If you do a quick Google search You’ll see the phrase “There was no threat to public health or safety” combined with “Vermont Yankee” pops up quite a bit.  It popped up again yesterday:

“The leak was isolated,” Smith wrote. “The valve has been replaced and the LCO has ended. There was no threat to public health or safety and there was no leak to the environment.”

You might think that this is in reference to another, previously reported, leak.  That, however, would be incorrect.  This time, it was a new leak on Tuesday, June 8th, which involved a valve releasing 1.6 gallons per minute into the containment building.  According to reports, it lasted under six hours.

But I want to get back to that phrase “no threat.”  

A threat doesn’t have to be immediate to exist.  There might not have been an immediate threat from this particular leak, but at this point, a power plant of the nature of Vermont Yankee, which has operated beyond its expected life cycle?  That’s a threat.  Every single minute of operation on the part of this plant is a threat, and every new leak, spill, equipment failure?  That’s not a new threat.  That’s just an illustration of the threat that is a constant issue for us.

It’s really time to move forward and find a new source of power for this state (and all the places VY exports it to).  This is just ridiculous.

When did oil, nuclear power, gas and coal become more important than the lives and well being of people and the planet? It seems every day now there is another accident caused by incompetent, thoughtless, greedy corporations who are more interested in the bottom line than in their fellow man’s well being. Or is it more than that? Could it be our greed and consumption that is causing these accidents?

For all the debate about whether offshore oil drilling in particular is too risky, the larger truth is simple: we are digging deeper oil wells and deeper mines because we have used almost all the readily available fossil fuels. Going after this harder-to-reach energy is riskier, for the environment and for the workers.

I remember growing up in town where everyone worked in ‘the mill’. Even then I recognized that money was more important than people. Yes, they were paid well but at what cost? Lost limbs, deafness and a short life span were common place but they all had a truck, a car, a boat, a camp and plenty of money to spend.

Predictions have been made that what we are facing now was bound to happen, just as terrorism was predicted and no one listened. Experts warned of impending terrorist acts but it all fell on deaf ears, just as the warnings of polluting the earth and poisoning our ecosystem fell on deaf ears. I am not sure anyone is really listening even now.

There is a trend that you may have noticed lately due to our increased use of fossil fuels. The more we use, the more accidents happen.

What constitute a severe accident?

An accident is severe, when at least one of the following consequences occurs:

5 or more fatalities

10 or more injuries

200 or more evacuations

far-reaching ban on the consumption of food

release of at least 10000 tons of hydrocarbons

cleanup of a land or water surface of 25 km2 or more

economic damages of at least 5 million USD

“Up to 10,000 miners die every year in Chinese coal mines. Our use of oil costs hundreds to thousands of human lives yearly through accidents. The collapse of two hydro storage dams in 1975 caused the death of 26000 people in China. And Chernobyl not only caused 31 immediate fatalities, but also many future latent fatalities. Insurance companies continue to pay high monetary damages, but there remain other damages to humanity and nature which no one pays.” Energie-Spiegal

April 2010 Methane explosion in West Virginia 25 miners killed

April 2010 Deepwater Horizon (BP oil rig) explodes and sinks with the oil still leaking to this day 11 killed

June 2010 Natural gas line in Texas erupted killing one

There is always a chance of accidents occurring. Energy companies may have neglected safety precautions that could have prevented these tragic events. More important than their neglect is our consumption of energy.

We, the consumers may be the ones that need to carry the burden of blame. We use more energy than countries with similar climates such as Japan, France, Germany and Australia and twice as much per capita as the United Kingdom.

The only countries that use more than we do on a per capita basis are small, oil-rich, deserts like Qatar and Bahrain. Canada, which is considerably colder, less densely populated, and also has such a high footprint in part because it has a lot of energy-intensive extraction industries.

Subsidies for homeownership increase the opportunity for living in the suburb and driving everywhere. The Interstate Highway System has caused a massive imbalance between funding for roads and mass transit, leaving no option for those who have no access to public transportation.

It is time to change American policy in favor of comprehensive energy reform and rethink our consumption. The accidental deaths of American energy company workers can not only be blamed on the corporations. We need to accept our (the consumer) responsibility in contributing to their deaths and injuries. Please support alternative forms of energy.

The Deepwater Horizon is not the only well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico for the last month.

A nearby drilling rig, the Ocean Saratoga, has been leaking since at least April 30, according to a federal document.

(Another Gulf oil spill: Well near Deepwater Horizon has leaked since at least April 30, AL.com, 06/07/10)

Some video at CONFIRMED: Aerial Video Shows Second Leaking Rig Near The Deepwater Horizon, Coto Report, 06/08/10.

Thanks to Buzz Flash for the original pointer.

In yesterday’s Brattleboro Reformer, there was this gem:

According to the PSB, the false testimony by Entergy witnesses was sufficiently damaging enough to merit sanctions. The New Orleans-based company, which operates the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, will have to reimburse costs to the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, the New England Coalition and the Windham Regional Commission attorney fees and other legal costs related to the plant’s misrepresentations about whether it had underground pipes carrying radioactive materials.

I don’t expect this to carry a whole lot of teeth.  The PSB’s interest in actually enforcing anything related to VY is relatively timid.  This seems to me to be more of a political distancing move than anything else, like politicians who have been in the pocket of big oil for decades suddenly saying “you know, maybe we should encourage these companies to be a little more responsible” a month after a catastrophic oil spill.

But still, it’s nice to see the PSB at least pretending to give a damn about truth and accuracy.  Took them long enough, but still…

Per today’s Rutland Herald:

“I will not agree to the site monitoring or the establishment of a database with the ability to collect such information about our staff, as I believe it undermines the trust we have developed and is, in fact, counter to the establishment of a productive work environment,” Spaulding wrote.

I agree with this completely.  As a state, we’ve wasted over $100,000 on this technology, and it’s a fairly crappy way to treat your employees.

But kind of buried down the line in this story is the following statement:

Spaulding said he will allow the monitoring technology to be used, but only he and his deputy will be privy to the data.

So it’s not that he thinks it’s a problem to undermine the trust he’s developed with his staff.  It’s just that he doesn’t want the human resources department to undermine it.  He… wants to do all the undermining himself?

Seriously?  Is this a solution?

a thousand Hail Marys words.

The June cover of Vermont Catholic Magazine.

With the lightening speed of millions of mice, this magazine cover has ricocheted across the Globe — or as the Church would tell Galileo — “God’s flat surface around which the sun revolves.”

The picture depicts an ordination ceremony. (I believe “Ordination” is Latin for “breaking in the new guy”). The debate over the picture falls into several camps. Some observers are saying:

1. The PR folks for the Vermont Diocese are either pathetically stupid or they are using a pathetically stupid approach to undercut Photoshop;



while others are arguing that

2. The Catholic hierarchy is truly, pathologically, that far out of touch with both perception and reality;



and still others seem to think that

3. For decades, the political infrastructure of the Catholic Church was dominated by evil bastards who did everything in their power to protect child rapers. The timing of the picture is just one big middle finger pointed at the Vermont victims of the Church’s criminal conduct — coming only a month after settling the last of the abuse cases that the Church has covered up and dragged out for years.

I suspect it is more likely #2 rather than #3.  That said, can the media arm of a large Vermont Corporation truly be this out of touch?  We know the lengths to which this organization went to protect and preserve a culture of predatory criminal sexual violence against children: how can anything truly be a surprise?

LONDON-As the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico entered its eighth week Wednesday, fears continued to grow that the massive flow of bullshit still gushing from the headquarters of oil giant BP could prove catastrophic if nothing is done to contain it.

(Massive Flow Of Bullshit Continues To Gush From BP Headquarters, the Onion, 06/07/10)

Unfortunately under the heading of No Bullshit

WASHINGTON – BP’s runaway Deepwater Horizon well may be spewing what the company once-called its worst case scenario – 100,000 barrels a day, a member of the government panel told McClatchy Monday.

BP well may be spewing 100,000 barrels a day, scientist says, McClatchey, 06/07/10)

Dissenting Officials Inside Spy Agency Say That Remote Air Strikes With Predator Drones Against Suspected Al-Qaida Operatives in Pakistan are ‘Doing More Harm Than Good’ by Boosting Recruitment of New Jihadist Militants Into Ranks of Al-Qaida, Taliban

UNDER FIRE — The use by the Central Intelligence Agency of unmanned, remote-controlled Predator attack drones, such as the one photographed above, against suspected al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan is drawing new criticism from an unlikely source: Dissenting CIA officials involved in the strikes, who argue that the attacks are “counterproductive” and resulting in making it easier for al-Qaida and its Taliban allies to recruit new militants into its ranks. (Photo Courtesy U.S. Air Force)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, June 8, 2010)

By GARETH PORTER

Inter-Press Service

(Published under a Creative Commons license)

Some Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in its drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency, because it is helping al-Qaida and its Taliban allies recruit new jihadist militants, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.

“Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, it is doing more harm than good,” said Jeffrey Addicott, former legal adviser to U.S. Special Forces and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, in an interview with Inter-Press Service.

Addicott said the CIA operatives he knows have told him the drone strikes are being used effectively by al-Qaida and Taliban leaders to recruit more militants.

CIA officers “are very upset” with the drone strike policy, Addicott said. “They’ll do what the boss says, but they view it as a harmful exercise. They say we’re largely killing rank and file Pakistani Taliban, and they are the ones who are agitated by the campaign.”

ATTACKS KILLING CIVILIANS,’INFURIATING’ MUSLIM MEN INTO BECOMING JIHADISTS

Because the drone strikes kill innocent civilians and bystanders along with leaders from far away, they “infuriate the Muslim male”, said Addicott, thus making them more willing to join the movement. The men in Pakistan’s tribal region “view Americans as cowards and weasels,” he added.

Addicott retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2000 after serving for six years as senior legal adviser to the Special Operations Forces but is still a consultant for the U.S. military on issues of terrorism and law.

Addicot said the CIA officers expressing concern about the blowback effects of the drone policy are “mid-grade and below.”

They learned about the impact of drone strikes on recruiting by extremist leaders in Pakistan from intelligence gathered by CIA and the National Security Agency, which intercepts electronic communications, according to Addicott.

They have informed high-level CIA officials about their concerns that the program is backfiring. “The people at the top are not believers,” said Addicott, referring to the CIA. “They know that the objective is not going to be achieved.”

DISSENTING CIA OFFICERS’ CONCERNS CONFIRM 2009 WARNINGS

The complaints by CIA operatives about the drone strikes’ blowback effect reported by Addicott are identical to warnings by military and intelligence officials reported in April 2009 by the McClatchy News Service.

McClatchy quoted an intelligence official with deep involvement in both Afghanistan and Pakistan as saying al-Qaida and the Taliban had used the strikes in propaganda to “portray Americans as cowards who are afraid to face their enemies and risk death.” The official called the operations “a major catalyst” for the jihadi movement in Pakistan.

A military official involved in counterterrorism operations told McClatchy the drone strikes were a “recruiting windfall for the Pakistani Taliban.”

DRONE ATTACKS IN AFGHANISTAN, YEMEN AND ELSEWHERE ALSO UNDER FIRE

The CIA operatives’ opposition to the drone strikes program extends to Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan, all of which now have confirmed deaths from drone strikes, according to Addicott.

The official goal of the geographical expansion of drone strikes is to destroy or disrupt al-Qaida. But al-Qaida today is less a major organization than “a mentality” in most Middle Eastern countries, Addicott said, and the CIA officers fear that the strikes will only reinforce that way of thinking.

BEGUN UNDER BUSH, DRONE STRIKE EXPANDED UNDER OBAMA

Addicott said the drone program has been driven by President Obama, rather than by the CIA. “Obama’s trying to show people that we’re winning,” he added.

The program was originally authorized by President George W. Bush against a relatively short list of high-level al-Qaida officials, and with highly restrictive conditions on approval of each strike. The strike could not be approved unless the target was identified with high confidence, and a complete assessment of “collateral damage” had to ensure against significant civilian casualties.

In early 2008, however, Bush approved the removal of previous restraints. As recounted by David Sanger in his 2009 book, The Inheritance, Bush authorized strikes against targets merely based on visual evidence of a “typical” al-Qaida motorcade or a group entering a house that had been linked to al-Qaida or its Pakistani Taliban allies.

As a top national security aide to Bush acknowledged to Sanger, the shift was “risky” because, “you can hit the wrong house or mistakenly misidentify the motorcade.”

It also meant that anyone who could be linked in some way to al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces” could now be targeted for drone attacks.

OBAMA STRATEGY TO ‘DEMORALIZE’ AL-QAIDA WITH DRONE STRIKES FAILING

The Obama administration has continued to justify the program as aimed at high-value targets, suggesting that it can degrade al-Qaida as an organization by a “decapitation” strategy, according to Addicott. However administration officials now privately admit that the objective of the program is to “demoralize the rank and file,” he said.

That won’t work, according to Addicott, because, “These are tribal people. They don’t view life and death the way we expect them to.”

In effect, the drone strikes program has become an “attrition” strategy for Pakistan, Addicott said.

Such a strategy in Pakistan’s tribal regions appears to be futile. Madrasas in the region have churned out tens of thousands of young men with militant views, and their activities are spread across hundreds of sites in the region.

ATTACKS SEEN BY ADMINISTRATION AS ‘GETTING RESULTS’

Within the Obama administration, it appears that the logic behind the program is that it has to be seen to be doing something about al-Qaida. “The argument I get from people associated with the program,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow in conflict prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations, “is the same as the one [CIA Director Leon] Panetta gave last year.”

“Very frankly,” Panetta declared on May 18 of last year, “it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al-Qaida leadership.”

Zenko, who has studied the bureaucratic in-fighting surrounding such limited uses of military force, told IPS that the drone strikes have appealed to the Obama administration because they offer “clear results that are obtained quickly and are easily measured.”

All the other tools that might be used to try to reduce al-Qaida’s influence in Pakistan and elsewhere take a long time, require cooperation among multiple actors and have no powerful political constituency behind them, Zenko observed.

Dissent from those who are involved in the program itself has little effect when it is up against what is perceived as political pressure to show progress against al-Qaida — no matter how illusory.

# # #

Special Report Copyright 2010, Inter-Press Service. Reposted under a Creative Commons license.

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

I discovered last year that GMD was rated the Best of the Best by the readers of the Times Argus.

It's that time again: follow the link and vote for your favorite political blog here.

(Continuing site policy of promoting diaries from officeholders and officeseekers – but in the future, please make it an actual interaction with the community, rather than a copied-and-pasted press release. – promoted by GMD)

Press release:

Donny Osman has announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for State Senate.  “I have the experience, the know how and the will to get things done for Washington County.”  Osman served three terms in the Vermont House of Representatives and was Vice Chair of the House Education Committee. Osman served as a advocate for children’s issues as Director of the Central Vermont Early Childhood Council.   He directed the renowned Vermont Governor’s Institute on the Arts for 25 years and toured widely as a performing and teaching theater artist.  Donny played a key role in the birth of Circus Smirkus.  

STATEMENT

I bring to this Senate race a record of experience and accomplishment.  Washington County needs a Senator who can hit the ground running, and get things done for an even better Vermont.  I know the legislative process and I’m not afraid to stand up for what is right.  I voted for civil rights and to move Vermont forward during the furor over Civil Unions. I voted time and again for a more fair, progressive tax structure.  My voting record shows unwavering support for preserving our precious environment. I was a key player in legislation to make our schools safer, get state funding for the U32 expansion, and to try to bend the high cost curve in special education. I have worked hard for interests of families and I am proud of my reputation as a champion for children.  I have shown that I can work across party lines and be an effective legislator.   I will get the job done for Washington County.

We must assure that our children and grandchildren will grow up in the same beautiful, green Vermont that we love.  That means smart, sustainable growth.  Vermont has a lot to brag about and is a great place to live and do business.  We need to protect our precious environment by attracting creative enterprises that have a long-term view and respect our rural and agricultural landscape. ”  

I will fight for an affordable, high-quality health care system for all Vermonters.  The bill passed by the legislature to study how we might change our system to deliver quality care at a reasonable and affordable cost is a start.  But it is only a start: small business and our schools are being crushed by the cost of health care.  We can do better in Vermont.   I will push for a more humane system of health care that is affordable and works for everyone in the state.

For years we have elected senators who come from Montpelier.  I love Montpelier!  And I hope lots of Montpelier voters will agree that it is time to have a senator who comes from the smaller towns and villages. I want to help small downtowns like mine in Plainfield that are beginning to sprout small businesses.  I live right on the Barre town line with a Barre phone and address and I am in Barre all the time.  I see too many empty stores, too few jobs and too many desperate people.  Like many of our other small cities and villages, Barre needs the state and federal government to step up efforts to increase commerce and create good jobs for its citizens.

Property taxes are a chronic Vermont problem.  I will work to assure value for our educational dollar.  Our children need a world-class education to compete in a global economy and quality education and economic progress go hand in hand.   At the same time we cannot balance budgets on the backs of working people and those that can least afford to pay.

I want to be a voice for those that often have no voice.  I will be a fierce advocate for children and a voice for the respect and dignity of elderly people and those with disabilities.  As Senator I will be eager to help individuals who are having problems negotiating the system. These qualities of working for justice, fairness and opportunity have always been the best of what politics is about.”

I look forward to the campaign and meeting as many people as I can between now and Election Day.   I know most candidates for Senate don’t do a lot of door to door campaigning, but I intend to wear my shoe soles thin.  I see the campaign as a long job interview and I want to give the people of Washington County a chance to interview me in person.