Water And Power  

The SMH has another up[date on the impact of the drought on power supplies.

THE impact of the long drought on the security of Australia's electricity supply will be discussed at a meeting of energy ministers today where a detailed report will be presented by the national body responsible for electricity marketing.The report is expected to spell out the risk to power supplies posed by water shortages for cooling power generators and hydro-electricity in all the eastern states, including NSW.

The water crisis could cause some power shortages next year unless action is taken, according to forecasts by the National Electricity Marketing Management Corporation. This month two of NSW's key power generators have issued new drought impact statements. One, from Macquarie Generation, is warning that electricity output could be affected.

Macquarie, the largest producer of electricity in Australia, operates the Bayswater and Liddell power stations in the Upper Hunter Valley which provide 40 per cent of the state's electricity supply.

Half of its water for Macquarie's cooling at its generators is supposed to come from the Hunter River during "high flow events". But on May 11 the corporation reported that due to the drought this has been restricted. Without further rainfall, Macquarie said, "electricity output may be affected from late 2008". Its other water supply, from the Glenbawn dam in the Hunter, has already been allocated but the level in the dam has fallen to less than 30 per cent.

The Snowy hydro power generation has also been affected by the drought and poor river flows. While Queensland and Victoria's power systems have come under pressure already, a spokesman for the National Electricity Marketing Management Corporation said forecasts showed NSW could experience a shortfall in its crucial "buffer" power reserves next April.

In the past two months the wholesale price of electricity has risen sharply as retailers and suppliers try to build in the risk from the drought among other issues.

The Australian reports the NSW government is creating a contingency water reserve to ensure power generation for another year or two. I wonder if that's enough time to build all the wind and solar thermal plants we need to replace the thirsty (and dirty) coal fired plants ?

THE NSW Government will put aside 40 billion litres of water to ensure power generation will not be affected if the drought continues. NSW Premier Morris Iemma said today the water would be stored as a contingency and would be used only for power generation if the drought did not break. The water would be held in the Glenbawn Dam in the Hunter Valley.

Mr Iemma said there was no immediate risk to the state's power supply, but low rainfall could have an impact on generators late next year and early in 2009. "We must act now to ensure our electricity generators have sufficient water supplies to keep producing energy in the event this drought drags into next year and beyond," he said today.

The Age reports installation of water tanks is lagging behind that of solar hot water systems in Victoria.

WATER tanks are being installed in as few as 20 per cent of new homes in Melbourne despite the crippling drought. Under the State Government's five-star rating system new homes must have a tank or a solar panel.

A survey of major builders has found that about 80 per cent of new homes have the solar hot water rather than water tanks. Builders say that upfront costs, savings over time, ease of installation and the dwindling size of backyards have worked against tanks.

Paul Pitrone, of the state environmental agency Sustainability Victoria, said the survey covered 5000 homes in inner and outer Melbourne. He said that builders were buying solar panels in bulk, which was helping to lower prices and encouraging rapid improvements in technology. "The (solar) technology is advancing, the prices are coming down, block sizes are getting smaller and setbacks don't allow for rainwater tanks," Mr Pitrone said.

In some areas with very low rainfall, tanks were not the best option for saving water, he said. Alternatives such as grey water diversion worked better.

Burbank Australia, one of Melbourne's larger builders, now markets its homes with solar hot water as a standard fitting. Home buyers have to pay extra for a tank. Burbank sustainability manager Fondas Verginis said financial savings were greater from solar — about $200 a year — than tanks — about $50 a year. But he said that with rising concern over drought, home buyers were increasingly interested in saving water and demand for tanks was rising.

The Age also reports on the progress of Santos' mud volcano in Java.

One year ago on Tuesday a gas exploration well part-owned by Australian mining giant Santos blew, sending a geyser of mud and toxic gas into the air. Nearby villages and factories were flooded, a major highway and railway were covered and later East Java's main gas pipeline ruptured.

Despite all attempts to plug the flow — drilling relief wells and even dropping chains of concrete balls into its centre — more and more mud spurts from the volcano, about 1 million barrels each day. The rising tide covered thousands more homes in March.

It is the region's worst social and ecological mining disaster, according to leading Indonesian environmental watchdog, Walhi.

The displaced await compensation, mitigation efforts are farcical and arguments continue about who will bear the multibillion-dollar cost.

There is no end in sight. Optimists hope the mudflow could dissipate in 30 years, but experts suggest it may continue for centuries. Twenty-three kilometres of earth dams have been built in an unsuccessful attempt to contain the mud, 20 metres deep in parts, and channel it into the nearby Porong River then on to the sea.

Renewable Energy Access reports that solar PV costs will decrease 40% by 2010 (echoing reports earlier this week quoting Travis Bradford at the Prometheus Institute and WorldWatch).

The solar industry is poised for a rapid decline in costs that will make it a mainstream power option in the next few years, according to a new assessment by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Prometheus Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Global production of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells has risen sixfold since 2000 and grew 41 percent in 2006 alone. Although grid-connected solar capacity still provides less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity, it increased nearly 50 percent in 2006, to 5,000 megawatts, propelled by booming markets in Germany and Japan.

Spain is likely to join the big leagues in 2007, and the U.S. soon thereafter.

This growth, while dramatic, has been constrained by a shortage of manufacturing capacity for purified polysilicon, the same material that goes into semiconductor chips. But the situation will be reversed in the next two years as more than a dozen companies in Europe, China, Japan, and the United States bring on unprecedented levels of production capacity, stated the assessment.

In 2006, for the first time, more than half the world’s polysilicon was used to produce solar PV cells. Combined with technology advances, the increase in polysilicon supply will bring costs down rapidly -- by more than 40 percent in the next three years, according to Prometheus estimates.

“Solar energy is the world’s most plentiful energy resource, and the challenge has been tapping it cost-effectively and efficiently,” says Janet Sawin, a senior researcher at Worldwatch, who authored the update. “We are now seeing two major trends that will accelerate the growth of PV: the development of advanced technologies, and the emergence of China as a low-cost producer.”

Tom at "Save and Conserve" points to a survey that claims American's have a grossly exaggerated view of how much oil their country possesses.

Although I shouldn't be, I find myself continually astounded by the results of surveys and polls here in the USA. The most recent one, conducted by the Consumer Federation of America, is a case study on misconceived notions, assumptions, and perceptions about America's relationship with black gold:

More than half (55%) of Americans mistakenly believe the nation holds more than twenty percent of the world’s oil reserves. In fact, the U.S. has less than 3% of this oil. Those who overestimate domestic oil reserves also are most likely to think “we can produce enough oil to reduce our dependence on oil imports.”

Slightly more than half of Americans (51%) think "we can produce enough new oil in the U.S. to reduce our dependence on oil imports,” with 46% disagreeing.

This optimism is clearly related to the widespread belief that the nation contains far larger oil reserves than it in fact has. More than half (55%) of Americans think we hold at least one-fifth of the world's oil, with nearly one-third (32%) thinking we hold over 30%. Only 3% of Americans think that we hold less than 5% of the world's oil reserves, which is the correct answer, since the nation holds less than 3% of the world's oil reserves.

Domestic U.S. oil reserves equal just three years of current annual U.S. consumption and 12 years of current annual U.S. production.

I guess the obvious question is: why do so many Americans think we have so much oil in this country? Where do they get this stuff from? Why are they so wrong?

Ed Gunther has a post on the California Clean Tech Open 2007 (Happy First Anniversary Ed).

There are six clean tech categories in the competition: Air, Water & Waste, Energy Efficiency, Green Building, Renewables, Smart Power, and Transportation. The California Clean Tech Open (CCTO) winner in each category will receive a "Start-Up In A Box" Prize Package worth $100,000: $50,000 in cash from the category prize sponsor and an additional $50,000 worth of sponsor donated office space and professional services.

If you are interested in entering the Competition, please visit How To Enter The Competition to register and understand the competition process. In 2006, 47 finalist teams were selected from 156 business plan entrants for an intensive mentoring boot camp preparing them to present their business plans to the CCTO Judging Panel. The CCTO 2006 Competition Report has all the details about last year. My wild guess is the number of entrants in the CCTO competition will almost double to 300 this year. About 30 to 60 finalist teams will be selected from the Executive Summary submissions.

I found the panel discussion moderated by Kerry Dolan, Senior Editor, Forbes, to be a category prize sponsor showcase without any major revelations. By contrast, the Closing Speakers had practical advice and profound thoughts about the competition, business, clean tech, and energy policy.

The first was profiled in the post, GreenVolts CEO Bob Cart addresses California Clean Tech Open 2007 Kick-off Event.

Raj Atluru, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, shared Clean Tech words of wisdom from the venture capitalist viewpoint:



John Garamendi, Lieutenant Governor of California, focused on fundamental changes to our national Energy Policy as a critical driver for Clean Tech to prevent climate change. This is a decent political speech that avoids mentioning the The Governator (Governor Schwarzenegger) or the California Solar Initiative too much.

Kevin Bullis at Technology Review has a look at the new starch to hydrogen process I mentioned recently. Kevin addresses your question about CO2 emissions SP - the offset is in growing the plants that make the starch in the first place.

Using a stew of enzymes culled from several organisms, researchers have developed a way to convert starch, available from numerous sources including corn and potatoes, into hydrogen gas at low temperatures and pressures. The method produces three times more hydrogen than an older enzymatic method does, suggesting that it might be practical to use such enzymes to produce hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles.

While fuel-cell vehicles are appealing because they emit no pollutants, it's been a challenge to find clean and affordable ways to produce, transport, and store hydrogen to fuel them. Most commonly, hydrogen is extracted from fossil fuels. Making hydrogen by electrolyzing water is energy intensive and can be expensive. The new system improves on other experimental methods for creating hydrogen from biomass by using low temperatures, making it potentially more convenient and energy efficient.

The researchers--from Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, VA; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and the University of Georgia, in Athens--combined 13 commercially available enzymes isolated from yeast, bacteria, spinach, and rabbit muscle. The work is available online in PLoS ONE, a journal published by the Public Library of Science. The hydrogen comes from two sources: the starch and the water used to oxidize the starch. The enzymes facilitate chemical reactions in which the water and starch can be completely converted into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, says Y. Percival Zhang, professor of biological systems at Virginia Tech. (The carbon dioxide released is offset by the carbon dioxide captured by plants that provide the starch.)

The new system produces a higher yield of hydrogen than previous experimental systems that used enzymes for converting sugars into hydrogen. But while the yield of hydrogen is high, so far the rates at which the gas is produced are extremely low. That's in part because the researchers used off-the-shelf enzymes and have not optimized the system, Zhang says. The scientists' next project will include analyzing each stage of the process in detail to find the rate-limiting steps. ...

Still, some are skeptical of the basic concept of using starch to create fuel. "Making food into hydrogen is not such a great idea," says John Deutch, a chemistry professor at MIT. Indeed, demand for corn to make ethanol is already increasing food prices. Using corn starch to make hydrogen could exacerbate the problem.

But Zhang notes that employing starch to make hydrogen would be a much better use of the available corn than turning it into ethanol: fuel cells can be three times more efficient than ethanol-burning internal combustion engines. Nevertheless, he sees starch as a temporary solution. Zhang is also developing a version of the process that starts with cellulose, found primarily in the nonfood parts of plants.

The LA Times reports that California is restricting purchases of power from coal fired plants.

The California Energy Commission on Wednesday imposed new rules that effectively forbid the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and all other municipal utilities in the state from signing new contracts with coal-fired power plants.

The move, together with identical regulations imposed on private utilities in January, is a significant step toward reducing the contribution of California, the world's sixth largest economy, to global warming.

"This will reduce greenhouse emissions throughout the Western states," said Claudia Chandler, a spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission. "People have long been critical of California for exporting its pollution…. Now we are holding ourselves accountable."

California, with the strictest pollution laws in the nation, has largely phased out coal-fired generators within its borders. But the state still buys about 20% of its electricity from coal-fueled power plants in other states.

The DWP buys 47% of its power from two massive coal-fired plants in Utah and Arizona that are major sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Those contracts expire in 2017 and 2027. Now, under state law, they cannot be renewed unless those plants find a way to pump their emissions underground, but the technology to do so is unproven. ...

The energy industry is pinning its hopes on developing a technology that would pipe carbon dioxide and other gases into underground repositories. But the feasibility of this technology and its environmental effects have not been fully determined.

If other states adopt California's approach, it will make renewable energy more competitive with cheap coal. On May 3, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire signed a law modeled on Perata's legislation. "California is telling Wall Street and Main Street that it is time to switch sides and invest in clean energy exclusively," said Bernadette del Chiaro, director of clean energy issues for Environment California.

But the DWP, she says, has a long way to go. "Los Angeles is one of the sunniest cities in the world, but it remains in the dark ages, with the bulk of its electricity coming from coal. Its solar program remains underfunded, understaffed and poorly designed. But the potential is there — the sunshine, the wind, tidal and geothermal power nearby. LADWP could become the nation's premier green utility."

Joel Makower has a post on "Shining a Bright Light on Energy Efficiency".

Energy efficiency came back into the limelight this week, a seemingly rare but welcome occurrence. Given the magnitude of our climate and energy challenges, the opportunities to use energy more efficiently and effectively have remained largely unexploited, as I've noted in the past. In our gadget- and gizmo-obsessed culture, in which status is expressed by what we can show for ourselves, not necessarily by what we do, being energy efficient is a decidedly tough sell.

Example: We'll spend irrationally on solar panels, whose economic payoff may be years away, if ever, but whose existence offers a "Hey, look at this" opportunity for both individuals and institutions. But we'll shun smaller investments that have more immediate economic and environmental payoffs: insulating buildings, installing devices that ration energy use to the times and places it's actually needed to provide comfort or service, and upgrades of appliances and other energy hogs with the latest models that do the same job with far fewer tons of coal, barrels of oil, and the like.

True, it's hard to get green cred for bragging about your company headquarter's R-34 insulation, but that may well be the wiser choice from an economic and environmental perspective.

It's not either/or, of course -- we need both clean energy and efficiency. It's simply that one of those two seems to have a much better press agent.

So, it was gratifying to see two significant developments this week that gave energy efficiency its rightful place in the sun. The first was the launch of the Clinton Climate Initiative's global Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program, which brings together four of the world's largest energy service companies, five of the world's largest banks, and sixteen of the world's largest cities to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings.

Under the program, four big energy technology and service companies -- Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Siemens, and Trane -- will conduct energy audits, perform building retrofits, and guarantee the energy savings of the retrofit projects. Groups like the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and U.S. Green Building Council will help the cities develop programs to train local workers on the installation and maintenance of energy-saving and clean-energy products. Meanwhile, Citibank, UBS, Deutsche Bank, ABN AMRO, and JP Morgan have agreed to provide $1 billion each in financing for both public- and private-sector building owners to undertake these retrofits at no capital cost. The resulting $5 billion kitty effectively doubles the existing global market for building energy retrofits.

This is no small matter. Buildings are responsible for roughly half of greenhouse gas emissions in most cities, and over 70 percent in older cities such as New York and London. And most buildings, large and small, leak heating in winter and cooling in summer, among other wastefulness. A handful of basic activities and technologies, along with a modicum of changed habits, can slash energy use between 25 and 50 percent. The Clinton Initiative's short-term financial injection can go a long way toward growing markets for building efficiency technologies and services, not to mention helping to make energy-smart buildings the rule rather than the exception. ...

Tom Paine has a column on the benefits of encouraging "green collar jobs".

Hooray! Hooray! Finally, some House Democrats connected the dots on ways to solve two of the nation's biggest problems: failing American job security and global climate security. By addressing both issues simultaneously, these congressional leaders may re-energize the anti-poverty movement—and transform the debate on global warming. ...

On May 22, the Select Committee held a special hearing, entitled: "Economic Impacts of Global Warming: Green Collar Jobs." At the special hearing, Solis addressed the importance of using green collar jobs both as a way to curb global warming and as a pathway out of poverty.

Markey made an equally strong statement in favor of pursuing this strategy. And Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has already been working hard on the Senate side, trying to get a "green collar jobs" proposal pushed through there.

A green collar job is a vocational job in an ecologically responsible trade, such as installing solar panels, weatherizing buildings, constructing and maintaining wind farms, materials re-use and recycling and doing organic agriculture.

During a speech on the House floor before the hearing, Solis spoke of the need to respond to the global warming crisis by investing not only in new infrastructure, but also in people.

The shift from dirty energy sources (like oil and coal) to cleaner energy sources (like solar, wind, and plant-based fuel) will produce hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The work of retrofitting millions of buildings so that they conserve energy will produce still more jobs. And all of these jobs will be, by definition, impossible to outsource to other countries.

Grist has a post on James Hansen's latest on the likelihood of catastrophic climate change

Sea level rise of 5 meters in one century? Even if most scientists will not say so publicly, that catastrophe is a real possibility, according to the director of NASA's Goddard Institute Of Space Studies.

It may seem like I single Hansen out for recommended reading. But that's only because he:

* is the nation's top climatologist
* writes prolifically
* speaks with unusually bluntness for a scientist
* has been more right than just about any climate scientist

He has written a terrific piece for the open-access Environmental Research Letters on "Scientific Reticence and Sea Level Rise":

I suggest that a "scientific reticence" is inhibiting the communication of a threat of a potentially large sea level rise. Delay is dangerous because of system inertias that could create a situation with future sea level changes out of our control. I argue for calling together a panel of scientific leaders to hear evidence and issue a prompt plain-written report on current understanding of the sea level change issue.

I could not agree more. In researching my book Hell and High Water, many leading climate scientists spoke to me candidly off the record that they share Hansen's fear. Fortunately, more and more are speaking out.

Hansen is especially concerned that sea level rise is nonlinear:

Rahmstorf (2007) has noted that if one uses the observed sea level rise of the past century to calibrate a linear projection of future sea level, BAU warming will lead to a sea level rise of the order of one meter in the present century. This is a useful observation, as it indicates that the sea level change would be substantial even without the nonlinear collapse of an ice sheet. However, this approach cannot be taken as a realistic way of projecting the likely sea level rise under BAU forcing. The linear approximation fits the past sea level change well for the past century only because the two terms contributing significantly to sea level rise were (1) thermal expansion of ocean water and (2) melting of alpine glaciers.

Under BAU [business as usual] forcing in the 21st century, the sea level rise surely will be dominated by a third term: (3) ice sheet disintegration. This third term was small until the past few years, but it is has at least doubled in the past decade and is now close to 1 mm/year, based on the gravity satellite measurements discussed above. As a quantitative example, let us say that the ice sheet contribution is 1 cm for the decade 2005–15 and that it doubles each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. That time constant yields a sea level rise of the order of 5 m this century. Of course I cannot prove that my choice of a ten-year doubling time for nonlinear response is accurate, but I am confident that it provides a far better estimate than a linear response for the ice sheet component of sea level rise under BAU forcing.

An important point is that the nonlinear response could easily run out of control, because of positive feedbacks and system inertias. Ocean warming and thus melting of ice shelves will continue after growth of the forcing stops, because the ocean response time is long and the temperature at depth is far from equilibrium for current forcing. Ice sheets also have inertia and are far from equilibrium: and as ice sheets disintegrate their surface moves lower, where it is warmer, subjecting the ice to additional melt. There is also inertia in energy systems: even if it is decided that changes must be made, it may require decades to replace infrastructure.

Feedbacks and inertia and the very real threat of catastrophic sea level rise mean the time to act is now!

Grist also talks about GE's booming green division.

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt gushed about his company's green successes at a second-anniversary celebration for the "ecomagination" unit yesterday, noting that it had sales of $12 billion last year, has back orders for $50 billion more, and will "blow away" the original goal of $20 billion by 2010. Hooray for innovation! We're ignoring the bad feelings about nuclear power and labor just for a second here so we can smile! It's Friday, for Pete's sake! In tandem with several other big-name partners, Immelt also revealed 11 new greener products and services, including the world's first diesel-electric hybrid locomotive and a global alliance with BP to develop 10 to 15 hydrogen power projects. Charles Zimmerman, vice president of Wal-Mart -- which will use GE's LED bulbs in refrigerated cases at over 500 of its stores -- spies an official tipping point: "People will look back 20 years from now and see what GE, BP, and Wal-Mart did at this point in time and will say, 'That's when it happened.'"

Grist also links to Al Gore on The Daily Show talking about his book "The Assault On Reason".





Ron Paul's latest speech to the US Congress is on peace and individual liberty.

We currently live in the most difficult of times for guarding against an expanding central government with a steady erosion of our freedoms.

We are continually being reminded that “9/11 has changed everything.” Unfortunately, the policy that needed most to be changed—that is our policy of foreign interventionism—has only been expanded. There is no pretense any longer that a policy of humility in foreign affairs, without being the world’s policeman and engaging in nation building, is worthy of consideration. We now live in a post 9/11 America where our government is going to make us safe no matter what it takes. We’re expected to grin and bear it and adjust to every loss of our liberties in the name of patriotism and security.

Though the majority of Americans initially welcomed this declared effort to make us safe, and were willing to sacrifice for the cause, more and more Americans are now becoming concerned about civil liberties being needlessly and dangerously sacrificed. The problem is that the Iraq war continues to drag on and a real danger of its spreading exists. There’s no evidence that a truce will soon be signed in Iraq , or in the war on terror or drugs. Victory is not even definable. If Congress is incapable of declaring an official war, it’s impossible to know when it will end. We have been fully forewarned that the world conflict in which we’re now engaged will last a long, long time.

The war mentality, and the pervasive fear of an unidentified enemy, allows for a steady erosion of our liberties, and with this our respect for self reliance and confidence is lost. Just think of the self sacrifice and the humiliation we go through at the airport screening process on a routine basis. Though there’s no scientific evidence of any likelihood of liquids and gels being mixed on an airplane to make a bomb, billions of dollars are wasted throwing away toothpaste and hairspray and searching old women in wheelchairs.

Our enemies say boo, and we jump, we panic, and then we punish ourselves. We’re worse than a child being afraid of the dark. But in a way, the fear of indefinable terrorism is based on our inability to admit the truth about why there is a desire by a small number of angry radical Islamists to kill Americans. It’s certainly not because they are jealous of our wealth and freedoms.

We fail to realize that the extremists, willing to sacrifice their own lives to kill their enemies, do so out of a sense of weakness and desperation over real and perceived attacks on their way of life, their religion, their country and their natural resources. Without the conventional diplomatic or military means to retaliate against these attacks, and an unwillingness of their own government to address the issue, they resort to the desperation tactic of suicide terrorism. Their anger toward their own governments, which they believe are co-conspirators with the American government, is equal to or greater than that directed toward us. These errors in judgment in understanding the motive of the enemy and the constant fear that is generated have brought us to this crisis where our civil liberties and privacy are being steadily eroded in the name of preserving national security. We may be the economic and military giant of the world, but the effort to stop this war on our liberties here at home in the name of patriotism, is being lost.

The erosion of our personal liberties started long before 9/11, but 9/11 accelerated the process. There are many things that motivate those who pursue this course—both well-intentioned and malevolent. But it would not happen if the people remained vigilant, understood the importance of individual rights, and were unpersuaded that a need for security justifies the sacrifice of liberty—even if it’s just now and then.

The true patriot challenges the state when the state embarks on enhancing its power at the expense of the individual. Without a better understanding and a greater determination to reign in the state, the rights of Americans that resulted from the revolutionary break from the British and the writing of the Constitution, will disappear.

The record since September 11, 2001, is dismal. Respect for liberty has rapidly deteriorated.

Many of the new laws passed after 9/11 had in fact been proposed long before that attack. The political atmosphere after that attack simply made it more possible to pass such legislation. The fear generated by 9/11 became an opportunity for those seeking to promote the power of the state domestically, just as it served to falsely justify the long planned-for invasion of Iraq .

The war mentality was generated by the Iraq war in combination with the constant drum beat of fear at home. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, who is now likely residing in Pakistan , our supposed ally, are ignored, as our troops fight and die in Iraq and are made easier targets for the terrorists in their backyard. While our leaders constantly use the mess we created to further justify the erosion of our constitutional rights here at home, we forget about our own borders and support the inexorable move toward global government—hardly a good plan for America.

The accelerated attacks on liberty started quickly after 9/11. Within weeks the Patriot Act was overwhelmingly passed by Congress. Though the final version was unavailable up to a few hours before the vote—no Member had sufficient time to read or understand it—political fear of “not doing something,” even something harmful, drove Members of Congress to not question the contents and just vote for it. A little less freedom for a little more perceived safety was considered a fair tradeoff—and the majority of Americans applauded.

The Patriot Act, though, severely eroded the system of checks and balances by giving the government the power to spy on law abiding citizens without judicial supervision. The several provisions that undermine the liberties of all Americans include: sneak and peak searches; a broadened and more vague definition of domestic terrorism; allowing the FBI access to libraries and bookstore records without search warrants or probable cause; easier FBI initiation of wiretaps and searches, as well as roving wiretaps; easier access to information on American citizens’ use of the internet; and easier access to e-mail and financial records of all American citizens.

The attack on privacy has not relented over the past six years. The Military Commissions Act is a particularly egregious piece of legislation and, if not repealed, will change America for the worse as the powers unconstitutionally granted to the Executive Branch are used and abused.

This act grants excessive authority to use secretive military commissions outside of places where active hostilities are going on. The Military Commissions Act permits torture, arbitrary detention of American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants at the full discretion of the president and without the right of Habeas Corpus, and warrantless searches by the NSA (National Security Agency). It also gives to the president the power to imprison individuals based on secret testimony.

Since 9/11, Presidential signing statements designating portions of legislation that the President does not intend to follow, though not legal under the Constitution, have enormously multiplied. Unconstitutional Executive Orders are numerous and mischievous and need to be curtailed.

Extraordinary rendition to secret prisons around the world has been widely engaged in, though obviously extra-legal.

A growing concern in the post 9/11 environment is the federal government’s lists of potential terrorists based on secret evidence. Mistakes are made and sometimes it is virtually impossible to get one’s name removed, even though the accused is totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

A national ID card is now in the process of being implemented. It’s called the Real ID card and it’s tied to our Social Security numbers and our state driver’s license. If Real ID is not stopped it will become a national driver’s license/ID for all America .

Some of the least noticed and least discussed changes in the law were the changes made to the Insurrection Act of 1807 and to Posse Comitatus by the Defense Authorization Act of 2007.

These changes pose a threat to the survival of our republic by giving the president the power to declare martial law for as little reason as to restore “public order.” The 1807 Act severely restricted the president in his use of the military within the United States borders, and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 strengthened these restrictions with strict oversight by Congress. The new law allows the president to circumvent the restrictions of both laws. The Insurrection Act has now become the “Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act”. This is hardly a title that suggests that the authors cared about or understood the nature of a constitutional republic.

Now, martial law can be declared not just for “insurrection” but also for “natural disasters, public health reasons, terrorist attacks or incidents” or for the vague reason called “other conditions.” The President can call up the National Guard without Congressional approval or the governors’ approval and even send these state guard troops into other states. The American republic is in remnant status. The stage is set for our country eventually devolving into a military dictatorship and few seem to care.

These precedent setting changes in the law are extremely dangerous and will change American jurisprudence forever if not reversed. The beneficial results of our revolt against the king’s abuses are about to be eliminated and few Members of Congress and few Americans are aware of the seriousness of the situation. Complacency and fear drive our legislation without any serious objection by our elected leaders.

Sadly, those few who do object to this self evident trend away from personal liberty and empire building overseas are portrayed as unpatriotic and uncaring.

Though welfare and socialism always fails, opponents of them are said to lack compassion. Though opposition to totally unnecessary war should be the only moral position, the rhetoric is twisted to claim that patriots who oppose the war are not “supporting the troops”. The cliché “support the troops” is incessantly used as a substitute for the unacceptable notion of “supporting the policy” no matter how flawed it may be. Unsound policy can never help the troops. Keeping the troops out of harm’s way and out of wars unrelated to our national security is the only real way of protecting the troops. With this understanding, just who can claim the title of “patriot”?

Before the war in the Middle East spreads and becomes a world conflict, for which we’ll be held responsible, or the liberties of all Americans become so suppressed we can no longer resist, much has to be done. Time is short but our course of action should be clear. Resistance to illegal and unconstitutional usurpation of our rights is required. Each of us must choose which course of action we should take—education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience, to bring about the necessary changes.

But let it not be said that we did nothing.

Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty.

Ron Paul also appeared on the Bill Maher Show and talked about Rudy Giuliani's reading list (and fields the most unusual question I've seen on US TV - "why are americans so dumb ?"). Onlookers Ben Affleck and PJ O'Rourke looked dumbfounded, having obviously never seen the Ron Paul show before...



Greg Palast seems to be causing quite stir with his latest story about Rove and Gonzales' "missing emails" and the "fired atorneys" case, along with more talk about vote fraud and election rigging in next year's US elections. From an interview with 10 Zen Monkeys:

Investigative reporter Greg Palast says 4.5 million votes will be shoplifted in 2008, thanks largely to the “Rove-bots” that have been placed in the Justice Department following the U.S. Attorney firings. Being the guy who uncovered the voter “purge lists” of 2000 that disenfranchised black voters, he’s worth listening to, even if the mainstream press chooses not to.

This time around, he claims to have 500 emails that the House subpoenaed and Karl Rove claims were deleted forever. They prove definitively, says Palast, that the Justice Department is infested with operatives taking orders from Rove to steal upcoming elections for Republicans and permanently alter the Department.

The “clownocracy” of Bush and Rove is criminal and even evil in its attempts to steal past and future elections, according to Palast, and can only be stopped if “Democrats…find their souls and find their balls.”

In an updated new version of his best-selling book, Armed Madhouse, Palast lays out the case for the future theft of the presidency, along with lots of other Executive malfeasance. I chatted with him about the role of the Justice Department in this scheme, and what it means for the viability of our “democracy.”

JEFF DIEHL: First off, the “lost” emails. I guess you’re confident those 500 emails aren’t themselves a hoax? Considering the source? [John Wooden, the man behind the spoof site, whitehouse.org, forwarded them on to Palast after someone accidentally sent them to Wooden’s georgewbush.org domain.]

GREG PALAST: Oddly, the GOP verified their authenticity to BBC. I almost fell over dead when they did that.

JD: How did they do that exactly?

GP: We asked them on camera. They did not deny they were the party’s internal emails — just disagreed what the “caging” lists were. Saying, for example, they were “donor” lists. Men in homeless shelters?

Remember, there’s no First Amendment in England. I’m wrong, I’m sued, I’m broke, I’m toast.

JD: Let’s move on to former Justice Department counsel (and Regent University graduate) Monica Goodling’s recent testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee, since it’s so fresh…

GP: The blondeling underling of the Police State. The lady was trying to tell us something important, but the dim bulbs of the U.S. press and the committee dolts wouldn’t listen. She began by accusing her bosses of perjury. The issue was her allegation that they knew all about “caging.” And no one asked her one damn question about it. Like what is “caging” and why would they commit perjury to cover it up?

JD: Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) asked, and Goodling said, “It has to do with direct mail.”

GP: And that was it. D’oh! It’s not about “direct mail.” Direct mail has to do with Victoria’s Secret and stuff like that. This was all about stealing the 2004 — and 2008 — elections. That’s why she wanted immunity. She was afraid it would all unravel, the caging game…but she had nothing to fear.

JD: Well, it is a direct mail term, but it’s also a voter supression term. Do no senators know that, not even Committee Chair John Conyers?

GP: Conyers knows — and he knows me. He’s keeping his powder dry. The others are clueless.

Caging works like this. Hundreds of thousands of Black and Hispanic voters were sent letters — do not forward. Letters returned as undeliverable (”caged”) were used as evidence the voter didn’t live at their registered address. The GOP goons challenged these voters’ right to cast ballots — and their votes were lost.

But whose letters were caged? Here’s where the game turns to deep evil. They targeted Black students on vacation, homeless men — and you’ll love this — Black soldiers sent overseas. They weren’t living at their home voting address because they were shivering under a Humvee in Falluja. ...

And to close, some tinfoil from Cryptogon about reports of an Iranian financial panic. I must admit, I thought exactly the same thing when I read the Guardian report - that dude at ABC who reported on covert ops earlier in the week seems to have been spot on.

I have no idea what this means, but with two U.S. carrier groups just off the coats of Iran… Let’s just hope nobody makes any sudden moves.

Maybe it’s related to the CIA ratf*cking that Bush recently authorized.

Via: Guardian:

Iran’s financial system suffered a fresh jolt yesterday with panic selling on the stock market after the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, abruptly ordered banks to cut interest rates sharply, despite surging inflation.

The order, which Mr Ahmadinejad issued by telephone during a visit to Belarus and which flew in the face of expert advice - has triggered warnings of a financial crisis and spiralling corruption amid fears of a capital flight from the country’s lending institutions.

Mr Ahmadinejad’s decree forced all state-owned and private banks to slash borrowing rates to 12%. Inflation is officially 15% but is generally believed to be much higher. State banks had been offering rates of 14%, while those in the private sector ranged from 17% to 28%.

The decision caused panic in the Tehran stock exchange, with private banks losing much of their share value overnight. Shareholders in one bank, Karafarin, queued on Wednesday to sell their stock when previously there had been 1.2 million applicants to buy its shares.