Pat Lang banned me from commenting at his SST blog. Such after earlier calling me a "plank-holder" of his blog, someone who traveled with his ship from its first voyage on.

He now says I am "anti-American". All I did was criticizing a foreign country's foreign policy. Pat himself regularly does the same with regards to not only U.S. foreign policies, but also especially Israeli foreign policies. Doesn't that make him "anti-American", like he accuses me to be, or even "anti-Semitic"? That's laughable.

The real reason for banning me, I believe, was me indirectly calling his harping for intervention in Libya dumb. He likely knew it was, but didn't want to admit it and damned me for telling him.

Now I seem to be in some powerful companionship. Superman wants to give back his U.S. passport. He dislikes its foreign policy, or maybe only being part of it. He endorses the UN General Assembly.

bigger

He also hasn't commented at SST for quite a while. Is he "anti-American"? Is he also banned?

/snark

Congratulation to Hamas and Fatah for their unity deal. Until the Egyptian revolution the Egyptian head of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, had monopolized and sabotaged the unity negotiations on orders from the United States.

With Suleiman and Mubarak gone, the deal was rather easy to make. Fatah and Hamas will create a unity government and will, in eight month, hold new parliament and presidential elections.

The U.S. and Israel will do their best to sabotage the deal. The first by withholding money (and thereby making itself more irrelevant) and the second likely by some kind of force. Currently the Israelis say that they will not negotiate with any government that includes Hamas. So what. They did not negotiate with a Palestinian government that did not included Hamas so the threat is actually in keeping the status quo.

The Egyptian revolution may not have brought much new yet for the Egyptian people, but the already visible foreign policy changes, topmost the exchange of ambassadors with Iran, are huge. The “western” media talked down how much the general anti-Israel feeling was part of Tahrir Square. Now it is coming into full view. There were demonstrations against the Israeli embassy in Cairo yesterday and the pipeline that carries cheap Egyptian gas to Israel was blown up for a second time. The guy who sold the gas to Israel for a much too low price is now in jail. My bet is that Israel will have to get used to live without that energy source.

Despite the Saudi-U.S. counter-revolution efforts, more changes will come to the Middle East.

Today a bomb blew up in a tourist restaurant in Marrakesh. After protests in February and March the Moroccan king has pledged some constitutional reforms and released some political prisoners. But the people are not yet convinced that real reforms will come. There were more protests, peaceful ones so far, over the last few days. Today’s explosion is likely a provocation (I have no idea from which side though) to attempt a change of the current peaceful contest. Morocco may be the next domino to fall.

The UN Security Council did not agree on sanctions against Syria, but some states are taking their own measures. Great Britain has now taken sanctions to a point never seen before. This will likely hurt Syria immensely:

Syrian Ambassador attendance at the Royal Wedding unacceptable

What a hars step. We can be sure now that Assad will now shudder, immediately hand his powers to the Salafi parts of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and travel to Canossa London to do penance.

Or maybe not. Maybe he, like me, thinks that this whole royal nonsense is just yellow press fodder for the dumb and not worth of further mentioning.

A rule of thumb says that a doubling of oil prices over one year leads to a recession. Demand then sinks and prices come down again.

Oil futures for Brent crude were slightly above $124/barrel today. The weekly futures chart shows the current increase.

The price increase over the last six month seems slightly parabolic.

The monthly futures chart allows comparison with the last parabolic increase in 2007/2008.

It reached $150/bl during the summer of 2008, double the $75 of a year earlier. Then a lack of further demand led to a crash of the speculative futures price.

Using the rule of thumb $150-$160 this summer would be double the price of last summers oil and probably cause another recession. Given the parabolic trend in the chart such prices could indeed be reached during this summer.

Global demand during this summer will be higher than usual as Japan will have to burn a lot more oil to replace lacking electricity output from its nuclear plants. The civil war in and foreign war on Libya took only 3% of the world production off the market. But Libyen oil is about the best "light sweet" stuff one can get. One would expect that in this case the Saudis would act as a swing producer and increase their output. But they seem to do the opposite now and it is quite possible that even while drilling frantically they can no longer produce enough high quality spice to replace the lost Libyan output and to stabilize prices.

The U.S. ecomomy with 10+% unemployment has by far not regained its full potential. Another recession would have serious impact on it with strong poltical consequences. With the current congress another Keynsian rescue from a recession, priming the pump with government programs, seems impossible.

The New Yorker has a 9,000 something words article on Obama's foreign policy: The Consequentialist – How the Arab Spring remade Obama’s foreign policy.

The looooong piece is trying to characterize Obama, his foreign policies and the various foreign policy persons around him especially with regard to the Middle East. It is also trying to keep all persons involved in a somewhat positive light.

But while trying to describe and analyze his alleged evolution on foreign policy issues it is missing the biggest of his foreign policy initiatives and how he lost it.

Within 9,000+ words there is no mentioning, none at all, of Obama's demand to stop Israeli settlements in the West Bank and of Netanyahooe's and the lobby's successful sabotage of the issue.

How can one analyze the foreign policy of the U.S., especially in the Middle East, while leaving out Israel? How can one analyze Obama's foreign policy while leaving out the most embarrassing public rejection of U.S. leadership in the last decades?

It seems that the New Yorker is now just as clueless about foreign policy as the Obama administration is.

Since the ruler of Qatar made up with the ruler of Saudi Arabia, this happened shortly after Mubarak stepped down, Aljazeera, owned by Qatar, has morphed into a propaganda channel. Several of its reporters, including the bureau chief in Lebanon, have stepped down.

As Aljazeera now acts very much like the partisan 'western' media, there is no reliable media information coming out of the country. The online activists, led via the Facebook page of a salafi Muslim Brotherhood guy in Sweden, are mostly not in the country and have an interest in exaggerating the size of the demonstrations and force the regime is using.

The reports coming from the government are, of course, unreliable too. It says that many of the bloody incidence came through provocation, that is shooting, from unknown forces suspected to be sponsored by foreign entities. This is certainly a possibility but it is hard to judge how true these reports are.

After the first bigger protests calling for reform started, the regime arranged for a big pro-regime demonstration in Damascus. Independent sources said it was really quite big and that most demonstrators attended without orders or pressure to do so. But smaller non-violent anti-regime protests continued and led to concessions by the government on the most demanded points, especially the abolishment of the emergency law. This will have satisfied at least some of the protesters.

But then more violent protests in several cities continued, now demanding the fall of the regime. I seriously doubt that the majority of Syrians do support this demand. The plausible alternatives to the regime, which isn't nice, are worse. The most likely scenario is massive sectarian strife with salafi-Sunni attacks on minority Christians and Alawites.

Unlike in Egypt there is no sign that the army will abandon the ruling government. The intervention by fukUS in Libya has already created enough bad experience that such measures will not be considered with regards to Syria or anywhere else. There is no sign that a majority or even significant minority of Syrians has any interest in violent regime change.

My current assessment is therefor that the regime will now put up a bit of a fight and, if it can stomach to do that harshly enough, it will win this fight.

The same is likely in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Iraq, where demonstration now also get gunned down by government forces. The difference to Syria is of course that no 'western' country will demand sanctions or intervention against any of those 'allies'.

Reading the New York Times on a shooting of some Israeli settlers by a Palestinian policeman in the West Bank city of Nablus, which is under Palestinian Authority control, one can not find any good reason for the incident:

The shooting occurred outside Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus after three carloads of religious Israeli Jews visited the site to pray, without coordinating their plans through the Israeli Army. Twice-monthly trips to the tomb have been organized with army escorts for the past four years without incident.
…
The Palestinian governor of Nablus, Jibril al-Bakri, told Israel Radio that the shooting was a result of lack of coordination between the worshipers and the Israeli Army. He said that Palestinian police officers who were on a regular patrol shot a warning into the air before firing at the cars. He stressed that the shooting was a mistake.

So was this a 'mistake' and just a policman on patrol gone crazy?

Of course not. But the Zionist NYT author Ethan Bronner, who's son is in the Israeli army and who lives in stolen former Palestinian house in Jerusalem, will not let you know that. Here is how Haaretz reported the incident:

Israelis shot in West Bank tried to break through Palestinian roadblock, probe shows

Palestinian security forces opened fire early Sunday on three cars full of Israelis who entered the West Bank compound of Joseph's Tomb without permission and then tried to break through a local checkpoint, according to an initial investigation by the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinian Authority.
…
A senior Israel Defense Forces termed the incident "a serious mishap caused by both sides." The army is refraining from referring to the shooting as a terror attack, but has called it an unjustified attack against civilians.
…

Haaretz was not the only media reporting on the checkpoint. Here is the first Ynet News piece on the incident:

Initial details suggest that while driving back from prayers, around 6 am, they came across a flash checkpoint and then came under fire shot at them from a Palestinian jeep. The fire continued even after the vehicles began to escape. Two of the three Israeli cars sustained gunfire damage.
…
Initial IDF investigation suggests the group may have failed to coordinate their arrival at the Tomb with the necessity authorities and may have been shot by Palestinian security forces.
…
Since the end of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Joseph's Tomb has been under Palestinian control. The IDF allows organized groups to visit the premises at night, under heavy guard.

Three suspicious cars full of men breaking through a checkpoint from an area where they were not supposed to be at all is certainly a justifying reason for the policeman guarding the checkpoint to open fire. Israel soldiers certainly do such when they are suspicious about some Palestinian movement.

But the New York Times will not let you know that the checkpoint even existed, that the policeman was guarding it and that the Israelis tried to break through it. Bronner does not mention any of that at all.

The same NYT is now trying to get money from its online readers. What for? For reading fact free Zionist propaganda?

Fighting goes on in Libya.

Meanwhile the Washington Post publishes an extensive report today about a torture prison on an island off the coast. Prisoners there are held, partly now for over ten years, without a trial.

Two years ago the head of the state announced the closing of the prison and promised the prisoners, which he called 'terrorists', to allow for a fair trial in front of a regular court.

But that announcement turns out to have been, like many others he made, just an empty promise. The prison continues to exist and the prisoners will be put in front of secretive military tribunals.

The ruler deplores this but claims that the parliament is responsible as it refused to support his policy.

Obama gave notice that he will secure 'humanitarian treatment' for the prisoners.

link

The results of an inconsistent foreign policy are quite embarrassing.

April 21 2011, BBC: Mullen: Pakistan’s ISI spy agency has ‘militant links’

The US military’s top officer, Adm Mike Mullen, has accused Pakistan’s spy agency of having links with militants targeting troops in Afghanistan.

He said Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had a “long-standing relationship” with a militant group run by Afghan insurgent Jalaluddin Haqqani.

April 21 2011, Reuters: US to supply Pakistan with 85 mini-drones

The United States will provide Pakistan with 85 small “Raven” drone aircraft, a U.S. military official told Reuters, a key step to addressing Islamabad’s calls for access to U.S. drone technology.

Update and further thoughts:

April 22, CNN: U.S. departs Pakistan base, source says

U.S. military personnel have left a southern base in Pakistan said to be a key hub for American drone operations in the country’s northwestern tribal areas, a senior Pakistani intelligence official told CNN on Friday.

It seems that the “small drones” carrot did not work as planed.

The current relation mess started when the U.S. spy Raymond Davis killed two Pakistani men in Lahore without any good reason and was imprisoned in Pakistan. The U.S. then stopped all drone attacks on Pakistani grounds and after a while payed a big bribe to get Davis released.

While that was an embarrassment for both sides, the real mess was created when some idiots within the CIA decided to take revenge for Davis’ capture and imprisonment. He was released on March 16 and the very next day the CIA launched a drone attack which killed more then 40 people who were at a normal tribal jirga, were neither ‘Taliban’ nor ‘militants’ and were on friendly footing with the Pakistani government.

That straw broke the back of the proverbial camel.

All the years Pakistan wanted real eye-to-eye relations with the U.S. but never could achieve such. The U.S. only wanted a client state which would do whatever it was told to do. Despite the fact that the success of the Afghanistan campaign depends on good relations with Pakistan, business deals with India proved to be more important to the U.S. than Pakistan’s existential fears. (India occupies Kashmir, the source of the Indus river which is Pakistan’s sole lifeline. India has several projects to divert that water for its own benefit.)

Pakistan has learned the lecture. Maybe. Ordering the CIA base which directs the drone strikes closed is a serious step. It is not decisive. Drone strikes will continue from the bases in Afghanistan. A really decisive step would be a cut off of the logistic line through Pakistan for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Pressure to do so comes from the street. Pakistan is not immune to public movements and the Egyptians did set an example. The Pakistani military knows this but I am not sure it will act decisively enough towards the U.S. to prevent a serious internal revolt.

After that? Who knows?

I am not sure yet if the following item was correctly translated as I do not find it anywhere else yet. But if it was, we seem to have a new additional meltdown which will likely lead to further high radiation releases:

Tokyo Electric admits fuel could be melting at Fukushima nuke plant

TOKYO, April 21, Kyodo

An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, admitted Wednesday that fuel of the plant's No. 1 reactor could be melting.

Given its prior communication one can be sure that when Tepco says "could" they know it is actually happening. But let's wait for some confirmation.

The Japanese government has now declared the evacuation zone as off limits. As support for that decision it only now released data that shows how bad the radiation situation was or rather it does not really show anything:

Radiation levels of over 100 microsieverts per hour were measured at four locations 2 to 3 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant from late last month, the science ministry said Thursday as it released such data for the first time.

Unfortunately this data released is misleading, "over 100 microsievert" does not say how much over. It is likely that the radiation near the plant was in the higher millisievert levels, several thousand times higher than 100 microsievert. Even over 30 kilometers away from the plant in the town of Iitate levels of 40 to 50 microsieverts per hour were reached (pdf). That data points to much higher levels near the plant.

The workers who were in such high radiation for days will likely have future health problems. There are also new reports of very bad working condition the workers have now to endure. But Tepco is doing its very best to motivate them:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is considering cutting annual salaries of its employees by around 20 percent as part of its restructuring effort to make compensation payments over the emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex, company sources said Thursday.

Oh – and there just was a 6.4 quake in Tokyo.

Cont. reading: Fukushima Update – April 21

Anthony Cordesman factual analysis tends to be better than those of other experts. On Libya he rightly writes:

French, British, and US leaders do not seem to have fully coordinated, but it is clear that they sought and got international cover from the UN by claiming a no fly zone could protect civilians when their real objective was to use force as a catalyst to drive Qaddafi out of power. They seem to have assumed that a largely unknown, divided, and fractured group of rebels could win through sheer political momentum and could then be turned into a successful government. They clearly planned a limited air campaign that called for a politically safe set of strikes again against Qaddafi’s air defense and air force, and only limited follow-up in terms of ground strikes against his forces. And then, they waited for success…
[…]
Yesterday’s announcement that British and French military advisors are going to help is not going to alter that situation quickly. It will take months more – at a minimum – to properly train and equip them and it will take a radical shift in rebel leadership to give them meaningful unity and discipline.

In the interim an enduring war of attrition will turn a minor humanitarian crisis into a major one [..]

With those facts on the table, one might expect a call to end the war. Negotiate some some ceasefire, Gaddafi already accepted the African Union’s proposal, and press the rebels who first rejected it to agree to it. End the war, start the politics.

But Cordesman instead goes nuts and calls for massive escalation, killing of more people and years of nation building:

Cont. reading: In Which Cordesman Goes Nuts

"The committee rejects foreign troops on the ground but we encourage the bombardment of Gaddafi's army," Ahmed El-Hasi, a spokesman for the February 17 opposition coalition, said in the eastern city of Benghazi.
Libyan rebels welcome air strikes, no ground troops, Mar 21

—

Rasmussen: The UN mandate does not authorise the use of forces on the ground. We are there to protect civilians against attack. We are there to implement a no-fly zone; we have no intention of putting troops on the ground.
Rasmussen says no NATO ground troops for Libya, Mar 28

—–

Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted that Britain will not send ground forces into Libya but conceded the limits set by the UN resolution were making the campaign more difficult.

"What we've said is there is no question of an invasion or an occupation, this is not about Britain putting boots on the ground, this is not what we are about here," he told Sky News television.
Cameron insists no ground forces for Libya, Apr 18

—

"I remain absolutely opposed to a deployment of troops on the ground," Juppe told reporters, saying it would not be allowed under a United Nations Security Council resolution permitting the intervention in Libya.
France opposes idea of sending troops to Libya, Apr 19

—

Italy, however, remains opposed to sending ground troops, Frattini said, following talks with the leader of the Libyan rebels' transitional government, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe also said Tuesday he is "totally hostile" to deploying ground troops.
UK to send military advisers to help Libya rebels, Apr 19

—

France and Italy are joining Britain in sending military officers to Libya to help advise rebels on technical, logistical and organisational issues.
…
A French foreign ministry spokesperson said a small number of liaison officers would be sent out to Benghazi along with a special envoy, while Italy said it was ready to send around 10 officers – "the same number of military staff as Britain".

Ignazio La Russa, Italy's defence minister, said that stronger intervention under the UN resolution, which does not permit ground troops, may be needed in Libya.

William Hague, Britain's foreign minister, announced on Tuesday that it would be sending a team to Libya to help rebels with "military organisational structures, communications and logistics, including how best to distribute humanitarian aid and deliver medical assistance".
France and Italy to send Libya advisers , Apr 20

Rest assured. No matter what they say. There are already special forces troops on the ground preparing for an invasion of Libya.

John Pilger: Barack Obama worked for a company which is a known CIA front: video – seems to be true – there is longer version of the Pilger 2009 talk the first video is cut from: Obama and Empire

Fits to a news(!) piece McClatchy had today: Obama ran against Bush, but now governs like him

AP writer vs. State Department spokesperson on human rights abuse on Bradley Manning: video

More Black Men Now in Prison System Than Were Enslaved

Please add your views and news.

Standing with the majority of the world inhabitants and with once principals and laws despite strong diplomatic pressure to do otherwise is now called being "woobly"?

Roger Cohen thinks so:

Adenauer and de Gaulle must be turning in their graves. Here was Germany standing wobbly with Brazil, Russia, India and China — and against its closest allies, France and the United States — in the U.N. vote on Libyan military action. And here was France providing America’s most vigorous NATO support.

To me it looked more like the U.S. supporting Sarkozy's personal ambitions but what do I know.

I also thought that diplomacy in a crisis is the art to achieve ones nations interests without the costs and sorrow of war. That to me is "a high point of diplomacy". But according to Cohen a high point of diplomacy is waging a war of aggression, killing people, instead of helping to achieve a peaceful outcome:

We stand at a high point in French postwar diplomacy and a nadir in German. There were strong arguments on either side of a Libyan intervention, but with a massacre looming in Benghazi, Germany had to stand with its allies. Angela Merkel has proved herself more a maneuverer than a leader. Germany often conveys the sense that it now resents the agents of its postwar rehabilitation — the European Union and NATO.

Waging a totally unnecessary war of aggression because of an assumed massacre, which was very unlikely to take place, is crime. France attacking Libya while its interest are less migration from North Africa, free flow of energy resources and fewer radical Islamists is worse. It is a blunder of Napolean proportion.

(Daniel Larison's has a longer recommandable take of the Cohen piece.)

The Leverett's have a new piece up on THE ARAB SPRING AND THE SAUDI COUNTER-REVOLUTION.

I disagree with it. The counter-revolution is not a sole Saudi project. While the Saudis princes are miffed about Obama and his, in their opinion, too early call for Mubarak to go, their mere existence depends too much on U.S. goodwill to act independently. The counter-revolution is a joint U.S.-Saudi project with a major U.S. motive of keeping the Middle East secure for Israel. Genuine democracy in any country there would endanger Israel's existence.

The Saudis were allowed to invade Bahrain and to suppress the Shia majority there without any critical word from Washington. As a thank you Obama got an Arab League vote that allowed him to attack Libya, practice regime change there by installing a bunch of dependable natives and to then steal its oil.

Both parties agree that Saleh in Yemen has to go as he has been incompetent to suppress the U.S. concern in Yemen, the alleged Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, and the Saudi concern, the Houthi tribes with their Zaidi Shia believe.

The Saudis are financing the gangs in Syria who try to take down the Syrian regime. Jordon and Israel seem to be involved in those efforts. If Assad falls (I do not think that he will) Hariri can be reinstalled in Lebanon as the Saudi tool he always was.

Egypt is still a military dictatorship. If some sort of meaningful elections will be allowed to happen there, then only if it is ensured that all possibly winning candidates are bought by either Riyadh, Washington or both. The U.S. already offered $150 million for that project.

A part of the Saudi-U.S. deal that is not yet fully visible is a new agreement about Afghanistan. Prince Bandar was recently in Pakistan and asked the Pakistani to keep a division of troops ready for the eventual use in Saudi Arabia. The Pakistanis agreed to that but had a price.

Then suddenly all the top people of Pakistan visited Kabul and astonishingly agreed with Karzai about the "reintegration" of Taliban. Pat Lang thinks that as part of some deal south Afghanistan will be handed to the Taliban when, in the next few month, the U.S. starts to reduce troops from there. This deal was certainly not made without U.S. involvement.

The revolutionary wave was stopped for now. Further revolts will get suppressed or, where convenient, channeled into directions the U.S. and Saudis can agree upon. This counter-revolution scheme may be successful for a while. I doubt though that it will be able to hold as a permanent solution.

The glorious three imperialist stooges who are currently bombing Libya, Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy, produced an Orwellian op-ed on what they say is Libya’s Pathway to Peace. In it they widen the mission they stupidly imposed on themselves.

Our duty and our mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Qaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Qaddafi in power. […] It is unthinkable that someone who has tried to massacre his own people can play a part in their future government.

Of course Gaddafi has never “tried to massacre his own people.” He indeed offered amnesty to those rebels who would put down their arms.

But the three stooges have decided that they will continue the war until Gaddafi is gone. They do not have a UN mandate for that which at least the French defense minister thinks is needed:

“Beyond resolution 1973, certainly it didn’t mention the future of Gaddafi but I think that three major countries saying the same thing is important to the United Nations and perhaps one day the Security Council will adopt a resolution.“

No, it will not. And pitchforks will not remove Gaddafi. Without an illegal invasions and a huge amount of ground troops the day Gaddafi is gone may be years away.

By setting a new condition for the war to end, the removal of Gaddafi whom the three who also threaten to put in front of a court, they have given Gaddafi more motivation to continue the fight. They have also given the rebels motivation to not agree to any ceasefire. They prolonged the war.

But a flight hour of the British Typhoon costs $150,000. A Britain already under austerity can not sustain a years long air campaign. Britain and France are also already running out of precision ammunition which they need for well target strikes. Both facts increases the pressure for a fast invasion.

Just delivering arms to the rebels and not enforcing the UN’s arms embargo will not be enough. Some trainers on the ground will not be enough either. There are many, many Libyans Gaddafi can count on to fight for him.

Without a UN resolution the three stooges will have to come up with some excuses to send in ground forces. Today’s “Gaddafi uses cluster ammunition” story, which would not even be illegal, may be a try for that. Notice how the reporter didn’t observe but only assumes that the mortar rounds used were fired by Gaddafi troops. They might well have been fired by the rebels. And relying even partially on Human Rights Watch with regard to cluster ammunition is a sad joke.

But I do expect more such stories. Like “confirmed” rumors of Gaddafi using gas, a “weapon of mass destruction”, on the rebels or some other stupid lie. The three set themselves up for a ground war. Now they will have to find a reason for it.

The aftershock quake on April 7 did, unlike earlier reports, some damage to the nuclear plants. The Daiichi trouble reactors were without "feed and bleed" cooling for some 50 minutes after external electricity lines failed. Cooling returned and new efforts were made to provide emergency generators and to position these out of reach of possible further Tsunamis.

A bigger immediate problem occurred at the reactors in Higashidori owned by the Tohoku Electric Power Company (not TEPCO). All its external electricity lines failed. Two of the three emergency diesel generators at the plant were dissembled for inspection and the one and only remaining third emergency generator started but soon developed an oil leak. Fortunately one external power line could be restored before the generator failed completely and the reactors and spent fuel pools were saved.

That incident showed a deplorable disregard for security. How can two of three emergency generators be disassembled while large aftershock quakes are expected and warned about?

The status at the Daiichi plant is largely unchanged since last week. The no 1 to 3 reactor cores are at least partially melted and they plus the no 1 to 4 spent fuel pools need continuous cooling to prevent more damaging reactions. Measurement of the plants parameters and the reporting of these by TEPCO is still unreliable.

The current cooling does not happen in a closed loop. Water is fed into the reactor pressure vessels and the pools to just bleed of from there as steam and as leakage.

While TEPCO is saying little about what it is doing at Daiichi it seems that their plan is to continue this "feed and bleed" cooling for the several month the nuclear fuel will need to cool below boiling temperature.

I believe that this is not sustainable. So far more than 60,000 tons of water were fed into the complex, got highly radiated and flowed out uncontrolled through various leaks. The turbine buildings with needed equipment are flooded. Some highly radiated water did flow into the sea. The measures to stop leaking to the sea are unconvincing. Groundwater radiation at the site has increased tenfold which suggests other additional leaks.

Meanwhile the radiated water is preventing access to the equipment that would be needed to restore the regular closed cooling loops. To install new improvised cooling loops one would need access to areas with very high radiation.

Feeding, contaminating and leaking additional hundreds of tons of water per day over several month is not a viable plan. TEPCO urgently needs to come up with a different cooling strategy. I stand by my suggestion to push a slurry of sand/boron/lead into the reactors which eventually will dry and form a solid mass preventing further leakage. Cooling would then take place through convection just like in Chernobyl.

While this would certainly make future disassembling more difficult, it would also prevent further leakage and radiation releases.

Cont. reading: Fukushima Update – April 15

A standard IKEA Billy bookcase (80cm wide, 202cm high, white) costs $59.99 in the United States. The same bookcase sells in Germany for €38.00, that's $52.82.

The IKEA bookcase factory in Danville, Virginia pays its workers $8 per hour and has rather horrible anti-union worker policies. The IKEA bookcase factory in Sweden pays $19 an hour which come with quite likable union controlled worker policies.

A spokesperson of the IKEA subsidiary Swedwood offers this explanation:

"That is related to the standard of living and general conditions in the different countries"

That statement is correct. With lower wages and higher prices the median U.S. standard of living is now below the western European one. One wonders if/when this will get acknowledged.

It seems that a decision has been made to invade Libya. It possibly was the plan all along. The troops to do so are getting lined up as I write and, even more important, the propaganda case for "humanitarian intervention" is getting build.

The plan is to attack Gaddafi's troops in Misurata and thereby cut Libya and the main coastal road in half. Gaddafi will probably be allowed to keep the western part with the capitol Tripoli but he will have to give up all of the eastern parts including the important oil cities Brega and Ras Lanuf. Currently Gaddafi loyals hold these cities but with the supply route cut by an invasion force they would have to surrender soon.

The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan went on "surge" deployment at the end of March from Norfolk. It is likely to be accompanied by the usual cruiser, a submarine and a support ship. The ship carries a marine detachment of some 1900 troops. The British amphibious assault ship HMS Albion left Plymouth on April 7 heading to the Mediterranean along with the frigate HMS Sutherland, soldiers from 40 Commando Royal Marines and a supply ship. The British marines often work together with the Dutch marines. Since 1973 there is a UK/NL Landing Forces within NATO. So I wonder where the Hr.Ms. Johan de Witt and its marine battalion currently is. The French also have good assault capabilities and are likely to join in.

Together those troops make up more than a full mechanized brigade with all the support they could ever need. Having air superiority that is enough to handle any force Gaddafi could put up should he suddenly behave dumb and decide to fight them in the open.

Unlike Gaddafi the rebels rejected the ceasefire the African Union was negotiating. A British and a U.S. envoy were standing next to the rebel leaders when that announcement was made.

The propaganda case gets build around the city of Misurata, which is still partly held by rebels under assault from Gaddafi loyalists. Human Rights Watch, always on the right side, is whining:

Gaddafi loyalists have also targeted a medical clinic in the besieged town, with even women, children and the elderly being murdered.
..
HRW quoted Dr. Muhammad el-Fortia, who is employed at Misrata Hospital, who stated that 257 people have been killed and 949 wounded and hospitalized since February 19 in the city. The wounded included 22 women and eight children.

The numbers actually show the opposite of what HRW wants to imply in the first sentences. If only 3% of the wounded are women and children it is certain that there are no intentional attacks on civilians. Out of 1.400 killed in Israel's 2008 war on Gaza at least 300, 20%, were children. That is was indiscriminate killing and attacks on clinics result in. Gaddafi's forces seem to be far more disciplined and are obviously fighting mostly male rebels.

France and Britain claim that NATO is "not doing enough". Well, NATO is doing what the UNSC resolution allows and even a bit more than that. But these insults are just to build pressure on other NATO countries.

The European Union is pressing the United Nations to allow an EUFOR Libya military support mission for "humanitarian aid" to Misurata. So far the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affair rejected such a mission saying there is no need for it.

That is certainly right. Three days ago a Red Cross ship docked in Misurata with medical supplies and earlier a Turkish ship evacuated hundreds of wounded. This was done without military escorts and without problems.

But with some more NGO "reports" and alarming anonymous phone calls to Aljazeerah, Gaddafi's assault on rebels will be propagandized into being an all out war against the population. The UN will get pressed to allow intervention and the first few soldiers will be put on the ground to protect a "humanitarian mission".

Those soldiers will be shot at immediately, it will not matter by whom, and that will require a "rescue mission" which then comes from the amphibious assault ships and their marines battalions. Misurata will get occupied and the coastal road cut. With the help from the CIA and various special operation forces the rebels will then renew their attacks from the eastern city Benghazi towards Brega and Ras Lanuf. With Gaddafi loyals there cut off from resupply the rebels chances to take those cities will be easier than in their first failed attempts.

After that the next step can be taken. The institution of a "western" occupying force under a different label.

The Afghans unfolded what looked like blankets and kneeled. "They're praying. They are praying," said the Predator's camera operator, seated near the pilot.

By now, the Predator crew was sure that the men were Taliban. "This is definitely it, this is their force," the cameraman said. "Praying? I mean, seriously, that's what they do."
Anatomy of an Afghan war tragedy – LA Times