But when I recently tried to locate the study using the authors’ names and a few other key words, I discovered that the study has been roundly criticized by a variety of sources.  If you’re interested in those criticisms, you can find them readily enough; just plug “Sherman Mangano Fukushima” into your search engine and let ‘er rip.

My purpose here though is to draw attention again to the fact that the failure of the US, Canadian and other governments to gather and share data continues to make it impossible to have an open scientific debate about what is happening, even as our exposure to radiation from Fukushima continues.  For some of the details of this problem, sources of documentation, and some suggestions for giving yourself and others the limited protection you can, see my blog entries of May and March 2011.  Some of the highlights:

First, there is no safe dose of radiation.  That is absolutely clear.  The National Academy of Sciences recently concluded that the preponderance of scientific evidence shows even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer or other health problems and it is unlikely that a threshold exists below which exposure can be viewed as harmless.  According to Richard R. Monson, chairman of the review panel and a professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s School of Public Health, “The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionized radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial.”

Comforting statements about the safety of low radiation are not even accurate for adults.  Small increases in risk per individual have immense consequences in the aggregate.  When low risk is accepted for billions of people, there will be millions of victims.  And our culture is entirely too casual about exposing us to radiation in various forms.  For example, common, low-dose dental x-rays more than double the rate of thyroid cancer.  Those exposed to repeated dental x-rays have an even higher risk of thyroid cancer.  http://healingjustice.wordpress.com/2011/03/.

Besides failing to gather the data that would permit a full-scale scientific analysis, governments downplay the risks of radiation in the very criteria by which they purpose to assess such risk.  As Washington’s Blog notes, “radiation safety standards are set based on the assumption that everyone exposed is a healthy man in his 20s – and that radioactive particles ingested into the body cause no more damage than radiation hitting the outside of the body.

“However – in the real world – radiation affects small children much more than full-grown adults. And small particles of radiation – called ‘internal emitters’ – which get inside the body are much more dangerous than general exposures to radiation.”  Washington’s Blog, December 24, 2011.

Nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson says that the Japanese will suffer one million cancer deaths from Fukushima, and that we’ll see a statistically meaningful increase in cancer on the West Coast of America and Canada from Fukushima. Gundersen says that – after Japan – the most radioactive areas are the Cascades and Portland.

And in another recent development, French researchers have confirmed that childhood leukemia rates “are shockingly elevated among children living near nuclear power reactors.”  John Laforge, http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/26/childhood-leukemia-spikes-near-nuclear-power-plants/ (January 26, 2012).

Washington’s Blog has done a fine job of discussing the reasons the number of deaths we’ve already experienced from the Fukushima disaster is controversial, and one of the ways in which our exposure is continuing.  So to make its findings more conveniently accessible, I copy below the December 24, 2011 and August 14, 2011 entries from Washington’s Blog (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/author/washingtonsblog):

Study: Fukushima Radiation Has Already Killed 14,000 Americans

Posted on December 24, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

Already 14,000 U.S. Deaths From Fukushima ?

A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal International Journal of Health Services alleges that 14,000 people have already died in the United States due to Fukushima.

Specifically, the authors of the study claim:

An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.

[The authors] note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.

The authors seem – at first glance – to have pretty solid credentials. Janette Sherman, M.D. worked for the Atomic Energy Commission (forerunner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) at the University of California in Berkeley, and for the U.S. Navy Radiation Defense Laboratory in San Francisco. She served on the EPA’s advisory board for 6 years, and has been an advisor to the National Cancer Institute on breast cancer. Dr. Sherman specializes in internal medicine and toxicology with an emphasis on chemicals and nuclear radiation.

Joseph J. Mangano is a public health administrator and researcher who has studied the connection between low-dose radiation exposure and subsequent risk of diseases such as cancer and damage to newborns. He has published numerous articles and letters in medical and other journals in addition to books, including Low Level Radiation and Immune System Disorders: An Atomic Era Legacy.

Sherman also claims that a study in British Columbia of infants under 1 year of age allegedly corroborates the increased deaths due to Fukushima:

But a Scientific American blog post and Med Page Today slam the study as being voodoo science. However, Scientific American does admit:

Certainly radiation from Fukushima is dangerous, and could very well lead to negative health effects—even across the Pacific.

What Do Other Experts Say?

Pediatrician Helen Caldicott said recently:

May I say that North America has received quite a large fallout itself.

***

We’re going to see an incredible increase in cancer, leukemia, and — down the time track — genetic disease. Not just in Japan but in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly North America.

Caldicott also wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed:

Children are innately sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation, fetuses even more so. Like Chernobyl, the accident at Fukushima is of global proportions. Unusual levels of radiation have been discovered in British Columbia, along the West Coast and East Coast of the United States and in Europe, and heavy contamination has been found in oceanic waters.

Nuclear engineer Gunderson says that the Japanese will suffer one million cancer deaths from Fukushima, and that we’ll see a statistically meaningful increase in cancer on the West Coast of America and Canada from Fukushima. Gundersen says that – after Japan – the most radioactive areas are the Cascades and Portland.

There is certainly evidence that West Coast residents – especially in Seattle, Portland and other areas near the Cascades – have been hit with some radiation. And there is certainly evidence that radioactive contamination has spread in the United States, and will continue to spread for some time to come.

Why Is The Science So Hotly Debated?

Why is there so much dispute about the number of deaths which Fukushima could cause on the West Coast?

Because radiation safety standards are set based on the assumption that everyone exposed is a healthy man in his 20s – and that radioactive particles ingested into the body cause no more damage than radiation hitting the outside of the body.

However – in the real world – radiation affects small children much more than full-grown adults. And small particles of radiation – called “internal emitters” – which get inside the body are much more dangerous than general exposures to radiation. See this and this.

In addition, American and Canadian authorities have virtually stopped monitoring airborn radiation, and are not testing fish for radiation. (Indeed, the EPA reacted to Fukushima by raising “acceptable” radiation levels.)

So – as in Japan – radiation is usually discovered by citizens and the handful of research scientists with funding to check, and not the government. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

The Japanese government’s entire strategy from day one has been to cover up the severity of the Fukushima accident. This has likely led to unnecessary, additional deaths.

Indeed, the core problem is that all of the world’s nuclear agencies are wholly captured by the nuclear industry … as are virtually all of the supposedly independent health agencies.

So the failure of the American, Canadian and other governments to test for and share results is making it difficult to hold an open scientific debate about what is happening.

Nuclear Expert: Radioactive Rain-Outs Will Continue For a Year – Even In Western U.S. and Canada – Because Japanese Are Burning Radioactive Materials

Posted on August 14, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says in a new interview that the Japanese are burning radioactive materials. The radioactivity originated from Fukushima, but various prefectures are burning radioactive materials in their terroritories.

Gundersen says that this radioactivity ends up not only in neighboring prefectures, but in Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California.

He notes that radioactive rain-outs were documented recently in British Columbia and Oklahoma with geiger counters.

Gundersen says that we’ll see another year of radioactive rain-outs, as the Japanese continue to burn radioactive materials.

Cover Up By American and Canadian Governments

Gundersen has a high-level contact in the State Department who says that the U.S. government has decided – within various agencies, including the State Department, FDA, and other agencies – to downplay the dangers from Fukushima. Because of this policy decision, the government is not really testing for radiation.

Gundersen is working with scientists who will publish a paper in the near future definitively debunking Canadian and American health officials’ claims that only harmless levels of radiation are being released.

Click here to listen to the interview.

See this for background.

Perhaps someone has already done this, but in case not, I think it’s time to ask:  If Jesus were with us bodily today and living in the United States, is there any serious question where he would stand on the Occupy Wall Street movement?  And if he were living in your community, what would he say (or do) about Occupy Portland, or Boston, or Chicago, or Eugene, or New York, or any of the scores (hundreds?) of other places people have gathered to protest the obscene maldistribution of wealth, income and political power in our society?  After all, wasn’t Jesus, during his public ministry, among the homeless of his time?  The Son of Man had no place to lay his head.

It might be said that bringing Jesus’ name to bear on contemporary politics trivializes his life and teachings, which are concerned with a “higher” plane of existence.  But having spent much of my spare time for twenty years reading dozens of books about the historical Jesus, I agree with those scholars who say his primary concern was with systemic injustice, with which our economy and political system are rife, and that he stood with the destitute against the empire of his time.  It even appears that he was a (the first?) community organizer.  There is more, of course, but I develop these and related themes in the essay below, first published on the CounterPunch site last Xmas Eve, and invite you to consider these things this Season.

It may be useful first to clarify what I mean by the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Those who have participated in the many occupations through the US have been accused of not having expressed a clear set of goals.  It’s true they have spoken with many voices, but the insistence on a set of specific demands is misplaced, if not disingenuous.   Still, I’d like to be clear about what I have in mind as the meaning of OWS.

To me, the most profound gift and achievement of Occupy Wall Street thus far is that it has catalyzed organizing for a better world.  Organizing is, after all, most fundamentally the development of common understandings and relationships of trust that enable people to act collectively to further their common interests.  From this perspective, OWS is already a success (if still only a beginning), in that it has changed the terms of popular discourse, and developed common understandings and relationships of trust, both by its actions and by the success of those actions in shining a spotlight that couldn’t be ignored on the maldistribution of wealth, income and power in our country.  And I think such organizing is not only critically important but perhaps the only possible answer to the seemingly intractable problems of our time.  We apparently face simultaneous climate change, resource depletion, and economic collapse, together with elites of wealth and power in control of a political and propaganda apparatus that makes addressing any of these problems, or even recognizing them, even more difficult than it would otherwise be.  I have suggested that the situation could degenerate into fascism and/or chaos, a war of each against all.  The Occupy movement(s) can’t solve all of these problems, but perhaps by bringing back an emphasis and focus on the common good, they can contribute very substantially to easing the transition out of the world we know to the one that is emerging.  Maybe we can face the future helping one another, and producing and sharing the means of survival and community, in the spirit of the Occupations, rather than fighting over scraps that are inadequate, in any event, to go around.

I’ve written extensively on the financial and economic crisis — and proposed solutions, none of which have been implemented — in previous entries in this blog.  But at times I’ve wondered whether some of my concerns were not a bit overdone, with respect to the possible political consequences of the continuation or worsening of current economic conditions.  Thanks to OWS, some of the most prominent and thoughtful voices in the mainstream media (yes, I think there are a few such) have expressed similar concerns.  For example, Martin Wolf, economics commentator for The Financial Times (London), the world’s premier financial newspaper, wrote recently:  “Darker forms of politics are waiting in the wings:  nationalism, racism.  We do not need to watch this tragedy again.”  (“The big questions raised by anti-capitalist protests,” FT, October 27, 2011).  Paraphrasing Wolf and seconding these concerns, William Pfaff, editorial page columnist for the International Herald Tribune in Paris, wrote a few weeks later that “it was not the hyperinflation Germany experienced after the First World War, but rather the brutal and seemingly interminable Depression and unemployment that followed the crash, that created the conditions in which German democracy collapsed.”  As Pfaff continued, “Its successor, National Socialism, ended the Depression and put the German economy back on its feet.  In case anyone has forgotten.”  And in the same piece, Pfaff observes, “The Occupiers dismiss [the] demand for a program as contrary to the spirit of the Occupation.  There is not and cannot be an agreed-upon program because that is not the nature of the movement, which is against ‘the system.’…How, after all, can ‘the system’ be changed?  Well first, justice could be done.  That is what people want:  justice.”  (“What Occupiers Should Ask For but What They Won’t Get,” November 16, 2011, http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=547.)

For more elaborate statements on the meaning and import of OWS and our current situation, I’d also suggest to your attention these further commentaries:  “Belittling the Occupy Movement – By Eugene [Oregon] Occupier Samuel Rutledge (November 20, 2011), http://occupyeugenemedia.org/2011/11/20/belittling-the-occupy-movement-by-eugen-occupier-samuel-rutledge/; Mike King, “Occupations and the Fulfillment of Human Need:  The Vacancies of Capitalism” (November 30, 2011), http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/30/the-vacancies-of-capitalism/; and incidentally, as a little encouragement for those of us who still hope there might still be hope and that thinking things through might help to produce it, historian Gabriel Kolko’s “Menu for Today’s Tricky Planet:  Use Your Head” (November 17, 2011), http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/17/menu-for-today%E2%80%99s-tricky-planet-use-your-head/.

But now on to the main event, my portrait (gleaned almost entirely from the work of others, as cited) of Jesus of Nazareth as a community organizer, whose teachings and values were substantially commensurate with those of Occupy Wall Street:

Up Against the Empire:  Celebrating the Rebel Jesus

Tell me say, What kind of man this Jesus is, my lord?/ He come to my heart, and my heart opened up.

– Buffy Ste.-Marie, “Ananais”

The media distorted parts of Jesus’ message right from the start. The Gospels, and the first generation of Jesus’ followers, effectively altered or hid his more radical teachings, and what has been preached from a million pulpits and that we still get from many today is a gross distortion. Jesus was not preoccupied with individual “sin” but with systemic injustice, in opposition to the commercializing empire of his time. The historical Jesus disclosed by contemporary scholarship appears to be fundamentally the same as the Jesus who is preached and practiced in the Catholic Worker movement, for example. And the parallels between his conflict with Rome and our own with imperial America are striking indeed.

Then as now, the maldistribution of wealth was quite severe, with peasants comprising the bulk of the population. “The term peasant … denotes a relationship of exploitation in which the vast majority who produce the food on which everyone and everything depends are consistently relieved of their surplus, so that a small minority have a huge surplus while most remain at a subsistence level. Simply: a peasant is a systematically exploited farmer.” John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus 4 (1995). Being a Jewish peasant had its saving moments, however, because of “a traditional ideology of land … enshrined in the ancient Pentateuchal laws.” Just as the people were to rest on the seventh or Sabbath Day, so God’s land was to rest on the seventh or Sabbath Year, when Jewish debts were to be remitted and Jewish slaves released. Exodus 23:10-11; Deuteronomy 15:1-3, 12-14,” Id. 5-6. And in the “Jubilee Year, the year after seven sets of Sabbath Years, all expropriated lands and even village houses, though not city ones, were to revert to their original or traditional owners. Leviticus 25:10, 18. “While the Jubilee Year was most likely no longer implemented at all by the first century, the Sabbath Year was probably still more or less enforced.” Id. 6. Those ancient laws “refuse to see debt, slavery, or land expropriation simply as business transactions. The land is a divine possession not a negotiable commodity[:] … ‘The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.’” Leviticus 25:23.

By Jesus’ day, however, the Roman Empire was no longer a traditional but a commercialized agrarian empire. To the Roman imperialist, land accumulation was a sensible business practice and debt foreclosure the best and quickest way to accomplish it. Crossan, The Essential Jesus 6. In first century Palestine, the Jewish peasantry was being pushed into debt and displaced from its holdings at unusually high rates, since land became, under the commercialized Roman economy, less an ancestral inheritance never to be abandoned and more an entrepreneurial commodity rapidly to be exploited. As higher rates of imperial and Herodian taxation forced increasing numbers of peasants from their land, there developed a growing class of destitute people with few options. One could become an artisan, a prostitute, a beggar, or a bandit. In this context Jesus of Nazareth appeared, the son of an artisan.

“Repent and believe in the gospel.” But “repentance” is not about a feeling of penitance for individual sins. It means a turning, at a more fundamental level, of the heart and soul to God. Marcus J. Borg, Jesus: A New Vision 122 n. 74, and 163-164 (1987). “The prophets called Israel to repent, which meant to turn or return, and which referred primarily to a change in Israel’s collective life, and not simply to a change in individual lives.” Id., 153 text and n. 13. Belief in the gospel does not mean merely to believe, as a condition of salvation, in certain doctrines or teachings, but to “give one’s heart to” the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. See Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For The First Time 137 (1995). And the Kingdom entails both religious and political meanings, in a situation of imperial domination and colonial exploitation. “The phrase evokes an ideal vision of political and religious power, of how this world here below would be run if God, not Caesar, sat on the imperial throne.” John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus 7-8.

In the Kingdom of God, it is not the rich who are favored, but the destitute. As destitute people flocked to Jesus to hear his teaching and to see or be cured by his mighty works, he taught them by the example of his life, as well. Be compassionate as God is compassionate. (Luke 6:36; see Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again 46, text and fn. 1.) Judge not, lest you be judged. If you have two coats and your brother has none, give one to your brother. Never refuse alms to one who asks for them. What you do for the least of these, you do for me. Love your neighbor as yourself. And who is my neighbor? A broken stranger lying by the side of the road. Eating and drinking, Jesus practiced open commensality, shared table fellowship, that mirrored many of his stories in their radical egalitarianism. He practiced free healing, declining to set up a brokered healing business that would stay in one place and let his disciples mediate access to him for a fee. Instead, he was always on the move for the next town, personally and directly accessible, and always performed, as it were, free of charge. He didn’t make people dependent on his power: he empowered them.

The stories of Jesus’ interactions with women are remarkable. First century Judaism was deeply patriarchal. Women had few rights; they could not be witnesses in a court of law, or initiate a divorce. They were not to be taught the Torah and were to be separated from men in public life. Respectable women did not go out of the house unescorted by a family member; adult women were to be veiled in public. But Jesus defended the woman who entered an all-male banquet, unveiled and with her hair unbraided, and washed his feet with her hair. While being hosted by Mary and Martha, he affirmed Mary’s choice of the role of disciple. And of course, he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. Women were apparently part of the itinerant group traveling with Jesus; the movement itself was financially supported by some wealthy women. And the evidence is compelling that women played leadership roles in the early post-Easter community. Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time 57 (1995).

“When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them.” Gospel of Thomas 14:2. See also Luke 10:4-11 = Matt 10:8-14 and Mark 6:8-13 = Matt 10:8-10a, 11 = Luke 9:2-6. John Dominic Crossan in a study based in part on the Didache argues persuasively that the itinerants who went out preaching the gospel in the century or so following Jesus’ ministry offered free healing in exchange for a meal, carrying on the practice mentioned, briefly, in the Gospels. Crossan, The Essential Jesus 9-10, and The Birth of Christianity, passim. Crossan speculates that the disciples were sent out two by two because one of them was likely female in many cases, and the two would travel as a couple for the woman’s protection.

The Kingdom movement was thus a form of community organizing, Jesus’ program of empowerment for a peasantry becoming steadily more hard-pressed through insistent taxation, indebtedness, and eventual loss of land, within the commercialized Roman Empire under Augustan peace and a Lower Galilee under Herodian urbanization. “Jesus lived, against the systemic injustice and structural evil of that situation, an alternative open to all who would accept it: a life of [free] healing and shared eating, of radical itinerancy, programmatic homelessness, and fundamental egalitarianism, of human contact without discrimination, and of divine contact without hierarchy. He also died for that alternative.” Crossan, The Essential Jesus 12.

The parallels with contemporary events could scarcely be more clear, or more striking. The form of globalization promoted by the elites of the rich countries and their instruments such as the IMF and the World Bank have driven peasants the world over off their land and into lives and early deaths of destitution. For example, “[p]rior to the 1910 revolution, wealthy landowners had confiscated most of indigenous Mexico’s communal farmland, reducing the campesinos to a state of serfdom. … [L]argely through the struggle of Zapata and his followers … the Mexican constitution of 1917, [in] Article 27, guaranteed the return and protection of communal land to farmers. … [A]lthough land reform [thus] became law in Mexico, it was only partially carried out. However, on January 1, 1994, as a condition of Mexico’s joining the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Article 27 of the Mexican constitution was abolished. An organization of Mayan Indians from the state of Chiapas, calling themselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), recognized this abolition as a death sentence for Mexico’s rural indigenous population. NAFTA would force farmers who could not compete with foreign investors’ technology and equipment off the land, thus opening up a wealth of cheap land and labor for exploitation by international corporations.” Donald Nollar, “Fighting For Our Lives,” Catholic Agitator (May, 2001), p. 1.

The rest has become part of our recent history, and is still going on. Similar scenarios have played out all across the globe. The rich countries continue to enforce protectionist policies and provide subsidies for their own basic industries, while demanding access to the markets of developing countries. “Free trade” is a euphemism for unfair trade. Protectionism is the only way any country has ever developed a domestic industrial base. The destruction of trade barriers and other mechanisms have, however, opened up many Third World countries to imports from the rich countries, resulting in the devastation of Third World industries, agriculture, and entire economies. Haiti is one of the more heart-rending examples.

And the commercializing empires of the industrialized world seek to reduce everything that was once regarded as personal or unique or holy to the status of interchangeable, salable commodities, demanding that all resources, including human beings, be accessible for exploitation, ostensibly to maximize production and thus promote the common good. But we all know what a rising tide does to those who have no boats, and it’s happening every minute of every day to people throughout the world.

At this point, the very idea of the common good is under relentless attack. That’s what is so evil about the current attacks on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the safety net generally, such as it still is. The real animus behind these attacks is hostility to the idea of the common good, the notion that we should care about and for one another, the very idea that we have interests in common that we can and should address collectively, through government as well as other forms of social organization. But caring for one another is our natural state, so a sustained program of propaganda is in place to persuade us to think only of wealth, forgetting all but self.

And what I think we need not only to counter these forces but to build community for its own sake is organizing: the development of common understandings and relationships of trust that will enable enough of us to act collectively, constructively, in coordination, to redeem the commons and serve the common good. Given that the airwaves are saturated with lies, the truth needs to be shared through other means: mind-to-mind, hand-to-hand, person-to-person, sometimes but not necessarily face-to-face and one-on-one. That’s what organizing ultimately is, and it can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including by the written as well as the spoken word.

We are called upon, in the present age, to oppose the forces of injustice and oppression, and to defend the commons, our common humanity, and the common good, and with them our neighbors, including and especially the most vulnerable among us. We are called by our very nature, our needs as human beings for fulfillment through relationship and community. This Season, we also hear the call from the movement to Occupy Wall Street.  And in answering that call, we have the powerful and heroic example of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth – as Jackson Browne has aptly called him, the rebel Jesus.

So I paid my dues for over 40 years and am just about to collect. I know the benefits will be there – up to a point – as Social Security isn’t yet quite melting into air. (Though as I begin to re-read Marshall Berman’s excellent book of that title, it’s the phrase that comes most readily to mind.) But Obama’s answer to the New Deal and the Great Society that enacted Social Security and Medicare, respectively, will begin chipping away at these hard-earned benefits, misleadingly – and cynically – labeled “entitlements.”

I owe the phrase Raw Deal, by the way, to Showdown In America, http://showdowninamerica.org/, a “national bank accountability campaign coordinated by National People’s Action (http://npa-us.org/), a network of community power organizations from across the country that work to advance a national economic and racial justice agenda.” Mike Whitney (http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney08012011.html) , Dean Baker (http://www.counterpunch.org/baker07052011.html), Robert Reich (http://robertreich.org/post/8331408301), Paul Krugman and others have pointed out why the Raw Deal is a ripoff as well as terrible economics. For my part, I want to say what I think is so fundamentally, morally and politically wrong about it – and, to be frank why it bothers me so much.

My household needs Social Security and Medicare, but we are not yet living on the edge as so many now are in the increasingly Third World United States. But in addition to the privation it means to inflict on hapless millions, what is so evil about the Raw Deal and the other attacks on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the safety net generally – such as it still is – is the real animus behind these attacks: hostility to the idea of the common good, the notion that we should care about and for one another, the very idea that we have interests in common that we can and should address collectively, through government as well as other forms of social organization. That we need not and should not be engaged in a perpetual war of each against all. That core idea is what has been under relentless attack for several decades now, culminating (so far) in Obama’s Raw Deal.

So what is to be done? As Noam Chomsky frequently points out, we do still have enormous freedom to agitate, organize, protest and struggle for change. The ballot box isn’t useless, it just isn’t being used nearly enough. But we still have it. And for its use to be more effective, we need a great many more people who recognize our real problems and demand that our political structures and players address them. It isn’t yet quite true, as Leonard Cohen said so long ago, that “the cities they are broke in half, and the middlemen are gone.” So “let me ask you one more time, O children of the dust: All these hunters who are shrieking now, do they speak for us?”

But it won’t be enough to ask just one more time. We need to keep asking, nagging, agitating, informing, sharing information and analysis – in a word, organizing – to build a sufficient and sustained opposition to the evils of our time, and to regain and defend the commons and the common good. Obama’s “bipartisan, bicameral” Raw Deal should be an excellent organizing vehicle.

There was a point when anything that stimulated economic activity would have helped. The image is sometimes used of dropping cash from helicopters to stimulate spending. That’s been done, but the helicopters all dropped their loads in the Wall Street area, and now so much has been spent that it would be reckless to have further stimulus that did not take into account the need for sustainability. That topic is covered in my paper (click on the Financial & Economic Crisis report) of May 2009.

There are no jobs because we’ve exported them all (as Paul Craig Roberts analyzed in a lengthy article on CounterPunch this past week) and the wages of what jobs remain have been stagnant for going on thirty years and without money to spend consumers can’t revive the economy. My piece and others have dealt with the deeper issue that we need a new economy and James Howard Kunstler’s commentary week before last had an especially incisive summary of some things that could be done:

One way to think about it is to stop using the word “growth” and substitute the term “economic activity.” There are lots of useful things we can do to rearrange daily life in the USA that would put people to work, but they would tend to defy the status quo. We could recognize that peak oil means that we have to grow our food differently and make local agriculture a more up-front piece of the economy. We could rebuild the railroads so that people don’t have to drive everywhere. We could rebuild our inland ports to move more bulk freight on boats. Notice these are very straightforward activities, unlike the manipulation of financial paper and markets. We’re not interested in focusing on agriculture and transport reform. Business and political interests are arrayed against changing anything. Something’s got to give.

With that qualification, here is Mike Whitney’s excellent summary of the current situation:

Policymakers Have Made Another Depression Unavoidable
Down, Down, Down
By MIKE WHITNEY

Equities markets have been battered all week by bad economic data sending investors piling into “risk free” Treasuries. The Dow Jones slipped 276 points on Wednesday followed by a 41 point loss on Thursday. The benchmark 10-year Treasury has ducked below 3 percent repeatedly signally a slowdown that could lead to another recession.

On Wednesday, the S&P/CaseShiller home price index confirmed that 5-year long housing crash was still gaining pace. Home prices have fallen to their lowest level in 8 years with no end in sight. Meanwhile the Chicago Manufacturing Gauge recorded its biggest decline in 2.5 years while factory orders dropped in April by the most since May, 2010. There was also bad news on the unemployment front where privately-owned businesses hired only 38,000 workers from April to May, nearly 100,000 less jobs than analysts had predicted. Also, consumer confidence fell to its lowest reading in six months.

So, housing, manufacturing, unemployment and consumer confidence are all down, down, down and down.

Friday’s unemployment report was also worse than expected. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that unemployment rose to 9.1 percent while the Labor Force Participation Rate remained stuck at 64.2%, well below the normal rate of 67%. According to Calculated Risk, “The current employment recession is by far the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms…(The BLS report) was well below expectations for payroll jobs, and the unemployment rate was higher than expected.”

So, no new jobs are being created and the economy is quickly decelerating. It’s all bad.

On Friday, the chairman of RIT Capital Partners Jacob Rothschild issued a warning about the fragility of world markets and the bleak prospects for future growth. He said,
“The risks ahead are glaring and global. It is likely that the withdrawal of the fiscal and monetary stimuli which will surely come soon will have an impact on global growth. Indeed there is already evidence of some slowing down.”

Commodities have already been walloped, but the real carnage is yet to come. This is from Bloomberg:
“Commodities plunged yesterday as investors accelerated sales following year-to-date gains through April of more than 23 percent for silver, oil, gasoline and coffee. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI index of 24 commodities sank 6.5 percent in the biggest one-day drop since January 2009, bringing its loss this week to 9.9 percent.
“It was a train wreck waiting to happen,” Michael Mullaney, portfolio manager at Boston-based Fiduciary Trust, said in a telephone interview. Speculation drove commodity prices well above reasonable levels, “and we are going to see it shake out some more before we get back to normal prices,” said Mullaney, who helps manage $9.5 billion.”

Even a whiff of deflation will send commodities tumbling, which is why investors should be worried about the recent data. The economy is quickly losing steam and troubles in China, Japan and the eurozone have only added to the uncertainty. According to Bloomberg:
“A ‘sudden’ slowdown in China may lead commodity prices to fall as much as 75 percent from current levels, Standard & Poor’s said.

“Unexpected shifts in government policies or problems in the banking sector may trigger such a slowdown, S&P said in a report e-mailed today…..”Given the extent to which China has bolstered commodity prices, that’s something that we have to be concerned about,” S&P analyst Scott Sprinzen said by telephone from New York.”…..(Bloomberg)

The fact that 10-year Treasuries have dipped below 3 percent should also be of concern, because it’s an indication that the policy is wrong. This is the real problem. When investors are still so scared that they’re still loading up on “risk free” assets a full 3 years after the crisis began, then something is fundamentally wrong. The 10-year is saying quite clearly, “Whatever you are doing is not working, so stop it.”

The Fed’s bond buying program (QE2) has done nothing to increase activity, lower unemployment, stimulate growth, restore confidence or expand credit. It has been the biggest policy bust in Fed history, and now the economy is slipping back into a coma.

Remember, the economy is not a sentient being. It does not consider whether a policy is good or bad. Like any system it merely responds to input. If spending increases, incomes will increase, demand will increase, employment will increase and the economy will grow.

Conversely, contractionary policies are contractionary. This is something the deficit hawks don’t seem to grasp. If you slash government spending, lay off workers, and trim the deficits, then spending will slow, incomes will shrivel, GDP will wither, and the economy will slip back into recession. In other words, if you take steps to shrink the economy, then the economy will shrink. This is why the economy has lost momentum, because congress and the White House have cut the blood flow of stimulus to the patient, so now we are headed back into ICU.

The Republican mantra, “job killing stimulus” is … idiocy squared. The economy needs stimulus because stimulus IS spending…government spending. And, as we noted earlier, the economy does not care “who spends”; it merely responds to input. And the input that’s needed now is more spending. Government spending will do just fine.

Consumers are still deleveraging from the losses they sustained during the financial crisis, so they’ve cut back on their borrowing and spending. This creates a problem, because consumer spending represents 70% of GDP. So if consumers don’t load up on debt again, there will be no recovery. (Every recovery since WW2 has been the result of a credit expansion.) This is why Fed chairman Bernanke has tried to induce more borrowing by lowering rates to zero and buying US Treasuries from the banks (which, in effect, creates negative interest rates) But it hasn’t worked. Negative rates have not sparked another credit expansion because there are times when people will not borrow regardless of the rates or the inducements. John Maynard Keynes figured this out more than 80 years ago, but Bernanke has “unlearned” the lessons of the past. As a result, we are headed for another slump.

Consumers aren’t spending, businesses aren’t investing, and credit is not expanding. At the same time, state and federal governments are trimming budgets and laying off workers. So, all the main players are cutting, cutting, cutting. Naturally, the economy has responded in kind; housing prices are falling, unemployment is rising, manufacturing is stalling and consumer confidence is dropping.

There’s nothing here that should surprise us. We are headed into a Depression because policymakers have made another Depression unavoidable. A policy-driven Depression is different than a financial crisis. It is a matter of choice. It means that the objectives of the people who control the system are different than our own. There are those who will benefit from another severe downturn, but most of us will only needlessly suffer.

First, it appears there was a coverup, and that there were one or more meltdowns at the Fukushima site very early on, one of them even before the tsunami hit. Besides confirming the usual about reliability of official sources, a key conclusion to draw from that is that many reactors are even less safe than previously thought. Besides the four on the California Coast plus a number of smaller research reactors in their vicinity, all in line to be damaged by the earthquake and possible tsunami likely to happen sooner or later and possibly any time, there is at least one that was in danger of damage from the Mississippi flooding that just occurred last week.

Second, it seems clearer all the time that we don’t have to wait for one of the reactors in the U.S. to blow to create serious danger and harm. Among the reports I’ve read from or based on comments from nuclear experts not paid by the industry or employed by government sources essentially in league with the industry, one suggests that fuel rods were blown into the air and vaporized by early events at Fukushima, others may or have already melted down through their containment structures and are going who knows where, and massive amounts of radioactive water have been and continue to be released into the ocean. It also appears that far greater harm could yet be done by the Fukushima reactors, and neither TEPCO nor the Japanese Government are up to the task of preventing that. Harvey Wasserman, a longtime activist who edits the nukefree.org website, calls for an international effort to devise and implement a plan to contain the damage to the extent possible.

Third, part of the reason it’s so hard to tell exactly what’s going on is there is an active effort to control the flow of information. The Japanese Government has refused to let Greenpeace conduct testing inside its territorial waters. The Nuclear Regulatory [sic: Marketing and Promotional] Commission has stopped monitoring the situation. The U.S. EPA and the Canadian Government have shut down much of their monitoring. And no one in an official position is talking straight. So we have a combination of independent experts saying the situation is grave and worsening, and official sources refusing not only to disclose what they know but declining to find out the truth. So you get people like me trying to figure out and sum things up instead of the systematic disclosure and analysis we should be getting from official sources.

One thing is crystal clear, and that is that radiation is not safe. There is no such thing as a safe dose. So the figures about readings in excess of legal limits, while they are disturbing, are also misleading in that they imply there are levels below which radiation would not be harmful. I recently found an article that confirms what I had guessed at myself (although, to be clear, I am not a health professional or formally trained in biology or related sciences): The reason there is no safe dose is that cancer begins at the molecular level: “Several lines of evidence convince most cancer biologists that cancer starts its development from ONE genetically abnormal cell.” John W. Gofman and Egan O’Connor, The Causes of Cancer: Is There “Too Much Emphasis on Genes, and Not Enough on the Environment?” How to Avoid Some Mistakes, April 2001, http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/CancerEmphasis.html.

The probability of developing cancer is quantitative, that is, the greater the number and volume of exposures to cancer-causing substances or radiation, the greater the probability that cancer will occur. Conversely, it would seem, the greater the number and volume of protective activities or substances we can accumulate, the lower the probability that the carcinogens we encounter will actually cause cancer to develop. But at the same time, the exposure of large populations to carcinogens is likely to cause a large number of cancers. The threat here is that seawater, seafood, soil, air, and rain can all carry radioactive materials, and apparently are doing so increasingly, with the continual release of radiation from Fukushima, and that these cancer-causing material are reaching the United States. So while the meltdown of a reactor located in the U.S. would cause a quantitatively greater exposure to residents here, we are already being exposed as a result of radiation released by Fukushima.

Although it may seem Quixotic to speak of protecting ourselves in the face of the planetary-level onslaught on our health and wellbeing and indeed, on all life forms on the Earth, that is described in the sources excerpted and cited below, I return to the fact that the risk of cancer is quantitative, that we are exposed to numerous carcinogens on a daily basis, and that it is possible to counteract to some extent their effect, through exercise, nutrition, and by other means. In addition to the information and sources provided in my two immediately prior entries, I have lately found informative and useful another post at Washington’s Blog, with considerable information on the protective effects of antioxidants: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/05/new-inexpensive-blood-test-tells-you.html.

And don’t forget, as noted in that article and elsewhere, both red wine (a glass a day) and dark chocolate (an ounce a day) are among the many protective substances available to us.

There is, of course, a limit to how much red wine, dark chocolate, or even Justice, can heal. It seems clear that massive amounts of irreparable damage are being caused ongoingly by the Fukushima disaster. My purpose in sharing this information and analysis is to inform you of the threat to your own health and that of your children and grandchildren, born, unborn or maybe just hoped for, to give you the tools to do as much as can be done to protect yourself and those you love, and to attempt to motivate you and others to become vocal and otherwise active in advocating that the U.S. Government begin behaving responsibly, first, by monitoring and disclosing accurate information about the situation at Fukushima, the ongoing releases of radiation and where the various radioactive elements are traveling; by cutting off (rather than continuing, as President Obama has proposed) the billions of dollars in subsidies, including the limitations of liability, without which nuclear power could not continue to operate; and by seeing to the shutdown and responsible decommissioning of nuclear reactors in the U.S. and the development of replacement sources of power, including conservation, and excluding biomass incineration, as the governments of Japan and Germany are now beginning to do.

Here then are the best and latest postings I’ve discovered, with their sources so you can go further for more details:

From Nuclear Information and Resource Service, http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/crisis.htm:
UPDATE, 2:30 pm, Friday, May 20, 2011. The world’s media are shocked (shocked, we tell you…) that three Fukushima reactors melted down. Where have they been the past 10 weeks? Where did they think all that radiation was coming from? You know, that radiation that has caused the evacuation/relocation of people as far as 25 miles from the reactor site? Not to mention contamination of food, seawater, etc…..

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution says that the impact on the world’s oceans by Fukushima exceeds the impact of Chernobyl—in fact, the impact is 10 times higher. Woods Hole has received an emergency grant from the National Science Foundation to set baseline radionuclide levels in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and to monitor the impact of Fukushima fallout.

Recently released photos of the tsunami hitting Fukushima Daiichi are here [at the NIRS website].

From Harvey Wasserman, “A Nuclear Rapture? Fukushima’s Apocalyptic Threat,” http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman05202011.html:

Fukushima may be in an apocalyptic downward spiral.

Forget the corporate-induced media coma that says otherwise…or nothing at all.

Lethal radiation is spewing unabated. Emission levels could seriously escalate. There is no end in sight. The potential is many times worse than Chernobyl.

Containing this disaster may be beyond the abilities of Tokyo Electric or the Japanese government.

There is no reason to incur further unnecessary risk. With all needed resources, it’s time for the world’s best scientists and engineers to take charge.

Even then the outcome is unclear.
…
The New York Times has now reported that critical valve failures that contributed to the Fukushima disaster are likely at numerous US reactors.
…
There is much more, none of it good.

Japan and Germany have had the good survival sense to abandon future reactor construction, and to shut some existing sites.

But here, the corporate media blackout is virtually complete. Out of sight, out of mind seems the strategy for an industry desperate for federal loan guarantees and continued operation of a rickety fleet of decaying old reactors.

The Obama Administration has ended radiation monitoring of seafood in the Pacific. It does not provide reliable, systematic radiological or medical data on fallout coming to the United States.
…
Now we must also move ALL the world’s governments beyond denial to focus on somehow bringing Fukushima under control.

After two months of all-out effort, four reactors and at least that many spent fuel pools remain at risk.

Our survival depends on stopping Fukushima from further irradiating us all.

The world community has come together to put a new sarcophagus around Chernobyl.

A parallel, more urgent effort now needs to focus on Fukushima.

Whatever technical, scientific and material resources are available to our species, that’s what needs to go there.

NOW!

From Washington’s Blog, http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/05/fuel-rods-most-likely-melted-completely.html:

Thursday, May 19, 2011

“Fuel Rods Most Likely Melt[ed] COMPLETELY at Reactors 1, 2 AND 3 in the Early Hours of the Crisis, Raising the Danger of More Catastrophic Releases”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is pulling the plug on continuous monitoring of the Japanese nuclear crisis because:
The conditions at the Japanese reactors are slowly stabilizing.

I hope they are stabilizing. But as I noted last month:

The Japanese government and Tepco claim that the nuclear reactors are “stable” and that radiation releases have subsided to low levels.

But world renowned physicist Michio Kaku – who studied under atom bomb developer Edward Teller – told Democracy Now today:

***

The situation is not stable at all. So, you’re looking at basically a ticking time bomb. It appears stable, but the slightest disturbance—a secondary earthquake, a pipe break, evacuation of the crew at Fukushima—could set off a full-scale meltdown at three nuclear power stations, far beyond what we saw at Chernobyl.

***

When the utility says that things are stable, it’s only stable in the sense that you’re dangling from a cliff hanging by your fingernails. And as the time goes by, each fingernail starts to crack. That’s the situation now.

***

TEPCO is like the little Dutch boy. All of a sudden we have cracks in the dike. You put a finger here, you put a finger there. And all of a sudden, new leaks start to occur, and they’re overwhelmed.

The New York Times summarizes the real situation in a single sentence:

Tokyo Electric in recent days has acknowledged that damage at the plant was worse than previously thought, with fuel rods most likely melting completely at Reactors 1, 2 and 3 in the early hours of the crisis, raising the danger of more catastrophic releases of radioactive materials.

From Stephen Lendman, “Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown Confirmed,” May 14, 2011 – http://inteldaily.com/2011/05/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-confirmed/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+inteldaily%2Ffeeds+%28Inteldaily.com%29:

Visual evidence now confirms what earlier was known: namely, that Tokyo Electric’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station experienced at least one core nuclear meltdown, perhaps much worse than now admitted.

An earlier article explained, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-meltdown-confirmed.html

Nuclear expert Karl Grossman calls it the ultimate nuclear nightmare, a real time China Syndrome, portrayed fictionally in the 1979 film by the same name.

On May 12, Hiroshima Peace Institute Professor Robert Jacobs told Russia Today TV that plant conditions “are much more serious than we were told earlier.”

In fact, confirming a coverup, he explained:
“We were not told that for a long time….I have a rule of thumb, which is that anything that is publicly stated is probably around 10 to 20% of what’s true. It will take us years to know the extent of the contamination and the extent of the fuel melting. The best case scenario in this situation is that it will take months to begin to stop leaking radiation from the reactors.”

As a result, plant conditions are extremely serious, perhaps out of control, but don’t expect government or media reports to admit it. Short of that, on May 12, TEPCO said low water levels fully exposed Fukushima’s Unit No. 1, grudgingly confirming a meltdown of nuclear fuel rods.
…
Visual evidence confirms that “(one Fukushima reactor) did suffer a nuclear meltdown. (TEPCO admitted that) the top five feet or so of (Unit No. 1′s) core 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down. Now (it appears likely) that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment, causing” large amounts of contaminated water to leak, posing an extremely serious health hazard to many countries besides Japan.

Moreover, conditions appear to be worsening, not improving. According to Friends of the Earth spokesman Tom Clements:

“TEPCO seems to be going backwards in getting the situation under control and things may well be slowly eroding with all (six) units having problems. At this point, TEPCO still finds itself in unchartered waters and is not able to carry out any plan to get the situation under control.”
…

Major Media Coverage

Throughout the crisis, they’ve regurgitated official lies, suppressing what’s vital to know about history’s worst ever environmental disaster. Despite the significance of TEPCO’s May 12 announcement, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune ignored it, while New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi and Matthew Wald downplayed it, headlining, “Japanese Reactor Damage Is Worse Than Expected,” saying:
New developments will likely “delay efforts to bring” Fukushima’s crippled reactor “under control, the plant’s operator said Thursday, (admitting) much more damage than originally thought….”

Avoiding the word “meltdown,” Tabuchi and Wald said “exposed fuel has probably melted and slumped to the bottom of the vessel in little pellets….Still the worst fears did not materialize….a nuclear chain reaction (causing) a full meltdown and a catastrophic release of radioactive material.”

In fact, that’s precisely what likely happened, but coverup and denial won’t confirm it, exacerbating an already catastrophic situation, affecting residents as far away as California, Boston, Iceland, Sweden and numerous other countries in the form of contaminated air, water, soil, food, and nuclear rain.

From Vivian Norris, “Deadly Silence on Fukushima,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivian-norris-de-montaigu/deadly-silence-on-fukushi_b_859241.html?view=print (Posted: 05/ 9/11 05:05 AM ET)

The best site I have found for up-to-date information by nuclear industry experts is here. [http://www.fairewinds.com/updates]

Arnie Gundersen was a high-level executive for years and analyzes the information he has been receiving in a calm and scientific way. His latest update is entitled, “Fukushima Groundwater Contamination Worst in Nuclear History.” Gundersen is in touch with senior members of the Japanese nuclear establishment. What is highly disturbing is that the main reason Japan does not appear to be as bad a Chernobyl is that the wind was blowing out to sea and not for the most part towards land. But all this has done is spread the cancers out into the worldwide population as opposed to concentrating it all in Japan. It will be very difficult to tell, as it was in France, Scandinavia and other places, where the Chernobyl cloud traveled in the days following the disaster. I will summarize some of Gunderson’s very disturbing and important information here:

1. There was a hydrogen explosion, and it was a detonation, not a deflagration — in other words the fire burned up not burned down.

2. A frame-by-frame analysis shows a flame that confirms that the fuel pool is burning as a result of an explosion which started as a hydrogen explosion but that could not have lifted the fuel into the air so there must have been a violent explosion at the bottom of the fuel pool. But more data is needed.

3. Gunderson speaks about past criticalities in other nuclear reactors around the world, and I find it odd we are not hearing about these and how they can teach us about what is going on now at Fukushima.

4. Radioactive water is being pumped out and groundwater is contaminated, so there must be a leak or leaks, and this disaster is in no way contained. There will be contamination for a long time to come and this groundwater contamination is moving inland. One town is reporting radioactive sewage sludge from ground water or rainwater.

5. The Greenpeace ship Rainbow water has requested the Japanese government to test the waters near Japan, and Japan has refused this independent data request. The EPA has also shut down all inspection centers and is NOT inspecting fish. (Why the silence?)

Since Gunderson made this latest video, just a day or so ago new photo evidence seems to be showing burning and new fires taking place at Fukushima (from TBS JNN Japan):

Why is this not on the front page of every single newspaper in the world? Why are official agencies not measuring from many places around the world and reporting on what is going on in terms of contamination every single day since this disaster happened? Radioactivity has been being released now for almost two full months! Even small amounts when released continuously, and in fact especially continuous exposure to small amounts of radioactivity, can cause all kinds of increases in cancers.

My initial reaction to all the latest information was little short of panic, in that the manner in which radiation is disseminated makes it impossible to avoid. Even the limited protection available from potassium iodide supplements is effective only if you are alerted to the exposure in advance; and it appears the government, specifically the Environmental Protection Agency, is disclosing its limited findings only after the fact. But regardless, there is ultimately no complete or completely effective defense.

Nevertheless, there are some things we can do to protect ourselves and our loved ones, and the best compilation of that information I have seen is at Washington’s Blog. As I was reviewing the material posted there, it finally dawned on me that everything we do now and have been doing for years to protect ourselves from the tsunami of cancer-causing chemicals in the environment is also protective from the cancer-causing effects of ionizing radiation.

Unfortunately, some things we can do, like eating organically grown foods rather than the products of chemical-intensive industrial agribusiness, have no analog with respect to radiation. We can’t avoid all carcinogens in the environment, but we can limit our exposure.  However, our ability to avoid radiation is at best even more limited, when, for example, the food chain is contaminated.   We can eat a strictly organically grown diet, but we can’t not eat.  See, e.g., “Fukushima radiation taints US milk supplies at levels 300% higher than EPA maximums,” posted at http://www.naturalnews.com/032048_radiation_milk.html. Even organically grown food can be contaminated by radioactive substances that fall in the rain.

But some defense is still available. While I have been looking in vain for the time to sum up what I’ve found along such lines, Washington’s Blog has gone ahead and pulled all the material together. So at this point I will just reproduce the latest entry from Washington’s Blog, and suggest to your attention the articles linked at the bottom, whose titles indicate the information they contain regarding potential protection from vitamin supplements, herbs, and foods that contain and reflect the colors of the sun. My thanks to the author of Washington’s Blog for this extraordinarily useful material.

I must make the same disclaimer, however: I am not a health care professional. And as this blog cannot reproduce the illustrations posted on Washington’s blog, I suggest you look there for the complete article:

How to Help Protect Yourself From Low-Level Radiation (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/04/how-to-help-protect-yourself-from-low.html)

As everyone knows, exposure to high levels of radiation can quickly sicken or kill us. Here’s an illustration from Columbia University: [illustration omitted; see original posted at Washington's Blog]

But as I’ve previously noted, even low level radiation can cause big problems. Columbia provides an illustration: [omitted; see original posting at Washington's Blog]

Radiation can sicken or kill us by directly damaging cells: [illustration omitted]

Or indirectly … by producing free radicals: [illustration omitted]

Indeed, some radiation experts argue that the creation of a lot of free radical creation is the most dangerous mechanism of low level ionizing radiation:

During exposure to low-level doses (LLD) of ionizing radiation (IR), the most of harmful effects are produced indirectly, through radiolysis of water and formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The antioxidant enzymes – superoxide dismutase (SOD): manganese SOD (MnSOD) and copper-zinc SOD (CuZnSOD), as well as glutathione (GSH), are the most important intracellular antioxidants in the metabolism of ROS. Overproduction of ROS challenges antioxidant enzymes.

Scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Science claim in the Archive of oncology:

Chronic exposure to low-dose radiation doses could be much more harmful than high, short-term doses because of lipid peroxidation initiated by free radicals.

***

Peroxidation of cell membranes increases with decreasing dose rate (Petkau effect).
(See this [link omitted] for more on the Petkau effect.)

Countering free radicals is therefore one of the most important ways we can help protect ourselves from the effects of low-level radiation from Japan, from Chernobyl and elsewhere.

Now that you know, I invite you to read the following articles to learn how to help counter free radicals:
• Can Vitamins or Herbs Help Protect Us from Radiation? See http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/03/how-to-protect-yourself-from-radiation.html.
• What Foods Are Highest in Antioxidants? Some Inexpensive Foods Are Higher In Antioxidants than the Newest Pricey “Superfoods” [link omitted]
• The Compounds Plants Use to Protect Themselves from Damage Also Help to Protect People From Damage [link omitted]
• Electrons as Antioxidants: A Key to Health [link omitted]

Note: The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reported that one of the best-known scientists of the 20th century – Dr. John Gofman – also believed that chronic low level radiation is more dangerous than acute exposure to high doses. Gofman was a doctor of nuclear and physical chemistry and a medical doctor who worked on the Manhattan Project, co-discovered uranium-232 and -233 and other radioactive isotopes and proved their fissionability, helped discover how to extract plutonium, led the team that discovered and characterized lipoproteins in the causation of heart disease, served as a Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California Berkeley, served as Associate Director of the Livermore National Laboratory, was asked by the Atomic Energy Commission to undertake a series of long range studies on potential dangers that might arise from the “peaceful uses of the atom”, and wrote four scholarly books on radiation health effects.  [I would add that I have long been an admirer of the late John Gofman, and have benefited enormously from his work, much of it produced jointly with Egan O'Connor, on the health effects of radiation, especially including medical X rays.  This material is available at the site of the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility.  - RR]

But whether or not chronic, low doses of radiation cause more or less damage than acute, higher doses is beyond the scope of this article. The point is that they both can cause damage.

Disclaimer: I am not a health care professional.

First, there is no safe dose of radiation.  That is absolutely clear.  The National Academy of Sciences recently concluded that the preponderance of scientific evidence shows even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer or other health problems and it is unlikely that a threshold exists below which exposure can be viewed as harmless.  (1)  According to Richard R. Monson, chairman of the review panel and a professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s School of Public Health, “The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionized radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial.”

Comforting statements about the safety of low radiation are not even accurate for adults.  (2)  “Small increases in risk per individual have immense consequences in the aggregate.  When low risk is accepted for billions of people, there will be millions of victims.  New research on risks of x-rays illustrate the point….[For example, c]ommon, low-dose dental x-rays more than double the rate of thyroid cancer.  Those exposed to repeated dental x-rays have an even higher risk of thyroid cancer.”  (3)

Second, it appears we are already being exposed to radiation from the Fukushima disaster, and that it’s likely to get worse.  This, despite the repeated assurances from various authorities that the levels detected so far are safe, or pose no health risk, generally because the doses to which we might be exposed are too low to threaten human health.  See my first point, above.

But, not to worry, “…the EPA is considering drastically raising the amount of allowable radiation in food, water, and the environment.”  (4)  Assuming that what is allowable must also be safe, I sure hope they do it soon!

Third, the fact that radiation is not being detected does not mean it is not in the vicinity.  “That the radiation is being released 5,000 miles away isn’t as comforting as it seems….Every day, the jet stream carries pollution from Asian smoke stacks and dust from the Gobi Desert to our West Coast….Half the mercury in the atmosphere over the entire US originates in China….A week after a nuclear weapons test in China, iodine 131 could be detected in the thyroid glands of deer in Colorado, although it could not be detected in the air or in nearby vegetation.” (5)

Fourth, the means of protection are not entirely clear, and in any case, there is no way to shield oneself entirely from radiation exposure.  Potassium iodide (KI) can protect the thyroid gland, but you have to know when to take it, that is, when the exposure occurs.  And you should consult a health professional to determine appropriate dosage, as too much can be harmful.  (6)  And KI does not prevent radioactive iodine from entering the body, exposing other glands, nor does it protect against other radioactive exposures.  Other isotopes are “dangerous to humans including strontium-90, cesium, iodine, plutonium, and tranuranium elements, since they can be absorbed by the human body.”  (7)

I have been interested to see workers in Japan wearing masks that look like ordinary surgical masks, but have not been able to determine what the masks are actually composed of or what if any protection they provide.

I have not been able to put enough time into this matter to get definitive information.  But I encourage you to conduct your own research, and list below some of the sources I have relied upon in deciding this is a serious problem for which there are at best some partial short-term solutions.

Longer-term, what is most frightening is the continued presence and operation of nuclear plants at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre in California.  The spent fuel rods from these are just a few feet above sea level, and I believe we are just about due for an earthquake here of a similar magnitude to the one that struck Japan.  (8)  On such issues, I suggest looking to Nuclear Information and Resource Service, two of whose facts sheets are cited below.

Footnotes:

(1) National Research Council, Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: Bier VII Phase 2 (National Academies Press, 2006), p. 10.

(2) Brian Moech, MD, “Radiation: Nothing To See Here?,” http://www.truth-out.org, citing Shuryak I, Sachs R, Brenner D, “Cancer Risks After Radiation Exposure in Middle Age,” JNCI J National Cancer Institute Volume 102, issue 21, pp. 1628-1636.

(3) Id., citing Memon A, Godward S, Williams D, et al., “Dental x-rays and the risk of thyroid cancer: A case-control study,” Acta Oncologica, May 2010, Vol. 49, No. 4: 447-453.  For further information and discussion see the Wasserman piece cited below.

(4) Washington’s Blog, http://www.washingtonsblog.com/, cited by Mike Whitney, “Fukushima Fallout Hits the US,” http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney03312011.html.

(5) Brian Moech, MD, footnote (2) above.

(6) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Emergency preparedness and Response, “Potassium Iodide (KI),” http://emergency.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp.

(7) Torres, Marcos, “The Difference Between Radiation and Radioactivity And How To Protect Yourself,” http://preventdisease.com/news/11/031511_radiation_radioactivity.shtml.

(8) Cockburn, Alexander, “In the Midst of Fukushima: Ahoy There, Nuke-Loving Greens, Welcome to the Real World!,” http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03182011.html.

Additional Sources:

Cockburn, Alex, “Fukushima, Cover-Up Amid Catastrophe,” posted March 25-27, 2011, at http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03252011.html.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service, www.nirs.org, “Radiation Basics” and “NIRS Fact Sheet – KI.”

St. Clare, Jeffrey, “When Spent Fuel Rods Ignite – Pools of Nuclear Fire,” http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03162011.html.

Torres, Marcos, “Admitted Japanese Nuclear Meltdown Now Means Detrimental Health Effects Worldwide,” http://preventdisease.com/news/11/031411_radiation_health_effects.shtml.

Wasserman, Harvey, “There’s No ‘Safe’ Dose of Radiation,” http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman03292011.html.

Whitney, Mike, several articles in the last several weeks posted at www.counterpunch.org.

Robert Roth is a retired public interest lawyer who worked in consumer protection for the Attorneys General of Oregon and New York.

Panelists: Sarah Kleeger, Open Oak Farm, Adaptive Seeds, Southern Willamette Valley Bean & Grain Project; Mary Ann Jasper, Sales and Distribution Coordinator, Stalford Farms; Willamette Seed & Grain, LLC, Corvallis Sustainability Coalition’s Local 6 Food Action team; Robert Roth, Founding Member, Lane County Fair Trade Campaign.

A Statement of the Problem
By Robert Roth – March 6, 2011

• What I have to say today is at the edge of my own understanding.  I’ve been paying attention to trade policy for years, but only recently made the connection with domestic US farm policy.  This talk is not a definitive analysis, but a starting point.  I will post my notes for this talk and a brief list of references and resource on my blog.
• I enforced what has been called the law of deception, prosecuted fraud, for about 20 years.  Forest is this:  Both “farm policy” and “trade policy” are marketing terms, and forms of deception – real purpose & effect is to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible for people who already have too much.  As collateral damage, industrial agriculture and unfair trade policies are destroying the biosphere.
• The food-related problems we have, both in agriculture & trade, are a direct result of government policy essentially dictated by agribusiness and multinational corporations.  So we need to pay attention to the US Farm Bill and to trade policy, if we’re to repair the world, continue to eat, and perhaps, avoid the civil unrest and violence that can occur when too many people find themselves unemployed and without access to food.
• About a billion people are chronically hungry.  It’s been suggested the blow-ups in the Middle East, although they have many causes, were triggered by high unemployment and new food price hikes.  And people have spoken of those blow-ups as conceivably triggering WW III.  Resource wars at any rate appear increasingly likely.
• How did we get here?  US farm policy since roughly end of WWII has not only ravaged the soil and water but driven millions of small & mid-sized farms out of business, concentrating control in the hands of agribusiness corporations.

• Beginning late 20^th century, trade agreements globalized this process, decimating the farming sectors of poorer countries & forcing newly impoverished farmers & farm workers to migrate for survival.  Globally, 17 corporations now control the bulk of food production.
• We face resource depletion, climate change, & economic collapse, all pretty much at once.  Policy-makers are doing everything possible to avoid or slow down the economic collapse (“massive campaign to sustain the unsustainable” – Jim K.) & these measures are accelerating resource depletion and climate change.  But part of the problem they’re not addressing is that in the US, there are no longer enough living-wage jobs to sustain the economy.
• It seems possible we face a comprehensive system breakdown.  But if so, I have no sense of how long that might take, and suspect that if it does occur, it will take longer than some of us expect.  In the meantime, we can help the economic situation and create sustainable jobs, while at the same time addressing some of the threats to the biosphere, by addressing the problems of industrial agriculture.
• [When I was in grammar school – 1950s – current events newsletter said we could feed 25 billion people with the new chemical farming methods.  Hasn’t worked out that way.  (Where did that newsletter come from?  System for the indoctrination of the young. - Dewey)]
• So, restoring food security & trade sovereignty requires that we address the farm Bill – next one is due in 2012 – & stand current trade policy on its head.
• Real beginning of the problem, per Bob Jensen interview with Wes Jackson, “Future Farming”:

About 10,000 years ago humans moved from gathering/hunting to agriculture, tapping into the first major pool of energy-rich carbon — the soil. … Humans went on to exploit the carbon of the forests, coal, oil, and natural gas. But through all that, we’ve continued to practice agriculture that led to soil erosion beyond natural replacement levels. That’s the basic problem of agriculture.

[In addition to] soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has given us pollution by toxic chemicals, now … present in our farmlands and streams. We have less soil, and it is more degraded. We’ve masked that for years through the use of petrochemicals … . But that “solution” is … in fact part of the problem. There are no technological substitutes for healthy soil and no miraculous technological fixes for the problem of agriculture. We need to move past the industrial model and adopt an ecological model.

• We need a whole new system of food production, with less chemically dependent agribusiness and much more locally based, smaller-scale, more labor-intensive, and sustainable farming.  Jackson & Wendell Berry call for a “50-year farm bill” – op ed in NYT Jan. 2009.
• BTW, agriculture also led to a further set of problems: it made possible cities, with centralized, hierarchical control by power elites and the concentration & maldistribution of wealth.  These problems have characterized much of human history and are still with us.  Useful to note the continuity.
• Fast forward to European colonization of the Americas (as described by Mark Ritchie & Kevin Ristau, “Crisis By Design: A Brief Review of US Farm Policy” (1987):

From the earliest days of European colonization, America’s commercial agriculture … was dominated by large-scale [operations, including] the slave plantations of the South, huge Spanish haciendas in the Southwest, and the bonanza wheat and cattle farms of the West….[most] in the hands of wealthy individuals or foreign investors.  By the mid-1800s…the federal government [had established] policies putting family farmers on much of the land….But…farm families…[immediately] found themselves caught in a classic cost/price squeeze.  Skyrocketing prices for [items such as] seeds, credit, and transportation could not be covered by the prices the grain monopolies were willing to pay for their crops.  Freight rates were controlled by the railroads, while interest rates were set by the big city banks.  [There was a] series of rural depressions and panics in the late 1800s and early 1900s….[F]amily farmers organized political movements…[and federal legislation to fix their problems] was passed by Congress three times, but vetoed twice by Pres. Coolidge and once by Pres. Hoover.

• Then came the New Deal.  Production controls, price supports, farm credit.  A national grain reserve.  “Public utility” model.
• But stabilizing prices hurt grain speculators, who thrive on price volatility, and supply management reduced farm acreage, cutting sales of pesticides and fertilizers sold by farm chemical & oil companies.
• Grain corporations thrive on high volume, low-prices, as they can store food, buy low & sell high, which smaller farmers don’t have the resources to do.  1940s-50s – powerful interests manipulated policy, set prices below cost of production.
• Total # of farms in the US: 6.5 m./1935→2.05 m. 1997, with most of the decline among family farms.
• Big corporations also manipulate subsidies: under “Freedom to Farm” Act, 1996-98, top 1% of subsidy recipients got avg. $249,000; top 10% got 61% of $$.
• Oregon received over $1.5bn. in federal farm subsidies 1995-2009; but it all went to 13% of the state’s farms.  87% got nothing.
• Policy also favors agricultural products geared for export.  Willamette Valley went from relative food sufficiency 50 years ago, when it was a major canning center, to specializing in grass seed production & importing 95% of our food.
• So-called “free trade” agreements globalized this process, as big subsidized operations drove smaller local farms out of business throughout the world.
• E.g., Mexico used to subsidize small farmers.  NAFTA required that Mexico stop those subsidies and credit programs.  But under US farm policy, the federal government here still gives billions in subsidies to big agribusinesses, which can thus sell corn in Mexico for less than it costs to grow.
• This arrangement drove over one million small Mexican farmers out of business.  Nearly seven million farm workers became unemployed.  Many came here.
• At the same time, trade agreements cause job losses among the people already living here.  At least ten thousand Oregon jobs were lost in 2009 due to trade agreements.  This causes tension between current residents and newly arriving immigrants.
• Part of a solution:  reorient US farm policy toward support for smaller farms.
• As James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, wrote in May 2009:  There’s no way we can continue the petro-agriculture system of farming. … President Obama and Ag Secretary Vilsack have not given a hint that they understand the gravity of the situation. … [But it] happens to be one of the few problems we face that public policy could affect sharply and broadly — if we underwrote the reactivation of smaller, local farm operations instead of shoveling money to giant “agribusiness” (or Citibank, or Goldman Sachs, or AIG…).
• Wes Jackson interviewed by Bob Jensen:  [P]rotecting the soil is not only an ecological imperative but an opportunity for positive economic and cultural change as well. The proposals we’re discussing would increase employment opportunities in agriculture — sustainable farming will require more “eyes per acre,” and replacing fossil-fuel energy with human energy and ecological knowledge makes good economic sense.
• [Right now, globally, 70 percent of food is grown on farms less than 2 hectares (4 acres) in size, tended in large part by women.]
• 2008 Farm Bill perpetuated market deregulation and volatility.  But the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy found small gains for local food system support (Farmers Market Promotion Program), support for beginning farms & ranchers, and for organic agriculture.  But the Institute concluded, the bill did nothing to address the larger problems.  For starters, we should re-establish a publicly-held grain reserve and stronger antitrust enforcement.

On trade policy, the TRADE Act would have existing trade deals renegotiated, and require consideration of consumer, environmental, labor and other protections in future pacts.  But Obama is instead pushing a NAFTA-style deal with Korea.  So the next step for us is to defeat the Korea Free Trade Agreement.  Ron Wyden chairs a Senate subcommittee that could help a lot to achieve that result.  Call and ask him to do so, and to sponsor comprehensive trade reform like the TRADE Act from the last Congress.   If you live outside of Oregon, please contact your own Senators and Congressional Representative with that message.

Selected Bibliography & Resources

Allen, Will, Kate Duesterberg and Ronnie Cummins, “The Real Gold Standard: Local and Organic Food and Farming,” www.counterpunch.org/allen02252011.html.

Anderson, Cassandra, “Monsanto Shifts ALL Liability to Farmers,” February 21, 2011, http://www.morphcity.com/home/94-monsanto-shifts-all-liability-to-farmers.

Astyk, Sharon, “Are We Seeing the Early Signs of a Seed Availability Crisis?”, Casaubon’s Book website, December 11, 2008.

CounterPunch website, www.counterpunch.org; on the economic and financial crises, articles by Mike Whitney, Pam Martens, Michael Hudson and others; and anything by James K. Galbraith, Simon Johnson, Robert Pollin, Robert Reich.

Cummings, Ronnie, “How Industry Giants Are Undermining the Organic Movement: The Organic Monopoly and the Myth of ‘Natural’ Foods,” www.counterpunch.org/cummings07092010.html.

Devinder Sharma’s ZSpace Page, “Caught In The Food Pirates’ Trap,” March 1, 2011.

Gray, Heather, and K. Rashid Nuri, “Witnessing a Shift in the Worldview of Agriculture: How Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World,” www.counterpunch.org/gray03102010.html.

Hansen-Kuhn, Karen, “Making US Trade Policy Serve Global Food Security Goals,” Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, January 2011.

Harkness, Jim, “Is Famine the New Normal,” Policy Innovations, a publication of the Carnegie Council, February 17, 2011.

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, www.iatp.org; Communications, Ben Lilliston, (612) 870-3416, BLilliston@iatp.org; see esp., “Farm Bill Perpetuates Market Deregulation and Volatility” (press release), May 13, 2008; see also, January 07, 2011 press release, “Health leaders call for healthy Farm Bill,” and www.HealthyFoodAction.org.

Jensen, Robert, “An Interview with Wes Jackson: Future Farming,” www.counterpunch.org/jenssen01302009.

Mazzei, Umberto, “International Speculation and Rising Food Prices,” www.counterpunch.org/mazzei02142011.html.

Murphy, Sophia, “Concentrated Market Power and Agricultural Trade,” Ecofair Trade Dialogue Discussion Papers, No. 1/August 2006/English Version.

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, http://www.citizen.org/trade/, Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, http://www.citizenstrade.org/orftc.php, and Alliance for Global Justice, http://afgj.org/?p=878#more-878, on trade policy and issues.

Ritchie, Mark, & Kevin Ristau, “Crisis By Design: A Brief Review of US Farm Policy,” League of Rural Voters Education Project (1987).

Roth, Robert, “The Financial and Economic Crisis: An Assessment and Action Plan,” May 18, 2009, accessible at www.healingjustice.wordpress.com (see Pages).

Seattle Farm Bill Principles, Supporting Healthy Farms, Food and People, Guidance for the 2012 Farm Bill, www.SeattleFarmBillPrinciples.org.

Willoughby, Robin, “Good for Farmers? The World Seed Conference,” www.counterpunch.org/willoughby09162009.html.

– Buffy Ste.-Marie, “Ananais”

The media distorted parts of Jesus’ message right from the start. The Gospels, and the first generation of Jesus’ followers, effectively altered or hid his more radical teachings, and what has been preached from a million pulpits and that we still get from many today is a gross distortion. Jesus was not preoccupied with individual “sin” but with systemic injustice, in opposition to the commercializing empire of his time. The historical Jesus disclosed by contemporary scholarship appears to be fundamentally the same as the Jesus who is preached and practiced in the Catholic Worker movement, for example. And the parallels between his conflict with Rome and our own with imperial America are striking indeed.

Then as now, the maldistribution of wealth was quite severe, with peasants comprising the bulk of the population. “The term peasant … denotes a relationship of exploitation in which the vast majority who produce the food on which everyone and everything depends are consistently relieved of their surplus, so that a small minority have a huge surplus while most remain at a subsistence level. Simply: a peasant is a systematically exploited farmer.” John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus 4 (1995). Being a Jewish peasant had its saving moments, however, because of “a traditional ideology of land … enshrined in the ancient Pentateuchal laws.” Just as the people were to rest on the seventh or Sabbath Day, so God’s land was to rest on the seventh or Sabbath Year, when Jewish debts were to be remitted and Jewish slaves released. Exodus 23:10-11; Deuteronomy 15:1-3, 12-14,” Id. 5-6. And in the “Jubilee Year, the year after seven sets of Sabbath Years, all expropriated lands and even village houses, though not city ones, were to revert to their original or traditional owners. Leviticus 25:10, 18. “While the Jubilee Year was most likely no longer implemented at all by the first century, the Sabbath Year was probably still more or less enforced.” Id. 6. Those ancient laws “refuse to see debt, slavery, or land expropriation simply as business transactions. The land is a divine possession not a negotiable commodity[:] … ‘The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.’” Leviticus 25:23.

By Jesus’ day, however, the Roman Empire was no longer a traditional but a commercialized agrarian empire. To the Roman imperialist, land accumulation was a sensible business practice and debt foreclosure the best and quickest way to accomplish it. Crossan, The Essential Jesus 6. In first century Palestine, the Jewish peasantry was being pushed into debt and displaced from its holdings at unusually high rates, since land became, under the commercialized Roman economy, less an ancestral inheritance never to be abandoned and more an entrepreneurial commodity rapidly to be exploited. As higher rates of imperial and Herodian taxation forced increasing numbers of peasants from their land, there developed a growing class of destitute people with few options. One could become an artisan, a prostitute, a beggar, or a bandit. In this context Jesus of Nazareth appeared, the son of an artisan.

“Repent and believe in the gospel.” But “repentance” is not about a feeling of penitance for individual sins. It means a turning, at a more fundamental level, of the heart and soul to God. Marcus J. Borg, Jesus: A New Vision 122 n. 74, and 163-164 (1987). “The prophets called Israel to repent, which meant to turn or return, and which referred primarily to a change in Israel’s collective life, and not simply to a change in individual lives.” Id., 153 text and n. 13. Belief in the gospel does not mean merely to believe, as a condition of salvation, in certain doctrines or teachings, but to “give one’s heart to” the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. See Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For The First Time 137 (1995). And the Kingdom entails both religious and political meanings, in a situation of imperial domination and colonial exploitation. “The phrase evokes an ideal vision of political and religious power, of how this world here below would be run if God, not Caesar, sat on the imperial throne.” John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus 7-8.

In the Kingdom of God, it is not the rich who are favored, but the destitute. As destitute people flocked to Jesus to hear his teaching and to see or be cured by his mighty works, he taught them by the example of his life, as well. Be compassionate as God is compassionate. (Luke 6:36; see Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again 46, text and fn. 1.) Judge not, lest you be judged. If you have two coats and your brother has none, give one to your brother. Never refuse alms to one who asks for them. What you do for the least of these, you do for me. Love your neighbor as yourself. And who is my neighbor? A broken stranger lying by the side of the road. Eating and drinking, Jesus practiced open commensality, shared table fellowship, that mirrored many of his stories in their radical egalitarianism. He practiced free healing, declining to set up a brokered healing business that would stay in one place and let his disciples mediate access to him for a fee. Instead, he was always on the move for the next town, personally and directly accessible, and always performed, as it were, free of charge. He didn’t make people dependent on his power: he empowered them.

The stories of Jesus’ interactions with women are remarkable. First century Judaism was deeply patriarchal. Women had few rights; they could not be witnesses in a court of law, or initiate a divorce. They were not to be taught the Torah and were to be separated from men in public life. Respectable women did not go out of the house unescorted by a family member; adult women were to be veiled in public. But Jesus defended the woman who entered an all-male banquet, unveiled and with her hair unbraided, and washed his feet with her hair. While being hosted by Mary and Martha, he affirmed Mary’s choice of the role of disciple. And of course, he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. Women were apparently part of the itinerant group traveling with Jesus; the movement itself was financially supported by some wealthy women. And the evidence is compelling that women played leadership roles in the early post-Easter community. Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time 57 (1995).

“When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them.” Gospel of Thomas 14:2. See also Luke 10:4-11 = Matt 10:8-14 and Mark 6:8-13 = Matt 10:8-10a, 11 = Luke 9:2-6. John Dominic Crossan in a study based in part on the Didache argues persuasively that the itinerants who went out preaching the gospel in the century or so following Jesus’ ministry offered free healing in exchange for a meal, carrying on the practice mentioned, briefly, in the Gospels. Crossan, The Essential Jesus 9-10, and The Birth of Christianity, passim. Crossan speculates that the disciples were sent out two by two because one of them was likely female in many cases, and the two would travel as a couple for the woman’s protection.

The Kingdom movement was thus a form of community organizing, Jesus’ program of empowerment for a peasantry becoming steadily more hard-pressed through insistent taxation, indebtedness, and eventual loss of land, within the commercialized Roman Empire under Augustan peace and a Lower Galilee under Herodian urbanization. “Jesus lived, against the systemic injustice and structural evil of that situation, an alternative open to all who would accept it: a life of [free] healing and shared eating, of radical itinerancy, programmatic homelessness, and fundamental egalitarianism, of human contact without discrimination, and of divine contact without hierarchy. He also died for that alternative.” Crossan, The Essential Jesus 12.

The parallels with contemporary events could scarcely be more clear, or more striking. The form of globalization promoted by the elites of the rich countries and their instruments such as the IMF and the World Bank have driven peasants the world over off their land and into lives and early deaths of destitution. For example, “[p]rior to the 1910 revolution, wealthy landowners had confiscated most of indigenous Mexico’s communal farmland, reducing the campesinos to a state of serfdom. … [L]argely through the struggle of Zapata and his followers … the Mexican constitution of 1917, [in] Article 27, guaranteed the return and protection of communal land to farmers. … [A]lthough land reform [thus] became law in Mexico, it was only partially carried out. However, on January 1, 1994, as a condition of Mexico’s joining the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Article 27 of the Mexican constitution was abolished. An organization of Mayan Indians from the state of Chiapas, calling themselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), recognized this abolition as a death sentence for Mexico’s rural indigenous population. NAFTA would force farmers who could not compete with foreign investors’ technology and equipment off the land, thus opening up a wealth of cheap land and labor for exploitation by international corporations.” Donald Nollar, “Fighting For Our Lives,” Catholic Agitator (May, 2001), p. 1.

The rest has become part of our recent history, and is still going on. Similar scenarios have played out all across the globe. The rich countries continue to enforce protectionist policies and provide subsidies for their own basic industries, while demanding access to the markets of developing countries. “Free trade” is a euphemism for unfair trade. Protectionism is the only way any country has ever developed a domestic industrial base. The destruction of trade barriers and other mechanisms have, however, opened up many Third World countries to imports from the rich countries, resulting in the devastation of Third World industries, agriculture, and entire economies. Haiti is one of the more heart-rending examples.

And the commercializing empires of the industrialized world seek to reduce everything that was once regarded as personal or unique or holy to the status of interchangeable, salable commodities, demanding that all resources, including human beings, be accessible for exploitation, ostensibly to maximize production and thus promote the common good. But we all know what a rising tide does to those who have no boats, and it’s happening every minute of every day to people throughout the world.

At this point, the very idea of the common good is under relentless attack. That’s what is so evil about the current attacks on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the safety net generally, such as it still is. The real animus behind these attacks is hostility to the idea of the common good, the notion that we should care about and for one another, the very idea that we have interests in common that we can and should address collectively, through government as well as other forms of social organization. But caring for one another is our natural state, so a sustained program of propaganda is in place to persuade us to think only of wealth, forgetting all but self.

And what I think we need not only to counter these forces but to build community for its own sake is organizing: the development of common understandings and relationships of trust that will enable enough of us to act collectively, constructively, in coordination, to redeem the commons and serve the common good. Given that the airwaves are saturated with lies, the truth needs to be shared through other means: mind-to-mind, hand-to-hand, person-to-person, sometimes but not necessarily face-to-face and one-on-one. That’s what organizing ultimately is, and it can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including by the written as well as the spoken word.

We are called upon, in the present age, to oppose these forces of injustice and oppression, and to defend the commons, our common humanity, and the common good, and with them our neighbors, including and especially the most vulnerable among us. We are called upon by our very nature, our needs as human beings for fulfillment through relationship and community. But in answering that call, we also have the powerful and heroic example of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth – as Jackson Browne has aptly called him, the rebel Jesus.

I don’t know where it comes from, but not unlike Chris Hedges and many others whose work helps to inform and sustain me these days, I feel driven to respond to the cruelty and injustice that I see. I’ve always been this way, speaking out in writings and other ways. But lately, as I must see fifty things a day that cry out for a response, I’ve been trying to let myself off the hook sometimes. A life spent completely in dwelling on such things is a life completely spent; I pay for it in anxiety and physical tension that used to lead to migraines until I learned to manage my energy a little better. So I don’t always speak out. The cruelty and injustice are too ubiquitous, and I’m not one of the prophets, I just admire them. But I try to emulate them in a small way, to target some of the worst offenses, learn enough about them to say something useful, and then pass that along, on this blog, in an op ed or letter to the editor, in emails and conversations with friends.

Faced with the pervasive catastrophes of our time, I do try to respond constructively. What happened this morning, when I broke down and cried in the middle of Chris Hedges’ essay, was that it all just got to me too deeply. That happens at times. There is just so much. I won’t repeat the list, Hedges does an estimable job in the piece I’m about to copy here. And it does seem that our situation might be hopeless, in the sense that, as I think Wendell Berry said recently, everything of value is threatened, and it seems unlikely the lives we now lead can be sustained in any easily recognizable form. There appears to be, as Hedges says, just a thin line of defense between civil society and its disintegration.

But before repeating Chris Hedges’ prescription, I want to say that I think more is possible. As Noam Chomsky frequently points out, we do still have enormous freedom to agitate, organize, protest and struggle for change. The ballot box isn’t useless, it just isn’t being used nearly enough. But we still have it. And for its use to be more effective, we need a great many more people who recognize our real problems and demand that our political structures and players address them. It isn’t yet quite true, as Leonard Cohen said so long ago, that “the cities they are broke in half, and the middlemen are gone.” So “let me ask you one more time, O children of the dust: All these hunters who are shrieking now, do they speak for us?”

But I won’t ask just one more time. I’ll keep asking, nagging, agitating, informing, sharing information and analysis in the hope of helping to organize a sufficient and sustained opposition to the evils of our time, and a multitude of forces for the common good. That is, by the way, what is so evil about the current attacks on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the safety net generally, such as it still is: The real animus behind these attacks is hostility to the idea of the common good, the notion that we should care about and for one another, the very idea that we have interests in common that we can and should address collectively, through government as well as other forms of social organization.

What I think we need is organizing: the development of common understandings and relationships of trust that will enable enough of us to act collectively, constructively, in coordination, to redeem the commons and serve the common good. Given that the airwaves are saturated with lies, the truth needs to be shared through other means: mind-to-mind, hand-to-hand, person-to-person, sometimes but not necessarily face-to-face and one-on-one. That’s what organizing ultimately is, and it can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including by the written as well as the spoken word.

I may misunderstand Chris Hedges, but that’s what I think of as my disagreement with him, that I wanted to express before sharing his wonderful latest piece of work. I don’t think it’s hopeless – it may be, but that’s just a hypothesis, like its opposite, at this point in our time – and there are things we can do to affect the outcome. Some of them may consist of protests like the one planned by Dan Ellsberg, Chris Hedges and others (described below), and routinely engaged in over the years by the War Resisters League and the Catholic Workers, to mention just two of my favorites. But others include conversation, speech-making, publication, and even use of the ballot, once organizing has produced a critical mass sufficient to put good people into office. Iraq Veterans Against the War is organizing by a variety of means, and as I wrote to them just the other day, theirs is some of the best organizing and most important work I’m aware of. Progressive Democrats of America and others are organizing to make more effective use of the ballot box. Even in Congress, there are some very good people: most members of the Progressive Caucus were reelected earlier this month, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky somehow got onto the Deficit Commission and has offered a compassionate and practical alternative to the deficit hawks’ attack on the safety net and the common good.

I think I will copy here the piece by Chris Hedges, and follow that with a script I composed for a reading at a bar mitzvah several years ago.

And please remember this:  Like lovers in a stormy night/with a child to defend,/No defeat, baby. No surrender.

Real Hope Is About Doing Something

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hope_in_the_21st_century_20101128/

Posted on Nov 29, 2010 – By Chris Hedges

On Dec. 16 I will join Daniel Ellsberg, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern and several military veteran activists outside the White House to protest the futile and endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of us will, after our rally in Lafayette Park, attempt to chain ourselves to the fence outside the White House. It is a pretty good bet we will all spend a night in jail. Hope, from now on, will look like this.

Hope is not trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It is not having a positive attitude or pretending that happy thoughts and false optimism will make the world better. Hope is not about chanting packaged campaign slogans or trusting in the better nature of the Democratic Party. Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil or the government.

Hope does not mean we will halt the firing in Afghanistan of the next Hellfire missile, whose explosive blast sucks the oxygen out of the air and leaves the dead, including children, scattered like limp rag dolls on the ground. Hope does not mean we will reform Wall Street swindlers and speculators, or halt the pillaging of our economy as we print $600 billion in new money with the desperation of all collapsing states. Hope does not mean that the nation’s ministers and rabbis, who know the words of the great Hebrew prophets, will leave their houses of worship to practice the religious beliefs they preach. Most clerics like fine, abstract words about justice and full collection plates, but know little of real hope.

Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope. They become, in their passivity, agents of injustice. If the enemies of hope are finally victorious, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are in times like these the thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and the more potent hope becomes. Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope’s power and it is why it can never finally be defeated. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with lies, seeks to obliterate. Hope is what our corporate overlords are determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don’t resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations to think. No. Above all do not think. Obey.

W.H. Auden wrote:
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in the cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money. The powerful protect their own. They divide the world into the damned and the blessed, the patriots and the enemy, the rich and the poor. They insist that extinguishing lives in foreign wars or in our prison complexes is a form of human progress. They cannot see that the suffering of a child in Gaza or a child in the blighted pockets of Washington, D.C., diminishes and impoverishes us all. They are deaf, dumb and blind to hope. Those addicted to power, blinded by self-exaltation, cannot decipher the words of hope any more than most of us can decipher hieroglyphics. Hope to Wall Street bankers and politicians, to the masters of war and commerce, is not practical. It is gibberish. It means nothing.

I cannot promise you fine weather or an easy time. I cannot assure you that thousands will converge on Lafayette Park in solidarity. I cannot pretend that being handcuffed is pleasant. I cannot say that anyone in Congress or the White House, anyone in the boardrooms of the corporations that cannibalize our nation, will be moved by pity to act for the common good. I cannot tell you these wars will end or the hungry will be fed. I cannot say that justice will roll down like a mighty wave and restore our nation to sanity. But I can say this: If we resist and carry out acts, no matter how small, of open defiance, hope will not be extinguished. If all we accomplish is to assure a grieving mother in Baghdad or Afghanistan, a young man or woman crippled physically and emotionally by the hammer blows of war, that he or she is not alone, our resistance will be successful. Hope cannot be sustained if it cannot be seen.

Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.

Also from Auden:
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Chris Hedges is Truthdig columnist and a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “Death of the Liberal Class.” More information on the Dec. 16 protest can be found at www.stopthesewars.org.

Reprinted from Sharon Astyk’s Blog CASAUBON 11/11/07 (excerpt):
Tikkun Olam, if you are a Jew, or even if you find the metaphor compelling – tikkun olam means “the repair of the world.” In my faith, that is why we are here – to fix what is broken, repair what is damaged, to improve what can be improved. As the saying goes, it is not required of us that we complete the work, but it is not permitted for us not to try. …
Sharon

Comments: Robert said…
Thank you, Sharon. … Recently I was asked to prepare a reading for a bar mitzvah. … I somewhat surprised myself by coming up with the following, which I’d like to share in response to your statement:

There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years…. The crises we face [today] are real and imminent, [but] in each case means are available to overcome them. The first step is understanding, then [at times, individual action can be effective; at others, we need] organization and [collective] action. That is the path that has been followed in the past, bringing about a much better world and leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before.…[1]

Therefore, may we have not only strength, determination, and will power, but understanding, compassion, patience, persistence, and the courage to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, [to vindicate] the rights of all who are left desolate,”[2] and to work in cooperation with our neighbors and the world community, that our world may become just and therefore peaceful and safe, and that our lives may be blessed.[3]

And let us say: Amen.

[1] Adapted from Noam Chomsky, Failed States, and “Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities,” Monthly Review 17, June 2007.
[2] Proverbs 31:8.
[3] Adapted from Jack Riemer, Social Action