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How NSA Surveillance Fits Into a Long History of American Global Political Strategy

by ChristiScanlon Posted on January 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington. The answer is remarkably simple. For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line— like, in fact, the steal of the century. Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.

For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion. Not surprisingly, in a post-9/11 bipartisan exercise of executive power, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have presided over building the NSA step by secret step into a digital panopticon designed to monitor the communications of every American and foreign leaders worldwide.

What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long history of US surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies.

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How NSA Surveillance Fits Into a Long History of American Global Political Strategy

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China launches world’s second-biggest carbon-trading market

by BelindaPowell Posted on December 20, 2013

China launches world’s second-biggest carbon-trading market

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If you find yourself passing through the Chinese city of Guangzhou with 61 renminbi burning a hole in your pocket, you could drop by the world’s newest and bound-to-be-second-largest carbon-trading market and pick up a carbon credit as a souvenir.

The first day of trading at China’s fourth carbon-trading market was described as brisk on Thursday. A cement company kicked things off, buying 20,000 carbon permits from an energy company in early trading at the equivalent of about $10 a pop. Reuters reports:

Early trade volume in Guangdong’s carbon permit market, expected to be the world’s second largest in terms of carbon dioxide covered, surpassed full-day totals that started the country’s three other carbon exchanges.

China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, wants to use markets to achieve its target to cut emissions per unit of gross domestic product to 40 percent to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 — at the lowest possible cost.

Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have already opened markets of their own; Hubei Province and the cities of Chongqing and Tianjin are expected to follow in the next few months.

The new market will become China’s main carbon-trading hub, second in trading volume only to one operated by the European Union. There, similar carbon credits trade for a little less than $7.

Once all of China’s seven planned carbon markets are operating, they will regulate emissions that are roughly equivalent to Germany’s carbon footprint.


Source
Chinese Carbon Market Opens to a Busy First Day, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Charts: Catholic Hospitals Don’t Do Much for the Poor

by mlodyseo7 Posted on December 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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Catholic hospitals have been on a merger spree over the last few years, as Mother Jones reported earlier this year. Ever-expanding swaths of the country are now served only by a Catholic hospital, where patients have no choice but to receive care dictated by Catholic bishops whose religious edicts don’t always align with what’s best for a patient. Catholic hospitals generally follow the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care, which restrict abortion even in cases where a fetus isn’t viable, for instance, a practice that has resulted in hospitals denying proper care for women suffering from miscarriages. The ACLU recently filed suit against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on behalf of a Michigan woman who was suffering a second-trimester miscarriage and was sent home twice by a Catholic hospital, developing a serious infection because the hospital refused to even talk to her about the possibility of an abortion. Her baby died two hours after she miscarried.

Despite this heavy mixing of theology and health care, Catholic hospitals in 2011 received $27 billion—nearly half of their revenues—from public sources, according to a new report put out today by the American Civil Liberties Union and MergerWatch, a reproductive rights advocacy group. And that figure doesn’t even include other tax subsidies the hospitals receive thanks to their nonprofit status.

The hospitals have long justified their tax status and restrictions on care by pointing to their religious mission of serving the poor and their delivery of charitable care. But the new ACLU/MergerWatch report suggests, and the chart below illustrates, Pope Francis might be on to something when he’s said that the church needs to shift its priorities to focus less on abortion and more on the poor. MergerWatch data show that Catholic hospitals, where executives often earn multimillion-dollar salaries, aren’t doing any better providing charity care than other religious non-profit hospitals that don’t restrict care. They’re barely any better than ordinary secular nonprofits.

ACLU/MergerWatch

The charitable care figures also don’t give a complete picture of how well Catholic hospitals serve the poor and uninsured because it doesn’t include patients who are covered by Medicaid, the government health care plan for the low-income and disabled. As it turns out, Catholic hospitals, which in 2011 had more than $200 billion in gross patient revenue, had the lowest percentage of revenue from Medicaid of any type of hospital. Even for-profit hospitals earned more revenue from Medicaid than Catholic hospitals.

ACLU/MergerWatch

All of these numbers suggest that as Catholic hospitals have merged and expanded into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, they’ve moved far beyond their religious mission and become like any other large corporation. Given those trends, and the hospitals’ reliance on public funding, it’s hard to see how they can continue to justify their mixing of Catholic doctrine with health care, especially when it disproportionately violates standards of care for women.

The ACLU/MergerWatch report calls on the US Department of Health and Human Services to crack down on Catholic hospitals and to insist that they follow federal law requiring all hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding to provide emergency treatment to any patient, even if that care requires an emergency abortion. Other advocacy groups have made similar requests in the past few years, but HHS thus far has refused to pick a fight with the Catholic Church, which has turned into one of the Obama administration’s biggest foes thanks to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act. The church has proven to be a powerful enemy—a wealthy special interest in a holy war—and even the new Pope seems unlikely to persuade it to give up this particular fight.

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Charts: Catholic Hospitals Don’t Do Much for the Poor

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Are Brits going to get screwed by pricey nuclear power?

by Conradk77 Posted on December 13, 2013

Are Brits going to get screwed by pricey nuclear power?

By

EDF Energy

This nuclear plant would be really, really expensive.

New nuclear power has become so expensive that Britain intends to allow a nuke plant operator to charge double the market rate for electricity. The European Union is investigating whether that amounts to illegal government aid to a company.

French nuclear energy giant EDF wants to build a $26 billion facility in southwest England, the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. The U.K. government’s philosophy is that nuclear power is desirable; the new plant could meet 7 percent of Britain’s electricity needs without hurting the climate. So, the power plant would be heavily subsidized by utility customers paying roughly double the rate set by the free market for electricity.

Some say that plan violates E.U. rules that restrict government aid for individual companies. From Reuters:

The European Commission will open an investigation next week into planned British support for a new nuclear power plant, three people familiar with the matter said, in a precedent-setting case for future nuclear funding in Europe. …

If the Commission refuses state aid approval, the Hinkley Point project could fail, threatening the British government’s long-term energy and environmental plans which call for nuclear power.

“The project could not proceed,” an EU diplomatic source said when asked what would happen if the Commission rules against the plan.

Another possibility is the directorate could call for modification of the government’s planned support, involving the guaranteed price or the contract’s length.

If you think opening a nuclear power plant is a dicey and pricey proposition these days, wait until you hear how much it costs to shut one down.

The Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida went offline in 2009, following a series of maintenance-related accidents, because it could no longer compete with fossil fuels or renewables on price. This week, Duke Energy told regulators that the shutdown and cleanup will cost $1.2 billion and take 60 years. That’s nearly twice as long as the plant was in operation.


Source
EU to launch probe into British nuclear state aid next week — sources, Reuters
Shutting down Crystal River nuclear plant will cost $1.2 billion, take 60 years, Tampa Bay Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Are Brits going to get screwed by pricey nuclear power?

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How offshore wind farms could protect us from hurricanes

by Peggy Mason Posted on December 11, 2013

How offshore wind farms could protect us from hurricanes

By

Eugene Suslo

It’s time to turn the tables on hurricanes. Instead of allowing their ferocious winds to tear apart our cities and infrastructure, why not use those winds to produce clean electricity?

Stanford University researchers used computer simulations to calculate that a protective wall of 70,000 offshore wind turbines built 60 miles offshore from New Orleans would have reduced Hurricane Katrina’s wind speeds by 50 percent by the time it reached land. The storm surges that toppled levees would have been reduced by nearly three-quarters. And a lot of electricity would have been produced, to boot, with the spinning of the wind turbines absorbing much of the storm’s power.

A similar array off the coast of New York or New Jersey could have reduced Hurricane Sandy’s wind speeds by 65 miles per hours, the scientists found.

The findings were presented this week during the annual get-together of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Climate Central reports:

Stanford civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson and his research team found that if it was feasible to build tens of thousands of wind power turbines off the shores of some of America’s cities most vulnerable to extreme weather, those cities would see lower wind speeds and less severe storm surges from approaching hurricanes. …

“If we have large arrays of offshore wind turbines — large walls of turbines — we could dissipate winds and storm surge quite a bit,” particularly in the vicinity of the turbines themselves, Jacobson said.

A study Jacobson co-authored in 2012 showed that offshore wind power can generate enough power to meet a third of U.S. energy needs. …

Jacobson said he has also envisioned constructing turbines worldwide to produce green energy that would meet half the world’s energy needs. He said it would require 4 million wind turbines globally to do so.

Such a lot of turbines would also affect local wind speeds during non-hurricane times, which could be good or bad. That said, it would sure be nice to rub our collective hands at the prospects of a clean energy rush every time a hurricane started to form in the Atlantic — instead of evacuating and battening down the hatches.

Read more about Jacobson’s planet-saving ideas: When it comes to energy, Mark Jacobson thinks big


Source
Offshore Wind Farms Could Protect Cities from Hurricanes, Climate Central

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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In 2 Charts: Why Hillary (and Bill) Clinton Damn Well Better Hope Obamacare Succeeds

by Julie Plunkett Posted on November 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Bill Clinton did it again. On Tuesday, he interjected himself into the ongoing political tussle over the implementation of Obamacare by declaring that President Barack Obama “should honor” his “commitment” to allow people to hang on to their preexisiting health insurance plans. With this comment, the Secretary of Explaining Stuff gave ammo to the foes of Obamacare, and he, unintentionally or not, undermined a core element of the health care law. And, no surprise, he kicked off a spasm of speculation among the politerati: What are the Clintons up to? Will Hillary, if she runs for president, distance herself from the White House? Will she somehow suggest she’s more competent than Obama? All this commentary was to be expected. There’s something about the Clintons that encourages folks to sniff out clever schemes, intricate plots, and self-serving conniving.

But there’s a basic fact that cannot be escaped: The Clintons need Obamacare to succeed. Just look at the chart in the video below:

After Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, he placed his wife in charge of health care reform. (It was part of the two-for-one deal.) And she subsequently unveiled a complicated reform plan that was quickly dubbed Hillarycare by Republicans and conservatives. The Clintons did seem to have a decent amount of political momentum on their side, and their GOP foes, fretting about being rolled, initially entertained the crazy idea of working with the White House to hammer out compromises and shape the legislation a bit more to their liking. Then came Sen. Arlen Specter, a cantankerous Pennsylvania Republican (who years later would switch parties). He hit the Senate floor with charts—complicated wire diagrams that appeared nearly impossible to sort out—that purportedly showed that Hillarycare would create a bureaucratic nightmare. It looked incomprehensibly complicated.

Meanwhile, Rep. Dick Armey, a leading House Republican, created his own chart:

Courtesy of Freedomworks

Armey’s office captioned the chart, “Simplicity Defined.” Dole showcased it in his 1994 response to Clinton’s State of the Union address.

After first toying with a get-along strategy for dealing with Hillarycare, the Republicans mounted a fierce opposition against it, and these charts fueled that effort (along with the Harry and Louise ad campaign orchestrated by the health insurance industry). Waving these charts, the GOPers succeeded in killing Hillarycare—and, decrying the Clintons’ health care proposal, they went on to seize control of the House in the 1994 midterm elections.

Hillarycare ended up a political failure and set back the cause of health care reform for nearly two decades. It’s not an episode that Hillary Clinton would want discussed during a 2016 presidential campaign. If Obamacare thrives, there will be no reason to look back to Hillarycare and drag these charts out of the dustbin of history. But should the Affordable Care Act falter or collapse, a question will loom: What would Hillary do about health care? Her past record would be raked over and that would likely not boost her presidential prospects. Having screwed up in the early 1990s, could she argue that she would do a better job in reforming the health care system than Obama?

It would be best for a Clinton 2016 campaign for health care to be off the table—with no need to revisit all this inconvenient ancient history. That means she and Bill should be hoping that the implementation of Obamacare proceeds well—and they should do all they can to encourage that. So Bill Clinton ought to coordinate (closely) with the White House on what stuff he should be explaining. It’s not only the president’s political fortunes that are tied to Obamacare.

Source:

In 2 Charts: Why Hillary (and Bill) Clinton Damn Well Better Hope Obamacare Succeeds

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23 Petty Crimes That Have Landed People in Prison for Life Without Parole

by Ivan Nutter Posted on November 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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As of last year, according to a report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union, more than 3,200 people were serving life in prison without parole for nonviolent crimes. A close examination of these cases by the ACLU reveals just how petty some of these offenses are. People got life for, among other things…

Possessing a crack pipe
Possessing a bottle cap containing a trace amount of heroin (too minute to be weighed)
Having traces of cocaine in clothes pockets that were invisible to the naked eye but detected in lab tests
Having a single crack rock at home
Possessing 32 grams of marijuana (worth about $380 in California) with intent to distribute
Passing out several grams of LSD at a Grateful Dead show
Acting as a go-between in the sale of $10 worth of marijuana to an undercover cop
Selling a single crack rock
Verbally negotiating another man’s sale of two small pieces of fake crack to an undercover cop

comedy_nose/Flickr

Having a stash of over-the-counter decongestant pills that could be used to make methamphetamine
Attempting to cash a stolen check
Possessing stolen scrap metal (the offender was a junk dealer)—10 valves and one elbow pipe
Possessing stolen wrenches
Siphoning gasoline from a truck
Stealing tools from a shed and a welding machine from a front yard
Shoplifting three belts from a department store
Shoplifting several digital cameras
Shoplifting two jerseys from an athletic store

fanatics.com

Taking a television, circular saw, and power converter from a vacant house
Breaking into a closed liquor store in the middle of the night
Making a drunken threat to a police officer while handcuffed in the back of a patrol car
Being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm
Taking an abusive stepfather’s gun from their shared home

These are not typically first offenses, but nor are they isolated cases. The vast majority (83 percent) of life sentences examined by the ACLU were mandatory, meaning that the presiding judge had no choice but to sentence the defendant to a life behind bars. Mandatory sentences often result from repeat offender laws and draconian sentencing rules such as these federal standards for drug convictions:

Families Against Mandatory Minimums

The data examined by the ACLU comes from the federal prison system and nine state penal systems that responded to open-records requests. This means the true number of nonviolent offenders serving life without parole is higher.

What’s clear, based on the ACLU’s data, is that many nonviolent criminals have been caught up in a dramatic spike in life-without-parole sentences.

Among the cases reviewed, the vast majority were drug-related:

And most of the nonviolent offenders sentenced to life without parole were racial minorities.

All graphics by Associate Interactive Producer Jaeah Lee

Obviously, housing all of these nonviolent offenders isn’t cheap. On average, for example a single Louisiana inmate serving life without parole costs the state about $500,000. The ACLU estimates reducing existing lifetime sentences of nonviolent offenders to terms commensurate with their crimes would save taxpayers at least $1.8 billion.

In August, Attorney General Eric Holder unveiled a reform package aimed at scaling back the use of mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders. As Dana Liebelson noted:

Under Holder’s new policy, mandatory minimums as they apply to specific quantities of drugs will no longer be used against offenders whose cases do not involve violence, a weapon, and selling to a minor, and they will also not be used against offenders that do not have a “significant criminal history” and ties to a “large-scale” criminal organization.

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23 Petty Crimes That Have Landed People in Prison for Life Without Parole

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Bill would boost renewables to 25 percent by 2025, has no chance in hell of passing

by Christopherd3o Posted on November 1, 2013

Bill would boost renewables to 25 percent by 2025, has no chance in hell of passing

By

Shutterstock

Most states in the union require utilities to generate a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable sources. A new bill in Congress would take that strategy national.

Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) — cousins, as it happens — introduced legislation this week that would require utilities across the country to generate a quarter of their electricity from wind, solar, and other renewable sources by 2025.

That’s right in line with Colorado’s current renewable electricity standard, and it’s modest compared to California’s, which calls for utilities to get 33 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2020. Look abroad and it’s more modest still: Germany generates 23 percent of electricity from renewable sources, with a goal of reaching 80 percent by 2050. Around the world, 138 countries have renewable energy goals or requirements in place.

“Clean energy creates jobs, spurs innovation, reduces global warming and makes us more energy independent,” said Mark Udall. “This common-sense proposal would extend Colorado’s successful effort to expand the use of renewable energy alongside natural gas and coal to the entire nation.”

But Congress isn’t about to pass anything of the sort. Because, ew, clean energy. The Udalls first introduced similar legislation in 2002, when they were both members of the House, then introduced it again two years ago in Senate. No luck so far — but bonus points for persistence.

Energy Department

Click to embiggen.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Bill would boost renewables to 25 percent by 2025, has no chance in hell of passing

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Have we hit a “permanent slowdown” in the growth of global CO2 emissions?

by Katherined5a Posted on October 31, 2013

Have we hit a “permanent slowdown” in the growth of global CO2 emissions?

By

Shutterstock/Leena Robinson

The world keeps making climate change worse, pumping out more greenhouse gases every year than the year before. But in an encouraging sign, the rate at which emissions are growing appears to be slowing down.

Global emissions hit 38 billion tons of carbon dioxide last year — up 1.1 percent from 2011. That’s bleak, but the glimmer of hope here is that emissions increased during the last decade by much more than that — by an average of 2.9 percent every year.

The slowdown is attributed to the worldwide growth of the renewables sector; to America’s fracking boom (which produces cheap natural gas that’s reducing coal use but also hobbling the growth of renewables); to new hydropower projects that are offsetting the use of coal in China; and to falling energy consumption and transportation in Europe triggered in part by a bad economy.

The latest annual estimate by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre says this “may be the first sign of a more permanent slowdown in the increase in global CO2 emissions, and ultimately of declining global emissions.”

That “may be” is a big caveat. It depends largely on continued improvements by the world’s three biggest greenhouse gas polluters — China, the U.S., and the European Union, which together accounted for 55 percent of global emissions last year.

Of course, positive though this development might be, nobody is suggesting that these improvements alone will be enough to curb the climate disaster engulfing the globe.

“It is good news but nowhere near good enough,” Grist board member Bill McKibben told BBC News. “The solution we need here is dictated by physics, and at the moment the physics is busy melting the Arctic and acidifying the ocean. We can’t just plateau or go up less, we have to very quickly try and get the planet off fossil fuels.”

Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency and the European Commission’s Joint Research CentreClick to embiggen.


Source
Report suggests slowdown in CO2 emissions rise, BBC
Trends in global CO2 emissions: 2013 report, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission Joint Research Centre

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Have we hit a “permanent slowdown” in the growth of global CO2 emissions?

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Old Russian nukes provide 10 percent of U.S. electricity

by Peggy Mason Posted on October 10, 2013

Old Russian nukes provide 10 percent of U.S. electricity

By

Shutterstock

Thanks for all the cheap power.

Peace-loving opponents of nuclear energy might find themselves a little conflicted over this one.

U.S. nuclear plants have been using uranium from decommissioned Russian warheads to provide an astonishing 10 percent of America’s electricity over the past 15 years. From Agence France-Presse:

Rose Gottemoeller, US under secretary of state for arms control, told a UN committee [that a 1993 arms-reduction] accord was a disarmament success.

Arms control experts call it the “megatons-to-megawatts” deal and hail the accord as a little known but important example of the United States and Russia pressing disarmament. …

Signed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the deal was concluded as the two countries sought ways to get rid of warheads under their 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

But Russia has concluded that it’s been getting a raw deal, so it’s ending the arrangment:

[T]he deal under which 500 tonnes of Russian weapons-grade uranium has been used to light and heat American homes will end next month because Russia believes its former Cold War rival has been getting energy on the cheap. …

The United States tried to extend the accord, but Russia refused saying the price was too low, diplomats said.

The final shipment under the old agreement is due to be sent next month. Under a new contract, the U.S. will get about half as much uranium from Russia as it’s currently receiving, and that uranium will be commercially produced rather than recycled from old warheads.

The tapering off of cheap Russian uranium is bad news for an industry already in the doldrums. The U.S. nuclear industry will also be challenged by a shrinking supply of a type of lithium produced only in Russia and China, according to a new report.


Source
Russian warhead fallout keeps America warm, Agence France-Presse

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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