Thirty Years of TMI Hysteria Is Enough

Last Sunday, when you saw the unrelated pictures from Martins Creek and Centralia — well, not really unrelated — you probably went to the nearest light switch and flipped it a few times just for reassurance.

That is, you should have. Not so long ago, when Californians flipped their switches, their houses remained dark.

On Sunday, we saw how explosives toppled a 600-foot-high smokestack for PPL’s useless coal-to-electricity plant at Martins Creek, along the banks of the Delaware in Northampton County. That plant was shut down in 2007 because of pollution.

In the Go Guide section of that same paper, we learned about a pollution problem that is even worse. Centralia, a ghost town in the hard coal region just beyond the Schuylkill County line, has been devastated by an underground anthracite fire since 1962. Nearly every resident of that town had to leave or die from the fumes.

Subterranean coal cannot burn without help, in the form of air from a labyrinth left behind by miners. Smoke still rises and the town resembles Hiroshima in 1945.

I have been to Centralia many times, and it does not represent the only evidence of damage from coal mining. Vast regions around Tamaqua were left looking like moonscapes, and many stream beds were coated with yellow boy, a by-product of mine runoff that chokes all aquatic life.

Yet today, people are pushing pie-in-the-sky ideas about making electricity with coal. The only way to get power from coal is to burn it. If you combine carbon with oxygen, you muck up the air, no matter how many smokestack scrubbers you install.

Wind power — being pushed hard by wheeler-dealers who make billions building windmills and by the politicians who do their bidding — is an even worse idea. As I have argued previously, the windmill scam would require the denuding of 250 square miles of mountaintop forests to produce as much electricity as one nuclear power plant on a site the size of a ball field.

That brings us back to PPL. I have praised that utility company so often you may think I’m on its payroll. Sadly, I don’t get a penny of payola, although I do have a financial reason for being fond of PPL.

As I revealed a few years ago, my monthly electric bills from PPL were averaging $41.37 at a time my daughter was paying around $300 a month in California.

For that, she could thank idiotic state utility industry regulation and hysteria over nuclear energy. In 1989, hand-wringing California voters shut down the Rancho Seco nuke plant because it had a reactor identical to the one that melted at Three Mile Island 10 years earlier. It did not matter that TMI was run by an inept company that engaged in criminal misconduct in connection with the 1979 accident, or that Rancho Seco had a good record. Meanwhile, regulatory insanity caused a financial calamity for all California utility companies. By 2001, off went the lights.

Lest our children wind up living in something like Somalia — a very realistic scenario if you smother enough life forms with yellow boy or stumble into an electric power catastrophe — we need to move in the opposite direction, which compelled me to visit the PPL people the other day at their lonesome skyscraper in Allentown.

No new nuclear power plants have been built in America since TMI, while France now gets nearly 80 percent of its electricity from fission. What, I asked PPL spokesman Dan McCarthy, is going on with plans (discussed publicly a couple of years ago) to build a new reactor at Berwick?

He gave me a ”Bell Bend project timeline” chart showing that applications have been filed for a federal nuke license and that ”investment partners” will be sought through 2011. Design certification is anticipated by 2012 and, by 2013, ‘’safety-related construction” could start. ”Project on line,” says the chart’s entry for 2018.

Those investment partners will be needed, McCarthy said, because the new 1,600-megawatt reactor will cost $15 billion. ”There are about three or four [nuke plants] that are further along than us,” he said, referring to Georgia and Maryland.

PPL already has two reactors chugging away at its Susquehanna plant at Berwick, and the new plant there would have the ”evolutionary power reactor” now being used in France. It is especially safe because it has double containment. (At TMI, single containment prevented any significant release of radioactivity, no thanks to the Three Stooges running that plant.)

Inevitably, there will be hysteria when those plans move forward, with some people predicting the sky will fall because of waste nuclear fuel, accidents or other woe.

When you and your children encounter them, invite them to move to Somalia, where there are no nuclear power plants to frighten them, or maybe to Centralia.

paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176

Paul Carpenter’s commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

MY RESPONSE TO DISSENTERS AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER:

I don’t often agree with Carpenter, but this is a great article. To the ostriches with their heads in the sand, consider this fact – currently PA has reactors in Limerick, Peach Bottom, Beaver Valley, Susquehanna, and yes, 3 Mile Island. Nationwide, there are 65 reactors. Nuclear power has been in use in the US since 1954, starting at the US Army post in Fort Belvoir, VA. In those 55 years, only one accident has occurred in the US, and in that accident there was no release of radiation. Worldwide, the worst accident was at Chernobyl. Both accidents were due to failure to follow mandates, poor government supervision, and human reluctance to follow protocol. Since those accidents, strict regulations are even more strictly enforced. Wind and solar are fine as supplements, but the average person cannot afford to power their home using the liberal pipe dream methodology. Perhaps in time solar will become more affordable, but now it is neither efficient nor affordable. Wind is a nightmare – too much clear cutting, takes the trees from mountaintops which will lead to massive erosion and mountain deforestation.
As for the fuel rods and other waste, there are programs that reconstitute waste into fuel for a second use. Think nuclear recycling. I for one would like to see that industry creating jobs in PA.

Let’s use our heads here folks. You were fed a lot of hooplah by the liberals in the media, but hooplah it is. We need answers for power now. Nuclear is the way to go.

FBI Keeps Tabs on TEA Parties

FBI Keeps Tabs on TEA Parties

Thursday, May 21, 2009 2:25 PM

By: James H. Walsh

“The ‘TEA Party’ movement is an unhealthy mutation from public dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s economic policies.”

— David Axelrod, Senior White House Adviser, April 2009

Since when is free speech, as personified by the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party grass-roots citizens movement, “unhealthy”? Since the leftward tilt of federal agencies accelerated during the first 100 days of the Barack Obama presidency.

Consider, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has moved far to the left on the political spectrum in record time under Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Consider also the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The once fabled and incorruptible FBI is showing signs of becoming a mere “yes man” for the Obama administration.

Evidence for the yes-man charge is found in a recent report by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment (I&A), entitled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” The report names law-abiding U.S. citizens, who choose not to support the liberal agenda of the Obama administration, as prime subjects for FBI surveillance.

This Obama enemies list is a lengthy one, encompassing all “single-issue” advocates, including those who are pro-life, those who are gun owners, those who oppose illegal immigration, those who oppose “same -sex marriages” (such as Miss California), those who support third-party candidates, those who criticize free trade agreements, and, believe it or not, those military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and those veterans still around.

A citizen-taxpayer who falls into several of these categories is even more likely to be targeted. The FBI appears to be following, in lockstep, the DHS agenda, in complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the citizenry. Lest the DHS, A&I, DOJ, and FBI forget, the U.S. Constitution protects the right to bear arms, the right to peaceful assembly, and free speech.

A similar DHS report, also prepared by the I&A, was withdrawn within hours of its release. Dated March 26, 2009, and entitled, “Domestic Extremism Lexicon,” it was a dictionary of political incorrectness. Its senior author was transferred to the DHS Office of the Director of National Intelligence, perhaps to prepare more and more anti-citizen reports.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has chosen to stand with those who would denigrate U.S. citizens by failing to denounce the DHS “Rightwing Extremism” report. Instead he actively supports the goals of this controversial DHS report as well as those of the withdrawn DHS “Lexicon.” The question arises, Who is left on the left to watch those foreign nationals who have sworn to destroy the United States?

No congressional investigation is underway regarding the origins of the DHS report or the withdrawn DHS “Lexicon.” Apparently the DHS guidelines for these reports were White House approved.

The worst aspect of this sad state of affairs is that the FBI historically has been a strong, disciplined, and effective bureau that lived up to its motto of “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.” For a century, countless books, articles, news accounts, movies, radio, and television shows have documented the Bureau as one of the world’s leading investigatory agencies. Now in 100 days, its proud history of crime fighting, spy-catching, civil-rights protecting, and domestic intelligence-gathering has been downgraded to political pandering and bureaucratic one-upmanship.

Extremists on the far left and on the far right have long found fault with the FBI for alleged privacy intrusions, especially when agents investigated wrong-doing by groups such as the U.S. Communist Party and the Ku Klux Klan. Ask any federal prosecutor, FBI agents were renowned for the quality of their background work in obtaining criminal convictions. But covering taxpayer protests? Come on.

The DHS “Rightwing Extremism” report admits that the I&A has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists (a term used in the report despite Napolitano’s new-think definition of terrorism as “man-caused disasters”) currently plan acts of violence. The report only suggests that “the election of the first African-American president presents unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.”

Armed with this baseless and biased assessment, the FBI under Mueller swung into action to place the Tax Day TEA Parties of April 15, 2009, under federal surveillance.

Mueller alerted FBI field offices throughout the United States to verify the date, time, location, and organizers of each TEA Party within their jurisdiction and to supply that information to seat of government, that is, FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. This request was issued two weeks before the DHS report was leaked to the California talk show.

Subsequently on April 6, 2009, FBI Headquarters advised its field offices to conduct cover surveillance and data collection of the protestors attending each TEA Party. The director’s advisory suggested that the surveillances were to be discreet and outside the purview of local law enforcement.

At the same time, the official FBI Web site carried the National Terror Suspect Watchlist, including the Most Wanted Terrorists, 24 of whom are foreign nationals, ranging from Osama bin Laden through Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed Al-Nasser. Each person on the Most Wanted List is under indictment by federal grand juries in the United States. Not one of them was a right-wing extremist, and not one of them would waste their time attending a TEA Party.

The FBI Web site also posts the Ten Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists, again all of them under indictment by federal grand juries. At the top of the list is Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth, a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) wanted for killing a police officer and may be traveling in Africa. The other Top Ten include two more BLA members, several Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) members, a member of the May 19th Communist Organization, and several other domestic terrorists, among them Puerto Rican nationalists. All of them are to be considered armed and dangerous.

Note that the Ten Most Wanted domestic terrorists all lean left of center, with not a rightwing terrorist or TEA Party taxpayer among them.

The FBI, by carrying out the DHS directives regarding surveillance of each TEA Party held in March and April, 2009, diverted valuable resources, and more will be needed to cover each TEA Party being planned for the Fourth of July. The FBI owes U.S. taxpayers a detailed accounting of the human resources and monetary expenses required by TEA Party surveillances. President Obama has pledged transparency.

It is time to reassign FBI resources from TEA Party surveillances to updating the National Terror Suspect Watchlist. Mueller and his agency continue, however, to show signs of political correctness. Has the Obama administration so intimidated federal career officials that agencies, such as the FBI, have lost all sense of direction?

Federal resources needed to combat Islamist terrorists are being wasted spying on law-obeying, taxpaying citizens. Enemy list surveillances are the building stones of a dictatorship. U.S. citizens, awake! Do not let future historians say that this all happened while we slept.

James H. Walsh is a former federal prosecutor and former Associate General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Department of Justice.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Most of History Lies Beneath the Surface

Research of ruins on seabeds and in lakes or rivers is increasing in Japan, where many sites are yet to be fully explored.

In Kushimoto in Wakayama Prefecture, the U.S.-based Institute of Nautical Archaeology held an excavation survey January and February of the Ertugrul, a Turkish warship that went down off the coast during the Meiji Era (1868-1912).

The 2,344-ton wooden battleship of the Ottoman Empire’s navy was on its return voyage after paying a courtesy call on Emperor Meiji in 1890 when the ship was caught in a storm, run aground and went down.

All but 69 of the 650 souls on board perished in the disaster.

The story of the brave rescue efforts by local residents remains a part of Turkish historical lore to this day.

The survey team, led by Turkish archaeologist Tufan Turanli, consisted of members from Turkey, Spain and Japan. The survey began in fiscal 2006.

This year, the team salvaged 3,513 items, including armaments, broken ceramic pieces, coins and a large cooking pot.

Turanli said at a meeting on the finds said that the team was able to salvage three times as many relics as last year. He said survey was providing valuable insight into the military during the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

He talked about the difficulties of underwater exploration–a single hour spent underwater requires 20 hours of preparation on land.

Since relics lying at the bottom of the sea for decades can seriously degrade when brought to the surface, they must undergo a slow desalination and conservation process.

Sinking below the surface

The Sone ruins at the bottom of Lake Suwako in Nagano Prefecture were discovered 100 years ago this year. Thousands of years ago, they were built on dry land.

The ruins in the lake date back about 10,000 years to the Paleolithic Age through the beginning of the Jomon Pottery Culture (c. 8000 B.C.-300 B.C.)

“The ruins are likely to have been submerged when the level of Lake Suwako rose, starting in the early Jomon period,” Satoshi Tanaka, a municipal employee of the Suwa city government, said. Last year, he organized a special exhibition of the ruins.

Tetsuya Mikami, a high school teacher in Suwa who compiled a report on the ruins, said, “Not many sites from the beginning of the Jomon period have produced relics of this scale.”

He hopes to isolate and drain water from the area containing the ruins to conduct a proper excavation.

Underwater archaeology became an active area of research in Japan starting in the 1970s, when the full-scale investigation of a sunken ship was undertaken for the first time.

The ship was Kaiyo Maru, a warship of the Tokugawa Shogunate that sank off the coast of Esashi in Hokkaido.

In a survey undertaken in 2000, the Agency for Cultural Affairs identified 216 underwater ruins in Japan.

“Research is yet to proceed fully and perhaps there are more than twice that number,” said Shinsuke Araki, a director of the nonprofit organization Japan Conservation Project. Araki is an expert on underwater ruins.

Although studying underwater ruins requires diligence and patience, there are quite a few advantages associated with the work, Araki said.

“In sunken ships, the living environment is preserved as is. They are like time capsules,” he said.

Also, wood articles that would rot on land often remain to some degree intact.

Treasures of Egypt

Underwater exploration is catching on with the public in Japan.

The graduate school of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology plunged into the water in April when it began offering a course on nautical archaeology.

“We are the first in Japan to set up a specialized educational system,” Akifumi Iwabuchi, professor of marine anthropology, said.

In June, an exhibition in Yokohama will open, featuring items excavated at underwater ruins of Alexandria in Egypt. “Egypt’s Sunken Treasures” is organized by The Asahi Shimbun.

Global interest in underwater archaeology is growing.

In 2001, UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which took effect in January of this year.

The treaty stipulates that “underwater cultural heritage shall not be commercially exploited” and regulates the activities of treasure hunters.

Japan, however, has not ratified the treaty since “the existence of the treaty may affect Japan’s ocean policy,” according to Kae Oyama, an associate professor of international law at Chukyo University.

The UNESCO treaty gives authority to coastal nations to ban exploring and salvaging of ruins and relics located within a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or on continental shelves even beyond the zone.

While commending the treaty in general terms, Oyama said it needs to be examined carefully since “this treaty could become the model when international agreements are negotiated on marine genetic resources in waters beyond a nation’s jurisdiction.”

Japan has no law concerning ruins or relics located in its EEZ or on continental shelves beyond its territorial waters.

Araki of the Japan Conservation Project said, “The government should view cultural heritage as an important issue concerning the sea and formulate a comprehensive national policy.”(IHT/Asahi: May 15,2009)

Native Americans Dental “Bling”

May 18, 2009—The glittering “grills” of some hip-hop stars aren’t exactly unprecedented. Sophisticated dentistry allowed Native Americans to add bling to their teeth as far back as 2,500 years ago, a new study says.

Ancient peoples of southern North America went to “dentists”—among the earliest known—to beautify their chompers with notches, grooves, and semiprecious gems, according to a recent analysis of thousands of teeth examined from collections in Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (such as the skull above, found in Chiapas, Mexico).

Scientists don’t know the origin of most of the teeth in the collections, which belonged to people living throughout the region, called Mesoamerica, before the Spanish conquests of the 1500s.

But it’s clear that people—mostly men—from nearly all walks of life opted for the look, noted José Concepción Jiménez, an anthropologist at the institute, which recently announced the findings.

“They were not marks of social class” but instead meant for pure decoration, he commented in an e-mail interview conducted in Spanish.

In fact, the royals of the day—such as the Red Queen, a Maya mummy found in a temple at Palenque in what is now Mexico—don’t have teeth decorations, Jiménez said.

Other evidence of early Mesoamerican dentistry—including a person who had received a ceremonial denture—has also been found.

Knowledgeable Dentists

The early dentists used a drill-like device with a hard stone such as obsidian, which is capable of puncturing bone.

“It’s possible some type of [herb based] anesthetic was applied prior to drilling to blunt any pain,” Jiménez said.

The ornamental stones—including jade—were attached with an adhesive made out of natural resins, such as plant sap, which was mixed with other chemicals and crushed bones, Jiménez said.

The dentists likely had a sophisticated knowledge of tooth anatomy, Jiménez added. For example, they knew how to drill into teeth without hitting the pulp inside, he said.

“They didn’t want to generate an infection or provoke the loss of a tooth or break a tooth.”

—John Roach

Photograph courtesy José C. Jiménez López

Article from National Geographic

Hate Crimes Laws lead to Thought Police and Dissent Control

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.
Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution’s principal tasks was “to alter people’s actual psychology”. Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people’s psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males”. He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were “potentially very aggressive”.
In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.
Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government’s anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: “If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you.” Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: “If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings.” It took him five years to clear his name.
Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher’s first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police!” Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form.”
A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya “Paki” and “bin Laden” during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: “Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don’t bother to prosecute. This is nonsense.”
Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.
Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children’s television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.
A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to “celebrate diversity”, the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.
Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.
There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities. The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.
Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the proclivities of a satanist crew member. “What would Nelson have said?” is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates who need it.
This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.
Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together – and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day – they add up to a pretty clear picture.
Hal G. P. Colebatch’s Blair’s Britain was chosen as a book of the year by The Spectator in 1999.