What Does Rupert Murdoch Want With America's Schools?

The following article first appeared in Mother Jones. For more great content from Mother Jones, sign up for their free email updates here.

Rupert Murdoch's reputation precedes him—but one thing he's not well known for is his education reform advocacy. But that could soon change. Next month, Murdoch will make an unusual public appearance in San Francisco, delivering the keynote address at an education summit hosted by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has lately been crisscrossing the country promoting his own version of education reform.

The high-profile speech to a collection of conservative ed reformers, state legislators, and educators is just the latest step in Murdoch's quiet march into the business of education, which has been somewhat eclipsed by the phone-hacking scandal besieging his media empire. (On Tuesday, word of Murdoch's appearance at Bush's conference came just hours after reports that News Corp. had agreed to pay more than $4 million to the family of a 13-year-old British murder victim, Milly Dowler, whose voicemail was hacked by reporters for Murdoch's News of the World. ) But Murdoch has made it very clear that he views America's public schools as a potential gold mine.

"In every other part of life, someone who woke up after a 50-year nap would not recognize the world around him…But not in education," he remarked in May during a speech at the "e-G8 forum" that preceded the G8 summit in France. "Our schools remain the last holdout from the digital revolution."

Last November, News Corp. dropped $360 million to buy Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn-based education technology company that provides software, assessment tools, and data services. "When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching," Murdoch said at the time.

A few weeks before the deal, News Corp. had hired one of the nation's most prominent education figures, Joel Klein, away from his job as New York City schools chancellor. As it happens, Klein was already familiar with Wireless Generation, which began working with the New York City school system during his tenure.

While Murdoch's arrival to the education business is being cheered by Jeb Bush and other conservatives, the idea of the parent company of News of the World and Fox getting into the school biz hasn't gone over well with the education establishment. Murdoch's new venture has stirred controversy in New York, where this summer the state sought to enter into a $27 million contract with Wireless Generation to track student performance. Given Klein's hiring, the deal prompted an outcry by teachers' unions and other critics who saw the public school system becoming just another example of revolving-door politics and crony capitalism. ("They chose us because we're good," and not due to any connection to Klein, says Wireless Generation's spokeswoman, Joan Lebow.)

In early August, New York teachers' unions demanded the state rescind its plans to contract with Wireless Generation. "It is especially troubling that Wireless Generation will be tasked with creating a centralized database for personal student information even as its parent company, News Corporation, stands accused of engaging in illegal news-gathering tactics," representatives from the state and New York City teachers' unions wrote.

Wireless Generation had caused controversy even before Murdoch purchased the company. Last year, when New Jersey lost out on millions of federal education funding due to a screw-up on its grant application, the company landed at the center of the debacle. The state, after all, had reportedly paid the firm $500,000 to ensure the accuracy of its application, among other things.

News Corp.'s entrance into the education sector raises broader education policy questions, says University of Arizona education professor Kenneth Goodman. Having a multinational corporation in charge of assessing kids' reading skills, he notes, shows that "decision making in education is so far removed from people who have anything to do with kids." And like many educators, he is suspicious that Murdoch will bring his conservative ideology to his education ventures: "They'd like everything to be privatized."

Already, Murdoch's phone-hacking baggage is hurting his bottom line. In late August, New York rejected its plans to contract with Wireless Generation. The reason, according to the state's comptroller: "vendor responsibility issues involving the parent company of Wireless Generation."

American Invention : Microwave Ovens a Key to Energy Production from Wasted Heat

More than 60 percent of the energy produced by cars, machines, and industry around the world is lost as waste heat -- an age-old problem -- but researchers have found a new way to make "thermoelectric" materials for use in technology that could potentially save vast amounts of energy.

And it's based on a device found everywhere from kitchens to dorm rooms: a microwave oven.

Chemists at Oregon State University have discovered that simple microwave energy can be used to make a very promising group of compounds called "skutterudites," and lead to greatly improved methods of capturing wasted heat and turning it into useful electricity.

A tedious, complex and costly process to produce these materials that used to take three or four days can now be done in two minutes.

Most people are aware you're not supposed to put metal foil into a microwave, because it will spark. But powdered metals are different, and OSU scientists are tapping into that basic phenomenon to heat materials to 1,800 degrees in just a few minutes -- on purpose, and with hugely useful results.

These findings, published in Materials Research Bulletin, should speed research and ultimately provide a more commercially-useful, low-cost path to a future of thermoelectric energy.

"This is really quite fascinating," said Mas Subramanian, the Milton Harris Professor of Materials Science at OSU. "It's the first time we've ever used microwave technology to produce this class of materials."

Thermoelectric power generation, researchers say, is a way to produce electricity from waste heat -- something as basic as the hot exhaust from an automobile, or the wasted heat given off by a whirring machine. It's been known of for decades but never really used other than in niche applications, because it's too inefficient, costly and sometimes the materials needed are toxic. NASA has used some expensive and high-tech thermoelectric generators to produce electricity in outer space.

The problem of wasted energy is huge. A car, for instance, wastes about two-thirds of the energy it produces. Factories, machines and power plants discard enormous amounts of energy.

But the potential is also huge. A hybrid automobile that has both gasoline and electric engines, for instance, would be ideal to take advantage of thermoelectric generation to increase its efficiency. Heat that is now being wasted in the exhaust or vented by the radiator could instead be used to help power the car. Factories could become much more energy efficient, electric utilities could recapture energy from heat that's now going up a smokestack. Minor applications might even include a wrist watch operated by body heat.

"To address this, we need materials that are low cost, non-toxic and stable, and highly efficient at converting low-grade waste heat into electricity," Subramanian said. "In material science, that's almost like being a glass and a metal at the same time. It just isn't easy. Because of these obstacles almost nothing has been done commercially in large scale thermoelectric power generation."

Skutterudites have some of the needed properties, researchers say, but historically have been slow and difficult to make. The new findings cut that production time from days to minutes, and should not only speed research on these compounds but ultimately provide a more affordable way to produce them on a mass commercial scale.

OSU researchers have created skutterudites with microwave technology with an indium cobalt antimonite compound, and believe others are possible. They are continuing research, and believe that ultimately a range of different compounds may be needed for different applications of thermoelectric generation.

Collaborators on this study included Krishnendu Biswas, a post-doctoral researcher, and Sean Muir, a doctoral candidate, both in the OSU Department of Chemistry. The work has been supported by both the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy.

"We were surprised this worked so well," Subramanian said. "Right now large-scale thermoelectric generation of electricity is just a good idea that we couldn't make work. In the future it could be huge."

American Invention: Researchers Create First Human Heart Cells That Can Be Paced With Light

ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2011) — In a compact lab space at Stanford University, Oscar Abilez, MD, trains a microscope on a small collection of cells in a petri dish. A video recorder projects what the microscope sees on a nearby monitor. The cells in the dish pulse rhythmically, about once a second. The cells are cardiomyocytes, which drive the force-producing and pacemaker functions of the human heart. They are programmed to pulse. They will beat this way until they die.

Abilez holds up a finger as if to say, "Wait," and reaches for a small lever hidden behind the microscope. With the same finger, he flips the lever up. A pale, blue light floods the petri dish. Abilez flicks the light off and then on; first fast and then slow. Each time his finger goes up, the heart cells contract in concert with the light.

In a paper to be published Sept. 21 in the Biophysical Journal, lead author Abilez, a postdoctoral scholar and PhD candidate in bioengineering, and a multidisciplinary team from Stanford describe how they have for the first time engineered human heart cells that can be paced with light using a technology called optogenetics.

In the near term, say the researchers, the advance will provide new insight into heart function. In the long term, however, the development could lead to an era of novel, light-based pacemakers and genetically matched tissue patches that replace muscle damaged by a heart attack.

To create the light-responsive heart cells, the researchers first inserted DNA encoding a light-sensitive protein called channelrhodopsin-2, or ChR2, into human embryonic stem cells. ChR2 controls the flow of electrically charged ions into the cell. For heart cells, the primary ion is sodium, which initiates an electrochemical cascade that causes the cell to contract. They then transformed the optogenetically engineered stem cells into cardiomyocytes unlike any others -- those that respond to light.

Like the new heart cells, optogenetics is a product of Stanford. Bioengineer and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, a co-author of the new study, has played a key role in the technology's development. It is an increasingly common research technique that allows researchers to fashion all manner of mammalian tissues that are responsive to light.

While Deisseroth has focused his research primarily on neurons in order to study neurological illnesses ranging from depression to schizophrenia, Abilez is the first to create optogenetic human heart cells.

The all-important protein for the experiment is ChR2, which is sensitive to a very specific wavelength of blue light and regulates tiny channels in the cell surface. When ChR2 is illuminated by the right wavelength of blue light, the channels open to allow an influx of electrically charged sodium into the cell, producing a contraction.

After creating the cells in a laboratory dish, Abilez next turned to Ellen Kuhl, PhD, the study's senior author and an associate professor of mechanical engineering, whose specialty is sophisticated computer modeling of the human body.

Using her algorithms, they tested their new cells in a computer simulation of the human heart, injecting the light-sensitive cells in various locations in the heart and shining a virtual blue light on them to observe how the injections affected contraction as it moved across the heart.

"In a real heart, the pacemaking cells are on the top of the heart and the contraction radiates down and around the heart," Kuhl explained. "With these models we can demonstrate not only that pacing cells with light will work, but also where to best inject cells to produce the optimal contraction pattern."

The long-term goal is a new class of pacemakers. Today, surgically implanted electrical pacemakers and defibrillators are commonplace, regulating the pulses of millions of faulty hearts around the globe.

"But neither is without problems," said Abilez. "Pacemakers fail mechanically. The electrodes can cause tissue damage."

"Defibrillators, on the other hand," Kuhl said, "can produce tissue damage due to the large electrical impulses that are sometimes needed to restore the heart's normal rhythm."

The researchers foresee a day when bioengineers will use induced pluripotent stem cells fashioned from the recipient's own body, or similar cell types that can give rise to genetically matched replacement heart cells paced with light, circumventing the drawbacks of electrical pacemakers.

"We might, for instance, create a pacemaker that isn't in physical contact with the heart," said co-author Christopher Zarins, MD, professor emeritus of surgery and director of the lab where Abilez performed the experiments. "Instead of surgically implanting a device that has electrodes poking into the heart, we would inject these engineered light-sensitive cells into the faulty heart and pace them remotely with light, possibly even from outside of the heart."

The leads for such a light-based pacemaker might be placed outside the heart, but inside the pericardium -- the protective sack surrounding the heart. Or, someday, the researchers say, there might be a pacemaker placed inside the heart chambers, as with traditional pacemakers, whose light can travel through the intervening blood to pace light-sensitive heart cells implanted inside.

"And, because the new heart cells are created from the host's own stem cells, they would be a perfect genetic match," Abilez added. "In principle, tissue rejection wouldn't be an issue."

"Much work and many technical hurdles remain before this research might lead to real-world application," said Zarins. "But, it may one day lead to more reliable, less invasive devices."

In the near term, however, the advance is promising on other fronts, said Abilez.

"Optogenetics will make it easier to study the heart. Not only can researchers turn cells on with light, but off as well," Abilez said.

Scientists might use these tools to induce disease-like abnormalities and arrhythmias in sample tissues in order to better understand how to fix them. There are likewise advantages inherent in pacing with light versus electricity.

"Heart researchers are often seeking to measure electric response in the heart," said Abilez, "but it takes quite a lot of electricity to stimulate the heart and the resulting electrical signal is relatively weak. This makes it hard to distinguish stimulus from response. It's like trying to hear a whisper in a crowded room." Pacing with light would eliminate that challenge.

Optogenetics could lead to advances beyond the heart, as well, the authors concluded in their study. It might lead to new insights for various neuronal, musculoskeletal, pancreatic and cardiac disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, cerebral palsy, paralysis, diabetes, pain syndromes and cardiac arrhythmias.

Other Stanford co-authors were Jonathan Wong, a mechanical engineering PhD student in the Kuhl Lab; and Rohit Prakash, a neuroscience MD/PhD student in the Deisseroth lab.

This work was supported by a Stanford ARTS Fellowship, a Stanford Graduate Fellowship, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

peace is fun

Danielle Gram spent her childhood in Maryland in the years following the 9/11 attacks. "I really didn't understand why people from different cultures wanted to kill each other," says Ms. Danielle, now 22 and a senior at Harvard University.

After her family moved to Carlsbad, Calif., she continued to think about the concept of peace and how to achieve it. She read the nonviolent philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi and studied what Buddhism and Christianity had to say on the subject.

In 2006, together with Jill McManigal, a mother of two young children, Danielle, then 16, founded Kids for Peace a nonprofit, child-led group that inspires kids to work together toward a more peaceful world.

Today Kids for Peace has more than 75 chapters in several countries. In August, its Great Kindness Challenge, where children try to see how many acts of kindness they can perform in a single day, drew thousands of participants in 50 countries.

Members also sign a six-line "peace pledge" in which they promise to "speak in a kind way," "help others," "care for our Earth," "respect people," and work together.

Beyond that, kids in each chapter design their own projects. "We really want the kids to be the leaders," Danielle says.

Last November, she was named a winner of the World of Children award for her work, and Kids for Peace was given a $20,000 grant.

In the near future, Danielle hopes to work on peace issues in Bangladesh or at a refugee camp in Africa. Either way, she'll carry on with Kids for Peace, too. "It grows with me, and I grow with it," she says.

Inside the Trillion-Dollar Underground Economy Keeping Many Americans (Barely) Afloat in Desperate Times

By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Posted on September 16, 2011, Printed on September 21, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152446/inside_the_trillion-dollar_underground_economy_keeping_many_americans_%28barely%29_afloat_in_desperate_times

The United States continues to suffer from mass unemployment. People have had to adjust their lifestyles to the new reality—fewer jobs, lower wages, mortgages to pay that are now more than their homes are worth. Millions have dropped out of the job hunt and are trying to find other ways to sustain their families.

That's where the underground economy comes in. Also called the shadow or informal economy, it's not just illegal activity like selling drugs or doing sex work. It's all sorts of work that doesn't get regulated by the government or reported to the IRS, and it's a far bigger part of the economy than most of us are aware—in 2009, economics professor Friedrich Schneider estimated that it was nearly 8 percent of the US GDP, somewhere around $1 trillion. (That makes the shadow GDP bigger than the entire GDP of Turkey or Austria.) Schneider doesn’t include illegal activities in his count-- he studies legal production of goods and services that are outside of tax and labor laws. And that shadow economy is growing as regular jobs continue to be hard to come by—Schneider estimated 5 percent in '09 alone.

The Young Women's Empowerment Project [PDF] describes the “street economy” as “... any way that girls make cash money without paying taxes or having to show identification. Sometimes this means the sex trade. But other times it means braiding hair, babysitting, selling CDs/DVDs, drugs or other skills like sewing and laundry.”

D.A. Barber explained:

“This underground economy goes beyond the homeless collecting aluminum cans or clogging day labor halls. It includes the working poor getting cash for all forms of recycling: giving plasma, selling homemade tamales outside shopping plazas, holding yard sales, doing under-the-table work for friends and family, selling stuff at pawnshops, CD, book and used clothing stores, and even getting tips from restaurants and bars--to name a few.”

That means nearly all of us have participated in some way in the underground economy.

Yet little is known or discussed about this area of our lives, even though it touches many of us as we try to make ends meet.

Economist Edgar Feige estimated in 2009 that unreported economic activity was costing the US government $600 billion in tax revenues, and the growth in that number—from the Internal Revenue Service's 2001 estimate of $345 billion—indicates the growth of the informal economy. Reporting on Feige's work, Dennis Chaptman noted, “As the recession deepens and regular employment opportunities decline, unreported activities tend to grow, thereby swelling the tax gap and worsening the government's budget deficit.”

Workers in the underground economy can also be vulnerable to exploitation; the Monthly Review pointed out that workers, especially undocumented immigrants, are pushed into off-the-books work out of desperation and have no authority to appeal to when their conditions are horrific or their pay substandard; wages are pushed downward and expectations lowered.

Labor economist Mark Price agreed. He told me, “People enter such arrangements because of their difficulty finding formal employment. Think of undocumented immigrants that work as housecleaners or in the construction industry.”

He continued, “Employers or consumers who use workers in this way are doing so to boost profits or lower prices. Of course documented workers also can end up choosing to work in the underground economy but that choice, like the choice for the undocumented, has the same basic driver--the inability to find formal paid employment that meets a worker's needs.”

Alfonso Morales, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told the Christian Science Monitor that off-the-books work “is probably neutral to good.” He pointed out that it is impossible to separate the informal economy from the formal. “People who make their money in unregulated businesses probably spend it in regulated ones.”

Price compared the growth of the underground economy to payday lending; “a typically undesirable practice that develops and thrives because it fills a need created by the failure of public policy to address societal needs.”

The informal economy, though, does not only consist of low-wage workers. Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, pointed out in her book Cities in a World Economy that there is also an informal economy of creative professionals. In an article titled “Cities Today: A New Frontier for Major Development” she wrote:

“In brief, the new informal economy in global cities is part of advanced capitalism. One way of putting it is that the new types of informalization of work are the low-cost equivalent of formal deregulation in finance, telecommunications, and most other economic sectors in the name of flexibility and innovation. The difference is that while formal deregulation was costly, and tax revenue as well as private capital went into paying for it, informalization is low-cost and largely on the backs of the workers and firms themselves.”

She points out that by keeping creative professional work informal, these workers avoid the corporatization of creative work, and maintain the freedom to be innovative and self-sufficient.

While these creative workers prize independence, Lisa Dodson stressed the way communities come together to help one another through tough times, often through off-the-books economic activity, in her book The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy.

In one passage, she tells the story of arriving in a small-town farmer's market in Maine, only to overhear a discussion between locals on “neighbors and the market erosion of common fairness.” She wrote:

“Just then a middle-aged woman, who had been talking to friends, suddenly turned around to face other shoppers and asked, 'What’s happening to us? Why doesn’t the government do something?' A local farmer, sorting vegetables nearby, responded immediately, 'The government is the same as the oil companies. There’s no difference. We can’t wait for them to do anything.' A young mom holding a baby as she stood in line said, 'So what do we do?' There was no single response, but they were looking at each other to find it.”

Without solutions coming from Washington or local governments, it continues to be up to working people to find a way to negotiate the rough economy. Price argued, “People shouldn't have to give up fundamental human rights like access to income in retirement or safety on the job because they need work. But in a society like ours, which tolerates high levels of unemployment, the underground economy is often the next best alternative to starving.”

While some have been able to flourish working underground, it's important to remember that most workers are not off the books to dodge paying taxes or because they prefer it that way. As we see more and more people dropping out of the formal labor market in despair, the informal economy will remain a destination of last resort—and will keep growing.

Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.

The War Against Witness

by V. NOAH GIMBEL

Former Army Intelligence officer Adrienne Kinne has a very valuable open secret which, if told under oath, could lead to the first ever conviction of U.S. soldiers on war crimes charges. But since she told her story publicly in an interview with journalist Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow! over three years ago, she has been reluctant to put it to use in the ongoing prosecution in the Spanish High Court of three U.S. soldiers for the murder of Spanish cameraman José Couso.

On May 13, 2008, Kinne went public for the first time with her experiences in military intelligence during the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war. Prior to the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad that preceded the U.S.-led coalition’s ground invasion, Kinne was tasked with filtering through thousands of recorded satellite phone conversations emanating from the Iraqi capital.

An Arabic translation specialist, Kinne grew concerned as she found herself listening not to terrorists and Iraqi militants but to English-speaking international journalists and NGO-workers. After spying on American civilians, she worried she was breaking the law. Her concerns multiplied on receiving an email listing potential targets of the invaders that included various assets of the Baathist regime, as well as the Hotel Palestine. During the previous weeks and days she had been listening in as international journalists based at this hotel spoke to their worried friends and loved ones abroad, reassuring them that they were safe along with 300 media colleagues from several countries, including the United States.

Thus was Kinne moved to address her superior officer, John Berry, regarding the presence of hundreds of journalists who considered themselves safe inside a potential U.S. target. She was told “it was not [her] job to analyze[, but] to collect and pass on information…someone somewhere higher up the chain knew what they were doing.”

Soon after the invasion, the hotel was indeed attacked, killing Couso as well as Ukranian Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk. Kinne didn’t know if the soldiers responsible for the attack knew the hotel was a media hub. But after five years of learning more and more about the consistent U.S. disregard for international law in the conduct of the war and after joining Iraq Veterans Against the War, Kinne decided to make her case known “because [she] really hope[d…] that other people who know a lot more […would] choose to do the same thing for the right reasons. And if by speaking out you can encourage other people to…follow suit, I think that’s…what [it]’s all about.”

Since her interview with Amy Goodman, Kinne has not testified before the Spanish court on behalf of Couso’s family. According to José’s brother, Javier Couso, she has stated that she will only testify before a U.S. court, that she believes the true guilty parties lie further up the chain of command. As a former soldier herself, she has expressed reluctance to prosecute fellow soldiers for carrying out orders, a reluctance perhaps encouraged by the U.S. government’s strong stance against whistleblowers. Nevertheless, the Couso case will go to oral arguments sometime this fall, raising the case’s profile and perhaps pressuring Adrienne Kinne to come forward.

Is Independent War Reporting a Crime?

In Spain, the name José Couso is well known in all sectors of society. He was a video-journalist with major TV network Tele5 who was killed in his hotel room by a U.S. tank during the first days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Spanish media outlets –even those that supported the invasion – expressed outrage in the wake of his assassination.

In the United States, however, the media has stayed relatively silent on the Couso case despite its enormous implications for international justice, and American diplomatic interference therein. More than eight years after José’s untimely death, his family and friends continue to seek justice for what they see as a blatant case of premeditated murder by U.S. war planners to send a message to journalists: Tell the official version of the war’s narrative or else. The unofficial version goes like this.

On April 8, 2003, about two weeks into the aerial devastation of the Iraqi capital and just days after invading forces entered Baghdad, TV news stations were broadcasting a spectacular demonstration of military power to millions of viewers around the world. Mainstream coverage of the war tended to repeat the crusader narrative of the war’s authors, in which the Coalition of the Willing sought to liberate Iraqis from a WMD-possessing, 9/11-linked Saddam Hussein. But many journalists covering the war were not convinced of the invaders’ good intentions. Arriving in Baghdad, they encountered a bustling metropolis inhabited by normal people – people not interested in spreading tyranny, but in living their lives. As flames engulfed miles upon miles of the urban center and surrounding areas, international journalists were aware that the great majority of the people whose lives and homes were being incinerated were not agents of evil, but human beings.

These independent reporters viewed the war differently than embedded journalists who were given body armor and protection by a cavalcade of armed men. The embedded journalist sees targets as just that – targets. Hearing an officer order fire on a building deemed to harbor the enemy, the embedded journalist has no choice but to believe the officer and hope that the enemy is – in the euphemistic language of war – neutralized.

With scores of embedded journalists serving as military stenographers of the invading, and later the occupying armies, independent journalists were cast as unwilling participants in the other war being fought in Baghdad in 2003 – the war that claimed the life of José Couso among others: the war against witness. It was that war that George W. Bush was waging when he ominously warned all un-embedded journalists to leave Baghdad and follow the war from Central Command Headquarters in Qatar. The war against witness has been fought with ever-higher stakes for decades if not centuries, and it goes on to this day as much in the courtrooms of Spain as in the streets of Gaza.

Killing the Witness

Weeks before the bombing of Baghdad began, Western journalists set up headquarters at the Hotel Palestine on the East bank of the Tigris River after having left their previous base at the Al-Rashid Hotel on the other side of the river. When CNN pulled its personnel from the Al-Rashid, other journalists knew that the Pentagon had identified it as a potential target. As the CNN team was under U.S. protection, the residents of the Al-Rashid followed them to the Palestine, forwarded their coordinates to the Pentagon, and believed themselves safe.

On the morning of April 8, several journalists in the Palestine concentrated themselves on the balconies of the 20-story hotel. There they filmed the activities of the A Company (nicknamed “assassins”) of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, U.S. Army. Its tanks spent the morning on the al-Jumuriya bridge over the Tigris shelling various government buildings of the old regime as well as remaining Iraqi military positions. Just 1.7 kilometers from the hotel, camera crews could capture every shot fired by the tanks.

Also visible from the balconies of the Palestine was a pair of less likely military targets: the headquarters of the two Arab media outlets that had set up in Baghdad to cover the war via satellite – Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV.

Like all journalistic enterprises in Baghdad at the time of the invasion, Al-Jazeera had reported its exact location to the Pentagon months in advance and had clearly marked the outside of its headquarters to avoid any confusion. The network heads did not want to take any chances after U.S. forces bombed their Kabul headquarters early in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. But the provision of the exact coordinates of its Iraq offices didn’t stop the United States from targeting Al Jazeera in Basra on April 2. In Baghdad on April 8, meanwhile, , an A-10 Warthog fighter plane from the same 3rd Infantry Division swooped over Hotel Palestine and launched a missile into Al Jazeera’s electrical generator, killing Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Tareq Ayyoub and injuring his Iraqi cameraman.

Some hours later, amid relative calm, the crews at the Palestine had turned their cameras back on the tank division. The heaviest fighting of the day was over, the tanks positioned over the water on the bridge. Without provocation, at 11:45 AM, the tank turned its guns on the headquarters of Abu-Dhabi TV, where a camera had been recording the tanks’ activities all morning from the building’s rooftop.

Footage recovered from José Couso’s camera shows the tank’s machine-gun fire aiming unequivocally at that camera, ultimately destroying it. The personnel of Abu Dhabi TV, who like those of Al Jazeera had reported their exact coordinates to the Pentagon before the invasion and marked their headquarters in giant press tags, were lucky to have escaped the attack alive.

By then, many journalists had left the hotel after a tense morning to cover other areas of the city. But Couso kept filming, and Taras Protsyuk’s camera continued feeding live images to Reuters. Fifteen minutes after attacking Abu Dhabi TV, the tank on the bridge took aim at the Hotel Palestine, lifted its crosshairs to the 15th floor and fired a single anti-personnel shell. Taras, on the 15th-floor balcony, was killed instantly. José, one floor below, was rushed to the hospital, his leg crushed, his stomach gored. Despite a successful leg amputation and several hours of surgery by more than a dozen Iraqi doctors, he died from blood loss. The whole episode was captured on film.

The three media targets attacked that day were the only non-embedded journalistic crews broadcasting unfiltered images of the war live via satellite. Al-Jazeera had long been a target of Bush administration derision, as top-level officials accused the network of outright collusion with bin Laden and Saddam for broadcasting unsavory images of civilian casualties and American hostages. Indeed, the United States continued bombing Al Jazeera installations during the war, seeking to ban it from broadcasting. And if the message the United States was trying to send to independent journalists wasn’t clear enough, the U.S.-led coalition later launched its own Arab-language satellite channel Al-Hurrah, “The free one.”

The Official Stories

The first official story, told just an hour after the attack, claimed that snipers were operating out of the hotel. Forty minutes later, the commander of the 3^rd Infantry Division, General Buford Blount, said the tank “was receiving small arms and RPG fire from the hotel and engaged the target with one round. After that, there was no more shooting.” Two-and-a-half hours after that, Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman admitted the Pentagon’s prior knowledge of the hotel’s journalistic presence but maintained that the tank had received rocket-fire from the hotel.

Contradicting Whitman, CENTCOM spokesman General Brooks said in a press conference the following day that the military “[did]n’t know every place a journalist [was] operating on the battlefield. We [knew] only those journalists that [were] operating with us.” In other words, un-imbedded journalists were fair game.

As news of the U.S. response filtered down to the eyewitnesses of the attack – the journalists who were at the hotel – the official story came under scrutiny: not a single shot was fired from anywhere within earshot of the Palestine, let alone from the very spot where dozens of journalists were watching the action below.

So the next day, Captain Philip Wolford, the tank commander who ordered the shelling of the hotel, told a reporter that he thought an Iraqi spotter was on the roof of the hotel, informing enemy combatants of the tank’s position. This story was repeated by the man who fired the shot, Lt. Shawn Gibson, who said he saw a man with binoculars through the tank’s scope. He emphasized that the “spotter” did not have a TV camera and also noted that he waited ten minutes to receive final clearance to fire the shot. During that time, Wolford’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp, was apparently never brought into the discussion on whether or not to fire on the hotel.

All of these official explanations can be traced through the 2004 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) report entitled “Two Murders and a Lie.” According to the Couso family, that report, which concludes that there “was not…a deliberate attack on journalists or the media,” is illegitimate for a number of reasons. First, it relies heavily on the statement of imbedded journalist Chris Tomlinson, a longtime Army Intelligence officer. Second, when the family requested that the report not be submitted as evidence in the case (it does not, after all, mention the attacks on Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV), RSF head Robert Ménard insisted on its inclusion. And finally, a U.S. embassy cable from February 2008 quotes a representative of RSF insulting judge Pedraz’s efforts to keep the case open.

Notwithstanding the report’s conclusions, the soldiers’ explanations suffer from three major problems: the shell was fired five floors below the hotel’s rooftop; second, it doesn’t take a spotter 1.7 kilometers away in a tall building to see a tank in the middle of a bridge; and Protsyuk, who was struck directly by the shell, did have a TV camera, and it happened to be the only TV camera in the entire hotel that was transmitting via satellite in real time.

Moreover, optical experts sent by both the Couso family’s legal team and the judge handling the case agree that a person looking through the tank’s scope, equipped to see details at up to four kilometers, would be able to distinguish the eye colors of those on the balcony from the bridge so there could be no mistaking a Ukrainian cameraman for a fedayeen with binoculars. The soldiers got caught in a lie.

U.S. authorities in Washington ignored the details. Erstwhile Secretary of State Colin Powell sent a letter to the Spanish foreign minister saying that the shot that killed Couso and Protsyuk was fired in proportionate response to “hostile fire” emanating from the journalistic hub. Dick Cheney told reporters “you’d have to be an idiot to believe that [U.S. troops deliberately fired on journalists].” And Commander in Chief Bush responded in his usual laconic fashion: “war is a dangerous place.”

But the colleagues of Couso and Protsyuk, who had been waving to the U.S. soldiers from their hotel balconies the day before the shelling and knew that not a single shot was fired from the hotel, refused to let the United States get away with killing two of their own. Journalists protested in the Spanish parliament demanding a diplomatic course of action to seek justice for a Spanish citizen killed without reason. Massive demonstrations in front of the U.S. embassy in Madrid brought thousands into the streets. And a shattered family with its own history of military service turned its grief into a righteous indignation fierce enough to fuel the fight for justice against all odds.

A Case of Judiciary Independence

After Spanish authorities denied the Couso family’s initial requests to demand an independent investigation into the events of April 8 – instead giving the benefit of the doubt to the U.S. military’s internal investigation – the family decided in consultation with human rights attorney Pilar Hermoso to present a legal case to the Spanish High Court against the three soldiers immediately responsible for José Couso’s death: Wolford, Gibson, and DeCamp.

Ever since Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón ordered the arrest of U.S.-backed Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on murder charges citing the doctrine of “universal jurisdiction,” the Iberian nation has earned notoriety for its fiercely independent and tenacious judicial system. But as soon as the Bush administration got word that a Spanish judge was seeking to impose jurisdiction over three U.S. soldiers, its diplomats began pressuring the Spanish government to keep the judiciary in check. Then ruled by the right-wing Popular Party (PP) under President José-María Aznar, the Spanish government was eager to cooperate with the United States in the so-called war on terror, sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq despite massive public opposition. Indeed, Aznar participated in the planning of the Iraq War on Portugal’s Azores islands with Bush and Tony Blair in an open rejection of UN protocol. Thus, months after the case was presented, the prosecutor’s office (staffed by political appointees of the ruling party) had it shelved for procedural faults.

Nevertheless, with the backing of a major social movement and the support of judge Santiago Pedraz (part of the independent judiciary), the family’s legal team spent the final months of 2003 collecting eyewitness testimony in support of the case. And they grew even more hopeful when the Socialist Party (PSOE), whose candidates had expressed their support for the Couso case during the campaign season, took control of the government in 2004.

What happened to the case over the subsequent years – which we know thanks to a number of U.S. embassy cables released by Wikileaks – reveals the alarming degree to which U.S. officials sought to undermine Spanish sovereignty, and the even more alarming degree to which Spanish officials bowed to their demands.

According to WikiLeaks

A cable dated October 21, 2005 details the rush of high-level (PSOE) Spanish officials – Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Justice Minister Juan Fernando López Aguilar, Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos, and Vice President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega – to the U.S. embassy after Judge Pedraz issued arrest and extradition warrants for the three soldiers on October 19. They assured the ambassador that despite their public expressions of respect for the judicial process, they would do all they could to kill the case.

In March 2006, the attorney general’s office was able to shelf the case once again, this time claiming lack of jurisdiction. A cable from March 22 written by Ambassador Eduardo Aguirre stresses the responsiveness to Bush-administration demands by the socialist vice president de la Vega, stating that “we are well served by strengthening our level of communication with her.” But the judiciary refused to fold under political maneuvering. In December 2006, the Supreme Court determined that Pedraz did indeed have jurisdiction in the case and effectively reopened it.

This ruling didn’t deter the U.S. embassy or its friends in the Spanish government. After strategizing with Embassy personnel, the chief prosecutor of the National Court, Javier Zaragoza, ordered the government to drop the charges once again. Two years later in 2009 the case was reopened for a brief 2-month period after new supporting evidence surfaced, including Adrienne Kinne’s interview on DemocracyNow!. Rather than seeking to confirm Kinne’s testimony and call her to the witness stand, the government prosecutors refused to even acknowledge that Kinne existed.

Nevertheless, for all the control they exerted over the politicized justice ministry, the U.S. embassy couldn’t tame the Supreme Court, which reopened the case again in July 2010. After submitting a provisional conclusion to the court and issuing another international arrest warrant for the accused soldiers, Judge Pedraz received authorization from the government to travel to Baghdad with a court-appointed team of experts in order to corroborate the evidence submitted by the Cousos. In a last ditch effort to obstruct justice, the government refused to guarantee their security. That didn’t seem to bother the judge too much, nor was he deterred by the harassment of armed U.S.-Iraqi military units who sought to prevent him from accessing various points of interest.

On return, the judge submitted the investigative report based on the trip’s conclusions to the justice ministry and the prosecutor’s office at the beginning of 2011. As that evidence is processed, the Couso family is left waiting for the court to advance the case into oral argument sometime this fall. Meanwhile, their struggle to secure Adrienne Kinne’s testimony continues. If she refuses, the family plans to fly Amy Goodman to Spain in order to confirm before the court that the interview with Kinne of 2008 did indeed transpire.

Whistleblowers under the Gun

Kinne’s reluctance to testify is by no means misguided. On the one hand, she currently works as a military psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs where she interacts daily with soldiers responsible for innocent civilian deaths. On the other hand, she has every reason to fear government retribution for her would-be bravery.

Since taking office, the Obama administration has turned its back on government whistleblowers, whom the president praised during his campaign for their “acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives[… that] should be encouraged rather than stifled.” His administration has thus far indicted five former government employees under the Espionage Act of 1917, more than any previous president, and he openly defended the harsh conditions of accused whistleblower Bradley Manning at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia.

The citizen movement in support of Manning that has moved thousands of people into the streets – several of them risking arrest – must not wait for potential whistleblowers to fall victim to government repression before coming to their defense. Despite the violent rhetoric of right-wing pundits and politicians, the brave men and women willing to speak the truth about the exercise of U.S. power may be the greatest hope for advocates of international justice.

Leaked documents give a broad outline of the often-illegal foreign policy of the United States, but only detailed human testimony can fill in the blanks to give the whole truth. International courts demand the whole truth, and so should those who seek global justice. A victory in the Couso case would set an important precedent in the effort to subject the military to the rule of law, and solidarity with whistleblowers may help secure that victory.

V. Noah Gimbel is a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus, writing from Spain. He can be reached at noah.gimbel@gmail.com

The Costs of the Great War on Terror

by VIJAY PRASHAD

When Bush declared the Global War on Terror (GWOT), it felt odd. The U.S. had already involved itself in combat with the social forces that attacked it on 9/11. To make such a formal declaration of war allowed the administration to do two things: first, on the surface, to indicate that the 9/11 attacks came from nowhere, and, therefore, to make the claim that the U.S. was now going to enter a conflict for the first time. It allowed it to appear as an innocent bystander that now wanted justice for something that it did not deserve.

The second claim, slightly beneath the surface, was a bit more complicated. Very quickly after September 11, the idea of “9/11” became a kind of myth. The notion that an innocent country was attacked in September wiped off all traces of previous U.S. involvement in the Arab lands and South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan) through warfare towards the control of oil and political power. None of that seemed relevant. If anyone suggested that this was the case, they were shunned. (Professor Ward Churchill was pilloried for saying that 9/11 was simply an instance of the “chickens coming home to roost”; the attack on Churchill silenced many who wanted to raise the question of U.S. involvement overseas.)

The idea of “9/11”, as well, provided cover for any future disasters, whether financial crises or wars to come. When CNN’s reporters covering Afghanistan would report on civilian casualties, the anchors were told to put that in a broader context. CNN’s chairman Walter Isaacson sent a memorandum to his anchors in October 2001, saying, “As we get good reports from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we must redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply reporting from their vantage or perspective. We must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000 innocent people.” In other words, these small stories of civilian deaths should not tarnish the larger goal – any atrocity should shrivel before the blinding light of “9/11”.

During the Clinton years, the neoconservatives were out of power and were thirsting to return. In exile, the foreign policy wing of the neoconservatives created the Project for a New American Century (1997-2006). In September 2000, they released a report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, a testosterone-laden argument for increasing military spending and using the massive U.S. military power to capture political and physical resources around the world. The American Century or Pax Americana was in threat of being undermined by global government (the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation) and the emergence of new powers (namely, China). To thwart the loss of power, the project urged the government to build up a military and construct a foreign policy to spread American values around the planet.

Bush’s spatial and temporal extension of GWOT derived its theory from the project (he hired most of its leaders into his administration). There was to be no attempt at a police investigation and a global police action to secure the criminals. The point was now to use 9/11 for maximum effect, to hastily dispatch the Taliban in Afghanistan and then to rush into war with Iraq. Today, the U.S. is at war from the Atlas Mountains to the Hindu Kush, with its navy and air force, its special forces and drones in action or poised to act. For these missions, the U.S. enlisted a willing North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) command, which had found its post-Cold War legs already in the Kosovo War (1999). NATO would be thrust into the forefront in Afghanistan, and later in Libya, but it would also be the spear to irritate Russian ambitions in Eastern Europe and in the Black Sea region.

Conservative estimates of the war dead in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan alone amount close to 150,000, with the rough total of refugees created by these wars now upwards of 7.8 million. There is little indication that the U.S. and NATO plan to draw down their involvement in this region, even as they might reduce their own deployment of troops. The bases and the foreign policy objectives will stifle the ability of countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq to develop their own societies, which means that Afghan and Iraqi security services will be pledged to conduct the security work that approximates the extension of American power. Much of this is already taking place in these two countries, where the continual social corrosion has taken on the character of a civil war (with the governments in both countries acting as proxies for U.S. global ambitions).

The Project for a New American Century did not fully think through its implications. It assumed that by military force itself the U.S. would be able to extend its power into a New American Century. What it did not consider was the massive costs of this endeavor. Bush sent his troops into battle, but could not find a sustainable way to conduct these wars. Anti-tax rhetoric is the analgesic of the domestic neoconservatives. Their agenda contradicted those of the foreign policy neoconservatives. The domestics could not countenance a rise in taxes to pay for the wars. In fact, they won the right to cut taxes. This meant that the U.S. had to borrow massively to fund the expansion of its military and its use of that military. Between September 11, 2001, and May 2011, the National Priorities Project shows, the U.S. exchequer spent $7.6 trillion in defense and homeland security. This figure is bewildering. The combination of this military spending, the Bush cuts on taxes for the wealthy, the bursting of the asset bubbles (real estate prices) as well as the tremors in Wall Street’s financial casino set the U.S. Treasury into a downward spiral. The net effect of 9/11 for the U.S. economy has meant the downgrading in the U.S. federal debt to AA+ from the risk-free rating of AAA.

Standard & Poor’s (S&P), which gives out these ratings, explained its actions: “The downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenge.” The problem for S&P was not the economy per se, but the political imbroglio and political myopia within the U.S. The Republican Party, heir to neoconservative domestic and foreign policy, is unable to restructure either the economic or the military objectives for the country. For them, the budget must be balanced (no more foreign debt), but no foreshortening of the military expenditure. Indeed, what the Republicans want is already the case in the U.S., with spending on social goods at an anaemic low level. No wonder that the Census Bureau announced in mid-September that there are now 46.2 million people living under the rather low poverty line (one in six is officially poor, the highest percentage since 1983). The unemployment rate and the rate of those without health insurance are also inching up to break records. Twenty-two per cent of the children in the U.S. live under the poverty line (the worst figure since 1962). President Barack Obama’s announcement of $447 billion towards job creation is a drop in the economic bucket, which has a large hole at its bottom, named Military Expenditure and Tax Cuts. There is no political will to reverse course.

Before 9/11, the U.S. had its eyes fixed on China. After Tiananmen Square (1989), Washington suspended many of its economic and trade relations with China (U.S. Trade and Development Agency’s work was suspended and restrictions emerged for munitions and arms deals). William Triplett, a senior Republican foreign policy expert, formed the Blue Team in the early 1990s with the express interest in ratcheting up conflict with China. Its view of China is defined by the right-wing Weekly Standard, which described the country as “a regime of hair-curling, systematic barbarity”. The Blue Team was strengthened by the military and economic tensions between the rising power in Asia and the stagnant power in the U.S. Many of the Blue Team’s personnel shared a vision of the world with the Project of a New American Century: both worried about the decline in U.S. influence and wanted to tackle the challenges in West Asia (Project) and East Asia (Blue Team) through strengthened belligerency.

In 1996, the U.S. and China clashed over the latter’s operations in the Taiwan Straits (two U.S. aircraft carriers rushed to defend Taiwan). A gradual thaw in relations occurred with the exchange of leaders in both directions, but this was threatened by the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade (1999) and by the shooting down of a U.S. EP-3 spy plane on Hainan Island (2001). U.S. threats in the late spring of 2001 to build its missile defense units to ring China were taken as the ultimate hostile action. Things got so tense that in July 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell went to Beijing to say, “My presence here today is an example of trying to let the world see that we are not an enemy and we are not looking for an enemy. We are looking for ways to cooperation.” The tensions did not break, and cooperation seemed impossible.

The 9/11 attack shifted U.S. attention away from China. The war on terror sapped the energy and wealth of the U.S. and brought it to its present impasse. Meanwhile, China has been able to build up its own economic prowess, sitting as it is on trillions of dollars in surpluses. At the Dalian meeting of the World Economic Forum in September 2011, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was asked about the crisis in Europe and the U.S. Wen answered tactfully, but forcefully: “As the two largest advanced economies in the world, the European Union and the U.S. should adopt promptly and resolutely responsible fiscal and financial policies, and push forward policy adjustment and institutional reform as soon as possible so as to cut budget deficit and ease the debt pressure.” Such measures are not feasible. One of the consequences of the way in which U.S. policy was formed after September 11, 2001, was precisely what the Blue Team and the Project for a New American Century feared: it delivered the momentum to China. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) now reports that by 2016, China will have the largest economy in the world. This is a consequence of 9/11.

VIJAY PRASHAD is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are just out. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu

What TEPCO and the Media are Hiding

by TAKASHI HIROSE

When did the radiation start to leak from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and how far has it spread?

About this our greatest interest, the Japanese Government announced nothing for several days (at least until March 17) after the earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011. They just described the facts saying they “….happened” in the past tense, explaining neither the cause of the explosion nor its mechanism. They never talked about expectations of danger. What is “the worst scenario” that this nuclear accident might lead to? A reporter asked this of Edano Yukio, Chief Cabinet Secretary, at a news conference, but whether because Edano couldn’t answer or didn’t want to, he said nothing clearly.

Like the government, most of the media, rather than informing us of the dangers posed by this accident, kept claiming groundlessly that there was none. The stock phrase used by both Edano and the TV “experts” – “no immediate effects to health” – means what? That radiation effects start one year or 10 years later? If the radiation was to have “immediate effects”, that would be a horror. People would be dropping dead in the streets of acute radiation sickness as they did after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But that is not what we are talking about. The question is whether radiation taken into children’s bodies is really safe.

The “Experts” Who Were Unable To Foresee a Hydrogen Explosion

This is the first time a genpatsu shinsai syndrome occurred in Japan – or in the world. [Translators’ note: genpatsu shinsai is a new term to describe an unprecedented phenomenon: a combined nuclear power plant (genpatsu) earthquake disaster (shinsai). Rather that attempt an awkward translation, it is rendered here as genpatsu shinsai syndrome.] With the situation changing by the minute, people surely would want to know more about what was likely to happen next, and not just what had already happened at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant.

But was there any medium that was able to foresee what was coming?

On the afternoon of March 12, the day after the earthquake, a hydrogen explosion occurred in #1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Plant and the reactor building suffered severe damage. This explosion should have been avoided at any cost, because a large amount of radioactive substances was carried away by the blast wind and spread into the atmosphere.

It is because neither the government, nor the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), nor the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC), nor TEPCO was able to predict the explosion that they failed to avoided it. I was watching this process on TV and thought of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. …. I was on edge, thinking “There’s going to be an explosion!” I was praying those “experts” on TV would raise the alarm and that the danger could be avoided. But no one said a thing.

The cause of the hydrogen explosion is simple. In #1 reactor the cooling system stopped working just after the quake, and after a full day with no cooling most of the uranium fuel rods in the core must have melted down. Uranium fuel is processed into the shape of pellets and encased in zircalloy (an alloy of zirconium) pipes.

If the core starts to melt, the zirconium, making contact with water, reacts, and oxidization begins. If the metal oxidizes in the water (removing the O from the H2O), more and more hydrogen is generated. If enough hydrogen is produced, explosion occurs.

Just when I was getting more and more irritated watching the TV where no one was mentioning this, the phone rang. It was a newspaper reporter asking for my comments.

I said, “Go immediately to the NISA press conference and ask them about the danger of a hydrogen explosion.”

Right after that, the explosion occurred.

After the explosion those “experts” were on TV again, giving plausible explanations of what had caused it. This is what we call showing up for the fair a day late. Real experts would be ashamed of not being able to explain the danger of the explosion before it happened.

At the press conference after the explosion, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano said, “Even though #1 reactor building is damaged, the containment vessel is undamaged. On the contrary, the outside monitors show that the [radiation] dose rate is declining, so the cooling of the reactor is proceeding.”

Both NISA and NSC insisted, “For this accident to reach the Chernobyl level is out of the question.”

Most of the media believed this and the university professors encouraged optimism. It makes no logical sense to say, as Edano did, that the safety of the containment vessel could be determined by monitoring the radiation dose rate. All he did was repeat the lecture given him by TEPCO. I was persuaded that TEPCO, the government spokesmen and the TV commentators are a pack of amateurs. I had a bad feeling that something even worse was going to happen.

It was on March 14, two days after the explosion at #1 reactor, that the hydrogen explosion occurred at #3 reactor. Though it was the second explosion I had not seen any “experts” on TV who predicted it or warned about it.

I will explain the process of the hydrogen explosion at #3 reactor. The process was as follows.

It began on March 13, the day after the #1 reactor explosion. Just after 7 AM, the feed-water stopped and #3 reactor lost its cooling function completely. With three-quarters of the fuel exposed meltdown began, and the hydrogen explosion occurred through exactly the same mechanism as that of #1 reactor. The time was 11:01 AM on March 14. It took about a day from the time the cooling function stopped until the explosion. That was about the same amount of time as it took #1 reactor. But after the explosion the situation got worse than at #1 reactor. The building was blown off together with its steel frame, and four TEPCO employees and three workers from partner companies were injured.

Was the Earthquake Really Magnitude 9?

Aside from the way the genpatsu shinsai syndrome was reported, there was another thing I could not understand about the media report of the Great Tohoku Earthquake. It is the expression “once-in-a-thousand-years earthquake” used by every TV station including NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation). The expression is based on the figure “magnitude 9” announced by Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). But was it really that big an earthquake?

When an earthquake occurs, it is recorded by seismographs, and the amount of energy generated at the epicenter is called the magnitude. …. If the magnitude figure is 0.2 larger, that means the energy is about twice as great, so if the magnitude is greater by a factor of 1.0, that means the energy is 32 times greater (2 to the fifth power: 2x2x2x2x2).

In the Southern Hyogo Prefectural Earthquake (1995) which brought about the Great Hanshin Earthquake Disaster, the magnitude was recorded at 7.3. That would calculate out to mean that the energy of the Great Tohoku Earthquake was 355 times that of the Southern Hyogo Prefectural Earthquake.

When I talked with news people who reported on the disaster, they all said with one voice, the earthquake damage was not so great, but the tsunami was appalling. I myself saw the enormous damage wreaked by the tsunami on TV and was terrified. However, the damage from the quake itself is not clearly known. One reporter said that this time he did not see anything like what he saw during the Southern Hyogo Prefectural Earthquake, when the Hanshin Expressway was toppled off its foundations.

So I examined the data.

“Gal” is a unit for measuring the strength of a quake precisely. It is an acceleration unit named after Galileo. One Gal indicates the amount of force which, when it acts on an object 1 gram in weight, will cause that object to accelerate at a rate of 1 centimeter per second. In time of earthquake this rate of acceleration indicates the momentary force that acts on people and buildings.

In the Great Tohoku Earthquake the strongest tremor, as far as I know, was the shindo 7 recorded at Tsukidate Kurihara City, Miyagi Pref. [again, the shindo is a unit used in Japan to measure the force of an earthquake at each specific site, not at the epicenter]. The ground acceleration figure there was 2933 Gal. A big quake it is, but in the Iwate Miyagi Inland Earthquake (magnitude 7.2) in 2008, they recorded vertical acceleration of 3866 Gal and three-component synthesis maximum acceleration of 4012 Gal (the highest ever recorded) in Ichinoseki City, Iwate Pref. This would mean that while its magnitude was less than the 9 alleged for the Great Tohoku Earthquake, its force on the ground was greater.

Was the 3/11 earthquake really the most powerful earthquake in history?

Watching the process, it seemed suspicious. At first JMA announced the magnitude of the earthquake provisionally as 8.4. Then this was corrected to 8.8, and finally “upgraded” to 9.0.

Escaping Responsibility by Managing the News

The seismologist and geologist Shimamura Hideki (former Director of the National Institute of Polar Research) said, “This never-before-heard-of figure of magnitude 9 is was produced by JMA’s arbitrary altering of the magnitude scale.”

In fact a number of different scales have been used to calculate magnitude. In Japan in the past the “JMA magnitude (M_j)”scale has been used. If we enter data of the Great Tohoku Earthquake into the M_j formula (omitted here as it is complicated), its magnitude would be 8.3 or 8.4 at most according to Shimamura. He continues, “It is because JMA recalculated the data using the ‘moment magnitude (M_w)’ scale, which has been used only by scientists, that the magnitude could be raised to 9.0.”

Note that in my book the magnitude of all the past earthquakes is shown by the customary M_j scale. If the scale is changed abruptly, it becomes impossible to compare with past earthquakes. Why did JMA change the scale without explanation? Here I can feel political intervention distorting a scientific truth. If the magnitude figure remained at the original 8.4, that would mean that the earthquake fell within the range of a “predictable” disaster. And if that were so, not only TEPCO, but also the Japanese government and the “experts” who have promoted nuclear power, would be held responsible.

The Chubu Electric Power Company (CHUDEN) has announced that its Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant is built to withstand an earthquake of a magnitude of magnitude 8.4. Advocates of nuclear power needed to raise the magnitude to 9.0, otherwise they would be in a pinch. By announcing this unprecedented figure, they want to make people think the earthquake was “a once-in-a-thousand-years earthquake” and “beyond expectation” thus escaping responsibility.

Especially TEPCO has tried to avoid criticism by raising the magnitude to 9.0. Even now their sales are decreasing sharply because of planned outages and electricity conservation measures by consumers. If they need to pay huge damage compensation for the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant accident, it will be hard to keep the company afloat. They want to keep compensation costs as low as possible; that is their aim as a company.

Excerpted from Chapter 2 of Takashi Hirose’s just translated Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster (Kindle Books).

Takashi Hirose has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex. Probably his best known book is Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo.

Translated by Doug Lummis, who is a political scientist living in Okinawa and the author of Radical Democracy. Lummis can be reached at ideaspeddler@gmail.com