No shortage of energy possibilities

Dyes turn windows into powerful solar panels

Windows could be used as powerful solar panels thanks to a clever new technology that concentrates the sun's rays. The technique uses transparent dyes to capture, concentrate and redirect light along the surface of the glass to photovoltaic (PV) cells in the frame, which convert the light into electricity. The breakthrough means that there is a tenfold increase in power output compared to use of the PV cell alone.

The team, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), claims the technology could slash the cost of generating electricity from sunlight, making it more competitive with standard grid power. This is because the expensive PV cells only need to be installed at the sides of the panels, rather than across the whole surface.

Sunlight is concentrated in existing solar power devices using large, mobile mirrors that track the sun as it moves across the sky. But these can be expensive to deploy and maintain. In the MIT device, called an "organic solar concentrator" and described in the latest issue of Science, the researchers painted a mixture of organic dyes onto the surface of a pane of glass. The dyes trap different wavelengths of sunlight and then guide the energy along the glass towards the PV cells at the edges.

"The point of all this is to get away with using far fewer solar cells," said Marc Baldo, an electrical engineer at MIT. "The concentrator collects light over its whole front surface, but the solar cells need only cover the area of the edges."

As the edges of a glass panel can often be 100 times smaller in area than the surface itself, he added, solar panels would need 100 times fewer PV cells to collect the same energy. "So we can save money. Since industry can't produce enough solar cells to satisfy demand, this might also be a good way to stretch production."

As well as windows, the technique can be applied to standard solar panels on roofs and walls to improve their efficiency. "We think the technology should cost less than $1 per watt [to build]", said Baldo.

The MIT device is relatively simple to manufacture and researchers claim it could be commercially available within three years.

Martyn Berry, senior research and development engineer at solar-energy company Solarcentury, said the biggest challenge for PV technology was to make it competitive with standard electricity."The notion that we could see a tenfold reduction on the cost of PV technologies through the use of organic solar concentrators is certainly exciting. Current concentrator technology is not generally suitable for the mass market."

Baldo said any transparent material could be used as the concentrator. "In the window application you'd probably design the window for 10% transmission [of light]. The remaining 90% is captured and used to generate electricity."

A more immediate use of the concentrator technology would be to coat the conventional solar panels used on the roofs of buildings, to boost their light collecting ability.

"We saw approximately 30% higher performance in the combined system compared to a stand alone solar cell," said Baldo. "We think that ultimately this approach will allow us to nearly double the performance of existing solar cells for minimal added cost."

A similar method to concentrate solar energy was developed in the 1970s. But the system, which painted dyes onto plastic surfaces, was abandoned because it could not collect enough of the sunlight and much of the retransmitted light was absorbed and lost as it travelled through the material to the PV cells.

To make their breakthrough, Baldo's team used advances originally developed to improve lasers and organic light-emitting diodes. By using the newer dyes in carefully chosen ratios and applying it only to the surface of a glass panel, the scientists were able to more accurately control how much light was absorbed and transported across it. "We made it so the light can travel a much longer distance," said Jonathan Mapel of MIT, who also worked on the solar concentrator.

Greenpeace's chief scientist, Doug Parr, said: "Innovations like this show renewable technologies can take a quantum leap forward if given proper financial support from governments. Rather than betting the farm on outdated nuclear technology and hoping that coal will one day be 'clean', Gordon Brown should be creating green jobs and pushing at the real technological frontier of the 21st century - renewables."

Original article posted here.

If the book is as informative as the book review, it is well worth reading

"Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire"

Review of James Petras' most recent book

by Stephen Lendman

James Petras is Binghamton University, New York Professor Emeritus of Sociology, whose credentials and achievements are long and impressive. He's a noted academic figure on the left, a well-respected Latin American expert, and a longtime chronicler of the region's popular struggles as well as being an advisor to the landless workers (MST) in Brazil and unemployed workers in Argentina. Petras is also a prolific author. He's written hundreds of articles and 63 books (and counting), published in 29 languages, including his latest one and subject of this review - "Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire."

The book is information rich on a core issue of our time. It discusses the US empire's "systemic dimensions," evolving changes in its ruling class, its corporatist system, myths about its coming collapse, contradictions in the current debate on immigration and market liberalization policies, the use of force and genocidal carnage, corruption as a market penetrating tool, the Israeli Lobby's power and influence, Latin American relations and events in the region, social and armed resistance, and much more in four power-packed parts under 17 subject chapter headings.

It's all covered below giving readers a detailed sampling of Petras' thoroughly documented, powerful and insightful account of his subject - who rules America, who's ruled, the US imperial role in the world economy and politics, and challenges to it in China, Latin America and the Middle East. This is another must-read book by a distinguished intellect and major figure on the left who writes dozens of them. This is his latest.

Part I: The US Empire As A System

Petras distinguishes between who sets policies and rules America and whose interests are served. He defines the ruling class as "people in key positions in financial, corporate and other business institutions" with rules "established, modified and adjusted" as the composition and "shifts in power" within the ruling class change over time. One example is manufacuring's decline (from outsourcing to low cost countries) as a "multidimensional financial sector" (finance capital) rose in prominence with Wall Street's influence especially dominant.

Petras defines "finance capital" to include investment banks, pension funds, hedge funds, saving and loan banks, investment funds and many other "operative managers" of a multi-trillion dollar economy they've all benefitted hugely from. They've been the driving force powering real estate and financial markets speculation, agribusiness, commodity production and manufacturing. Petras calls "finance capital" the "midwife" of wealth and capital as well as a "direct owner of the means of production and distribution."

He stratifies it into three sub-groups from top to bottom in importance: big private equity bankers and hedge fund managers, Wall street executives, and senior officials of private and Wall Street public equity funds as well as major figures in top law and accounting firms. Political leaders are drawn from their ranks with Wall Street in the lead and one firm in particular standing out - Goldman Sachs. Today, its former CEO Henry Paulson is the de facto US economic czar in charge of proving doomsayers wrong about the US economy with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's money creation power partnered with him. Both of them must also navigate around the powerful Israeli Lobby and its pro-war agenda that could lead to catastrophic consequences if the US and/or Israel attack Iran and the Middle East explodes and disrupts oil flows.

Petras sees an inevitable split between wealth-first financial ruling class objectives and militarists in the Bush administration, their counterparts in Israel, and the Lobby representing Israeli interests with a stranglehold on most of Congress. The battle lines shape up over Israeli Middle East dominance at the cost of imperial overreach, an escalating trade deficit, a ballooning national debt, decreasing capital inflows to offset it, and a declining dollar as other nations move to euros, yen and pounds sterling. Something has to give, says Petras, as both sides support opposing agendas that only a crisis-provoking widespread backlash may resolve.

For now, however, things couldn't be better for the ruling class (despite their disrupted plans in Iraq and Afghanistan) with the top 2% of adults in the world owning half its wealth, the top 10% with 85% of it, and the bottom half with just 1%. The result is an unprecedented wealth disparity with corporate CEO's on average earning over 400 times the median income of wage and salaried workers, and for top-earning speculators and hedge fund managers the ratio is 1000 to one with some having incomes topping a billion dollars a year. In addition, corporate wealth was at a record 43% of 2005 national income accruing to profits, rents and other non-wage/salary sources compared to a declining percentage of it to individuals, except for those at the top gaining hugely.

Petras states: "The growth of monstrous and rigid class inequalities reflects the narrow social base of an economy dominated by finance capital" with the US redistributing far less to its people than other developed nations like those in Western Europe. Democrats are as culpable as Republicans with both parties tied to big monied interests through campaign funding and the power of lobbies. It makes everyone in the political power structure unwilling to change things so they don't. The result is working Americans suffer hugely while those at the top never had it so good. It signals warnings of a potential worker backlash ahead that for now have gone unheeded. Elitists ignore it at their peril, so far without negative consequences to their dominance, but watch out.

Capitalism or US Workers in Crisis?

Petras notes how for years many on the left and some in the financial community have been predicting the "coming collapse, decline or demise of capitalism" as though (for some) wishing would make it so. They're still predicting, but it hasn't happened, and Petras explains why not. It's because business and government partnered (especially since the 1980s) to let workers take the pain so business could gain and prosper. It's done it hugely and continues to despite the resurgent summer doomsday predictions still ongoing.

In a letter to clients, noted investment manager Jeremy Grantham explained why business is resilient by comparing the global financial system (with its US anchor) to a giant suspension bridge. Thousands of bolts hold it together, so when some of them fail, even a lot of them, it's not enough to bring it down. Short of "broad-based....financial metal fatigue," even more bolts may fail, but he's betting the bridge will hold, supported by amazing "animal spirits," at least for now.

Grantham is likely right in the near term, while Petras takes a longer view, and his arguments are compelling. He sees labor today in crisis with living standards declining the result of reduced or eliminated business benefits, government services and stagnating wages. He also lists popular myths predicting doom ahead - the growing budget and current account deficits; ballooning national debt; excess speculation; weakening dollar; high energy costs; outsourcing of jobs at all levels, and more. Petras maintains these problems aren't as serious as claimed because:

-- budget deficits declined in 2006 as tax revenues rose from high-end earners' greater income at the expense of labor getting less;

-- foreign investment in the US remains high;

-- the dollar remains the world's reserve currency; over time, it weakens and strengthens based on interest rates, political events, and the overall level of economic activity; nonetheless, the dollar weakened considerably after the Fed cut interest rates and depreciated to an all-time low against a basket of six of its major peer currencies that include the euro, pound and yen; in addition, the New York Board of Trade index hit its weakest level since it came out in 1973, and the same is true for the Fed's trade-weighted dollar index since its creation in 1971; what's ahead? Likely more of the same until everyone believes the dollar is dead; then, watch out;

-- a decade-long trade deficit hasn't caused apocalypse;

-- strong economic underpinnings (Grantham's giant suspension bridge) offset excess speculation, and workers, not capital, take the pain;

-- high energy profits overseas are recycled back into dollar-based investments and have been for years although countries like Iran, Venezuela and others are moving away from the dollar at least for now;

-- the potential of new technologies is underestimated;

-- corporate profits have had their longest ever run of double-digit gains; the number of millionaires and billionaires is growing; the rich are becoming super-rich; and the beneficiaries are largely in North America, Western Europe (plus Russia) and Asia.

Petras concludes that as long as worker exploitation continues, the fundamental law of "casino capitalism" applies - the house never loses, or in this case the neighborhood (of developed nations) with some in it doing better than others and the US their anchor. The weakness of US labor and its history of overpaid, underperforming, corrupted leaders explains why with only 7.4% today in the private sector organized compared to 34.7% in the 1950s. Unless new social and political movements surface under activist leaders, Marx's "dirty secret" and Adam Smith's "vile maxim of the masters of mankind" will continue proving "the wealth of all nations" depends on the rich taking it "all for ourselves and (leaving) nothing for" the working class.

Market Liberalization and Forced Emigration

Migration and so-called illegal immigrants make headlines but never the reasons why that are two-fold: fleeing political strife (as in Iraq) or for economic reasons that the imperial globalized market system causes horrifically. The latter forces millions of Mexicans el norte because of NAFTA. Its disastrous effects on their lives leaves them no choice - emigrate or perish.

Petras explains when protective trade barriers come down, millions of small farmers and entrepreneurs are no match for the power of subsidized agribusiness, big manufacturers and corporate service providers. They're displaced when their livelihoods are lost, and that creates a huge surplus army of labor on the move and an opportunity for business to exploit for profit. It affects all skill types and levels (farm workers to computer specialists to doctors), undermines unions, and allows management to replace higher-paid US workers with low-wage immigrants at their mercy and getting little. Pay is kept low, benefits few or none, working conditions unsafe, unions weakened, and dare complain and be sent home.

Petras notes that as imperial power grows, "the massive movement of dislocated workers toward the imperial center multiplies," and there's no end in sight nor will there be as long as highly exploitative sectors like agriculture, construction and low-end manufacturing and services thrive on it. Workers lose and so do "sender" countries. They bore the costs of raising, educating, training and providing services for millions with "receiver" nations getting the benefits. It amounts to multi-billions in the form of critically needed skilled areas lost that include professionals like doctors, nurses, teachers and others. This won't ever change unless worker movements unite against it.

Empire-Building and Corruption

Petras notes how empire-building "is the driving force of the US economy (especially post-9/11)," corruption a key corporate predator tool to re-divide the world, and nations with the greatest firepower get the choicest slices. Business profit growth depends on exploiting overseas opportunities for their resources, markets and cheap reserve armies of labor with four so-called "BRIC" countries especially targeted:

-- China for its cheap labor and opportunities in finance, insurance and real estate;

-- India for its low cost information technology services;

-- Brazil for its high interest rates that hit 19.5%, were then greatly cut, but are still around 11%; and

-- Russia for its high profit oil and gas reserves, transport and luxury goods markets with booming opportunities in real estate once political leaders are bought off in a country rife with corruption as is China.

Petras notes that today over half the top 500 transnational corporations earn most of their profits overseas, and for many it's 75% of it. This trend will continue, he says, as these companies shift most of their operations abroad for greater cost savings. In addition, "political corruption, not economic efficiency, is the driving force of economic empire-building (with) the scale and scope of Western pillage of the East....unprecedented in recent world history." It's from business-friendly legislation on low wages, pensions, job tenure, land use, worker safety and health, all designed for maximum profit. Political leaders are bought off to get state-owned businesses privatized, markets deregulated, wages kept low, with a huge reserve army of exploitable labor the payoff for "the US Imperial System."

Hierarchy of Empire and Use of Force

Petras explains the US imperial system in terms of its "hierarchy of empire" rankings. Imperial powers top it (the US, EU and Japan) followed by emerging powers (China, Russia, India), semi-autonomous client regimes (Brazil, South Korea, South Africa), and collaborator regimes on the bottom (Egypt, Mexico, Colombia). Then come independent "revolutionary" (social democratic) states like Venezuela and nationalist ones like Iran as well as "contested terrain and regimes in transition (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine)." Client regimes provide "a crucial link in sustaining imperial powers" by allowing them to project and extend their state and market reach.

One "anomaly" in the hierarchy is Israel. It's a colonialist and nuclear power and world's fourth largest military power and arms exporter that's breathtaking for a country of 7.1 million and 5.4 million Jews. It's influence over US Middle East policy, however, inordinately outweighs its size with Iraq exhibit A and Iran moving up fast. More on this below.

Petras notes the constant flux within the imperial system the result of wars, national struggles and economic crises. They bring down regimes and elevate others with examples like Russia, the Eastern European states, South Africa and Venezuela. It shows "no singular omnipotent imperial state....unilaterally defines the international or....imperial system (that in the case of the US) proved incapable of....defeating popular....resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Even in Somalia, a US proxy war is in trouble, but it's too early to predict the outcome. The easy 2006 overthrow of the popular Islamic Courts Union (ICU) put an unsupported warlord regime in charge (that plundered the country from 1991 - 2005) with predictable results - strong resistance against the US puppet regime and its deeply corrupted Transitional Federal Government (TFG) "president," Abdullahi Yusuf.

Washington backed a hated regime and an equally detested Ethiopian government that's been "prop(ping) up its Somali puppet" with a lift from US-supported force. Earlier in 1993-94, the Clinton administration's intervention failed. It spawned mass opposition, took thousands of Somali lives in retaliation, and ended in defeat and a humiliating US pullout. That may repeat despite Washington's establishing an African Command (AFRICOM) to solidify its hold on the continent and its strategically important Horn. So far, it's very much up for grabs with US presence in the region unwelcome and greatly destabilizing. The "empire" never learns, so it's on to the next target that looks like Iran. More on that below.

Imperialism and Genocide

Petras explains how Korea, Vietnam and other wars hid their true cost in lives, devastation and human wreckage. It's the way of all empires sweeping over populations like crabgrass. It becomes "an accelerating predisposition to genocides to accomplish political aims," and in an age of "shock and awe," it can come with "awesome" speed. An example is from the latest O.R.B. British polling data reporting 1.2 million Iraqi deaths since March, 2003 alone plus another 1.5 million up to that date. The true toll may be even higher with huge uncounted numbers of daily violent and non-violent deaths that one estimate by Gideon Polya places at 3.9 million from 1990 to the present. No one knows for sure, and his estimate may be as good as any other. All of them are horrific.

Petras notes the "quantity" of killings elsewhere - six million Jews and 20 million Soviet civilians in WW II as well as 10 million Chinese civilians in Asia. He explains genocide as policy from a "state (promoted) racialist-exterminationist ideology (as well as from) an historical antipathy of one culture to another." This allows ruling classes to legitimize their ideology and achieve "uncontested dominance" and ability to economically exploit domestic and overseas markets. An omelet requires breaking eggs. Mass human slaughter is the frequent fallout from consolidating empires with living beings having no more worth than egg shells.

Genocides also result from revolutionary challenges to unpopular puppet rulers with Korea, Indo-China and Iraq Exhibits A, B, and C. Up to eight million perished in Asia, and three (or maybe four) million could be reached in Iraq in 2008 at the present pace. There's no end to it in sight with billions funding it, and no reporting on the carnage in the mainstream.

Petras reviews examples of imperialism becoming genocide with the Reagan administration alone responsible for its share. It committed multiple proxy genocides in Africa, Afghanistan and Central America, but you'd never know it from reports at the time about a president being prepped for Mount Rushmore with a spot for George Bush beside him until Iraq got him in trouble.

Another unreported genocide is Israel's six decade-long crusade against the Palestinians with predicable results. It caused many thousands of deaths, mass population displacement, and excessive use of detentions and torture to deny a people freedom and justice in their own land. The policy continues because Israel has a powerful ally in Washington and an even more influential Lobby working on its behalf. More on that below.

Petras notes genocides are "repeated, common practices," impunity for committing them the norm, and no effective international order is in place to stop them. Victors justice prevails so victims face kangaroo tribunals like the ICTY for Yugoslavia and the equally corrupted one for Iraq. Genocides will only end when imperial powers are defeated and their leaders held to account for their crimes, but that goal is nowhere in sight.

The Global Billionaire Ruling Class

The number of world billionaires reached 946 in March, 2007, they have an estimated combined wealth of $3.5 trillion, and over half of them are in three countries - 415 in the US, 55 in Germany and 53 in Russia where never did so many people lose more so a handful of others could gain so hugely in so short a time. India ranks high as well with 36 billionaires with China next in the region at 20. The number of millionaires exploded as well with close to 10 million in 2007, and in 2006 their numbers grew by an estimated 8.3%.

Balzac was right saying behind every great fortune is a crime (and most often a small fortune as seed money) but likely nowhere more rapaciously than in Russia. Petras notes "Without exception, the transfers of (state) property were achieved through gangster tactics - assassinations, massive theft, and seizure of state resources, illicit stock manipulation and buyouts." They strip mined over a trillion dollars of Russia's wealth into private predatory hands who, in turn, stuffed them in offshore accounts. It happens everywhere with the US exhibit A. The Rockefellers, Morgans, Fords and Carnegie's didn't amass wealth by being neighborly or nice. They got it the old-fashioned way - by strong-arming and stealing.

In developing countries, it came faster under Washington Consensus rules favoring capital over people with billionaires coming out on top. Latin America has 38 of them, mostly in Brazil (with 30) and Mexico (with industrialist Carlos Slim Helu now the world's third richest man). These "two countries.... privatized the most lucrative, efficient and largest public monopolies," and benefitted hugely from regressive taxes, tax exemptions, deregulation, big subsidies, and the ability to hike prices and make vital services unaffordable to millions who can't pay for them.

"How to become a billionaire," Petras asked. No need for an MBA or market savvy when the "interface of politics (aka friends in high places) and economics" works much better. The road to super-riches came from privatized state assets that began with bloody military coups in Latin America. In countries like Chile, Colombia and Argentina, results were always the same - great riches at the top, stagnant economies, vast poverty, high unemployment, two-thirds of the region's population with "inadequate living standards," and the long shadow of US involvement backing military dictators, business elites, and neoliberal politicians to assure lucrative ties to corporate interests in America. More on this below.

Part II - The Power of Israel and Its Lobby in the US

Petras covered how the Israeli Lobby defeated the Jim Baker Iraq Study Group's (ISG) proposal released December 6, 2006. Its alternative US Middle East agenda lost out to the Israeli Lobby's influence on Congress, a massive supportive propaganda campaign in the major media, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert being as able to "have the US president under our control" as Ariel Sharon once boasted.

For a time it looked like the ISG plan would prevail with top Bush advisors recommending dialogue with Iran; high-ranking military, active and retired, wanting a phased withdrawal for a failed effort; and the Army, Navy and Marine Corps weekly publications wanting Defense Secretary Rumsfeld sacked shortly before he resigned. Even Big Oil interests backed Baker because stable conditions favor business more than conflict (at least to pump oil), and that won't happen without a change of course now off the table.

Iran wants rapprochement as well but not on the usual US terms - making demands and offering nothing in return. Iran's objectives are simple and reasonable - normalized relations and an end to Washington's confrontational stance and military threats. They're off the table because the "Israel-First power structure (Lobby-Congress-Mass Media-Democratic Party Donors)" reject them. Syria is just as compliant, but its overtures are also rebuffed for the same reason.

Petras explained that AIPAC wants war with Iran as its top priority objective. In addition, the publications, conferences and press releases of the Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (CPMAJO) asked their members "to go all-out to fund and back candidates (mostly Democrats) who supported Israel's military solution to Iran's nuclear enrichment program" even though IAEA agrees it's in total compliance with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty rules while Israel violates them with impunity.

In the end, Prime Minister Olmert co-opted George Bush, got him to reject the ISG proposal and ally with Israel's aim to solidify its Middle East dominance by removing a non-existent Iranian threat with Syria also targeted. In many respects, this flies in the face of logic as many influential US figures know. Petras believes Iran is a key interlocutor for a Middle East settlement that might let Washington retain its strategic Arab allies. Tehran is willing to cooperate but not when its government is lumped with Al-Queda, the Taliban and Iraqi resistance and is being threatened with war. That's the current condition with renewed Bush administration efforts to prep the public to accept more of it if it comes.

Hamas also has been conciliatory. Its leaders made two peace proposals as a show of good faith, is willing to recognize Israel if Palestinians get justice, pledged a cease-fire in the face of Israeli attacks, and was rebuffed with rejection and an Israeli blockade of Gaza along with frequent hostile incursions. Conflicts rage in Iraq and occupied Palestine, more war threatens in Iran, and the road to peace in the region runs through Jerusalem providing Washington concurs. But it's not possible, in Petras' judgment, unless foreign military bases are closed, there's public control or nationalization of the region's resources, and Israel ends its colonial occupation of Palestine. So far, those objectives are nowhere in sight.

The Lobby and Media on Lebanon

In Petras' powerful 2006 book, "The Power of Israel in the United States," he documented how this power derives from a vast pro-Israel Lobby in the country supporting all aspects of its agenda. It's position is firm - "Israel is always right, Arabs and Muslims are a threat to peace," and the US should unconditionally support Israel across the board. In Petras' view, that's the main reason why the Bush administration attacked Iraq and may now target Iran and Syria. Israel perceives these countries as threats, Washington seems willing to remove them, and a chorus of media-driven propaganda approves.

They always support Israel and jumped right in last summer backing "Operation Change of Direction" against Hezbollah and "Operation Summer Rain" against Hamas that caused many hundreds of deaths and mass destruction. It was all papered over in the major media and characterized as Israel's "defensive, existential war for survival against Islamic terrorists." It was pure baloney. In fact, and unreported, Israel launched dual long-planned aggressive wars with Hezbollah's capture of three IDF soldiers in Lebanon the pretext and Hamas taking one Israeli corporal the justification in occupied Palestine. Never mentioned are the many thousands of Palestinians illegally abducted, imprisoned and tortured, and that unprovoked aggressive wars and their fallout are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Also unmentioned is that if Hezbollah and Hamas hadn't provided the pretexts, Israel (as it's often done) would have manufactured them to launch its summer aggression. With full US support and backing from its Lobby and dominant media, these type actions continue at the expense of their victims with US taxpayers duped into funding them generously.

US Empire and the Middle East

Petras notes key factors help explain US Middle East policy that in his judgment are "challenged from within and without, are subject to sharp contradictions," and are likely to fail.

First, is the influence of the Israeli Lobby he documented powerfully as have Mearsheimer and Walt in their work. It's likely the most potent lobby in Washington and can practically mobilize the entire Congress, every administration and the dominant media to back pro-Israeli policies even when they run counter to US corporate interests that in Middle East means those of Big Oil primarily.

The Lobby wanted war with Iraq and got it. Now its top priority is stiff sanctions and war on Iran, and if the orchestrated media hate frenzy targeting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Columbia University address September 24 is an indication, it may get it. As Petras notes, the Lobby's fanatical support for Israel is so extreme and uncompromising, it's even willing to risk world war and economic collapse to get its way.

Another key factor is the US ability to enlist and co-op client states and proxy forces to serve our interests - the Kurds in Northern Iraq; the Abbas-Dahlan Fatah militants in Palestine; the Sinoria-Hariri-Jumblat pro-US/Israel, anti-Syria/Hezbollah/Hamas alliance in Lebanon; Mubarak in Egypt; King Hussein in Jordan; pro-US regimes in Turkey; the Saudis and others.

Petras then explains how the Israeli Lobby's influence runs counter to the US "Arab agenda." It shows up in Washington's failure to construct a NATO-style power-sharing alliance in the region, except for Turkey and Israel, and the former may not prove solid. The Iraq policy has been disastrous, each tactic tried failed, resistance is unabated, the Arab street overwhelmingly rejects occupation, and Arab leaders offer tepid support.

Petras calls Washington's permanent war strategy (next targeting Iran and Syria) "an irrational gamble comparable to Hitler's attack on Russia" that doomed him. Today in the Middle East, attacking these two countries may only compound the Iraq failure with "greater defeats, greater domestic rebellion" and still more wars without end promising gloomy prospects ahead.

Part III - The Possibility of Resistance

Petras discusses China and the "general consensus (it's) emerging as the next economic superpower" to challenge US dominance. Petras expresses doubts that can only be summarized briefly. He notes Chinese capitalism not only depends on growth and the ability to generate jobs, but also on "the social relations of production, circulation and reproduction." They come at a high price - ferocious labor exploitation, rampant corruption and nepotism, mass small farmer displacement, firing millions of workers from state-owned and bankrupt enterprises, ending social services, and higher living costs increasing class warfare in the streets against billionaire kleptocrats and foreign investors profiting hugely at the expense of most Chinese.

Petras then distinguishes between "made in China" and Chinese-owned and whether the former enhances China's growth or foreign investor profits instead. He sees China taking on "features of both a neo-colony and an emerging imperial power," but mostly the former. He notes the standard of living for most Chinese "declined precipitously;" air, water and ground pollution greatly increased; the quality of life for most Chinese suffers; class inequalities are vast; and gains from a consumerist society for a minority of the population are offset by dirty air, loss of leisure, job security, near rent-free housing, state-provided health care and education, deteriorated working conditions and more. Paradise it's not, at least for workers, and conditions aren't improving.

Petras then discusses China's transition from state to "liberal" capitalism. As it deepened, trade barriers were dismantled; protective labor laws abolished; price controls lifted; the countryside ravaged; a massive new army of unemployed workers created; and an export-driven market strategy followed. The result today is a new class of billionaires and about 2900 former party "princelings" who control around $260 billion of wealth. In addition, property, real estate and construction boomed, an export strategy concentrated development on coastal regions, and domestic consumption is relatively constrained.

In contrast, "millions of construction workers, miners, domestic servants and assembly-line workers (labor) under the most abominable conditions" - long hours, low pay, awful sanitary conditions and little regard for safety in an unregulated environment structured for maximum profit. China today is a "magnet for capitalists and investors worldwide," a free market paradise that's hell on workers paying hugely for the country's marketplace "success."

Petras envisions China's capitalism deepening and mainly benefitting foreign investors. He sees their "initial beachheads as minority shareholders" extending into production, distribution, transport, real estate,

telecommunications, consumer goods and services, entertainment, finance and more and eventually gaining more control. As a result, he believes China's next great leap forward will be from liberalism to neoliberalism, the country will lose its national identity, it will become a "territorial outpost" for foreign-owned transnationals, and the country's bid for world power status will be subverted.

Petras sees 21st century China emerging as a "gigantic proxy for imperial powers," but China won't be one of them. Its "Great Leap Backwards" will be consummated when the nation's "share of profits shifts from the national bourgeoisie" to foreign investors in a process now accelerating.

But it won't come easily as a new generation of China's leaders may stop or curtail it. In addition, growing mass resistance has now emerged for obvious reasons cited above. Already, close to 100,000 mass demonstrations have occurred involving millions of Chinese protesting a workers' hell. Social crisis is deepening, class struggle has returned, and the government has taken note. It's beginning to address concerns but giving back pathetically little considering China's massive population. Petras calls these remediating actions "too little and too late." Ahead he sees decentralized protests becoming organized urban worker movements that when joined with displaced farmers may set off a new rebellious period. This may then blossom into "a new revolutionary struggle" that will determine China's future and its climate for investors.

The US and Latin America

Petras has studied Latin America for decades and knows the region as well as anyone. Here he dispels notions of a revitalized regional populism with US dominance waning. His case is compelling as he argues Washington's influence has increased in recent years (though not to the level of the 1990s) despite the success of Hugo Chavez and his ability to thwart US efforts to unseat him.

The Bush administration lost out on FTAA but has had other successes:

-- bilateral trade agreements with numerous Latin American states from the Caribbean to Chile;

-- an expanded number of military bases despite the possible loss of one in Ecuador ahead;

-- US business interests in the region flourishing, including in Venezuela where they're booming; and

-- neoliberal free market policies intact despite campaign rhetoric promising change.

Aside from Venezuela and maybe Ecuador (where it's too soon to tell), the left's appraisal of progressive change is nowhere in sight, so what are they seeing that's not there.

Petras assesses the current state of things in the region after reviewing its recent history readers can get from the book. He notes signs of Washington's declining influence that's had no adverse affect on corporate interests except in Venezuela where taxes are now fair compared to earlier when they were too low. He also explains so-called center-left regimes in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and elsewhere tamed mass social movement demands while embracing 1990s neoliberalism. In Brazil, if fact, President Lula da Silva actually deepened and extended the privatization and restrictive budget policies of the preceding Cardoso regime, and despite his Workers Party background, demobilized mass movements and trade unions instead of supporting them as people expected. Many now see him for what he is - a traitor, but sadly, he's got company, too much of it.

Of great significance is the way Petras explains four competing regional power blocs representing varying degrees of accommodation or opposition to US policies and interests.

1. The Radical Left

It includes:

-- the FARC guerillas in Colombia (active since 1964); some trade union sectors; and peasant and barrio movements in Venezuela;

-- the labor confederation CONLUTAS and sectors of Brazil's Rural Landless Movement (MST);

-- sectors of the Bolivian Labor Confederation (COB) and the Andean peasant movements and barrio organizations in El Alto;

-- peasant movement sectors (CONAIE) in Ecuador;

-- teachers and peasant-indigenous movements in Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas, Mexico;

-- nationalist-peasant-left sectors in Peru;

-- trade unionist and unemployed sectors in Argentina; and

-- other Central and South American social movements and some Marxist groups in several countries.

2. The Pragmatic Left

-- Hugo Chavez in Venezuela who combines grassroots participatory democracy and redistributive social policies with support for business interests;

-- Evo Morales in Bolivia;

-- Fidel Castro in Cuba;

-- various large electoral parties and major peasant and trade unions in the region; leftist parties including the PRD in Mexico, FMLN in El Salvador, CUT in Colombia, Chilean Communist Party, Peru's nationalist parliamentary party, sectors of Brazil's MST, Bolivia's MAS governing party, CTA in Argentina, and PIT-CNT in Uruguay.

3. The Pragmatic Neoliberals (the most numerous political block)

-- Lula in Brazil;

-- Kirchner in Argentina;

-- the major trade union confederations in Brazil and Argentina;

-- business and financial elite sectors providing subsistence unemployment doles and food aid; and

-- similar groups in Ecuador, Nicaragua (the Sandinistas and their split-offs), Paraguay and other countries.

4. The Doctrinaire Neoliberal Regimes

-- Calderon in Mexico;

-- Uribe in Colombia;

-- Bachelet in Chile (in spite of her being imprisoned and tortured under Pinochet);

-- the Central American countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala;

-- Garcia in Peru;

-- Paraguay with the region's largest military base;

-- Uruguay's ex-leftist regime now rightist;

-- US-occupied Haiti through proxy thuggish paramilitary UN peacekeepers; and

-- the Dominican Republic.

The notion that populism swept Latin America in the new century is pure fantasy. In fact, there's a "quadrangle of competing and conflicting" regional forces with Washington having less market leverage than in the 1990s "Golden Age of Pillage" but still enough to be dominant and able to keep business flourishing.

Petras continues his analysis with detailed examples of key center-left regimes in Brazil under Lula, Argentina under Kirchner, Uruguay under Vazquez, Bolivia under Morales plus some comments on Peru and Ecuador under leaders preceding their current ones. Each case substantiates the fantasy that these regimes represented "new winds from the Left" sweeping the region. Hot air maybe, but little, if anything, in the way of progressive change despite the beliefs of many intellectuals on the left.

However, that's not to say leftist forces aren't strong enough to bubble up and bring change. Insurrectionary forces brought Evo Morales to power in Bolivia and can take him down if he fails them as he's now doing. The same is true in other countries with Hugo Chavez their model. He challenged US imperialism, brought real social change, has mass public support and thus far withstood US efforts to oust him. In Cuba, Fidel Castro thwarted every Washington effort against him since 1959 and is still in charge, larger than life, although frail and weak following his protracted illness from which he's still recovering. Petras sees a new generation of young committed leaders emerging in the region. "They are the 'Left Winds' of Latin America," and it's in them that hope lies.

Foreign Investment (FI) in Latin America

Petras demystifies FI's impact, explains the risks in attracting it, and exposes six myths about its benefits.

Myth 1.

It's untrue FI creates new enterprises, market opportunities and more. Most, in fact, aims to buy privatized and other enterprises while crowding out local capital and public initiative.

Myth 2.

FI doesn't increase export competitiveness. It buys mineral resources for export with little done to create jobs or stimulate the local economy.

Myth 3.

It's false to think FI provides tax revenue and hard currency. An FI export model creates more indebtedness and a net loss.

Myth 4.

It's false believing debt repayments to international lenders is key to a good financial standing. Much foreign debt is odious and repaying it harms borrower countries.

Myth 5.

It's false believing FI provides developing countries needed capital. It's used instead to buy local companies and control a country's markets.

Myth 6.

It's false believing FI attracts further investment. Capital freely moves to wherever it gets the best returns and is anchored nowhere.

Developing countries benefit most by relying less on FI and more on national ownership and investment. The former is predatory. The latter accrues profits to the national treasury and grows the country's economy. FI demands conditions favoring capital over labor that results in a widening economic gap and greater inequalities in political and social power. The 20 year (1980 - 2000) record of Latin American FI is socially disastrous. Living standards plunged while unemployment and poverty soared. Hardly reasons to attract it and clear ones to stay away or restrict it.

Part IV - An Agenda for Militants

Petras considers FI economic alternatives and ways to buck its strategic countermeasures. FI generally threatens disinvestment when a country wants to enhance its own economy and benefit popular living standards. Hardball tactics cut both ways, and the state can use its own effectively to counter capital flight threats as well as adopt policies in advance serving its needs first ahead of those FI wants to have things its own way.

Petras notes that FI "is incompatible with any notion of an independent, socially progressive country" even though at times it can be useful in a regulated environment controlling it. He explains a country's own financial and economic resources can be used instead of FI to enhance its internal development and technological advance by reinvesting profits from export industries; controlling foreign trade to increase retention of foreign exchange; investing pension funds productively; imposing a moratorium on debt payments; recovering stolen public treasury funds and unpaid taxes; maximizing under-employed labor, and more.

Most countries can avoid FI by relying on multiple sources of its own capital. They can also employ alternative effective strategies when outside help is needed by minimizing its ownership, employing short-term contracts on favorable terms, imposing stiff penalties on capital flight, and barring it from returning if it leaves. Petras concludes: "The historical and empirical evidence demonstrates that the political, economic and social drawbacks of (FI) far exceed any short-term benefits perceived by its defenders."

The Middle Class and Social Movements in Latin America

Petras observes that middle class attitudes in the region depend on the "political-economic context" confronting it. It's attracted to the right under expanding right-wing regimes and to the left in times of economic crisis. On the other hand, under a "popular, anti-dictatorial, anti-imperialist populist government, the middle class supports democratic reforms" but not radical policies harming it for the benefit of the working class. Three examples make his case - in Brazil under Lula when it took over his Workers Party; in Argentina when it benefitted under Menem and Cardoso and later under Kirchner; and in Bolivia under Morales who combines "political demagogy" to his base and neoliberal IMF austerity in his policies attractive to middle class and business interests.

Petras notes social movements failed by not developing political leadership or a program for state power and depended instead on "electoral politicians of the upwardly mobile professional middle class." The Left's key challenge, he believes, is to "convert the public sector middle class from anti-neoliberalism to anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism, and to combine urban welfare (with) agrarian reform."

Iraq and Afghanistan's Importance in Defeating the Empire

Petras concludes by noting Washington's imperial wars were stopped in their tracks in Iraq and Afghanistan by resistance too powerful to contain. A "shock and awe" blitzkrieg failed when Iraqis wanted a say in running, rebuilding and transforming their country and rejected its US-installed puppet regime. The country is a wasteland, the nation creation project bankrupt, and the prospect for success bad and worsening with multi-billions expended and nothing gained except huge profits for administration favored contractors that always benefit whoever wins or loses.

The same situation holds in Afghanistan. An easy five week walkover turned into an endless debacle with no end in sight. Washington planned successive wars for unchallengeable world dominance, but local resistance in two countries stopped it cold (so far), may defeat its proxies in Somalia, and resilient opposition in Palestine and South Lebanon may prove equally formidable as well.

The US is now over-extended and its "imperial grand strategy" weakened. It's made preemptive wars against Iran and Syria and trying again to topple Hugo Chavez less likely, but none of these possibilities are off the table. Cornered and facing defeat, rhetoric is heated making anything possible, and the September 20 Lieberman-Kyl "Sense of the Senate" (no legal force) resolution/amendment to the FY 2008 Defense Authorization bill ratchets up the possibility of attacking Iran and its regional "proxies" with potentially catastrophic fallout the risk.

For now, emboldened resistance and strong anti-war opposition are matched against an administration desperate to turn things around and willing to try anything to do it. How this may end is a crapshoot, the stakes on its outcome too great to risk but may be waged anyway, and the world trembles as it waits and watches. Stay tuned and hope Petras is right believing Iraq and Afghanistan thwarted the empire and prevented further aggression against Iran and beyond, now off the table. Or maybe not. When wounded and cornered, desperate animals and politicians may try anything with nothing to lose. Keep a close watch.

Stephen Lendman is Research Associate of the center for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.


Original article posted here.

A dying Superpower (and rising dictatorship, but that's another day)

Rising powers have the US in their sights

By Dilip Hiro

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall - militarily invincible, economically unrivaled, diplomatically uncontestable. and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true "American century", with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.

Yet with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of US supremacy - Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode US hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.

How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon? The George W Bush administration's debacle in Iraq is certainly a major factor in this transformation, a classic example of an imperialist power, brimming with hubris, overextending itself. To the relief of many - in the US and elsewhere - the Iraq fiasco has demonstrated the striking limitations of power for the globe's highest-tech, most destructive military machine. In Iraq, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to two US presidents, concedes in a recent op-ed, the US is "being wrestled to a draw by opponents who are not even an organized state adversary".

The invasion and subsequent disastrous occupation of Iraq and the mismanaged military campaign in Afghanistan have crippled the credibility of the United States. The scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, along with the widely publicized murders of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, have badly tarnished America's moral self-image. In the latest opinion poll in Turkey, a secular state and member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, only 9% of Turks have a "favorable view" of the US (down from 52% just five years ago).

Yet there are other explanations - unrelated to Washington's glaring misadventures - for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe's leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news.

Many channels, diverse perceptions

During the 1991 Gulf War, only the Cable News Network and the British Broadcasting Corp had correspondents in Baghdad. So the international TV audience, irrespective of its location, saw the conflict through their lenses. Twelve years later, when the Bush administration, backed by British prime minister Tony Blair, invaded Iraq, Al-Jazeera Arabic broke this duopoly. It relayed images - and facts - that contradicted the Pentagon's presentation. For the first time in history, the world witnessed two versions of an ongoing war in real time. So credible was the Al-Jazeera Arabic version that many television companies outside the Arabic-speaking world - in Europe, Asia and Latin America - showed its clips.

Though, in theory, the growth of cable television worldwide raised the prospect of ending the Anglo-American duopoly in 24-hour television news, not much had happened because of the exorbitant cost of gathering and editing TV news. It was only the arrival of Al-Jazeera English, funded by the hydrocarbon-rich emirate of Qatar - with its declared policy of offering a global perspective from an Arab and Muslim angle - that, last year, finally broke the long-established mold.

Soon France 24 came on the air, broadcasting in English and French from a French viewpoint, followed in mid-2007 by the English-language Press TV, which aimed to provide an Iranian perspective. Russia was next in line for 24-hour TV news in English for the global audience. Meanwhile, spurred by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Telesur, a pan-Latin American TV channel based in Caracas, began competing with CNN in Spanish for a mass audience.

As with Qatar, so with Russia and Venezuela, the funding for these TV news ventures has come from soaring national hydrocarbon incomes - a factor draining US hegemony not just in imagery but in reality.

Russia, an energy superpower

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has more than recovered from the economic chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. After in effect renationalizing the energy industry through state-controlled corporations, he began deploying its economic clout to further Russia's foreign-policy interests.

In 2005, Russia overtook the United States to become the second-largest oil producer in the world. Its oil income now amounts to US$679 million a day. European countries dependent on imported Russian oil now include Hungary, Poland, Germany, and even Britain.

Russia is also the largest producer of natural gas on the planet, with three-fifths of its gas exports going to the 27-member European Union. Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland and Slovakia get 100% of their natural gas from Russia; Turkey 66%; Poland 58%; Germany 41%; and France 25%. Gazprom, the biggest natural-gas enterprise on Earth, has established stakes in 16 EU countries.

In 2006, the Kremlin's foreign reserves stood at US$315 billion, up from a paltry $12 billion in 1999. Little wonder that in July 2006, on the eve of the Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg, Putin rejected an energy charter proposed by the Western leaders.

Soaring foreign-exchange reserves, new ballistic missiles, and closer links with a prospering China - with which it conducted joint military exercises on China's Shandong Peninsula in August 2005 - enabled Putin to deal with his US counterpart, President Bush, as an equal, not mincing his words when appraising US policies.

"One country, the United States, has overstepped its national boundaries in every way," Putin told the 43rd Munich Trans-Atlantic Conference on Security Policy in February. "This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations ... This is very dangerous."

Condemning the concept of a "unipolar world", he added: "However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it describes a scenario in which there is one center of authority, onecenter of force, one center of decision-making ... It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And this is pernicious." His views fell on receptive ears in the capitals of most Asian, African and Latin American countries.

The changing relationship between Moscow and Washington was noted, among others, by analysts and policymakers in the hydrocarbon-rich Persian Gulf region. Commenting on the visit
that Putin paid to longtime US allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar after the Munich conference, Abdel Aziz Sagar, chairman of the Gulf Research Center, wrote in the Doha-based newspaper The Peninsula that Russia and Gulf Arab countries, once rivals from opposite ideological camps, had found a common agenda of oil, anti-terrorism, and arms sales:

The altered focus takes place in a milieu where the Gulf countries are signaling their keenness to keep all geopolitical options open, reviewing the utility of the United States as the sole security guarantor, and contemplating a collective security mechanism that involves a host of international players.

In April, the Kremlin issued a major foreign-policy document. "The myth about the unipolar world fell apart once and for all in Iraq," it stated. "A strong, more self-confident Russia has become an integral part of positive changes in the world."

The Kremlin's increasingly tense relations with Washington were in tune with Russian popular opinion. A poll taken during the run-up to the 2006 G8 summit revealed that 58% of Russians regarded the US as an "unfriendly country". It has proved to be a trend. Last month, for instance, Major-General Alexandr Vladimirov told the mass-circulation newspaper Komsolskya Pravda that war with the United States is a "possibility" in the next 10-15 years.

Chavez rides high
Such sentiments resonated with Hugo Chavez. While visiting Moscow in June, he urged Russians to return to the ideas of Vladimir Lenin, especially his anti-imperialism. "The Americans don't want Russia to keep rising," he said. "But Russia has risen again as a center of power, and we, the people of the world, need Russia to become stronger."

Chavez finalized a $1 billion deal to purchase five diesel submarines to defend Venezuela's oil-rich undersea shelf and thwart any possible future economic embargo imposed by Washington. By then, Venezuela had become the second-largest buyer of Russian weaponry. (Algeria topped the list, another indication of a growing multipolarity in world affairs.) Venezuela acquired the distinction of being the first country to receive a license from Russia to manufacture the famed AK-47 assault rifle.
By channeling some of his country's oil money to needy Venezuelans, Chavez broadened his base of support. Much to the chagrin of the Bush White House, he trounced his sole political rival, Manuel Rosales, in a presidential contest last December with 61% of the vote. Equally humiliating to the Bush administration, Venezuela was by then giving more foreign aid to needy Latin American states than the US was.

After his re-election, Chavez vigorously pursued the concept of forming an anti-imperialist alliance in Latin America as well as globally. He strengthened Venezuela's ties not only with such Latin countries as Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and debt-ridden Argentina, but also with Iran and Belarus.

By the time he arrived in Tehran from Moscow (via Minsk) in June, the 180 economic and political accords his government had signed with Tehran were already yielding tangible results. Iranian-designed cars and tractors were coming off assembly lines in Venezuela. The "cooperation of independent countries like Iran and Venezuela has an effective role in defeating the policies of imperialism and saving nations", Chavez declared in Tehran.

Stuck in the quagmire of Iraq and lashed by the gusty winds of rocketing oil prices, the Bush administration finds its area of maneuver woefully limited when dealing with a rising hydrocarbon power. To the insults that Chavez keeps hurling at Bush, the US response has been vapid.

The reason is the crippling dependence of the United States on imported petroleum, which accounts for 60% of the total it consumes. Venezuela is the fourth-largest source of US imported oil after Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia; and some refineries in the US are designed specifically to refine heavy Venezuelan oil.

In Chavez' scheme to undermine the "sole superpower", China has an important role. During a visit last August to Beijing, his fourth in seven years, he announced that Venezuela would triple its oil exports to China to 500,000 barrels per day in three years, a jump that suited both sides. Chavez wants to diversify Venezuela's buyer base to reduce its reliance on exports to the US, and China's leaders are keen to diversify their hydrocarbon imports away from the Middle East, where US influence remains strong.

"The support of China is very important [to us] from the political and moral point of view," Chavez declared. Along with a joint refinery project, China agreed to build 13 oil-drilling platforms, supply 18 oil tankers, and collaborate with the state-owned company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PdVSA), in exploring a new oilfield in the Orinoco Basin.

China on a stratospheric trajectory
So dramatic has been the growth of the state-run company PetroChina that, in mid-2007, it was second only to ExxonMobil in its market value among energy corporations. Indeed, that year three Chinese companies made it on to the list of the world's 10 most highly valued corporations. Only the US had more with five. China's foreign reserves of more than $1.3 trillion have now surpassed Japan's. With its gross domestic product soaring past Germany's, China ranks No 3 in the world economy.

In the diplomatic arena, Chinese leaders broke new ground in 1996 by sponsoring the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, consisting of four adjoining countries: Russia and the three former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The SCO started as a cooperative organization with a focus on countering drug-smuggling and terrorism.

Later, the SCO invited Uzbekistan to join, even though it does not abut China. In 2003, the SCO broadened its scope by including regional economic cooperation in its charter. That, in turn, led it to grant observer status to Pakistan, India and Mongolia - all adjoining China - and Iran, which does not. When the US applied for observer status, it was rejected, an embarrassing setback for Washington, which enjoyed such status at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Early this month, on the eve of an SCO summit in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, the group conducted its first joint military exercises, code-named Peace Mission 2007, in the Russian Ural region of Chelyabinsk. "The SCO is destined to play a vital role in ensuring international security," said Ednan Karabayev, foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan.

Late last year, as the host of a China-Africa Forum in Beijing attended by leaders of 48 of 53 African nations, China left the US woefully behind in the diplomatic race for that continent (and its hydrocarbon and other resources). In return for Africa's oil, iron ore, copper and cotton, China sold low-priced goods to Africans, and assisted African counties in building or improving roads, railways, ports, hydroelectric dams, telecommunications systems and schools. "The Western approach of imposing its values and political system on other countries is not acceptable to China," said Africa specialist Wang Hongyi of the China Institute of International Studies. "We focus on mutual development."

To reduce the cost of transporting petroleum from Africa and the Middle East, China began constructing a trans-Myanmar oil pipeline from the Bay of Bengal to its southern province of Yunnan, thereby shortening the delivery distance now traveled by tankers. This undermined Washington's campaign to isolate Myanmar. (Earlier, Sudan, boycotted by Washington, had emerged as a leading supplier of African oil to China.) In addition, Chinese oil companies were competing fiercely with their Western counterparts in getting access to hydrocarbon reserves in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

"China's oil diplomacy is putting the country on a collision course with the US and Western Europe, which have imposed sanctions on some of the countries where China is doing business," commented William Mellor of Bloomberg News. The sentiment is echoed by the other side. "I see China and the US coming into conflict over energy in the years ahead," said Jin Riguang, an oil-and-gas adviser to the Chinese government and a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Council.

China's industrialization and modernization have spurred the modernization of its military as well. The test-firing of the country's first anti-satellite missile, which successfully destroyed a defunct Chinese weather satellite in January, dramatically demonstrated its growing technological prowess. An alarmed Washington had already noted an 18% increase in China's 2007 defense budget.

Attributing the rise to extra spending on missiles, electronic warfare and other high-tech items, Liao Xilong, commander of the People's Liberation Army's general logistics department, said: "The present-day world is no longer peaceful, and to protect national security, stability and territorial integrity, we must suitably increase spending on military modernization."

China's declared budget of $45 billion was a tiny fraction of the Pentagon's $459 billion one. Yet in May, a Pentagon report noted China's "rapid rise as a regional and economic power with global aspirations" and claimed that it was planning to project military further afield, from the Taiwan Strait into the Asia-Pacific region, in preparation for possible conflicts over territory or resources.

The sole superpower in the sweep of history
This disparate challenge to US global primacy stems as much from sharpening conflicts over natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas, as from ideological differences over democracy, US-style, or human rights, as conceived and promoted by Western policymakers. Perceptions about national (and imperial) identity and history are at stake as well.

It is noteworthy that Russian officials applauding the swift rise of post-Soviet Russia refer fondly to the pre-Bolshevik Revolution era when, according to them, czarist Russia was a great power. Equally, Chinese leaders remain proud of their country's long imperial past as unique among nations.

When viewed globally and in the great stretch of history, the notion of US exceptionalism that drove the neo-conservatives to proclaim the Project for the New American Century in the late 20th century - adopted so wholeheartedly by the Bush administration in this one - is nothing new. Other superpowers have been there before, and they too have witnessed the loss of their prime position to rising powers.

No superpower in modern times has maintained its supremacy for more than several generations. And however exceptional its leaders may have thought themselves, the United States, already clearly past its zenith, has no chance of becoming an exception to this age-old pattern of history.

Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation Iraqi Freedom and, most recently, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources, both published by Nation Books.

Original article posted here.

Once again, Tesla was right: He challenged Einstein's theory of relativity and said that particles COULD exceed the speed of light

Scientists break speed of light in lab test

IT was supposed to be the one speed limit you could not break.

But scientists claim to have demonstrated there is the possibility of travel faster than the speed of light.

The feat contradicts one of the key tenets of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity - that nothing, under any circumstances, can move faster than 300,000km a second, or the speed of light.

Travelling faster than light also, in theory, turns back time.

According to conventional physics, a person moving beyond light speed would arrive at his destination before leaving.

But two German physicists claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the phenomenon of quantum tunnelling.

Their experiments focused on the travel of microwave photons - energetic packets of light - through two prisms.

When the prisms were moved apart, most photons reflected off the first prism they encountered and were picked up by a detector.

But a few appeared to "tunnel" through a gap separating them as if the prisms were still held together.

Although these photons had travelled a longer distance, they arrived at their detector at the same time as the reflected photons.

This suggests the transit between the two prisms was faster than the speed of light.

Dr Gunter Nimtz, of the University of Koblenz, told the magazine New Scientist: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."

Original article posted here.

Tesla's Genius -- Wireless energy being developed over a 100 years after he said it could be done (and wanted financing to provide it free globally)

Goodbye wires... MIT experimentally demonstrates wireless power transfer

Wireless power transfer over two-meter distance, from the coil on the left to the coil on the right, where it powers a 60W light bulb. Members of the team that performed the experiment are obstructing the direct line of sight between the coils; front row: Peter Fisher (left) and Robert Moffatt; second row: Marin Soljacic; third row: Andre Kurs (left), John Joannopoulos and Aristeidis Karalis. Photo / Aristeidis Karalis

Imagine a future in which wireless power transfer is feasible: cell phones, household robots, mp3 players, laptop computers and other portable electronics capable of charging themselves without ever being plugged in, freeing us from that final, ubiquitous power wire. Some of these devices might not even need their bulky batteries to operate.

A team from MIT’s Department of Physics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN) has experimentally demonstrated an important step toward accomplishing this vision of the future. The team members are Andre Kurs, Aristeidis Karalis, Robert Moffatt, Prof. Peter Fisher, and Prof. John Joannopoulos (Francis Wright Davis Chair and director of ISN), led by Prof. Marin Soljacic. Realizing their recent theoretical prediction, they were able to light a 60W light bulb from a power source seven feet (more than two meters) away; there was no physical connection between the source and the appliance. The MIT team refers to its concept as “WiTricity” (as in wireless electricity). The work will be reported in the June 7 issue of Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.

The story starts one late night a few years ago, with Soljacic (pronounced Soul-ya-cheech) standing in his pajamas, staring at his cell phone on the kitchen counter. “It was probably the sixth time that month that I was awakened by my cell phone beeping to let me know that I had forgotten to charge it. It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging.” To make this possible, one would have to have a way to transmit power wirelessly, so Soljacic started thinking about which physical phenomena could help make this wish a reality.

Various methods of transmitting power wirelessly have been known for centuries. Perhaps the best known example is electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves. While such radiation is excellent for wireless transmission of information, it is not feasible to use it for power transmission. Since radiation spreads in all directions, a vast majority of power would end up being wasted into free space. One can envision using directed electromagnetic radiation, such as lasers, but this is not very practical and can even be dangerous. It requires an uninterrupted line of sight between the source and the device, as well as a sophisticated tracking mechanism when the device is mobile.

In contrast, WiTricity is based on using coupled resonant objects. Two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with extraneous off-resonant objects. A child on a swing is a good example of this. A swing is a type of mechanical resonance, so only when the child pumps her legs at the natural frequency of the swing is she able to impart substantial energy. Another example involves acoustic resonances: Imagine a room with 100 identical wine glasses, each filled with wine up to a different level, so they all have different resonant frequencies. If an opera singer sings a sufficiently loud single note inside the room, a glass of the corresponding frequency might accumulate sufficient energy to even explode, while not influencing the other glasses. In any system of coupled resonators there often exists a so-called “strongly coupled” regime of operation. If one ensures to operate in that regime in a given system, the energy transfer can be very efficient.

While these considerations are universal, applying to all kinds of resonances (e.g., acoustic, mechanical, electromagnetic, etc.), the MIT team focused on one particular type: magnetically coupled resonators. The team explored a system of two electromagnetic resonators coupled mostly through their magnetic fields; they were able to identify the strongly coupled regime in this system, even when the distance between them was several times larger than the sizes of the resonant objects. This way, efficient power transfer was enabled. Magnetic coupling is particularly suitable for everyday applications because most common materials interact only very weakly with magnetic fields, so interactions with extraneous environmental objects are suppressed even further. “The fact that magnetic fields interact so weakly with biological organisms is also important for safety considerations,” Kurs, a graduate student in physics, points out.

The investigated design consists of two copper coils, each a self-resonant system. One of the coils, attached to the power source, is the sending unit. Instead of irradiating the environment with electromagnetic waves, it fills the space around it with a non-radiative magnetic field oscillating at MHz frequencies. The non-radiative field mediates the power exchange with the other coil (the receiving unit), which is specially designed to resonate with the field. The resonant nature of the process ensures the strong interaction between the sending unit and the receiving unit, while the interaction with the rest of the environment is weak. Moffatt, an MIT undergraduate in physics, explains: “The crucial advantage of using the non-radiative field lies in the fact that most of the power not picked up by the receiving coil remains bound to the vicinity of the sending unit, instead of being radiated into the environment and lost.” With such a design, power transfer has a limited range, and the range would be shorter for smaller-size receivers. Still, for laptop-sized coils, power levels more than sufficient to run a laptop can be transferred over room-sized distances nearly omni-directionally and efficiently, irrespective of the geometry of the surrounding space, even when environmental objects completely obstruct the line-of-sight between the two coils. Fisher points out: “As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of such wireless power, it would charge automatically, without having to be plugged in. In fact, it would not even need a battery to operate inside of such a room.” In the long run, this could reduce our society’s dependence on batteries, which are currently heavy and expensive.

At first glance, such a power transfer is reminiscent of relatively commonplace magnetic induction, such as is used in power transformers, which contain coils that transmit power to each other over very short distances. An electric current running in a sending coil induces another current in a receiving coil. The two coils are very close, but they do not touch. However, this behavior changes dramatically when the distance between the coils is increased. As Karalis, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, points out, “Here is where the magic of the resonant coupling comes about. The usual non-resonant magnetic induction would be almost 1 million times less efficient in this particular system.”

WiTricity is rooted in such well-known laws of physics that it makes one wonder why no one thought of it before. “In the past, there was no great demand for such a system, so people did not have a strong motivation to look into it,” points out Joannopoulos, adding, “Over the past several years, portable electronic devices, such as laptops, cell phones, iPods and even household robots have become widespread, all of which require batteries that need to be recharged often.”

As for what the future holds, Soljacic adds, “Once, when my son was about three years old, we visited his grandparents’ house. They had a 20-year-old phone and my son picked up the handset, asking, ‘Dad, why is this phone attached with a cord to the wall"’ That is the mindset of a child growing up in a wireless world. My best response was, ‘It is strange and awkward, isn’t it" Hopefully, we will be getting rid of some more wires, and also batteries, soon.’”

Original article posted here.

Asia Times Still Reporting What Most Western Media Don't

Petro-power and nuclear renaissance

By Michael T Klare

Not "Islamo-fascism" but "energo-fascism" - the heavily militarized global struggle over diminishing supplies of energy - will dominate world affairs (and darken the lives of ordinary citizens) in the decades to come. This is so because top government officials globally are increasingly unwilling to rely on market forces to satisfy national energy needs and are instead assuming direct responsibility for the procurement, delivery and allocation of energy supplies.

The leaders of the major powers are ever more prepared to use force when deemed necessary to overcome any resistance to their energy priorities. In the case of the United States, this has required the conversion of its armed forces into a global oil-protection service; two other significant expressions of emerging energo-fascism are the arrival of Russia as an "energy superpower" and the repressive implications of plans to rely on nuclear power.

Energy haves and have-nots
With global demand for energy constantly rising and supplies contracting (or at least failing to keep pace), the world is being ever more sharply divided into two classes of nations: the energy haves and have-nots. The haves are the nations with sufficient domestic reserves (some combination of oil, gas, coal, hydropower, uranium and alternative sources of energy) to satisfy their own requirements and be able to export to other countries; the have-nots lack such reserves and must make up the deficit with expensive imports or suffer the consequences.

From 1950 to 2000, when energy was plentiful and cheap, the distinction did not seem as obvious as long as the have-nots possessed other forms of power: immense wealth (like Japan); nuclear weapons (like Britain and France); or powerful friends (like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NATO - and Warsaw Pact countries).

For poor countries possessing none of these assets, being a have-not state was a burden even then, contributing mightily to the debt crisis that still afflicts many of them. Today, these other measures of power have come to seem less important and the distinction between energy haves and have-nots correspondingly more significant - even for wealthy and powerful countries such as the United States and Japan.

Surprisingly, there are very few energy haves in the world today. Most notable among these privileged few are Australia, Canada, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq (if it were ever free of conflict), and a few others. These countries are in an envious position because they do not have to pay stratospheric prices for imported oil and natural gas and their ruling elites can demand all sorts of benefits - political, economic, diplomatic and military - from the foreign leaders who come calling to procure their energy products. Indeed, they can engage in the delicious game of playing one foreign leader against another, as Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev - a regular guest in Washington and Beijing - has become so adept at doing.

Pushed even further, this pursuit of favors can lead to a quest for political domination - with the sale of vital oil and natural-gas supplies made contingent on the recipient's acquiescing to certain political demands set forth by the seller. No country has embraced this strategy with greater vigor or enthusiasm than President Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The rising energy superpower
At the end of the Cold War, it appeared as if Russia was a forlorn, wasted ex-superpower, impoverished in spirit, treasure and influence. For years, it was treated with disdain by US officials. Its leaders were forced to swallow humiliating agreements like the expansion of NATO to Moscow's former satellites in Eastern Europe and the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. To many in Washington, it must have seemed as if Russia was little more than a relic of history, a has-been never again slated to play a significant role in world affairs.

Today Moscow, not Washington, seems to be enjoying the last laugh. With control over Eurasia's largest reserves of natural gas and coal as well as enormous supplies of petroleum and uranium, Russia is the new top dog - an energy superpower rather than a military one, but a superpower nonetheless.

First, a look at the big picture. Russia is the absolute king of natural-gas producers. According to BP (the former British Petroleum), it alone possesses 1.7 quadrillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, or 27% of the total world supply. This is even more significant than it might appear because Europe and the former USSR rely on natural gas for a larger share of their total energy - 34% - than any other region of the world. (In North America, where oil is the dominant fuel, natural gas accounts for only 25% of the total.)

Because Russia is by far the leading supplier of Eurasia's gas, it enjoys a position of supply dominance unmatched by any energy provider - except Saudi Arabia in the petroleum field. Even in that realm, Russia is the planet's second leading producer, falling just 1.4 million barrels short of Saudi Arabia's 11.0 million barrels per day at the start of 2006. Russia also possesses the world's second-largest reserves of coal (after the US) and is a major consumer of nuclear energy, with 31 operational reactors.

Soon after assuming power as president in 1999, Putin set out to convert this superabundance of energy - the economic equivalent of a nuclear arsenal - into the sort of political clout that would restore Russia's great-power status. By controlling the flow of energy to other parts of Eurasia from Russia and former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (whose energy is exported through Russian pipelines), he reasoned, he could exercise the sort of political influence enjoyed by Soviet officials during the heyday of the Cold War.

To accomplish this, however, he would have to reverse the wide-ranging privatization of the oil-and-gas industry that occurred in the early 1990s after the breakup of the USSR and bring vital elements of Russia's privately owned energy industry back under state control. Since there was no legitimate way to do this under Russia's post-communist legal system, Putin and his associates turned to illegitimate and authoritarian methods to de-privatize these valuable assets. Here, we see another emerging face of energo-fascism.

Remarkably, Putin had long before spelled out the rationale for concentrating control over Russia's energy resources in the state's hands. In a 1999 summary of his PhD dissertation on "Mineral Raw Materials in the Strategy for Development of the Russian Economy", he asserted that the Russian state must oversee the utilization of the country's mineral raw materials - including oilfields in private hands - for the good of the Russian people.

"The state has the right to regulate the process of the acquisition and the use of natural resources, and particularly mineral resources, independent of on whose property they are located," he wrote. "In this regard, the state acts in the interests of society as a whole." No better justification for energo-fascism can be imagined.

The most famous expression of this outlook has been the so-called Khodorkovsky Affair. In 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the chief executive officer of Yukos, then Russia's top oil producer, was arrested on fraud and tax-evasion charges. He had run afoul of Putin by pursuing all sorts of energy deals independent of the state, including possible joint ventures with ExxonMobil, and by supporting anti-Putin political forces inside Russia - either of which would have alone been sufficient to earn him the Kremlin's wrath.

However, it is now apparent that Putin's ultimate goal in engineering the arrest was to seize control of Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos' prime asset, accounting for about 11% of Russia's oil output. With Khodorkovsky and his top associates in prison awaiting trial, the government auctioned Yuganskneftegaz to a secretive shell company, which then resold it to state-owned Rosneft at a below-market price. In one fell swoop, Putin had managed to dismember Yukos and turn Rosneft into the country's leading oil producer.

The Russian president has also sought to extend state control over the distribution and export of oil and gas by blocking any effort by private firms to build pipelines that would compete with those owned and operated by Gazprom, the state-owned natural-gas monopoly, and Transneft, the state oil-pipeline monopoly. The US and other consuming nations have long pushed for the construction of privatized oil and gas pipelines in Russia to increase the outflow of energy to Europe and other foreign markets as well as to dilute the power of Gazprom and Transneft. The Kremlin has, however, systematically foreclosed all such efforts.

If the concentration of ownership of energy assets in the state's hands through legally dubious means is one dimension of emerging energo-fascism in Russia, a second is the utilization of this power to intimidate have-not states on Russia's periphery.

The most notable expression of this was the cutoff of natural-gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1, 2006. Ostensibly, Gazprom stopped the flow in a dispute over the pricing of Russian gas, but most observers believe that the action was also intended as a rebuke to Ukraine's Western-leaning president, Victor A Yushchenko. Remember, this was in the dead of winter, and natural gas is the main source of heat in Ukraine, as in much of Eastern Europe and the former USSR.

Gazprom resumed the flow after a last-minute pricing compromise and vociferous complaints from Western European customers who were suffering their own losses (as the Ukrainians diverted Europe-bound gas for their own use). This was the moment when it became clear to all that Moscow was fully prepared to open and close the energy spigot as a tool of foreign policy.

Since then, Moscow has employed this tactic on several occasions to intimidate other neighboring states in what it terms its "near abroad" (as the US used to speak of Latin America as its "back yard"). Last July 29, claiming a leak, Transneft halted oil shipments to the Mazeikiu refinery in Lithuania after its owners announced its sale to a Polish firm, not a Russian one. Observers of the move speculate that Russians officials intended to force a Russian takeover of the refinery.

In November, Gazprom threatened to more than double the price of natural gas to the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic from US$110 to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters. The alternative offered was a cessation of deliveries. Again, political pressure was believed to be at least part of the motive, as Georgia's pro-Western government had defied Moscow on a wide range of issues.

In December, Gazprom pulled the same ploy on Belarus, demanding a major readjustment of prices from a close (and impoverished) ally that had recently been showing mild signs of independence.

This, then, is another face of energo-fascism in Russia: the use of its energy as an instrument of political influence and coercion over weak have-not states on its borders. "It is not that energy is the new atomic weapon," Cliff Kupchan of the Eurasia Group consultancy told The Financial Times, "but Russia knows that petro-power, aggressively and cleverly applied, can yield diplomatic influence."

Big Brother and the nuclear renaissance
The last face of energo-fascism to be discussed here is the inevitable rise in state surveillance and repression attendant on an expected increase in nuclear power.

As oil and natural gas become scarcer, government and industry leaders will undoubtedly push for a greater reliance on nuclear power to provide additional energy. This is a program likely to gain greater momentum from rising concerns over global warming - largely a result of carbon-dioxide emissions created during the combustion of oil, gas and coal.

US President George W Bush has repeatedly spoken of his desire to foster greater reliance on nuclear power, and the White House-backed Energy Policy Act of 2005 already provides a variety of incentives for electrical utilities to build new reactors in the United States. Other countries, including France, China, Japan, Russia and India, also plan to up their reliance on nuclear power, greatly adding to the global spread of nuclear reactors.

Many problems stand in the way of this so-called renaissance, not least the mammoth costs involved and the fact that no safe system has yet been devised for the long-term storage of nuclear waste. Furthermore, despite many improvements in the safety of nuclear power plants, worries persist about the risk of accidents like those that occurred at Three Mile Island in 1979 in the US state of Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in the Ukrainian SSR in 1986.

But this is not the place to weigh these issues. Let me instead focus on two especially worrisome aspects of the future growth of the nuclear power industry: the possible federalization of nuclear-reactor placement in the US and the repressive implications globally of the greater availability of nuclear materials open to diversion to terrorists, criminals and "rogue" states.

Currently, America's municipalities, counties and states still exercise considerable control over the issuance of permits for the construction of new nuclear power plants, giving citizens in these jurisdictions considerable opportunity to resist the placement of a reactor "in their back yard".

For decades, this has been one of the leading obstacles to the construction of new reactors in the US, along with the costly and time-consuming legal process involved in winning over state legislatures, county boards and environmental agencies. If this practice prevails, we are never likely to see a true "renaissance" of nuclear power in the US, even if a few new reactors are built in poor rural areas where citizen resistance is minimal. The only way to increase reliance on nuclear power, therefore, is to federalize the permit process by shunting local agencies aside and giving federal bureaucrats the unfettered power to issue permits for the construction of new reactors.

Unlikely, you say? Well, consider this: the Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a significant precedent for the federalization of such authority by depriving state and local officials of their power to approve the placement of "regasification" plants.

These are mammoth facilities used to reconvert liquefied natural gas, transported by ship from foreign suppliers, into a gas that can then be delivered by pipeline to customers in the US. Several localities on the east and west coasts had fought the construction of such plants in their harbors for fear that they might explode (not an entirely far-fetched concern) or become targets for terrorists, but they have now lost their legal power to do so. So much for local democracy.

Here's my worry: that some future US administration will push through an amendment to the Energy Policy Act giving the federal government the same sort of placement authority for nuclear reactors that it now has for regasification plants. The feds then announce plans to build dozens or even hundreds of new reactors in or near such places as Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and so on, claiming an urgent need for additional energy.

People protest en masse. Local officials, sympathetic to the protestors, refuse to arrest them in droves. But now we're speaking of defiance of federal, not state or municipal, ordinances. Ergo, the National Guard or the regular army is called up to quell the protests and protect the reactor sites - energo-fascism in action.

Finally, there's another danger in the spread of nuclear power: that it will require a systematic increase in state surveillance of everyone even remotely connected with commercial nuclear energy. After all, every uranium-enrichment facility, nuclear reactor and waste-storage site - and any of the linkages between them - is a potential source of fissionable materials for terrorists, black-market traffickers or rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

This means, of course, that all of the personnel employed in these facilities, and all their contractors and subcontractors (and all their families and contacts) will have to be constantly vetted for possible illicit ties and kept under strict, full-time surveillance. The more reactors there are, the more facilities and contractors who will have to be subjected to this sort of oversight - and the more the security staff itself will have to be subjected to ever-higher levels of surveillance by state security agencies. It's a formula for Big Brother on a very large scale.

And then there's the special problem of "breeder reactors". These plants produce ("breed") more fissionable material than they consume, often in the form of plutonium, which can, in turn, be burned in power reactors to generate electricity but can also be used as the fuel for atomic weapons. Although such reactors are currently banned in the US, other countries, including Japan, are building them so as to diminish their reliance on fossil fuels and natural uranium, itself a finite resource.

As the demand for nuclear energy grows, more countries (even, possibly, the US) are bound to build breeder reactors. But this will vastly increase the global supply of bomb-grade plutonium, requiring an even greater increase in state supervision of the nuclear-power industry in all its aspects.

The state's iron grip
All the phenomena discussed - the transformation of the US military into a global oil-protection service, the growth of the energy equivalent of a major-power arms race, the emergence of Russia as an energy superpower, and the need for increased surveillance over the nuclear-power industry - are expressions of a single, overarching trend: the tendency of states to extend their control over every aspect of energy production, procurement, transportation and allocation.

This, in turn, is a response to the depletion of world energy supplies and a shift in the locus of energy production from the global North to the global South - developments that have been under way for some time, but are bound to gain greater momentum in the years ahead.

Many concerned citizens and organizations - the Apollo Alliance, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Worldwatch Institute, to name a few - are trying to develop sane, democratic responses to the problems brought about by energy depletion, instability in energy-producing areas, and global warming.

Most government leaders, however, appear intent on addressing these problems through increased state controls and a greater reliance on the use of military force. Unless this tendency is resisted, energo-fascism could be the future.

Original article posted here.