Obama’s Secret Weapon: GOP Extremists

One of the ironies about the far right is that it is in many ways hastening its own destruction through its extremism and intransigence to change.   The Christofascists, while demanding special rights and displaying the ugly hatred at the core of their theology, are speeding the exodus of the younger generations from religion entirely (and more older folks are following suit as well).  And on foreign policy where the GOP and the Christofascists and Tea Party lunatics seem to want endless war - they always ignore the squandered American lives and squandered billions of dollars - they helping drive moderates and sane individuals to the Democrats.  Killing Muslims may take the Christofascists and their GOP political whores to near orgasm, but decent people are increasingly repulsed.  A piece in Slate looks at how the GOP helped insure the approval of the Iran nuclear power deal.  Here are excerpts:

This was a great week for the White House.

A month ago Democrats were working to stop a GOP-penned resolution of disapproval against President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. . . .  it would restrict his ability to lift sanctions on Iran, and potentially threaten the deal itself, as allies questioned U.S. commitment to the agreement.

On Thursday, however, that changed. When the resolution came for a vote, 42 senators voted to filibuster and keep it from the Senate floor. Democrats didn’t just save the deal; they blocked the GOP altogether. It was a huge win, and the administration wasn’t shy about its success. “This vote is a victory for diplomacy, for American national security, and for the safety and security of the world,” said Obama. 

[W]e shouldn’t ignore the extent to which it [the White House] had a huge ally in persuading Democrats to stand with the deal. Namely, the Republican Party.

Republicans could have capitalized on the division, running against the deal while offering an alternative and showing—in word and deed—that this was about the policy, not the president. . . . . considered opposition could have peeled away enough Democrats from the administration to win the legislative battle and jeopardize the deal. Instead, Republicans jumped to hyperbole.

The apex of this criticism came Tuesday, when former Vice President Cheney slammed the agreement in the fiercest words possible. “I know of no nation in history that has agreed to guarantee that the means of its own destruction will be in the hands of another nation, particularly one that is hostile,” he said.

None of this scared Democrats into voting against the deal. Instead, it was evidence that this fight was irreducibly partisan, with no chance of a compromise or détente. Cautious Democrats—like Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon or Cory Booker of New Jersey—had two options: They could sign on with Cheney and the GOP, or they could bolster the president. They chose the latter, and handed Obama a victory that wasn’t guaranteed.

Again and again, the GOP’s great obstacle—and Democrats’ great ally—is itself. Its intransigence might win elections—Obamacare helped the GOP win the 2010 midterms, and Republicans hope that Iran will do the same for 2016—but it comes at a cost: policy that’s more liberal than the alternative. And while there’s still time to turn the tide, it’s running out. If Democrats win another four years in the White House, they can turn Obama’s changes into a new and durable status quo.

Will the Iran Deal Bring a New Political Order to the Middle East?

"Iran topo en". Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iran_topo_en.jpg#/media/File:Iran_topo_en.jpg

While the Republican response to the announcement of an agreement with Iran to control its nuclear program has been to (i) attack Barack Obama, (ii) declare that the GOP will torpedo the deal, and (iii) claim war with Iran is the real answer - never mind that the disaster would make the Iraq War fiasco look good in comparison - and would bust the federal budget and throw away countless American lives - saner response believe the deal is a good starting pint and that it could readjust the political landscape of the Middle East.  To date, American policy has been to prop up Israel and pander to extremist Saudis while alienating everyone else, including Iran, the most populous nation in the Middle East.  (For comparison, Iran has 78.4 million inhabitants versus Iraq's 36 million - Israel has 8.2 million and Saudi Arabia has 30.7 million).  As a piece in the Washington Post reviews, the Iran agreement could shift much of this.  Here are article excerpts:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pledged Friday that his country would honor what he called a historic agreement to curb its nuclear program, provided that world powers uphold their end of the deal to ease economic pressures.

“We don’t cheat. We are not two-faced,” Rouhani declared in an upbeat televised address to the nation a day after negotiators reached a framework on the nuclear deal. He added: “If we’ve given a promise . . . we will take action based on that promise. Of course, that depends on the other side taking action on their promises, too.”

But a range of other views across the Middle East — including cautious hope in Saudi Arabia, internal dissent in Iran and open hostility in Israel — underscored the potentially difficult diplomatic and security challenges facing Washington among even some of its strongest allies, and how the region’s political dimensions could be reordered by the possibility that the United States and Iran might move beyond an estrangement that reaches back more than 35 years.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood firm on his opposition to any deal

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman staked out less confrontational ground, telling President Obama that he hoped it would strengthen “stability and security” in the region.  The remarks by Salman suggested no major policy shifts by Saudi Arabia or its Persian Gulf Arab partners. . . 

Iran insists it only wants to produce nuclear fuel for energy-producing reactors and medical applications. Israel and others worry that Iran could one day use the same enrichment process to make warhead-grade material.

Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Muslim states in the gulf view Shiite-led Iran as their main regional rival. Tensions have further escalated as a Saudi-led coalition carries out airstrikes in Yemen aimed at weakening a Shiite rebel force, which gulf leaders say receives support from Tehran. 

“The gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, fear the nuclear deal between the United States and Iran is premised on a recognition of rising Persian power in the gulf and the region,” said Fawaz A. Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics.

Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born regional affairs lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, an academic and research center, predicted a sharp increase in defense spending by the gulf states despite being hit by a sharp drop in oil prices. . . . . they are very likely to challenge Iran’s influence in the region, in places such as Iraq, Yemen, Syria with even more vigor than before, and in a unified manner,” he said.

America has pursued largely the same Middle East policy for 35 years and, if one looks at the state of the Middle East - and the fact that wealthy Saudis have been said to be funding Islamic extremists - it is difficult to say that it has been a success.  Returning Iran to the world economic fold may be the best way to moderate the county's leadership over time and bring the rulers back into line with modernity - something most rank and file Iranians seemingly support.   America's biggest mistake, of course, was not supporting the Shah in 1979 against the religious extremists. 

How Big is the Ongoing Danger from Fukushima?

Nearly everyone is familiar with the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant that followed the tsunami that hit Japan.  But how many understand that the dangers and risks may not be passed?  Especially for Americans living on the west coast of the United States (where two of my children and my young grandson currently live)?  An article on Bill Moyers.com contains some frightening information and ought to have many Americans deeply concerned.  Among the issues reviewed are the incompetence and dishonest of the owner of the devastated Fukushima plant to the danger of radiation contamination on the U. S. West Coast.  Here are highlights:

All eyes are on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as major cleanup efforts are set to begin later this month, in the most significant test of the operator’s ability to manage the threats resulting from one of the biggest nuclear disasters ever. For two years now, the plant’s operator and the Japanese government have struggled to contain an ongoing series of crises at the devastated facility. But the situation has the potential to get worse. Here’s what you need to know.

The Problems
The operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant has come under severe criticism from nuclear energy experts for its handling of the cleanup at the crippled facility, decimated after the March 2011 tsunami.

Many say Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the Japanese utility company that operates the plant, has been grossly incompetent, deceptive and guilty of downplaying the health impacts resulting from the meltdown.

The Associated Press and Japan Today reported this week that tanks containing radioactive water were leaking or otherwise failing because they were hurriedly erected by inexperienced workers — including one auto mechanic who expressed his concern about the quality of his own work.

Researchers are concerned about the effects of the radioactive water on sea life and those who eat it. Last year, scientists reported that Pacific bluefin tuna migrating from coastal Japan to the waters off Southern California contained radioactive cesium isotopes from the Fukushima plant. The safety of Pacific fish following the disaster is up for debate.

And Fukushima, as well as other nuclear facilities in Japan, lie near 14 active fault lines, which the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) says the utilities are capable of withstanding. Last month, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki expressed his fears that further damage to the Fukushima facility could prove catastrophic. “Three out of the four plants were destroyed in the earthquake and in the tsunami. The fourth one has been so badly damaged that the fear is, if there’s another earthquake of a seven or above, that building will go and then all hell breaks loose.”

Should the fourth reactor collapse, Suzuki said, it would be “bye bye Japan,” and “everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate. Now if that isn’t terrifying, I don’t know what is.”

Later this month, Tepco is expected to begin the delicate task of removing over 1,500 spent fuel rods stored in a building heavily damaged by the March 2011 explosion. The rods are capable of producing radiation at levels 14,000 times greater than what was released when America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It’s a highly dangerous operation that has never been attempted on such a scale before, and a key part of decommissioning the facility, which could cost $50 billion and take 40 years.

Former nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander says Tepco may be playing down the dangers of the operation. “The thing that keeps me up late at night is that they’re getting ready to unload the spent fuel in unit four,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating US nuclear plants. “It has the potential if it doesn’t go well to create a very, very serious accident,” he told Bloomberg News.

The Politics

Both Tepco and the Japanese government have come under criticism for how they handled the disaster. “You have a government that is in total collusion with Tepco, the energy company. They’re lying through their teeth,” said Suzuki.

Of the attempts to stop the water from leaking, Suzuki said, “They don’t know what to do. And the thing we need is to get an international group of experts to go in with complete freedom to do what they suggest. And right now the Japanese government has too much pride to admit that.”

Fact checking Suzuki for Vice, David P. Ball contacted University of British Columbia physicist Marcello Pavan. Asked whether Tepco was indeed “lying through their teeth,” Pavan said, “That is absolutely correct, at least from what I see. Tepco has been minimizing the effects of what is happening. But here we have a large industrial concern lying to the government about an accident related to its business — is that news?”

A study conducted by Australia’s University of New South Wales says radiactive waters will reach the US sometime in early 2014 — and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported earlier this month that radioactive waters from Fukushima had already arrived in Alaska.

Meanwhile, many of the 50,000 workers employed by subcontractors in the cleanup effort are being exposed to dangerous radiation levels while facing low wages and wage theft, reports Reuters. For some, the cost of speaking up was getting fired.