The Syrian "Spring"

Daily reports on the bloody repression of protestors in Syria by the corporate mass media have hewed a familiar line: genuine democrats have risen against a brutal dictator and the West must help them against the corrupt regime's tanks and guns. Sounds familiar because the simpleminded trope was last used only a year ago to wring a covering resolution from the UN Security Council for a NATO led coup against Muammar Qaddafi. Is there true democracy in Libya as a result of western oil motivated meddling? Just ask the myriad of armed militias currently terrorizing their tribal opponents there. Russia has not forgotten it was duped into going along with the R2P Benghazi red herring, and that may be one reason it has vetoed intervention in Syria so far. As someone on Capitol Hill astutely observed Syria is not Libya. The struggle in Syria is a sectarian one between the Alawi and Sunni. Al-Assad controls a strong, by Middle Eastern standards, army and security apparatus. The only chance the Sunni insurgency has to defeat it, is to interest the West in supporting the insurgency or at least equipping it with heavy weapons. So before western ruling elites convince themselves another intervention to kill a dictator is necessary, they should ask themselves whether promoting a civil war in Syria that would probably have as an analog the sectarian struggles in Lebanon or Iraq rather than a relatively quick assination in Libya is in their best interests. There is no oil elixir to cloud their judgment, and Sunnis are just as bigoted as Alawites. There is no guarantee a Sunni dominated regime would respect the minority rights of Syria's Christians and Alawites or peacefully accept the existence of Israel. Sunni suicide bombers killed 28 and injured 235 in government controlled Aleppo. The Syrian army has shelled the majority Sunni town of Homs for eleven days in a row. Syria's rulers, unlike Qaddafi, have significant friends, and they are backing Assad.

Chart of the Week: Central Banks 'Print' Mo' Money

No one is hiding in the basement of the New York Fed building with an ancient printing press making dollar bills, but the major central banks are expanding the money supply through their operations as this chart shows:

The US Fed had a big jump in assets compared to GDP when the government decided to bail out big banks. "Quantitative easing" as its termed may continue for the near future further weakening the purchasing power of the dollar. Banks will still be able to borrow dollars from the Fed at a near zero interest rate through the end of 2014. That Open Market Committee decision is music to the ears of Wall Street. The rest of us can just pay more. Want to see a correlation that says a lot? Look at these charts comparing the odds of the Obamatron extending his White House lease and the stock market:

[source: Gary Dorsch, marketoracle.co.uk]

Creature Feature: When Gorillas Visit

This group of Bwindi gorillas led by their silverback came to visit the ecotourists one morning in December:

Kudos to John who behaved appropriately and kept his cool in the presence of a much stronger and dominant primate. Tourism plays a large role in the preservations of wild mountain gorillas. Tourists bring money into the impoverished local economy which provides an incentive for local people to protect the wildlife from destruction. You can help by paying a visit just like the gorillas occasionally do.

NRC Approves New Nuc

The NRC approved a combined construction and operating permit for the Vogtle plant site in eastern Georgia yesterday. It was the first new permit issued since 1978. Two more reactors in South Carolina are expected to be approved in the next few months. The administration has offered the Vogtle project $8.3 billion in subsidies as part of its nuclear expansion policy. These new plants are what is left of the "nuclear renaissance" touted by the industry as a solution to greenhouse gas emissions and dependance on foreign oil. The Union of Concerned Scientists in response to the approval said the building boom has been significantly slowed and blamed the industry for "inappropriate optimism" that ignores huge capital costs, acceptable nuclear waste disposal, and safety risks. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, recently criticized by his colleagues as being too bossy in his efforts to close the Yucca Mountain waste depository, voted against the license because he wanted a binding agreement from the Southern Co. that it would make safety changes based on what was learned from the Fukushima disaster. New safety regulations are still under development. Twenty-eight US reactors use an early GE design similar to those that failed at Fukushima. Other countries such as Germany are reversing their commitment to nuclear power in the wake of the largest nuclear accident in history.

'Toontime: The Fog of GOP Primaries

[credit: J.D. Crowe, Mobile Press-Register]
Wackydoodle axes:  Is that the hand of God or Carl Rove's?

What the results of the latest primaries in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri  show is the level of right-wing dissatisfaction with the once-upon-a-time moderate Mitt Romney as opposed to the level of support for Rick Santorum.  These smaller midwestern state wins will keep the Santorum campaign going, but in the long haul Romney's deepest pockets will carry the day even if it means winning in the convention's hotel rooms.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond a different show is grabbing the attention of the masses:

credit: [Christo Komarnitski, Sturshel]

That's the head of a Greek civil servant encased in the stone calendar. No agreement yet on a Greek bailout deal as the EU demands even more cuts of €325 million and parliamentary approval. Greek unions call for another forty-eight hour general strike.

States Let Banks Off

The mortgage settlement between 49 states' attorney generals and the banks may sound large--$26 billion--but its peanuts for the big banks whose misfeasance in the sub-prime mortgage market led to a worldwide financial crisis that still reverberates through western economies. All the corporate news markets have details, so go there for a run down. What readers of this post should know is:

• no criminal prosecutions for fraud or admissions of wrong doing;
• only $17 billion for principal write down to borrowers who are facing foreclosure compared to total negative equity of $700 billion;
• the banks already have reserves set aside for the deal achieved with the help of near zero interest funds from the Federal Reserve;
• only $5 billion of payments is from banks, the rest is from securitized loans;
• restitution for fraudulent loan documentation (60% error rate in one sampling) has been priced at $1500-2000 per loan foreclosed on between September 2008 and December 2011, a fraction of the average loan amount of $180,000 or about 1% of the outstanding loan balances.

In short, it stinks as the banks' rising stock prices will tell you. Former Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Kouril commented,"The court system will be permanently corrupted by forged and perjurious documents. This settlement is an incredible breach of the social contract between the government and the governed." Equally incredibly, Oklahoma's attorney general did not sign up for the deal because he thinks the banks should not face any penalties. With regulators like that in office, who needs laws?

Birds Die Around Fukushima Plant

In a harbinger of sad reports to come, a study in the journal Environmental Pollution says bird numbers are in dramatic decline around the Fukushima nuclear power station. Four of the six reactors there were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami last year. The study by researchers from Japan, US and Denmark is the first major one to consider the environmental impact of the worst nuclear accident in history. Fourteen species common to Fukushima and Chernobyl show the affect of radiation on bird populations is worse in Japan's disaster zone. Two of the study's authors are veterans of research in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, still depopulated of humans twenty-five years later. In the absence of human activity around Chernobyl wildlife has begun to return to what is essentially now a wildlife refuge. However, the co-authors' research has shown the negative impact of radiation including reduction of longevity and male fertility, and physical deformations such as smaller brains. Many species show elevated DNA mutation rates and insect life has been dramatically reduced.