawar, is now in decline and it appears that the country has nothing to offset that decline. That has led many to conclude that "Peak Oil is a Done Deal." (Dave Cohen, ASPO/USA Energy Bulletin, July 16, 2008. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/45940)



IF IT'S A "DONE DEAL," WHY DID IT TAKE UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO GET HERE?




"We can wish it, we can dream it, but it will never be, oil is not renewable, and therefore in time it must be realized that THERE WILL BE NO OIL." ENO Petroleum Corporation, "Peak Oil - The Global Oil Crisis," http://www.enopetroleum.com/opecoilreservers.html. It is hard to conceive of an act or omission causing more pain to more people and creatures than the failure of "those in charge" to announce with reasonable forewarning that the oil supply was going to crash. But it is upon us with no forewarning to the general public at all.



The government planning agencies charged with helping the public survive the end of oil could not have performed worse than by recognizing peak oil only after it has happened. Like anthropogenic global warming ("AGW"), "peak oil" has been the subject of decades of denial. Notwithstanding Hubbert's famous coup in pinpointing the peak of US oil production through the simple observation that production naturally peaks when the supply is half gone, few would listen that because the worldwide supply of conventional oil would reach the halfway point in the first decade of this century, trouble was right around the corner. The fact is, coming to that point meant we were in trouble regardless, because the early stages of development of an oil field (like the early stages of growth of virtually anything else) follow an exponential growth curve, and the world's growth addicts love exponential curves, but once you get beyond the halfway point, it is a mathematical certainty that the longer you attempt to conform the field to a pattern of exponential growth, the more the end is going to be precipitous. If you don't decelerate rapidly, that is preciely what has to happen - the decline after the halfway point can only be more rapid than the rise beforehand.



What Hubbert observed with respect to the US oil reserves has an intuitive sense to it - as the amount of oil in the field drops, its pressure drops, so the flow begins to slow down - the gusher goes down to a trickle. But if the owner of the field doesn't make full disclosure of what's there, outsiders can only make educated guesses from general geological principles and what the owner is selling, as to what the future holds. And as we all know, full disclosure is not the name of the game in the oil business.




If the field is just allowed to release its liquid gold at its natural rate, that's not too bad, because observations like the Hubbert Peak can be applied. But as technology improves and well pressure can be jacked up to compensate for declining reserves, (for instance by pumping water into the wells) the outside observer loses certainty..There remains information about the company's reserves, but the accuracy of that information is seriously open to question. Within OPEC, which allows its members to market in accordance with the amount of their reserves. Hart, "Introduction to Peak Oil," www.philhart.com/content/introduction-peak-oil, there are great temptations to fudge. Outside observers can follow a country's reports on its reserves, but those reports are highly suspect. They will remain constant for years while the country is pumping great amounts of oil without reporting any new discoveries, and indeed they can take sudden leaps upward also without reports of new discoveries. Such "records" lead to the inevitable conclusion that many OPEC reserves reports are fictional. If you would like to see charts of OPEC oil reserves mysteriously contorting themselves, you are invited to take a look at Hart's essay. So if you thought the experts had it all in hand and would reliably warn us when trouble was a'brewin', think again. Not only do OPEC members have internal business reasons to exaggerate their reserves, but companies on the public stock market want to satisfy their stockholders of their long-term viability, and all oil producers want to make their customers confident that they can rely on oil for the long haul. By concealing their future from homeowners, oil companies have made trillions for the real estate business and the banks at the expense of those who chose urban sprawl over dense "near-in" housing, and the companies themselves will make trillions in the near future selling to consumers trapped into oil addiction, who might have sought alterntives more vigorously had they known how close the crash was.



Matt Simmons, the banker who has spent his post-Harvard-Business School career advising oil companies and seving as peak oil advisor to the last Presidential administration and specifically to President Bush, ought to know. And what he says is that Western oil companies like ExxonMobil would be strongly opposed to the idea of transparent data because it would reveal “how crappy and old their fields really are.” Energy TechStocks.com, "Meeting the Challenge Matt Simmons: Force All Oil Producers to Give Transparent Data," According to EnergyStocks.com, Simmons has warned that "the failure of Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers to provide transparent production data has left the world in a lurch, unable to know whether it can maintain an adequate supply of oil in the face of burgeoning demand Such uncertainty has led to indecision about whether the world should invest the huge sums of money necessary to develop alternative transportation fuel sources."



Just how bad the published reserve figures for the major oil-producing nations are, has long been understood. We like to say that what goes up, must come down, but not OPEC member-nation oil reserves. Their allowed production quotas depend upon their reserves, so there is a built-in temptation to overstate reserves and never reflect in reduiced reserve figures, what they have pumped out. In 1988, the OPEC oil reserves "magically and miraculously increased twofold," without any corresponding discovery of new fields. The officially reported reserves follow graphs that would be comical were it not for the fact that 6.8 billion people, and counting, depend upon the real numbers. See http://www.enopetroleum.com/opecoilreservers.html




Now we are facing the consequences of the major oil producers "leaving the world in a lurch": almost complete inability to cope with the severe difficulties we face in transporting, feeding, housing, and keeping warm the burgeoning billions of our numbers. It is hard to conceive of how any private entity could impose so much pain on so many. It didn't need to be that way. The US Government and its cohorts around the world could have imposed transparency on the oil companies as to their true reserves, and we would have had fair warning and the possibiity of coping. Yes, and the moon could be made of green cheese.



Of course, as noted, it is possible to produce a graph roughly like the one above with nothing more than production data and reserves data. The former are public, and the latter are known to a limited extent. It has been the consensus of decisionmakers for many years that the world had a total (both produced and still in the ground) of approximately 2 trillion barrels of conventional oil, and as pointed out by Campbell, four decades of dwindling discoveries have left us with an absolute inability to increase available reserves in a timely manner to mitigate the looming shortfall. The two trillion barrel figure was absolutely critical for doing what planning could be done, but at the beginning of the last decade, the US broke ranks with the consensus of the rest of the world, declared through the historically-reliable US Geological Survey (USGS) that world reserves of conventional oil (both consumed and yet-to-be-consumed) were in fact in the neighborhood of three trillion barrels rather than two, a claim which if true immediately provided the world by sleight of hand with an extra thirty years' supply at present consumption rates. To be sure, USGS former employees disputed its estimates as relying "heavily on guesses to calculate new oil discoveries," and on doubling the usual 30 percent recovery rate from reserves "with no technology in mind capable of doing that." Gordon, "Worries Swelling Over Oil Shortage," Energy Bulletin March 20-, 2005. The concerns about overestimation of discoveries proved correct: they continued on their downward track. This alone created a discrepancy between the USGS projections and reality of approximately 900 billion barrels. At the same time, the production data appeared to peak in 2005, prominent Princeton University petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes predicted that 2005 was the year, and Simmons suggested similar concerns. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4835 and http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Northern%20Trust%20Bank.pdf (p. 31). Nonetheless, based upon the USGS wishful thinking, during the Bush Administration, the Department of Energy was forecasting a "production peak somewhere between 2021 and the start of the next century, with 2037 the most likely date." http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4835 Not to worry.




With the peak imminent in reality, like the global warming "scientific skeptics," industry in 2006 came up with a "theory" published in a non-peer-reviewed report, that "peak oil" was in its totality a false concept, and that the true behavior of an oil field or conglomeration thereof was a peak followed by an "undulating plateau" and then a gentle decline by around 2% per year, years, perhaps decades later. According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), "“It is likely that the situation will unfold in slow motion and that there are a number of decades to prepare for the start of the undulating plateau. This means that there is time to consider the best way to develop viable energy alternatives that would eventually provide the bulk of our transport energy needs." www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/about/about.aspx Not to worry.



CERA faulted the "peak oil" proponets with failure to take into acount the facts that reserve estimates evolve with time and that so does the technology used in extracting oil. The criticism is disingenuous given that the industry refuses to disclose either the technology it is using at any one time or its true reserves, and the reserve estimates evolve with time more for political reasons than geological one.. The facts the proponents of "peak oil" fail to take into account are facts that the industry will not disclose. As Simmons has pointed out, "With solid global field-by-field production data, 'Peak Oil timing could be 'proved'." And, or course, if the "undulating plateau" theory is correct, all the industry has to do is to disclose their true facts to prove it, but they won't. Regardless, average decline rates of an oil sujpply are dictated by only two numbers: how fast we are now using the oil, and how much is left. Lower decline rates now mean higher decline rates later. Those are immutable facts even if the "undulating plateau" is correct. So to avoid a rapid decline in available oil, we must discover and bring to production staggeringly large new supplies, right now today. Nonetheless, the CERA "theory" has sufficiently intimidated the bureaucrats that DOE's official position at the moment, as expressed to Le Monde, notwithstanding the graph, is that we are "entering a plateau." petrole.blog.lemonde.fr:80/2010/03/25/washington-considers-a-decline-of-world-oil-production-as-of-2011/



At the same time all of this was happening, the UN, the US Congress, the Obama Administration and the oil industry were negotiating over goals for global warming legislation. Miraculously, although arguably coincidentally, the percentage-reduction goals agreed to fit quite precisely the percentage reductions in oil consumption that will be physiclly forced upon us all if you believe the above graph: an 18% drop from 2005 by 2020, and an 85% drop from 2005 by 2050. (It is possible to extrapolate the graph, which assumes exponentially dropping levels of existing reserves at a 4% per year rate.) This compares to reductions of CO2 emissions 17% from 2005 in 2020 and 80% from 2005 in 2050 in the bill. So it would appear that the legislative goals have been set, for whatever reason, so that the oil industry will have to do little if anything it won't have to do in any event because of dwindling reserves. http://ecoglobe.ch/energy/e/peak9423.htm . It is hard to see how the negotiators could have come up with such correspondence if they had not all been aware of the impending crash of production and the expected decline rate.. Coincidence? Maybe, but somehow it seems unlikely. Whether or not by intent, the goals fit the needs of the oil companies rather than the needs calculated by the scientists.




In short, with all the evidence available, it is hard to see how the industry and the Department of Energy could have failed to see this coming. Their failure to warn the public, given the consequences, verges on the criminal. And if somehow they can claim innocence, then we still have to ask why they did not heed the warning of Matt Simmons, advisor on peak oil to the Bush administration, as to the importance of transparency. But they did not, and here we are.



CONCLUSIONS



We are on our own. We are rapidly going to have to deal with less and less oil, since there has been no forewarning and no planning. It is a time for communities to prepare for community energy independence, because only that way will be safe. This means relying on the sun and wind and water that have always been with us. It means cooperation with each other to get through seriously difficult times. It means finding alternatives to oil throughout our lives as quickly as possible - the oil that runs our cars, the oil that heats our houses, the oil that runs generators for our electricity, the oil from which chemical fertilizers and insecticides and plastics and polyester are made, the oil that brings countless manufactured goods to us from overseas, the oil on which farmers depend for irrigation pujmps, for transporting produce to market, for working the soil to bring us food. If you believe the graph, it will almost all be gone in 20 years. And the progressives and Tea-Partyers must remember that the people who brought this calamity to us are not our friends but are people we trusted and they trusted, so we must work together to cope with the mess that is upon us, and "to throw the rascals out.".




The author, Nicholas C. Arguimbau, is an appellate and environmental lawyer licensed in California and residing in Western Massachusetts. He may be contacted at narguimbau@earthlink.net.

http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

Can You Pass The Iran Quiz

By Jeffrey Rudolph

24 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org

What can possibly justify the relentless U.S. diplomatic (and mainstream media) assault on Iran ?

It cannot be argued that Iran is an aggressive state that is dangerous to its neighbors, as facts do not support this claim. It cannot be relevant that Iran adheres to Islamic fundamentalism, has a flawed democracy and denies women full western-style civil rights, as Saudi Arabia is more fundamentalist, far less democratic and more oppressive of women, yet it is a U.S. ally. It cannot be relevant that Iran has, over the years, had a nuclear research program, and is most likely pursuing the capacity to develop nuclear weapons, as Pakistan, India, Israel and other states are nuclear powers yet remain U.S. allies—indeed, Israel deceived the U.S. while developing its nuclear program.

The answer to the above-posed question is fairly obvious: Iran must be punished for leaving the orbit of U.S. control. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when the Shah was removed, Iran, unlike, say, Saudi Arabia, acts independently and thus compromises U.S. power in two ways: i) Defiance of U.S. dictates affects the U.S.'s attainment of goals linked to Iran; and, ii) Defiance of U.S. dictates establishes a “bad” example for other countries that may wish to pursue an independent course. The Shah could commit any number of abuses—widespread torture, for example—yet his loyalty to the U.S. exempted him from American condemnation—yet not from the condemnation of the bulk of Iranians who brought him down.

The following quiz is an attempt to introduce more balance into the mainstream discussion of Iran.

Iran Quiz Questions :

1. Is Iran an Arab country?

2. Has Iran launched an aggressive war of conquest against another country since 1900?

3. How many known cases of an Iranian suicide-bomber have there been from 1989 to 2007?

4. What was Iran 's defense spending in 2008?

5. What was the U.S. 's defense spending in 2008?

6. What is the Jewish population of Iran ?

7. Which Iranian leader said the following? “This [ Israel 's] Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

8. True of False: Iranian television presented a serial sympathetic to Jews during the Holocaust that coincided with President Ahmadinejad's first term.

9. What percentage of students entering university in Iran is female?

10. What percentage of the Iranian population attends Friday prayers?

11. True or False: Iran has formally consented to the Arab League's 2002 peace initiative with Israel.

12. Which two countries were responsible for orchestrating the 1953 overthrow of Iran's populist government of democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, primarily because he introduced legislation that led to the nationalization of Iranian oil?

13. Who made the following address on March 17, 2000? “In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”

14. Which countries trained the Shah's brutal internal security service, SAVAK?

15. Does Iran have nuclear weapons?

16. Is Iran a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)?

17. Is Israel a signatory of the NPT?

18. Does the NPT permit a signatory to pursue a nuclear program?

19. Who wrote the following in 2004? "Wherever U.S forces go, nuclear weapons go with them or can be made to follow in short order. The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy. Though Iran is ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, most commentators who are familiar with the country do not regard its government as irrational. ... [I]t was Saddam Hussein who attacked Iran, not the other way around; since then Iran has been no more aggressive than most countries are. For all their talk of opposition to Israel , Iran 's rulers are very unlikely to mount a nuclear attack on a country that is widely believed to have what it takes to wipe them off the map. Chemical or other attacks are also unlikely, given the meager results that may be expected and the retaliation that would almost certainly follow.”

20. What percentage of Iranians in 2008 said they had an unfavorable view of the American people?

21. What percentage of Iranians in 2008 expressed negative sentiments toward the Bush administration?

22. What were the main elements of Iran's 2003 Proposal to the U.S., communicated during the build-up to the Iraq invasion, and how did the U.S. respond to Iran's Proposal?

23. True or False: Iran and the U.S. both considered the Taleban to be an enemy after the 9/11 attacks.

24. Did the U.S. work with the Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq both before and after the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq?

25. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, who said the following? "The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States ."

26. Who wrote the following in 2004? “It is in the interests of the United States to engage selectively with Iran to promote regional stability, dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, preserve reliable energy supplies, reduce the threat of terror, and address the ‘democracy deficit' that pervades the Middle East …”

Iran Quiz Answers :

1. No. Alone among the Middle Eastern peoples conquered by the Arabs, the Iranians did not lose their language or their identity. Ethnic Persians make up 60 percent of modern Iran, modern Persian (not Arabic) is the official language, Iran is not a member of the Arab League, and the majority of Iranians are Shiite Muslims while most Arabs are Sunni Muslims. Accordingly, based on language, ancestry and religion, Iran is not an Arab country. ( http://www.slate.com/id/1008394/ )

2. No.

-According to Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Iran has not launched such a war for at least 150 years. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p.199.)

-It should be appreciated that Iran did not start the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s: “ The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980 following a long history of border disputes, and fears of Shia insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution. Iraq was also aiming to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War)

3. Zero. There is not a single known instance of an Iranian suicide-bomber since the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. ( Robert Baer; The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower; Crown Publishers; New York: 2008.)

-According to Baer, an American author and a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, it is i mportant to understand that Iran has used suicide bombers as the ultimate “smart bomb.” In fact there is little difference between a suicide-bomber and a marine who rushes a machine-gun nest to meet his certain death. Therefore, while Iran had used suicide bombers for tactical military purposes, Sunni extremists use suicide bombing for vague objectives such as to weaken the enemy or purify the state.

4. $9.6 billion. ( http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25279.htm )

5. $692 billion. ( http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25279.htm )

-There is also little doubt that Israel could defeat Iran in a conventional war in mere hours. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p p.206-7.)

6. 25,000. It is one of the many paradoxes of the Islamic Republic of Iran that this anti-Israeli country supports by far the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, thousands of Jews left for Israel, Western Europe or the U.S., fearing persecution. But Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's first post-revolutionary supreme leader, issued a fatwa, upon his return from exile in Paris, decreeing that the Jews and other religious minorities were to be protected, thus reducing the outflow of Iran's Jews to a trickle. ( http://www.sephardicstudies.org/iran.html )

7. Ruhollah Khomeini. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York : 2009; p.201.)

-This wasn't a surprising statement to come from the leader of the 1979 Revolution as Israel had been a firm ally of both the U.S. and the Shah.

-According to Cole, Ahmadinejad quoted this statement in 2005 yet wire service translators rendered Khomeini's statement into English as “Israel must be wiped off the face of the map.” Yet, Khomeini had referred to the occupation regime not Israel , and while he expressed a wish for the regime to go away he didn't threaten to go after Israel . In fact, a regime can vanish without any outside attacks, as happened to the Shah's regime in Iran and to the USSR. It is notable that when Khomeini made the statement in the 1980s, there was no international outcry. In fact, in the early 1980s, Khomeini supplied Israel with petroleum in return for American spare parts for the American-supplied Iranian arsenal. As both Israel and Iran considered Saddam's Iraq a serious enemy, they had a tacit alliance against Iraq during the first phase of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. It should also be noted that Ahmadinejad subsequently stated he didn't want to kill any Jews but rather he wants a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. While Ahmadinejad's preferred solution is a non-starter, Israel 's refusal to pursue a comprehensive peace creates space for Arab hardliners whose agendas do not include a realistic peace with Israel .

8. True. Iranian television ran a widely watched serial on the Holocaust, Zero Degree Turn , based on true accounts of the role Iranian diplomats in Europe played in rescuing thousands of Jews in WWII.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJljqWQAqCI&feature=related )

9. Over 60%. ( M. Axworthy; A History of Iran : Empire of the Mind; Basic Books; New York : 2008.)

-In fact, many women—even married women—have professional jobs.

10. 1.4%. ( M. Axworthy; A History of Iran : Empire of the Mind; Basic Books; New York : 2008.)

11. True. In March 2002, the Arab League summit in Beirut unanimously put forth a peace initiative that commits it not just to recognize Israel but also to establish normal relations once Israel implements the international consensus for a comprehensive peace—which includes Israel withdrawing from the occupied territories and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee crisis. (This peace initiative has been subsequently reaffirmed including at the March 2009 Arab League summit at Doha.) All 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, including Iran , "adopted the Arab peace initiative to resolve the issue of Palestine and the Middle East ... and decided to use all possible means in order to explain and clarify the full implications of this initiative and win international support for its implementation." ( Norman G. Finkelstein; This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion; OR Books; New York : 2010; p. 42.)

12. The U.S. and Britain . ( Stephen Kinzer; All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; New Jersey: 2008.)

-According to Kinzer, Iranians had been complaining that the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) had not been sharing profits on Iranian petroleum with Iran fairly; and Iran's parliament (Majles) had tried to renegotiate with the AIOC. When the AIOC rejected renegotiation, Mossadegh introduced the nationalization act in 1951. In response, Britain and the U.S. organized a global boycott of Iran which sent the Iranian economy into a tailspin. Later, the military coup was orchestrated that reinstalled the shah. (One irony is that Britain itself had nationalized several industries in the 1940s and 1950s.)

13. Madeleine Albright: U.S. Secretary of State , 1997 -2001. ( Stephen Kinzer; All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; New Jersey : 2008; p.212.)

14. According to William Blum, a highly respected author and journalist, "The notorious Iranian security service, SAVAK, which employed torture routinely, was created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel in the 1950s. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, Jesse J. Leaf, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency. After the 1979 revolution, the Iranians found CIA film made for SAVAK on how to torture women." (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Torture_RS.html)

-According to Reed College Professor Darius Rejali, one of the world's leading writers on the subject of torture and the consequences of its use for modern society, “[T]he Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the revolution against torture. When the Shah criticized Khomayni as a blackrobed Islamic medieval throwback, Khomayni replied, look who is talking, the man who tortures. This was powerful rhetoric for recruiting people, then as it is now. People joined the revolutionary opposition because of the Shah's brutality, and they remembered who installed him. If anyone wants to know why Iranians hated the U.S. so, all they have to do is ask what America 's role was in promoting torture in Iran . Torture not only shaped the revolution, it was the factor that has deeply poisoned the relationship of Iran with the West. So why trust the West again? And the Iranian leadership doesn't.” ( http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002387 )

15. No.

-"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons
program …” “ We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.” ( U.S. National Intelligence Estimate Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities November 2007

http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf )

-According to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, "The bottom line assessments of the [National Intelligence Estimate] still hold true, " … We have not seen indication that the government has made the decision to move ahead with the [nuclear weapons] program." (http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20100115_1438.php)

16. Yes. ( http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/18/world/AP-ML-Iran.html )

17. No. ( http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/18/world/AP-ML-Iran.html )

18. Yes.

-According to Juan Cole, The NPT specifies that “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” Therefore, as long as Iran meets its responsibilities under the NPT and continues to allow inspections by the IAEA, it is acting within its rights. The sorts of research facilities maintained by Iran are common in industrialized countries. The real issue is trust and transparency rather than purely one of technology. Yet, Iran has not always been forthcoming in fulfilling its obligations under the NPT.

The Ford administration of the mid-1970s produced a memo saying that the shah's regime must “prepare against the time … when Iranian oil production is expected to decline sharply.” Iran 's energy reserves are extensive, so that fear was misplaced. But Iran already uses domestically 2 million of the 4 million barrels a day it produces, and it could well cease being an exporter and even become a net importer in the relatively near future. (This helps explain Iran's focus on nuclear energy. Yet, the desire for nuclear weapons isn't irrational either.) Ford authorized a plutonium reprocessing plant for Iran , which could have allowed it to close the fuel cycle, a step toward producing a bomb.

In the 1970s, GE and Westinghouse won contracts to build eight nuclear reactors in Iran . The shah intimated that Iran would seek nuclear weapons, without facing any adverse consequences beyond some reprimands from the U.S. or Western Europe . In contrast, Khomeini was horrified by the idea of using weapons of mass destruction, and he declined to deploy chemical weapons at the front in the Iran-Iraq War, even though Saddam had no such compunctions and extensively used mustard gas and sarin on Iranian troops. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009)

19. Martin van Creveld: Distinguished professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem . ( http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/21/opinion/21iht-edcreveld_ed3_.html )
-It should not be surprising that Creveld would deem it rational for Iran to want nuclear weapons. "For more than half a century, Britain and the US have menaced Iran . In 1953, the CIA and MI6 overthrew the democratic government of Mohammed Mossadegh, an inspired nationalist who believed that Iranian oil belonged to Iran . They installed the venal shah and, through a monstrous creation called SAVAK, built one of the most vicious police states of the modern era. The Islamic revolution in 1979 was inevitable and very nasty, yet it was not monolithic and, through popular pressure and movement from within the elite, Iran has begun to open to the outside world – in spite of having sustained an invasion by Saddam Hussein, who was encouraged and backed by the US and Britain.
At the same time, Iran has lived with the real threat of an Israeli attack, possibly with nuclear weapons, about which the ‘international community' has remained silent.” ( http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=8533 )

20. 20%. ( Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York : 2009; p.197.)

21. 75%. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; ( New York : 2009); p.197.)

-One wonders what the percentage of Canadians—or Americans—held the same view?

22. According to the Washington Post, “Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces … an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States , and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups. But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran …” ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700727_pf.html )

23. True. According to Ali M. Ansari, Professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews, “[K]hatami, moved quickly to offer his condolences to the US President [after the 9/11 attacks]. … [T]he Iranians soon recognized the opportunity that now confronted them. The United States was determined to dismantle Al Qaeda, and in the face of Taleban obstinacy decided on the removal of the Taleban. Nothing could be more amenable to the Iranians, who had been waging a proxy war against the Taleban for the better part of five years. … The collaboration which took place both during and after the war against the Taleban seemed to inaugurate a period of détente between Iran and the United States … It came as something of a shock therefore to discover that President Bush had decided to label Iran part of the ‘Axis of Evil' … Now it appeared that the [Iranian] hardliners within the regime had been correct after all; the United States could not be trusted …” ( Ali M. Ansari; Modern Iran: The Pahlavis and After Second Edition; Pearson Education; Great Britain: 2007; pp. 331-332.)

24. Yes. ( http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_bush_created_a_theocracy_in_iraq )

-One wonders what the Bush administration thought the party name entailed? Would it have been unreasonable to assume it had good relations with Iran and might support an Islamic Revolution?

-In 2007, the party, showing good public relations, changed its name to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq .

25. Flynt Leverett: Senior director for Middle East affairs in the U.S. National Security Council from March 2002 to March 2003. He left the George W. Bush Administration and government service in 2003 because of disagreements about Middle East policy and the conduct of the war on terror. ( http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8590 )

26. A task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and chaired by two prominent members of the American foreign policy establishment, former CIA director Robert Gates and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, recommended “a revised strategic approach to Iran.” Their report included the above statement. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/mar/24/clouds-over-iran/?pagination=false )

Jeffrey Rudolph, a college professor in Montreal, was the Quebec representative of the East Timor Alert Network, and presented a paper on its behalf at the United Nations. He prepared the widely-distributed, “Can You Pass the Israel-Palestine Quiz,” which can be found at,

http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph180608.htm (Comments or questions concerning these quizzes should be emailed to: Israel-Palestine-Quiz@live.com.)

The Tea Party and Big Spending on War

by Charles V. Peña,
April 30, 2010

Largely due to the recently passed health-care reform bill (aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010) that has a massive $940 billion price tag over ten years, the folks in the Tea Party movement have been in the news a lot lately.  The Tea Party isn’t a formal political party or organization, but more a loose conglomeration of groups such as:

• Tea Party Patriots


• Tea Party Express


• Tea Party Nation


• National Tea Party Federation

What these groups and others share in common is an opposition to big government and big government spending, along with the taxes needed to finance such spending.  [As an aside, the Tea Party movement takes its name from the Boston Tea Party, which was a direct act of protest by British colonists who believed the Tea Act violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives.  It's worth noting, however, that the taxation that the Tea Party opposes is not without representation – Tea Party activists may not like the taxes, but they are enacted by representatives chosen in elections where Tea Partiers were allowed to vote.]  For example, from the Tea Party Patriots website:

• Fiscal Responsibility:  Fiscal Responsibility by government honors and respects the freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of their own labor.  A constitutionally limited government, designed to protect the blessings of liberty, must be fiscally responsible or it must subject its citizenry to high levels of taxation that unjustly restrict the liberty our Constitution was designed to protect.  Such runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington D.C. compels us to take action as the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty and the personal and economic liberty of future generations.


• Constitutionally Limited Government:  We, the members of The Tea Party Patriots, are inspired by our founding documents and regard the Constitution of the United States to be the supreme law of the land. We believe that it is possible to know the original intent of the government our founders set forth, and stand in support of that intent.  Like the founders, we support states’ rights for those powers not expressly stated in the Constitution.  As the government is of the people, by the people and for the people, in all other matters we support the personal liberty of the individual, within the rule of law.

Not surprisingly, the tea partyers have directed their ire at President Obama’s and the Democratically-controlled Congress’s proclivity for excessive domestic spending.  Although it’s not clear how they feel about farm subsidies which cost $10 to $30 billion a year.  Or earmark spending – according to Citizens Against Government Waste, in fiscal year 2009 there were 9,129 earmarks worth $16.5 billion.  At least they seem to be against corporate bailouts … now. (It’s hard to remember a groundswell of those who fit the Tea Party demographic – Republicans or Republican-leaners who voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election – who were as vocal about bailing out Wall Street and Detroit automakers when George W. Bush occupied the Oval Office.)  And while the Tea Party is clearly anti-government funded/run health care, it’s not entirely clear where they stand on Medicare and Medicaid – although the idea of "Keep The Guvmint Out Of My Medicare" is amusing. 

And Tea Party-goers have been largely silent about spending for the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To begin, even though the various Tea Party groups pay lip service to "Constitutionally limited government" and copies of the Constitution are often handed out at Tea Party rallies, they seem to have forgotten (or never read) Article 1, Section 8 that gives Congress the power to declare war.  Otherwise, they would at least bother to point out that both Afghanistan and Iraq are unconstitutional (as has been every U.S. military intervention overseas since World War 2).

Constitutionality aside, the cost of military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan is hardly trivial.  The National Priorities Project’s Cost of War counter is currently (as this is written) at $987 billion-plus for both wars (remember when former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey opined that the Iraq conflict would cost $100 billion to $200 billion and then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld later called his estimate "baloney"?)  According to the National Priorities Project, "to date [fiscal year 2010] $1.05 trillion dollars have been allocated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In their book The Three Trillion Dollar War, Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz estimate that the total cost of both wars will be $3 trillion.

You would think these kind of numbers would grab the Tea Party’s attention.  If the prospect of $940 billion over ten years for health care concerns them, the $680 billion in FY 2010 for the Department of Defense (the FY2011 request is $708 billion) would also seem to warrant some concern on their part.

Apparently not.  So it’s hard to take the Tea Party’s mantra of "fiscal responsibility" seriously.  Although the Tea Party has its roots in Ron Paul’s revolution, they forgot the part about a non-interventionist foreign policy (full disclosure: I was a foreign policy advisor to Dr. Paul during his 2008 presidential run), which is part and parcel of a constitutionally limited government and fiscal responsibility.

Unfortunately – especially with Sarah Palin seemingly now a darling of the Tea Party crowd (she was the keynote speaker at the Tea Party Nation’s national convention in Nashville, TN, in February and was a headliner for the Tea Party Express stop in Boston, MA on April 14th) – it seems the tea the Tea Party has been drinking is just Republican Kool Aid.

http://original.antiwar.com/pena/2010/04/29/the-tea-party-and-big-spending-on-war/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+antiwar-original+%28Antiwar.com+Original+Articles%29

Hundreds of thousands march as global protests mark workers’ day of solidarity

By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, May 1st, 2010 -- 12:39 pm

Hundreds of thousands of people joined May Day marches across the world Saturday, as police and protestors clashed in debt-riven Greece and a bomb killed a World War II veteran in Russia.

In Athens several dozen youths, some armed with sticks, charged a line of anti-riot forces, prompting police to respond with tear gas as thousands of protestors swarmed the city to protest budget cuts forced by the debt crisis.

Police said about 15,000 people joined the Athens marches to vent anger at deep budget cuts which will hit public sector workers particularly hard.

"It's the biggest attack on workers for centuries. They want to return us to the nineteenth century," said one protestor, printer Ericos Finalis.

In the northern city of Thessaloniki, police also fired tear gas at youths who attacked banks and businesses using iron bars during a protest that police said drew about 5,000 people.

There were also clashes at a May Day march in the Chinese gambling mecca of Macau, where police used water cannon and pepper spray against hundreds of protestors who fought back with stones and bottles.

g20protestslondon Hundreds of thousands march as global protests mark workers day of solidarityAbout 1,000 people joined the demonstration to demand job protection and action against illegal workers, Hong Kong's RTHK radio said.

Tens of thousands filled a central square in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul for the first May Day celebrations at the site after dozens were killed there 33 years ago.

Waving colourful flags, the crowds marched into Taksim square, the hub of the sprawling city, and chanted: "Shoulder to shoulder against fascists."

The square had been declared off-limits since the bloodshed during a May Day rally there in 1977 when gunmen, believed to be far-right militants aided by members of the intelligence services, fired on a crowd, triggering mass panic.

In Russia, diehard Communists hoisted red flags and portraits of wartime leader Joseph Stalin in a throw-back to Soviet-era parades and joining unionists to bemoan the economic crisis and call for a return to communism.

An event in the country's restive North Caucasus region of Kabardino Balkaria was marred by a bomb blast that killed a 94-year-old veteran of World War II and injured nearly two dozen other people, according to news agencies.

May Day rallies also drew hundreds of thousands of people in several French cities although the turnout disappointed unions who had called for a massive show of force against pension reform.

In Ukraine, thousands chanted slogans such as "Socialism is our future", and in Serbia activists warned about the "worsening situation for workers" while in Romania opposition supporters in red shirts and caps targeted the government.

German police rounded up about 50 leftists overnight for various incidents in the lead up to May Day.

In Cuba, President Raul Castro presided over a May Day march staged as a show of unity in the face of what his government charges is a US and European-backed campaign to destroy the Cuban revolution.

The United States was meanwhile braced for demonstrations expected in more than 70 cities to protest at a tough new immigration law in Arizona that has triggered an outcry from rights groups.

In Hong Kong, several thousand protestors marched through the streets to demand a minimum wage of 33 dollars (4.20 US) per hour and better job protection.

Thousands marched through the Indonesian capital Jakarta demanding better social security and shouting "Today we unite" and "Stop oppression now." Some 15,000 security personnel stood guard, using water canon to suppress a scuffle near the palace.

The Indonesian social security system only covered about 25 percent of workers, Indonesian Workers Association head Saepul Tavip told AFP.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0501/hundreds-thousands-march-global-protests-mark-workers-day-solidarity/