Take Action at Fukushima: An Open Letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Dear Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

You no doubt observed the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011, with terror and worry: what would another nuclear disaster mean for state relations, especially in your home region of East Asia? Fortunately, it seemed, the effects were largely kept to Japan’s islands and were less than many experts anticipated. Within weeks the stories dissipated if not disappeared from the major media outlets, only to be resurrected with personal interest stories of a hero or an especially tragic case of a lost loved one.

But the crisis is not over. Today, Martin Fackler reported in the New York Times that radioactively polluted water is leaking out of the plants and that the site is in a new state of emergency. Mitsuhei Murata, Japan’s former ambassador to Switzerland, wrote a letter last year that brought international attention to the thousands of radioactive spent fuel rods at the site and the danger their vulnerability presents; he has testified to this several times before Japan’s parliament. International experts, independent and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, have commented that the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s plans for the removal of the rods from the site and their storage in a safer, if still temporary, location are optimistic if not unrealistic.

The news media has done an adequate if meager job of reporting the many issues the fuel rods present. The radioactive fuel must be continuously cooled in order to stay safe; the improvised electric system that maintains this cooling has failed several times, once for more than 24 hours, both on its own and because of hungry rats. The mechanism that stands between safety and a fire at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is, to say the least, precarious. (And, as has been clear to many since the beginning, TEPCO hope to shirk its responsibility: first, in its safety and maintenance of the site; second, in paying its costs to Japan.)

One can only speculate to the extent of the consequences of a spent fuel fire, but, unarguably, once a fire ignites (from lack of cooling water or from an earthquake-caused spill), even the best case scenario would be an unprecedented global disaster. Possible consequences are the evacuation of Tokyo’s 35 million people, permanent disuse of Japan’s land, and poisoned food crops in the United States. These are not fantastic projections, but reasonable, if not conservative, expectations.

Yet, unimaginably but all too familiarly, the situation is still relegated to the back pages of our papers, and thus to the back of our leaders’ minds. This reminds me of our international approach to solving climate change, which I have partaken in for decades, first in the United Nations and then as the Secretary General of the Parliamentary Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: we have a latent but very serious issue that we can likely fix but lack the resolve and political will to do so. As you well know, a successful climate change agreement has eluded us.

In comparison with climate change, however, the radioactive fuel rod issue at Fukushima is both easier to solve and more urgent. Any Japanese can tell you another serious earthquake will hit Japan well inside the next decade. That is to say, this situation must be resolved quickly.

Still, even if possible to solve, the issue needs constant attention and competent and well funded actors. So who might take charge? The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week that it will take TEPCO 40 years to secure the radioactive fuel rods in more appropriate storage containers. TEPCO is already refusing to pay Japan billions of Yen in cleanup costs, and does not have the technology or wherewithal to perform the task competently and expediently. Yet, so far the Japanese government has only looked to TEPCO.

The next obvious choice outside Japan is the United States, for their technological superiority, money, and leadership. Early after the accident, the U.S. Department of Defense offered assistance to Japan, but the Japanese denied their help. It remains to be seen whether that door has permanently closed. This would not be a benevolent action: the U.S. sits in harm’s way in the case of a fuel pool fire; residents of California, Oregon, and Washington have already received much radiation. U.S.-led action, except perhaps by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, is unlikely: U.S. senators and representatives continues to demonstrate their impotence at home or abroad.

I have long been advocating for an international team of independent experts to investigate the situation. The United Nations is one appropriate body to assemble and deliver such a team. The IAEA, however, should not take on the responsibility.

The IAEA’s mission is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Concerns of proliferation are not applicable here, and the disaster itself has certainly called into question (again) what the peaceful use of nuclear energy means and whether it should be promoted. While the agency has recently urged safety improvements at Fukushima, the official line of thinking is still, incorrectly and impossibly, to use TEPCO to carry out the process.

We are not only waiting for a bigger disaster. One is already unfolding before us. The health consequences of the released radiation are large: despite what major news outlets are reporting, we will see a significant jump in thyroid and other cancers in Japan in four to five years. Congenital malformations will likely begin to appear. The premature reporting of some UN agencies and the press at large has been irresponsible: do we have no notion of what “precaution” means? These latent effects will cripple much of Japan’s young population within the decade.
Our myopia, in Japan and internationally, is tragic. One bright spot was the UN Special Rapporteur Anand Grover’s fact-finding mission in Japan last year; I hope you back his findings and circulate them widely.

We have already waited too long, as we did for climate change, to take international action on Fukushima. But now it is clear that we cannot allow Japan to take care of an issue that could affect all of us.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, I urge you to use your unique position as the head of the United Nations to galvanize political will and organize an independent assessment team of international scientists and engineers to solve the Fukushima radioactive spent fuel rod issue before we are forced to reckon with the fallout of another disaster. Japan and the world should not have to suffer more because we choose to wait.

Yours truly,

Akio Matsumura

-Former Special Advisor to the United Nations Development Program
-Founder and Secretary General of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival
-Secretary General of the 1992 Parliamentary Earth Summit Conference in Rio de Janeiro More

 

 

Business as usual could result in sea level rise of up to seven metres - Club of Rome

Only a complete overhaul of our economic growth and international negotiations can prevent sea level rises that will destroy coastal cities like New York and London experts warn

New York, USA, 28 April: Energy expert Ian Dunlop and policy-planner and scholar Tapio Kanninen delivered a stark message in New York at the end of April that even limiting global warming to 2°C could eventually produce sea level rises of up to 6 to 7 metres (23 feet), wiping out coastal cities like New York, London, Shanghai and Tokyo. They told shocked audiences at the United Nations that if we continue with current policies, temperatures could rise 4°C or more, leading to sea level rises of up to 70 metres (230 feet).

Kanninen and Dunlop were in New York to address a series of packed meetings and panel discussions, organised by the Finnish Mission to the United Nations,Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the Club of Rome, the Temple of Understanding and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

They presented new evidence demonstrating the severity of the crisis of global sustainability and global survivability and discussed with diplomats, political decision‐makers, sustainable development experts and NGOs how to persuade the UN and other international institutions to take immediate emergency action.

Commenting on recent scientific findings, Ian Dunlop - with over 30 years’ experience at the Royal Shell Group as engineer and senior executive and a former leader of Australia's Emissions trading panel said: “Today’s leadersrefuse to accept that climate change science and the concept of peak oil condemns the international community to a catastrophic future. Why are we stillexploring for fossil fuels, since we can only burn of 20-30% of reserves if we wish to keep climate change to the 2 °C limit, while current policies will result in warming of4-6 °C?” he asked.

This level of temperature rise means that the globe can only carry 0.5-1 billion people, not the present 7 billion, leading experts evaluate.

Tapio Kanninen, a former long time UN staff member and policy-planner, said that scientists have determined a number of "tipping points" that exponentially and dramatically accelerate global warming trends. As they begin to kick in, in a matter of years not decades, we must take action before it is too late to avert a catastrophe.

The severity of the global crisis goes unrecognised: we need a global emergency response and newpolicy models

Dr Kanninen said current international and nationalinstitutional and political systems are incapable of preventing the increasing severe global crises; it requires a change in the entire system plus an emergency response. If runaway climate change leads to rising sea levels the next move has to be to urgently overhaul the UN and our global governance system so it is capable of dealing with rapidly changing global and regional conditions.

Ian Dunlop said that many scientists and practitioners are wrongly dubbed ‘alarmist’, but diplomats, politicians and the whole intergovernmental system have failed to grasp the severity of the crisis. If we fail to act we could find ourselves like a ‘ship of fools’ floating on rising sea levels.

Failing to institute a major global policy change will inevitably lead to the gradual implosion of the economic, ecological and social structures on which we depend, andthey called for “An urgent joint effort by member states, NGOs and scholars to improve the quality of global negotiations on climate change and sustainable development”.

The Club of Rome raised similar issues 40 years ago and recent research has confirmed that its projections ofindustrial collapse in the early 21st century aresurprisingly close to actually data gathered. In his recent book Crisis of Global Sustainability Dr Kanninen evaluates the Club's history and impact, as well as describing the future global crisis if no action is taken.

Setting up new structures

Faced with the reality gap between what scientists predict and what politicians are prepared to do, part of the solution to global inertia lies in creating an independent Global Crisis Network of regional, national and local centres with a global coordination unit that will interact with a revamped UN. Eventually, the UN Charter has to be totally rewritten to correspond to thenew global reality.

The Club of Rome is an international think-tank, based in Switzerland, with 1500 members and over 30 National Associations. Its mission is to undertake forward-looking analysis and assessment on measures for a happier, more resilient, sustainable planet. www.clubofrome.org

The Limits to Growth, a 1972 report to the Club of Rome was written by Denis Meadows, Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William Behrens III. It used computer models to project possible future scenarios with different assumptions of how humans would react to earth’s physical limitations.

Dr Tapio Kanninen is Senior Fellow at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a Co-Director of the Project on Sustainable Global Governance. He was Chief of the Policy Planning Unit in the Department of Political Affairs (1998–2005) at the United Nations and worked earlier to set up a global environmental statistical framework in a UNEP-funded project in the UN Statistical Division. He is a member of the Club of Rome.

Ian Dunlop is an Australian Energy Expert, a fellow to the Centre of Policy Development and a former senior executive at the Royal Dutch Shell Group. He is Chair of Safe Climate Australia, Deputy Convenor of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and a Club of Rome member.

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung is a German political foundation with over 100 offices around the world, including an active UN office. It is the Germany's oldest organisation to promote democracy, political education, and promote students of outstanding intellectual abilities.

The Temple of Understanding is an interfaith NGO working to promote global survivability, and an active member of the NGO community working on the inside of the United Nations to advance social justice.

Crisis of Global Sustainability is published by Routledge. Paperback: £18.99, $29.95
978-0-415-69417-9; Master eBook ISBN10 : 0203071867. Master eBook ISBN13 : 978-0-203-07186-1. To order copies go to: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415694179/

For more information about the ideas behind the book: www.crisisofglobalsustainability.com

Ian Dunlop's presentation on same issues as he spoke at the UN can be seen here:http://vimeo.com/53540204

 

Syria access essential for credible chemical weapons inquiry: U.N.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that investigators have been gathering and analyzing available information on alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria, but access to the war-torn country is essential for a "credible and comprehensive inquiry."

A U.N. push for unconditional access for its inspection team gained fresh momentum after the United States and Britain said last week they had limited evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's troops used the nerve agent sarin against rebels.

U.S. President Barack Obama has warned Syria that deployment of chemical weapons could trigger unspecified consequences, widely interpreted to include military action by Washington.

But Obama stressed the need for a comprehensive U.N. inquiry in Syria before any decisions on further steps could be taken. The U.N. team, led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom, is investigating if chemical weapons were used, not who used them.

The Syrian government and the opposition blame each other for alleged chemical weapons attacks in Aleppo in March and Homs in December. Syria wants the U.N. team to probe only the Aleppo attack, but Ban wants the inquiry to cover both incidents.

Syria denies using chemical weapons in the two-year-old civil war in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.

"On-site activities are essential if the United Nations is to be able to establish the facts and clear all the doubts surrounding this issue," Ban told reporters before meeting with Sellstrom at the United Nations in New York.

"A credible and comprehensible inquiry requires full access to the site where chemical weapons are alleged to have been used," Ban said. "I again urge Syrian authorities to allow the investigation to proceed without delay and without conditions."

SYRIA BLOCKING ACCESS

Syria has blocked unfettered access by the U.N. mission, which was created by Ban nearly six weeks ago and has an advance team in Cyprus ready to deploy to Syria. Diplomats say it is unlikely it will gain access any time soon.

"There are clearly still differences in the understanding of what is required to carry out the investigation," Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters. Syria and the United Nations have exchanged nearly a dozen letters on the issue.

Ban said that in the meantime, the U.N. investigators were gathering and analyzing available information on the alleged attacks, which included possible visits to countries that said they had evidence of chemical weapons use.

A Western diplomat said British officials had shown Sellstrom evidence on which London based its assertion that there was "limited but growing" evidence of chemical weapons use by Syrian troops. But Sellstrom found the evidence inconclusive, said the diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which works on U.N. inquiries, has said assertions of chemical weapon use by Western and Israeli officials citing photos, sporadic shelling and traces of toxins do not meet the standard of proof needed for U.N. investigators. More

Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons

 

Entering a resource-shock world

Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the US intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you are on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.

Two nightmare scenarios - a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate change - are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition and conflict. Just what this tsunami of disaster will look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate refugees (with resulting anti-migrant violence) and the breakdown of social order or the collapse of states. At first, such mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia and other areas of the underdeveloped South, but in time all regions of the planet will be affected.

To appreciate the power of this encroaching catastrophe, it’s necessary to examine each of the forces that are combining to produce this future cataclysm.

Resource shortages

Start with one simple given: the prospect of future scarcities of vital natural resources, including energy, water, land, food and critical minerals. This in itself would guarantee social unrest, geopolitical friction and war.

It is important to note that absolute scarcity does not have to be on the horizon in any given resource category for this scenario to kick in. A lack of adequate supplies to meet the needs of a growing, ever more urbanised and industrialised global population is enough. Given the wave of extinctions that scientists are recording, some resources - particular species of fish, animals and trees, for example - will become less abundant in the decades to come, and may even disappear altogether. But key materials for modern civilisation like oil, uranium and copper will simply prove harder and more costly to acquire, leading to supply bottlenecks and periodic shortages.

Oil - the single most important commodity in the international economy - provides an apt example. Although global oil supplies may actually grow in the coming decades, many experts doubt that they can be expanded sufficiently to meet the needs of a rising global middle class that is, for instance, expected to buy millions of new cars in the near future. In its 2011 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency claimed that an anticipated global oil demand of 104 million barrels per day in 2035 will be satisfied. This, the report suggested, would be thanks in large part to additional supplies of “unconventional oil” (Canadian tar sands, shale oil and so on), as well as 55 million barrels of new oil from fields “yet to be found” and “yet to be developed”.

However, many analysts scoff at this optimistic assessment, arguing that rising production costs (for energy that will be ever more difficult and costly to extract), environmental opposition, warfare, corruption and other impediments will make it extremely difficult to achieve increases of this magnitude. In other words, even if production manages for a time to top the 2010 level of 87 million barrels per day, the goal of 104 million barrels will never be reached and the world’s major consumers will face virtual, if not absolute, scarcity.

Water provides another potent example. On an annual basis, the supply of drinking water provided by natural precipitation remains more or less constant: about 40,000 cubic kilometres. But much of this precipitation lands on Greenland, Antarctica, Siberia and inner Amazonia where there are very few people, so the supply available to major concentrations of humanity is often surprisingly limited. In many regions with high population levels, water supplies are already relatively sparse. This is especially true of North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, where the demand for water continues to grow as a result of rising populations, urbanisation and the emergence of new water-intensive industries. The result, even when the supply remains constant, is an environment of increasing scarcity.

Wherever you look, the picture is roughly the same: supplies of critical resources may be rising or falling, but rarely do they appear to be outpacing demand, producing a sense of widespread and systemic scarcity. However generated, a perception of scarcity - or imminent scarcity - regularly leads to anxiety, resentment, hostility and contentiousness. This pattern is very well understood and has been evident throughout human history.

In his book Constant Battles, for example, Steven LeBlanc, director of collections for Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, notes that many ancient civilisations experienced higher levels of warfare when faced with resource shortages brought about by population growth, crop failures, or persistent drought. Jared Diamond, author of the bestseller Collapse, has detected a similar pattern in Mayan civilisation and the Anasazi culture of New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon. More recently, concern over adequate food for the home population was a significant factor in Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and Germany’s invasions of Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941, according to Lizzie Collingham, author of The Taste of War.

Resource-related conflict

Although the global supply of most basic commodities has grown enormously since the end of World War II, analysts see the persistence of resource-related conflict in areas where materials remain scarce or there is anxiety about the future reliability of supplies. Many experts believe, for example, that the fighting in Darfur and other war-ravaged areas of North Africa has been driven, at least in part, by competition among desert tribes for access to scarce water supplies, exacerbated in some cases by rising population levels.

“In Darfur,” says a 2009 report from the UN Environment Programme on the role of natural resources in the conflict, “recurrent drought, increasing demographic pressures, and political marginalisation are among the forces that have pushed the region into a spiral of lawlessness and violence that has led to 300,000 deaths and the displacement of more than two million people since 2003.”

Anxiety over future supplies is often also a factor in conflicts that break out over access to oil or control of contested undersea reserves of oil and natural gas. In 1979, for instance, when the Islamic revolution in Iran overthrew the Shah and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Washington began to fear that someday it might be denied access to Persian Gulf oil. At that point, President Jimmy Carter promptly announced what came to be called the Carter Doctrine. In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter affirmed that any move to impede the flow of oil from the Gulf would be viewed as a threat to America’s “vital interests” and would be repelled by “any means necessary, including military force”.

In 1990, this principle was invoked by President George HW Bush to justify intervention in the first Persian Gulf War, just as his son would use it, in part, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Today, it remains the basis for US plans to employ force to stop the Iranians from closing the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about 35 percent of the world’s seaborne oil commerce passes.

Recently, a set of resource conflicts have been rising toward the boiling point between China and its neighbours in Southeast Asia when it comes to control of offshore oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea. Although the resulting naval clashes have yet to result in a loss of life, a strong possibility of military escalation exists. A similar situation has also arisen in the East China Sea, where China and Japan are jousting for control over similarly valuable undersea reserves. Meanwhile, in the South Atlantic Ocean, Argentina and Britain are once again squabbling over the Falkland Islands (called Las Malvinas by the Argentinians) because oil has been discovered in surrounding waters. More

 

CCW Singapore May 13-14th: Smart City Systems Working Track - Unlocking a $1 Trillion Dollar Opportunity

 

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Obama's Risky Middle East Fantasy by Ira Chernus

Had you searched for “Israel, nuclear weapons” at Google News in the wake of President Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East, you would have gotten a series of headlines like this: “Obama: Iran more than a year away from developing nuclear weapon” (CNN), “Obama vows to thwart Tehran's nuclear drive” (the Times of Israel), Obama: No nuclear weapons for Iran (the San Angelo Times), “US, Israel increasingly concerned about construction of Iran’s plutonium-producing reactor” (Associated Press), “Obama says ‘there is still time’ to find diplomatic solution to Iran nuke dispute; Netanyahu hints at impatience” (NBC), “Iran’s leader threatens to level cities if Israel attacks, criticizes US nuclear talks” (Fox).

By now, we’re so used to such a world of headlines -- about Iran’s threatening nuclear weapons and its urge to “wipe out” Israel -- that we simply don’t see how strange it is. At the moment, despite one aircraft carrier task force sidelined in Norfolk, Virginia (theoretically because of sequester budget cuts), the U.S. continues to maintain a massive military presence around Iran. That modest-sized regional power, run by theocrats, has been hobbled by ever-tightening sanctions, its skies filled with U.S. spy drones, its offshore waters with U.S. warships. Its nuclear scientists have been assassinated, assumedly by agents connected to Israel, and its nuclear program attacked by Washington and Tel Aviv in the first cyberwar in history. As early as 2007, the U.S. Congress was already ponying up hundreds of millions of dollars for a covert program of destabilization that evidently involved cross-border activities, assumedly using U.S. special operations forces -- and that's only what's known about the pressure being exerted on Iran. With this, and the near-apocalyptic language of nuclear fear that surrounds it, has gone a powerful, if not always acknowledged, urge for what earlier in the new century was called “regime change.” (Who can forget theneocon quip of the pre-Iraq-invasion moment: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad, real men want to go to Tehran”?)

And all of this is due, so we're told, to what remains a fantasy nuclear weapon, one that endangers no one because it doesn’t exist, and most observers don’t think that Tehran is in the process of preparing to build one either. In other words, the scariest thing in our world, or at least in the Middle Eastern part of it -- if you believe Washington, Tel Aviv, and much reporting on the subject -- is a nuclear will-o'-the-wisp. In the meantime, curiously enough, months can pass without significant focus on or discussion of Pakistan’s expanding nuclear arsenal. And yet, in that shaky, increasingly destabilized country, such an existing arsenal has to qualify as a genuine and growing regional danger.

Similarly, you can read endlessly in the mainstream about President Obama’s recent triumphs in the Middle East and that Iranian nuclear program without ever stumbling upon anything of significance about the only genuine nuclear arsenal in the vicinity: Israel’s. On the rare occasions when it is even mentioned, it’s spoken of as if it might or might not exist. Israel, Fox News typically reports, “is believed to have the only nuclear weapons arsenal in the Mideast.” It is, of course, Israeli policy (and a carefully crafted fiction) never to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal. But the arsenal itself isn’t just “believed” to exist, it is known to exist -- 100-300 nuclear weapons' worth or enough destructive power to turn not just Iran but the Greater Middle East into an ash heap.

To sum up: we continue to obsess about fantasy weapons, base an ever more threatening and dangerous policy in the region on their possible future existence, might conceivably end up in a war over them, and yet pay remarkably little attention to the existing nuclear weapons in the region. If this were the approach of countries other than either the U.S. or Israel, you would know what to make of it and undoubtedly words like “paranoia” and “fantasy” would quickly creep into any discussion.

With that in mind, let Ira Chernus, TomDispatch regular and an expert on separating fantasy from reality, take on the tough task of putting aside the media hosannas about the president’s recent Middle Eastern travels and making sense of what actually happened. Tom

Obama Walks the High Wire, Eyes Closed

When It Comes to Israel, Palestine, and Iran, It Could All Come Crashing Down

By Ira Chernus

Barack Obama came to Israel and Palestine, saw what he wanted to see, and conquered the mainstream media with his eloquent words. U.S. and Israeli journalists called it a dream trip, the stuff that heroic myths are made of: a charismatic world leader taking charge of the Mideast peace process. But if the president doesn’t wake up and look at the hard realities he chose to ignore, his dream of being the great peacemaker will surely crumble, as it has before.

Like most myths, this one has elements of truth. Obama did say some important things. In a speech to young Israelis, he insisted that their nation’s occupation of the West Bank is not merely bad for their country, it is downright immoral, “not fair... not just ... not right.”

I’ve been decrying the immorality of the occupation for four decades, yet I must admit I never dreamed I would hear an American president, standing in Jerusalem, do the same.

Despite those words, however, Obama is no idealist. He’s a strategist. His Jerusalem speech was clearly meant to widen the gap between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the substantial center-left portion of Israeli Jews, who are open to a deal with the Palestinians and showed unexpected strength in recent elections. The growing political tensions in Israel and a weakened prime minister give the American president a potential opening to maneuver, manipulate, and perhaps even control the outcome of events.

How to do so, though? Obama himself probably has no clear idea. Whatever Washington’s Middle Eastern script, when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, it will require an extraordinary balancing act.

The president will have to satisfy (or mollify) both the center-left and the right in Israel, strike an equally perfect balance between divergent Israeli and Palestinian demands, march with Netanyahu up to the edge of war with Iran yet keep Israel from plunging over that particular cliff, calibrate the ratcheting up of punishing sanctions and other acts in relation to Iran so finely that the Iranians will, in the end, yield to U.S. demands without triggering a war, and prevent the Syrian civil war from spilling into Israel, which means controlling Lebanese politics, too. Don’t forget that he will have do it all while maintaining his liberal base at home and fending off the inevitable assault from the right.

Oh, yes. Then there are all the as-yet-unforeseeable variables that will also have to be managed. To call it a tall order is an understatement.

The Fantasy of Perfect Control

In American political culture, we expect no less from any president. After all, he is “the most powerful man in the world” -- so he should be able to walk such a high wire adroitly, without fretting too much about the consequences, should he fall. More

 

The Future of Warfare Is Warfare in Cyberspace

National Security Agency Tasked with Targeting Adversaries' Computers for Attack Since Early 1997, According to Declassified Document

"The Future of Warfare Is Warfare in Cyberspace," NSA Declared

"Cyberspace and U.S. National Security" - New Archive Posting Explores Wide Range of U.S. Cyber Concerns, Experiences and Counter-Activities

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 424

Posted - April 26, 2013

Edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson

For more information contact:
Jeffrey T. Richelson 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, D.C., April 26, 2013 - Since at least 1997, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been responsible for developing ways to attack hostile computer networks as part of the growing field of Information Warfare (IW), according to a recently declassified internal NSA publication posted today by the non-governmental National Security Archive ("the Archive") at The George Washington University. Declaring that "the future of warfare is warfare in cyberspace," a former NSA official describes the new activity as "sure to be a catalyst for major change" at the super-secret agency.

The document is one of 98 items the Archive is posting today that provide wide-ranging background on the nature and scope of U.S. cyber activities.

Activities in cyberspace - both defensive and offensive - have become a subject of increasing media and government attention over the last decade, although usually the focus has been on foreign attacks against the United States, most notably the Chinese government's reported exploitation of U.S. government, commercial and media computer networks. At the same time, the apparent U.S.-Israeli created Stuxnet worm, designed to damage Iranian centrifuges, has put the spotlight on the United States' own clandestine cyber efforts.

The NSA's new assignment as of 1997, known as Computer Network Attack (CNA), comprises "operations to disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy" information in target computers or networks, "or the computers and networks themselves," according to the NSA document.

Today's posting by the Archive highlights various aspects of U.S. cyberspace activities and concerns going back to the late 1970s. The documents - obtained from government and private websites as well as Freedom of Information Act requests - originate from a wide variety of organizations. These include the White House and National Security Council, the National Security Agency, the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security, the military services, the General Accounting/ Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Research Service - as well as three private organizations (Project 2049, Mandiant Corporation, and Symantec).

Among the highlights of the documents are:

* The NSA's earlier concerns about the vulnerability of sensitive computer systems to either viruses or compromise through foreign intelligence service recruitment of computer personnel

* The Secretary of Defense's March 1997 authorization of the National Security Agency to conduct computer network attack operations

* Detailed discussions of Chinese computer network exploitation activities

* Analyses of the Stuxnet worm

* Extensive treatments of intelligence collection concerning U.S. technologies through computer network exploitation

Check out today's posting at the National Security Archive website - http://www.nsarchive.org

Find us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive

Unredacted, the Archive blog - http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/

http://twitter.com/NSArchive

________________________________________________________
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.

 

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Medellin, Colombia - Scientists are finding a new suspect to blame for flood disasters around the world, and it’s not climate change: It’s sediment.

Researchers in Spain have found the number of yearly floods and related disasters around the world has jumped more than 9 times since the 1950s - to more than 180 per year - and that the trends in rainfall attributed to climate change are not enough to explain such a rise.

Instead, the dramatic rise of water-related disasters seems to follow GDP, the researchers found. As economies around the world grow, people are clearing more and more forests to make way for cities and farms. Without trees to retain soil, excess dirt and rocks are poured into rivers, damaging their capacity to cope with storms.

Sediments are produced when water, wind, ice or changes in temperature break up rocks and soil into small bits, in a process called erosion. Erosion is a natural process that shapes the landscape and transports nutrients.

However, human impacts on land - especially deforestation - have significantly increased erosion rates all around the world.

A 2010 study by the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina looked at sediments and their connection with economic growth, using the La Plata River in South America as a case study.

The study found while unpopulated Andean regions showed no major increase in erosion, in places near the Sao Paulo metropolitan area sedimentations rates increased “gently” starting in the mid-1980s and then sharply since 2000, showing more than tenfold growth in about 20 years.

A 2012 follow-up study by the Earth Science Department at the University of Cantabria found that as GDP increased in northern Spain, so did the rates of sediment production, and also the number of water-triggered disasters in the region.

Colombia’s Magdalena River

The researchers’ hypothesis is that human contributions to erosion have risen to an extent that the world is now undergoing “global geomorphic change”, which makes floods and landslides worse, regardless of the changes in the weather.

The Magdalena River in Colombia is a dramatic illustration of the changes, and the inter-relationships between economic growth, sediments and flooding.

The Magdalena is born in the Colombian Andes, and flows north into the Caribbean Sea. More than 80 percent of Colombians live in the Magdalena Basin, and about 85 percent of Colombia’s GDP is generated there.

Once it was the swiftest way to move between cities in Colombia’s interior and the Atlantic Ocean. But current navigation on the Magdalena is very limited, partly because of excess sediments accumulated in the riverbed.

The Magdalena flooded in 2010 and 2011 when rainy seasons enhanced by the La Niña phenomenon caused the worst climate-linked tragedy in Colombian history, affecting more than four million Colombians. Two-and-a-half million became climate refugees. One million hectares of cropland were flooded, and more than 800 roads destroyed. The country spent more than $3.9bn in emergency humanitarian aid to cope with the tragedy. More

I have to question if this is partly to blame for the flooding in Pakistan in 2010 and 2011? Editor