The four coordinated hijackings, resulting in three deliberate attacks and one downed passenger jet, took 2,977 innocent lives and sowed fear and dismay across the world. They were acts of unconscionable evil intended to not only harm innocents and terrify the wider population, but to destabilize American democracy itself, and derail a people’s journey through history, possibly to erode its most virtuous contributions.

It was a clear, sunny morning and the first plane crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center had sparked a sustained global news flash, bringing hundreds of millions of eyes to the television footage. There was confusion and disbelief, and just as it was becoming clear there must have been a devastating loss of life, a massive fireball engulfed the top half of the South Tower, clearly signaling a deliberate terrorist attack was underway.

Less than 2 minutes later, the White House chief of staff told the president, then in a public event with schoolchildren, that “America is under attack.” A third plane flew into the Pentagon, headquarters of the US Dept. of Defense, while the fourth crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers reportedly made a fateful and heroic decision to rush the cockpit and take back the plane from the hijackers.

In the days after the attacks, it was often said such heinous acts would not be allowed to change our open, democratic culture or to reduce our commitment to moral leadership in the world. Pres. Bush made a visible, conscious effort to ask that no one treat Muslims or people of Arabic origin or descent, as anything other than members of an open, democratic society, as neighbors and possibly as victims, of the attacks.

But in the months and years that followed, the pressures and temptations inherent in legislating and prosecuting the war on terror drew the US federal government into planning and implementing policies that marked an appreciable and concerning detour away from many of our most cherished shared principles.

We have suffered, in the aftermath of the attacks, fully a decade of war. From the standpoint of an idealist democracy, or of just war theory, from the standpoint of a civilization committed to peaceful coexistence and negotiated outcomes, war is failure. It is the failure of peace, of the institutions of peaceful negotiation; it is the threat of a descent into chaos. War tests the moral fiber of a society more than any other experience.

In one of the most emotional and solemn of the speeches given to commemorate the legacy of those lost, Vice President Joseph Biden noted that “Never before in our history, has America asked so much over such a sustained period of an all volunteer force. I can say without fear of contradiction or being accused of exaggeration that the 9/11 generation ranks among the greatest our nation has ever produced.”

He spoke of 4,478 “fallen angels” who died in Iraq, another 1,648 who gave their lives in Afghanistan, over ten years, many of them in recent weeks, and the more than 40,000 wounded in both wars. Biden has visited the wounded soldiers many times, and said “I am awed not only by their capability, but by their sacrifices, today and every day.”

To this day, military strategists disagree about whether going to war as a response was a major strategic blunder. It was important, and positive, to oust the Taliban from power, to end the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein, but the unity and the worldwide human fabric of sympathy that grew immediately after the 9/11 attacks bled away as a politics of division and confrontation took hold.

Some professional politicians deliberately adopted the attacks as a “wedge issue”, and sought to paint rivals to their political philosophy or to their job security as enemies of the state. A naturally occurring sense of democratic, civic unity was replaced by a push for ideological uniformity. Many Americans began to feel, for the first time in their lives, as if dissent, or even critical thinking, was not welcome in the public discourse.

The very idea of engaged citizenship was challenged by a prevailing attitude of hardline politics, and for many, fear and suspicion. In retrospect, it may have been possible to depose the Taliban and to counter Al Qaeda, without ever going to war in Iraq, without adopting interrogation techniques borrowed from Cambodian death camps, and without giving in to the suspicion that due process was somehow a risky departure from the best service of justice in a free society.

In retrospect, there may have been better ways to channel the collective emotional upheaval that followed the attacks. Historians were already talking of how quickly the political capital of the moment was “squandered”, as less than two years after the attacks, an aggressive, unilateralist drive had totally overtaken American foreign policy. There was, for several years, a great risk that American democracy would be forever changed, and many of its most vital ideals eroded.

But today, in northern Virginia, Vice President Biden reminded us of something else: the attackers misunderstood the nature of the event they had planned and its likely impact on the nation they were targeting. While the risk was there that our culture could be comprehensively destabilized by the grief and anger that follow such an event, Biden suggested we were ultimately protected against that deviation by something Al Qaeda may never have understood:

With the fully restored Pentagon behind him, Biden intoned: “The true source of American power does not lie within that building, because as Americans, we draw our strength from the rich tapestry of our people.” He added that “The true legacy of 9/11 is that our spirit is mightier, the bonds that unite us are thicker, and the resolve is firmer than the millions of tons of limestone and concrete that make up that great edifice behind me.”

Biden explained the miscalculation of a small group of extremists who “never imagined” that the killing of 3,000 people would inspire 3,000,000 to volunteer for military service, to strengthen and defend a population of over 300,000,000. He spoke of the “sleeping giant” that was awakened by the shock and horror of the attacks. He was speaking not of a will to violence or retaliation, but of a spirit of aid to one’s fellow citizens.

In the hours after the attacks on New York City, a fleet of ferries, fishing boats, tug boats, small craft, commercial vessels and patrol boats, spontaneously gathered around lower Manhattan. The United States Coast Guard then sent out a message to “all available boats” to “report to Governor’s Island”. Hundreds of boats converged on the city to assist in the evacuation, arriving at what witnesses describe as astonishing speed.

After the North Tower collapsed into its footprint, engulfing lower Manhattan in a cloud of toxic dust, heat, smoke and debris, tens of thousands of evacuees—some injured, some in shock, many hysterical with panic, some just acting in service of those around them—were flooding the waterfront. Some were jumping into the water, despite the heavy boat traffic, desperate to get off the island and if possible swim to safety.

In what is now referred to as the great Manhattan “boatlift”, nearly 500,000 civilian refugees were evacuated in just nine hours. It was the largest evacuation by sea in history. By comparison, the legendary military evacuation of Dunkirk, during some of the darkest days of World War II, evacuated 350,000 French and British soldiers from France to Britain.

The great Manhattan boatlift was possible because conscientious citizen volunteers from across the region shot into action, heading into the unknowable dangers of an unprecedented disaster zone, risking their lives and livelihoods to help total strangers in desperate need. This was emblematic of a society infused with a strong sense of public trust and civic responsibility, where citizenship and shared destiny are implicit in our sense of who we are.

Ten years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, we have seen a spiritual recovery, in which people recognize that the values of such a society cannot be cast aside for any temporary sense of security. Our politics have seen a reversal, in which an unprecedented number of people voted, in 2008, for a politics of unity and civic engagement. And the hotly contested political campaigns have continued, with fevered disagreement over policy and ideology, but we can, perhaps say, that the freedom to disagree so vehemently is a celebration of the virtues of a free and open society.

Vice President Biden said to the families of victims today, “My prayer for you is that ten years later when you think of them, ten years later when you think of them, that it brings a smile to your lips instead of a pain in your heart.” There are many ways in which the legacy of the 9/11 attacks has long since been reclaimed from both the terrorists and the hardliners, and has come to inspire a commitment to service and shared responsibility.

Speaking of the bond between her family and the family of her brother’s great friend, coworker and fellow victim of the 9/11 attacks, Debra Epps today said, at the opening of the World Trade Center’s new 9/11 Memorial park, that the tragedy had brought the lesson that “People really do catch you, when you fall. It’s been a blessing.”

There are societies where unity in service of the civic space and one’s fellow citizens is a rare, if not unthinkable eventuality, and there are societies that are strong because free people naturally and voluntarily engage with each other with a sense of holding the civic space in trust, with a sense of commitment to the virtues and the vulnerabilities of their common humanity.

Ten years after the attacks of 9/11, the United States has been through many choices, many complexes of complicating choices, in response to the attacks. Many of those choices were controversial, and many have been reversed. Many curbs on civil liberties are still in place, and top officials disagree vehemently about whether there needs to be a trade-off between commitment to Constitutional protections of civil liberties and security.

Now, we enter a new period, in which withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan is already underway, a sometimes clumsy and always complicated process of nation-building is giving way to remote security actions, forceful “smart diplomacy” and a cooperative effort to prevent civil war in both countries. Osama bin Laden, and a number of “second-in-command” and “third-in-command” Al Qaeda operatives have been killed.

Some say the struggle against militant groups with “global reach” may be entering a more conscious deliberative phase, where the liberty-security tradeoff is not seen as being so economical. There is a hunger for reviving a less militaristic civic space, in which the cooperative voluntary citizenship of free people is the strength and the hope of a great democracy, in which the value of the service of millions of volunteers can be truly honored as an expression of their selflessness.

9/11 should, after this 10th anniversary, and in the aftermath of the deviation from and restoration of core values that we have undergone, become a national day of solemn recognition, collaborative restoration, and an affirmation of our civic space, in which citizenship is a sacred trust and human interest in the principal goal of our activity. It should be a day of national reflection and of the reaffirmation of the value of an open, democratic and voluntary civic space.

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Cross-posted from Independents of Principle

As early as one day after the March 11 tsunami sparked the (still ongoing) nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan’s government had advanced radiation fallout and atmospheric modeling showing the area most likely to be hit by fallout from the explosions and the ongoing seepage. The government allegedly concealed this information, to prevent mass panic, but the result may have been the evacuation of large numbers of people to the most dangerous zones.

According to the New York Times:

Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north, believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice.

The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima — and town officials would learn two months later that a government computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing just that.

But the forecasts were left unpublicized by bureaucrats in Tokyo, operating in a culture that sought to avoid responsibility and, above all, criticism. Japan’s political leaders at first did not know about the system and later played down the data, apparently fearful of having to significantly enlarge the evacuation zone — and acknowledge the accident’s severity.

Officials of the Japanese government have admitted there was a pattern of concealing information, denying known facts, even of releasing data that were modified to achieve more politically expedient outcomes, even as the nation and the world were waiting for a thorough and serious crisis response. The government reportedly withheld crucial modeling projections from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, also known as SPEEDI.

According to the Times, Seiki Soramoto, a former nuclear engineer who was asked for information by the prime minister, said “In the end, it was the prime minister’s office that hid the SPEEDI data, because they didn’t have the knowledge to know what the data meant, and thus they did not know what to say to the public, they thought only of their own safety, and decided it was easier just not to announce it.”

Though at least three of the six reactors were in meltdown, and were known to be, and the government was permitting the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) to dump huge volumes of radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean, the status of meltdown was repeatedly denied, and was not acknowledged for several months.

In June, it was revealed that tellurium 132, an isotope that indicates a meltdown has occurred, was detected on the second day of the crisis, but the readings were kept from the public for three months. It is not clear how the alleged campaign of distorted data and concealed modeling might have impacted the crisis response, but scientists and engineers have expressed concern that the nuclear emergency response was stunted by inadequate information and poor decisions.

There are also likely to be new investigations into the public health consequences of the concealed information.

There is a simple response to the GOP hardliners who say bin Laden’s demise justifies waterboarding and other torture techniques used under the Bush administration, and that is: if it had worked, it would not have taken 10 years to locate bin Laden. What “led” the US intelligence community, and SEAL Team Six to bin Laden’s fortified compound was long-running, diligent intelligence work of the kind that is hampered and obstructed by irrational fits of violence, torture and vengeful behavior.

It was not as a result of torture and waterboarding that bin Laden was found, but in spite of those acts and after long, complicated and persistent efforts made to correct the missteps, bad intel and general deviance of the previous administration’s unconstitutional approach to security policy.

From the outset, the practice of physically and emotionally abusive interrogation techniques was slowing down the investigative process and hampering the ability of investigators and intelligence officers to get useful information from those they interrogated. What analysts found when they looked at the history was that abusive interrogations shut down the flow of useful intelligence, and provoked more violent, more intransigent militancy; where techniques were softened, in line with US and international law, there was better information available.

In 2008, a report [PDF] became available detailing the long history of disputes among agencies regarding Bush-era interrogation techniques. According to the New York Times:

In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a “war crimes file” to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday.

The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The controversy over waterboarding has raged for 7 years now in public discourse, and it was even more intense in the private exchanges between agencies before it became public knowledge. But one salient fact remains: according to Dick Cheney’s own argument that waterboarding was used sparingly, it was used 267 times on just three prisoners. That’s an average of 89 times per individual.

In Spanish bullfighting, when a matador moves in for the final strike, and aims to kill, efficacy is considered to be doing the job in one perfect blow. A bullfighter who takes 10 or 15 or 19 strikes to knock the bull to the ground is jeered and hated by the crowd, partly for the cruel nature of what is taking place, partly for his abject failure to perform. If after 89 attempts at waterboarding, no information that wouldn’t require nearly a decade to unravel (or correct) emerged, how effective can such a method be?

The logic used even by the White House was that waterboarding would force the near immediate release of useful information. They used the “ticking time-bomb” defense. The logic was that one or two or three interrogations, relying solely on the effective use of language to gain information, was too slow, too fuzzy, too imprecise. But it took an average of 89 attempts at waterboarding to deal with these three prisoners of whose interrogation Cheney spoke so proudly.

How, then, could anyone make the argument that this was an “effective” interrogation technique. If it took another 8 years to locate bin Laden, the information was clearly not very useful, not very relevant and certainly not expedient. What’s more, the compound in which bin Laden was located and killed did not even exist yet, when the CIA was waterboarding those three individuals, allegedly at Dick Cheney’s urging, or authorization. None of them could have known where it was.

Waterboarding did not lead to Osama bin Laden’s killing, any more than any other event that took place in 2002 or 2003 led to his killing. What led to bin Laden’s killing —inside a structure that had not been built yet, when Dick Cheney ordered US personnel to use techniques defined as torture under existing law— 7 to 8 years later, under a different administration, in a new decade, in a country whose entire system of government has changed, mired in a Taliban war as intense as the one in Afghanistan… what led to SEAL Team Six raiding that compound was all of the hard work of far more honest public servants than those who believe the US can only do well when it does the wrong thing.

The idea that torture or waterboarding were necessary, or even contributed in some indirect way, to make the investigation into bin Laden’s whereabouts a success is a smear of the worst kind, and precisely the kind of negative propaganda enemies like al Qaeda would love to be true. But it is not true. It is a perversion of the mind to which certain hardline elements are given, who believe more in the use of violence than they do in the guiding principles of American democracy.

It is also a smear against all of the men and women sacrificing their time, their quality of life, their safety and their lives, in service of the nation; it suggests they are not defending a great democracy committed at every level at every moment to upholding the rule of law, but rather that they are fighting in service of something less worthy, less noble, less in keeping with the founding values of the nation they love.

No credible authority on interrogations, on the tactical strengths of the American intelligence community or military service personnel, could stoop so low as to make the absurd claim that only as a result of torture was it possible to locate and to eliminate Osama bin Laden. We know that abusive interrogation techniques, even torture, were used under certain aspects of the Bush administration’s security policy. We know just as well that no substantive intelligence that did not require many years’ worth of untangling emerged from those torture sessions.

There was even testimony before Congress suggesting that an individual who underwent the procedure known as waterboarding —whichis, by definition, oxygen deprivation— several dozen times, or 89 or 100 or more, could suffer irreparable brain damage, thus eliminating the one (theoretically) useful source of information involved in the process: the clarity of the detainee’s memory.

The tensions between FBI and CIA interrogators, especially regarding the alleged usefulness of torture as an interrogation technique, seem, in time, to have boiled down to a contest between two fundamental ideas: on the one hand, the FBI’s contention that interrogations don’t always turn up the information that one seeks, and so must always be supplemented with extensive field work and parallel investigative techniques, while waterboarding and abusive methods inhibit cooperative prisoners from sharing useful information; on the other hand, the insistence of some that without such abuses, they would be helpless to learn anything of value.

In retrospect, especially now in the cold light of morning, as the world adjusts to the idea that bin Laden is no longer out there, that dispute now looks simpler than ever: there were some who knew that getting information takes time, honest effort, and serious, highly skilled, committed hard work, and there were some who were feeling rushed, who were more given to impatience, brutality and the eschewing of basic principle than to trust in the quality of the people doing the information gathering.

To highlight the views of those committed professionals who believed that upholding the rule of law was not only necessary, but ultimately smarter and more effective, Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent, told Congress about the abusive interrogation techniques. He said:

People were given misinformation, half-truths, and false claims of successes; and reluctant intelligence officers were given instructions and assurances from higher authorities…

I wish to do my part to ensure that we never again use these … techniques instead of the tried, tested, and successful ones – the ones that are also in sync with our values and moral character. Only by doing this will we defeat the terrorists as effectively and quickly as possible.

Soufan noted that CIA agents involved in the interrogations shared his view that waterboarding was not only unhelpful, but was counterproductive. Despite the use of such techniques at least 267 times (according to the CIA’s own records) on just two of the “high value detainees”, the result was less meaningful testimony and unreliable and flagrantly false claims.

It has long been known —and any mildly reasonable person could find the same by simple logic— that torture induces people to lie. It produces false confessions, and is in fact favored by totalitarian regimes that are seeking false confessions. It was an aberration for American interrogators to resort to torture, and amounted to the relegation of the investigative process to the backward, hamfisted manipulations of backwater dictators; it was not worthy of a great open democracy, it did not honor those who were part of it, and it did not serve the security interests of the United States.

The election of Barack Obama to the White House is not the direct cause of bin Laden’s death, either, any more than any other event in 2008 is the direct cause. But there is something about Obama’s presidency that has made it possible to carry out this kind of raid, and which helps to account for why it happened now and did not happen in the years 2001-2009: the president and his security establishment are committed to 1) getting the information right, and 2) acting decisively on good information, to actually achieve an outcome that furthers the national security objective of undoing al Qaeda, in a substantive way.

Pres. Obama did not pursue bin Laden by diverting 90% of the nation’s military muscle to another nation, Iraq, where there was no immediate cause for war. He did not propose to spend $1 trillion fighting that unnecessary war, while making the ridiculous claim to the American people that doing so would put pressure on militia leaders hiding in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He did not try to alter the political or legal substance of our national security policy to make it more like Hosni Mubarak would have liked.

He committed bright public servants, brave intelligence officers and the most skilled military strike force possible, to tracking, locating and capturing or killing bin Laden. That’s how bin Laden was tracked, located and killed.

Osama bin Laden was killed in spite of the sad and counterproductive use of torture techniques, not because of it.

The reason people spontaneously went into the streets to celebrate the event was not that bin Laden’s death is synonymous with joy or the culture is obsessed with him. And it’s not merely the fact that this moment allows for a sigh of relief, after 10 years of war. It was because people now feel there is a meaningful alignment between the principled public service of government officials and their ability to tackle the most dangerous problems. Ideology and testosterone-laden rhetorical distractions are not interfering with the work of governing, so the leadership are now making better choices, more in keeping with our values and more conducive to outcomes in line with our goals.

This is one example of the efficacy of Obama’s approach to public service and of what he demands of his lieutenants. The raid was daring not only tactically, but also politically: the clearest precursors to the raid were Jimmy Carter’s failed hostage-rescue in Iran and the infamous “Black Hawk down” incident in Mogadishu.

It takes a certain seriousness of purpose and a certain commitment to service to put one’s political future so much at risk, and it takes a respect for the men and women on the ground, for the command structure and for the wisdom of thoughtful, well-informed, diligent, purposeful planning, to make this kind of strike possible.

The people of the United States owe a debt of gratitude to the courage and talent of those who built the body of (real) evidence, who planned the COA (courses of action) and who carried out the strike. And it owes a debt of gratitude to the leadership style that puts the virtues of American democracy, of its citizens, its servants and its applications, ahead of the urge to do flashy things that intimidate or threaten.

Bin Laden was killed in May 2011, because the United States has put aside bluster in favor of focus. That cannot be said of any of the people or agencies that participated in the dark, shameful history in which torture was used in place of the best, most serious, most effective effort. By doing what American democracy demands, American agents, led by an American president, were able to do what American democracy requires.

The strike on bin Laden’s compound shows that torture is not required, and serves to highlight just how counterproductive it may have been. We are on a better track now, and this, we should celebrate.

Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari, whose late wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by extremists shortly after returning to her homeland to seek the presidency, said he was not informed prior to the operation that it was taking place, but that his government, and all of Pakistan should celebrate bin Laden’s demise. Bin Laden had repeatedly tried to kill Bhutto, and was suspected of plotting to assassinate Pres. Zardari.

Zardari said bin Laden was “an enemy of civilization”, and that all people everywhere are safer because of this covert operation. There has been speculation about whether Pakistan’s people might be offended by this operation or dismayed at the death of a symbolic leader of fundamentalist Islamist insurgency, but Pakistan’s president and other local observers say bin Laden was not in favor in Pakistan, nation should be expected to celebrate.

There is likely to be pressure on the US administration to abandon its policy of targeted missile strikes from drone aircraft, now that bin Laden has been killed, but counterterrorism experts have been telling the press there are still very well-funded, well-armed “second-tier” al Qaeda leaders, who need to be rounded up or targeted.

The United States Department of State has issued a blanket warning for all Americans traveling abroad, to be watchful for the possibility of anti-American attacks as retribution for the killing of bin Laden. The Taliban in Pakistan is now threatening retribution, first against Zardari and the government of Pakistan, then against the United States.

The US Department of Homeland Security has told the press there is no credible evidence of an imminent threat on American soil. The warnings so far have been to Americans traveling abroad, especially to places where there is evidence al Qaeda-linked or Taliban-linked groups could stage an attack.

Fox News is reporting specifics of the top-secret operation:

According to officials, a 40-man Navy SEALs squadron raided bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday. As officials described it, the raid was swift — the team was on the compound for less than 40 minutes and did not run into any local authorities during the firefight.

The top secret raid on bin Laden’s hidden compound is now certain to raise tensions between the United States and some elements of the Pakistan security apparatus, who may also find themselves at odds with the civilian leadership of the government. As TIME Magazine’s Middle East bureau chief Aryn Baker reported today:

That bin Laden had been living in a specially constructed compound less than an hours’ drive from Pakistani military HQ, and in the same town as the country’s premier military academy, makes the near constant denials by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies that the terror group leader was in the country difficult to swallow.

It is now looking increasingly likely that some figures in the government of Pakistan provided direct material aid to Osama bin Laden, to secure his fortified hiding place and to protect him against discovery by American agents and military spy satellites. Baker adds, in her analysis, that Pakistan’s security forces are everywhere in Pakistan, trailing foreigners and spying on journalists and anyone suspected of activity that might run counter to their interests:

The crackle and click of telephone lines is the constant reminder that no conversation over the phone is private, the crew-cut men in beige that materialize whenever I start asking questions proof that one is never quite alone in Pakistan. So the idea that absolutely no one but American intelligence knew who was living in that multi-million dollar compound beggars belief.

It would seem nearly impossible, then, that Pakistani intelligence did not know exactly where bin Laden was hiding, and the concern must now be: will there be a struggle for power among divergent factions within the ISI, some of whom openly support the Taliban and al Qaeda, or at least giving them shelter, and some of whom view them as mortal enemies of the nation of Pakistan? How will Zardari’s government deal with the emerging tensions, as foreign militia groups seek to destabilize his government, and he is likely faced with the need to detain those among his ranks who were, in effect, aiding the enemy?

It is, in some ways, thought that this could be just the most visible symbol to date that the US is no longer going to be patient with Pakistan’s involvement with terrorist gangs, and militia groups like the so-called Haqqani network, which is believed to be funding, training for and carrying out deadly attacks against US interests and civilians, inside Afghanistan.

Tonight, the news is breaking across global television and online media that the president of the United States will be making a special televised address to announce that Osama bin Laden has been confirmed killed. NBC News’ Chuck Todd is reporting the news began to leak out after Pres. Obama began informing, by telephone, the key leaders in Congress, that he would be making this announcement.

After a 10-year manhunt, and a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden was reportedly killed by US forces in a mansion outside the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. It had long been rumored bin Laden was seeking shelter inside Pakistan, after fleeing across the border in the fog of combat during the battle at Tora Bora.

There are reportedly celebrations taking place in New York City, where Bin Laden’s most infamous terror attack took nearly 3,000 lives on September 11, 2001. Massive crowds have gathered outside the White House, cheering and celebrating what might now mark the beginning of the end of the nation’s longest war.

At 11:35 pm EDT, Pres. Barack Obama stepped to the podium in the East Room of the White House, to announce that Osama bin Laden had been confirmed killed in an operation in a mansion outside Islamabad. He recounted the tragic history of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He explained that he had ordered his CIA director Leon Panetta to make capturing or killing bin Laden the top priority of the US efforts against al Qaeda.

Last week, Pres. Obama explained, he determined that there was enough information to warrant covert action against a compound in Abadabad, outside Islamabad. Tonight, he said, conditions were right, and he ordered the operation. Highly trained covert operatives raided the compound, resulting in a firefight, in which bin Laden was killed. The operatives then “took custody of his body”, and were able to confirm that he was in fact Osama bin Laden.

“Let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed, but … tonight we are reminded that America can do whatever we set our minds to.” He reminded the American viewing public that we can achieve justice and equality, help to spread our values, not owing to our power, but to “who we are, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

UPDATE, 11:48 pm EDT: According to CNN, George W. Bush issued a statement saying he was personally informed by Pres. Obama earlier this evening, that he congratulated the president for the accomplishment and he wanted to remember the military men and women. He said the news makes the message clear: “no matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”

UPDATE, 11:54 pm EDT: NBC News is reporting the most likely command in charge of the covert operation to capture or kill bin Laden was JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command. Such operations are often acknowledged after the fact, but the involvement of individuals in covert operations will not be made public.

Reports about the precise location of the strike now suggest it took place in Abbottabad, more than 100 km from Islamabad (by automobile, an estimated 35 miles by air), and roughly 200 km east of Peshawar. Bin Laden’s body was removed from the site of the skirmish, as evidence, to confirm the operation had succeeded and would not need to be repeated.

UPDATE, 12:21 am EDT, Monday, May 2: NBC News reporting Osama bin Laden, two al-Qaeda “couriers”, and one adult son of bin Laden, were shot and killed. One woman who was reportedly used by bin Laden as a human shield was also killed. The compound is being described as shockingly massive and fortified. It was a large compound with a central structure many times larger than any other house in the neighborhood, with 12 to 15-foot walls, at least two fortified outer walls, and heavy security.

UPDATE, 1:08 am EDT, Monday: Live video from the site of the World Trade Center, in lower Manhattan, and from Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, show massive crowds of young people gathering to celebrate a moment in history that many associate with justice, peace, possibly a return to a freer, less fearful way of living.

There are reports at this hour that unknown officials within Pakistan’s government and/or security services had been discovered to be giving tips to al Qaeda targets about imminent attacks, and there is concern about the possibility that the intensely fortified compound where bin Laden was staying may have been somehow provided or given support by some faction within the government or security services. There may now be pressure to find out who may have collaborated with bin Laden, allowing him to seek shelter in Pakistan for what is believed to be much of the last 9 years.

After what now looks like significant foot-dragging, for fully one month, Japanese authorities have finally admitted the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is undergoing a level 7 nuclear emergency, the worst possible. There is still an effort to slow-walk this news, with repeated claims the radiation release has not been as significant as Chernobyl, also a level 7, but the Fukushima disaster involves 6 reactors, with at least 4 considered to be at ongoing risk of meltdown.

Last week, radiation levels in water leaking from the plant were found to be at 7.5 MILLION times the legal limit, and it was acknowledged that officials had been deliberately dumping highly radioactive water directly into the Pacific Ocean. The news that, on day one of this emergency, there may have been as much as 10% of the Chernobyl event’s radiation released suggests the still mounting crisis is far from contained, and the evacuation area should be expanded.

There is concern authorities are still making an effort to obscure the true extent of the disaster, and many question why if the American nuclear agency was prescient enough to extend the recommended exclusion zone to a wider radius than what currently surrounds Chernobyl, weeks ago, the Japanese authorities appear to have been cooperating with Tokyo Electric in downplaying the gravity of the crisis.

According to the Guardian newspaper:

“At Chernobyl, the reactor itself exploded while still active, which is completely different from the situation at Fukushima,” Hidehiko Nishiyama said.

He added that the decision had been taken a month after the accident because experts needed time to analyse the data.

Japan’s nuclear safety commission estimated that the Fukushima plant’s reactors had released up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 per hour into the air for several hours after they were damaged in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

The pattern of underreporting, adjusted reporting, and moving from aggressive downplaying to ever more contrite admissions, seems for many to parallel the reaction of BP to its own industrial disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year, the single worst release of oil in world history, aside from Saddam Hussein’s military attempt to destroy Kuwait’s oil infrastructure during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

To this day, much of what BP knew about how much oil was released during last summer’s catastrophic blowout remains unknown to the public, and the oil giant is now suing to avoid paying the $20 billion it agreed to pay as restitution to the region and for cleanup.

There is good reason to scrutinize the reporting coming from Japan, as both the plant operator and the government appear to view it as in their interest to underreport the magnitude of the catastrophe.

If as much as 10% of the release of just one isotope from the Chernobyl disaster was released just on the first day of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, and we are now at day 32, and at least 4 o ut of 6 reactors —and/or their exposed spent-fuel cooling pools— are at risk of meltdown, and they have not yet found a way to contain the radioactive water pooling around the reactors, the ultimate release from Fukushima could be far worse.

We do not yet have adequate information to make that determination, but are being given a model whereby the authorities slow-walk the crisis response, downplay the official emergency rating, and appear to be imposing an inadequate radius of exclusion, while scientists study the data, in hopes of being able to produce a less than worst-case reading of the history of this crisis.

That is not adequate effort to protect the local population, the wider public, the human food, water and air supply, beyond Japan’s borders, or the future stability of the Japanese economy. The situation in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture may yet be the most grave, costly, and consequential nuclear disaster in world history, and local officials and world authorities need to organize their response as if it were so.

Reports from Tokyo today have authorities telling residents water is now safe for infant consumption, even as reports from Fukushima show radiation levels may have surged to 10 million times the normal level. Readings taken 30 miles out to sea have found radiation levels in seawater at 1,850 times the normal level. More nations around the Pacific Ocean are expressing concern about the handling of the disaster.

UPDATE on DATA: By this evening, TEPCo had released a revision to its earlier reports of radiation at 10 million times normal, correcting the figure to 100,000 times normal. The reading still constitutes a major, and very worrying radiation spike, and the cause of the misreading has not been isolated.

There appears to be a rising tension between Japanese government officials and the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, TEPCo. When three plant workers were reportedly exposed to highly dangerous levels of radiation, two of them hospitalized with severe radiation burns, government officials suggested the radiation may have come from a breach of the reactor core and TEPCo officials retorted that the leak could be coming from a water-pumping system.

It is unclear whether the high levels of radiation can be confirmed, as there may be, at the moment, too much danger for workers to return to the site where the 10-million-times radiation reading was taken. Officials have said they are not concerned about the seawater radiation levels, because ocean currents will “disperse” the radiation. But concern about seafood, Japan’s seafood industry, food supply and the impact on marine life, is mounting.

As reports of the spike in radiation levels went out this morning, there have been more warnings that even the initial process of containment will last for months. It is now becoming clear that the Fukushima disaster will be similar to the Chernobyl disaster in at least one respect: there will be a need for plant workers to continue going into an environment of extreme danger, for many years after the crisis is more or less brought under control, on a daily basis, to make sure the containment operation is running smoothly.

There are increasing calls for a long-term strategy, designed to roll back and contain the release of radiation, on a permanent basis, along with the permanent cool shut-down of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Critics of the crisis response have suggested government and power-company officials may be hoping to avoid that kind of long-term permanent shut-down, and that this reluctance may be hindering the planning for a comprehensive crisis resolution.

As of this writing, several questions remain unanswered:

1. What is the source of intensely radioactive water that hospitalized at least two plant workers last week?
2. Have one or more reactor cores been breached?
3. Are elevated levels of radiation in the Pacific Ocean a permanent contamination?
4. If so, of how wide an area?
5. Of what sort of marine life?
6. Is there any way to prevent radiation in seawater from entering the human food supply?
7. Has meltdown begun in one or more reactor cores?
8. Is there any way to contain radiation emanating from the spent-fuel cooling pools?
9. Will the Japanese government and TEPCo agree to permanently shut-down, secure and seal the Fukushima reactors and spent-fuel cooling pools?
10. Is there a plan in place to achieve long-term containment?

These are just the most urgent questions. There are others that must be asked, by extension. For instance: how is radiation reaching Tokyo in such levels that drinking water was considered no longer safe for infant consumption last week? Then: how can those radiation levels be considered safer now, as levels measured at the source of the radiation —the Fukushima Daiichi plant— soared?

These are difficult questions. No one could possibly envy the officials forced to deal with them, much less the workers who have to do the most dangerous work on the ground. But they are open questions, and tens of thousands of lives will likely hinge on how well and how swiftly they are answered. It is possible to answer these concerns directly, in a forthright manner, and with a scientifically viable crisis response. But it is not possible to do any of that, if authorities do not fully admit to the radical long-term gravity of what they are dealing with.

A report from the American Medical Association finds the US is not prepared to deal with the public health crisis that would ensue from a major nuclear accident. There is also evidence suggesting that aging nuclear plants are less stable and less secure than the public is led to believe. Indeed, radiation releases are surprisingly and disturbingly common.

Christian Parenti, author of the book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, told MSNBC tonight that at least two aging nuclear plants in the northeast —one in Vermont and one in New York— are presently leaking radiation. And as many as 180,000 gallons of radioactive tritium-laced water may have leaked into ground water in one incident.

According to the study, titled State-Level Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities:

The extent of planning for epidemiology and surveillance for the human health effects of radiation was assessed for 5 types: syndromic surveillance, clinician reporting, crisis-phase epidemiology, recovery-phase epidemiology, and other types of statistical surveillance (Table 1). A range between 70% and 84% of states reported minimal to no planning completed on the potential human effects of radiation among any of these 5 types of surveillance.

States reported only slightly better planning for providing advice on exposure assessment and environmental sampling combined (42%–50% reporting none to minimal planning) and little planning to provide advice for biological sampling (14% have none and 60% have minimal). Seventy-four percent of states reported having minimal (53%) or no (21%) plans to conduct population-based exposure monitoring.

In response to accidental release of radiation:

Twenty (53%) states reported having a finalized radiation-specific written response plan (Table 5). Four (20%) of the 20 states did not have a nuclear power plant (data not shown). For unintentional releases, half of the states had written or detailed operations plans for all scenarios except for a waterways incident, for which only 6 (15%) states reported having a written or detailed operations plan.

On just one day in April 2010, two different nuclear plants in New Jersey were visited by nuclear inspectors, to deal with possible radiation seepage. According to New Jersey Newsroom, “State and federal inspectors Friday were searching for the cause of a leak of radioactive water into catch basins at the Salem 2 nuclear power plant in Lower Alloways Creek in Salem County.”

Then, shortly after the Salem 2 release was made public:

the state Department of Environmental Protection announced that it had been notified by Exelon, owner of Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in Lacey, Ocean County, that a monitor that measures radiation emissions from the facility was discovered to be inoperable. It is unknown how long the monitor has been out of service.

Exelon, the operator of that Ocean County plant, was forced to pay for clean-up of an estimated 180,000 gallons of radioactive tritium-laced water that leaked from the plant on 9 April 2009. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection reportedly found evidence that water with contamination levels 50 times legal limits may have reached the Cohansey Aquifer, an important drinking-water source for southern New Jersey.

On Wednesday evening Chris Jansing reported for MSNBC that a report has found that 25% of all nuclear plants in the United States have leaked or are presently leaking radioactive waste.

According to a report from The New York Times, the underregulated practice of hydraulic fracturing (hydro-fracking) is releasing not only high quantities of minerals into the water supply, but also radioactive materials. Regulators are not acting to halt such releases or require full reprocessing of waste water from the drilling sites.

As the four troubled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex continue to deteriorate, the news is breaking this evening that workers at Reactor #4 are being forced to abandon the site, due to the risk of extreme radiation contamination. The evacuation means that at least one of the failing reactors will not have any one in place to manage it; at this hour, it is not clear whether the entire Fukushima complex is being evacuated.

If the entire complex is being abandoned, experts say the radiation would have to be so severe it is now no longer feasible to rotate workers in and out to reduce risk to each individual worker. There are mounting concerns that total evacuation of the plant means authorities are taking a “wait and see” attitude, meaning there will no longer be an opportunity to prevent total meltdown, if that is where the failing reactors are headed.

Japan is a very densely populated island nation, and there are fears the fallout resulting from any major nuclear explosion, fire or prolonged radiation seepage, could spread to other parts of the country. Already, the radiation leaking out appears to have affected conditions in Tokyo and also out to see, where US naval vessels were moored, staging rescue and relief operations.

There were reports throughout the day that Japanese authorities and the US military were being asked by the company that manages the Fukushima site to coordinate airborne delivery of water to cool the reactors. As of 10:00 pm EDT, the news was that Japanese authorities planned to assist in the delivery, overland by pump or from the air, of water and boric acid, to cool the overheating reactors.

But just half an hour later, the situation had, reportedly, deteriorated to the point where a decision was made that it would be safer to evacuate the roughly 50 remaining workers from the site, and possibly to start planning containment measures. If, however, the result of abandoning the site is a total meltdown of the radioactive fuel rods in the reactor cores, the resulting release of radioactivity could render a wide area uninhabitable, as occurred after the Chernobyl disaster more than 20 years ago.

UPDATE, 11:02 pm EDT: There are now reports of white smoke rising from both Reactor #3 and Reactor #4. Two workers are still missing from the explosion yesterday. American military personnel flying aid missions into Japan have been given potassium iodide to protect their thyroids from vulnerability to radioactive particulates.

There is now a report that after the workers were forced to evacuate, some, all or a different crew of workers, returned to the site after 45 minutes, to again attempt to restore the cooling and containment process. Several surrounding countries are now examining all food imported from Japan. There is a surge of demand for flights out of Japan, as foreign nationals seek to return home to escape the release of radiation from the Fukushima plant.

European governments are reportedly drawing up plans for a safety stress testing regime for nuclear plants. Germany has ordered seven nuclear plants in operation since prior to 1980 shut down, and the United States Congress is being pressured to call hearings to examine the safety and disaster preparedness at dozens of nuclear plants across the US.

Christian Parenti, author of the book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, told MSNBC tonight that at least two aging nuclear plants in the northeast —one in Vermont and one in New York— are presently leaking radiation. On one day in April 2010, two different nuclear plants in New Jersey were visited by nuclear inspectors, to deal with possible radiation seepage.

According to New Jersey Newsroom, “State and federal inspectors Friday were searching for the cause of a leak of radioactive water into catch basins at the Salem 2 nuclear power plant in Lower Alloways Creek in Salem County.” Then, shortly after the Salem 2 release was made public:

the state Department of Environmental Protection announced that it had been notified by Exelon, owner of Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in Lacey, Ocean County, that a monitor that measures radiation emissions from the facility was discovered to be inoperable. It is unknown how long the monitor has been out of service.

Exelon, the operator of that Ocean County plant, was forced to pay for clean-up of an estimated 180,000 gallons of radioactive tritium-laced water that leaked from the plant on 9 April 2009. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection reportedly found evidence that water with contamination levels 50 times legal limits may have reached the Cohansey Aquifer, an important drinking-water source for southern New Jersey.

UPDATE, 11:31 pm EDT: Chris Jansing reported for MSNBC that a report has found that 25% of all nuclear plants in the United States have leaked or are presently leaking radioactive waste.

The president’s proposed budget for 2012 includes $36 billion in loan guarantees for the development of new nuclear power plants. The United States has still not solved the problem of where to securely store nuclear waste material for the time frame necessary. In Japan, two nuclear reactors appaer to be in meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The $36 billion would be far more wisely spent developing a clean energy economy based on advanced solar and wind technology.

At Fukushima Daiichi, a third reactor (#2) is now said to be at risk of meltdown, after all the cooling fluid evaporated, completely exposing the radioactive fuel rods. Two other plants —one at Tokai and one at Onagawa— are also reported to be experiencing potential system failures that could lead to the release of radiation.

The effort underway at Fukushima Daiichi, to restore nuclear security to the three failing reactors, is experimental, and there is no viable alternative, due to the massive flooding of key areas of the plant. According to the New York Times:

Experts called the injection of seawater and neutron-absorbing boron into the site’s three crippled reactors units a desperation move never attempted before in the industry. It amounted to sacrificing the reactors in an attempt to maintain the structural integrity of the reactor and its encasing concrete containment structure and prevent a potential uncontrolled major radiological release. Three other Fukushima Daiichi reactors had been shut down for planned work before Friday’s 8.9 earthquake and were not part of the crisis.

“I would describe this measure as a Hail Mary Pass but if they succeed, there is plenty of water in the ocean and if they have the capability to pump this water in the necessary volume and at the necessary rates … then they can stabilize the reactor,” said former Energy Department official Robert Alvarez, according to press accounts of his press conference Saturday.

For three decades, the United States has been prioritizing other forms of energy generation, but the nuclear energy has seen a surge in support over the last decade. The Bush administration was a major source of support for the industry, governors and states have begun to talk about the economic viability of nuclear power, and the Obama administration has allotted $36 billion in new loan guarantees for the development of new nuclear plants.

But there is still strong opposition in much of the country to siting any nuclear facilities near homes, schools and workplace environments where people spend the bulk of their time. Farmers have preferred installing their own wind turbines to supporting the construction of major nuclear plants near their land. Public health concerns are very real, and safety guidelines and environmental hazards make nuclear very expensive to develop.

We are now experiencing one of the first cost-relative inflection points in the green power revolution. In North Carolina, solar energy is now cheaper than nuclear power. A report, from the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network and two Duke University researchers, finds that:

Now the nuclear industry is pressing for more subsidies. This is inappropriate. Commercial nuclear power has been with us for more than forty years. If it is not a mature industry by now, consumers of electricity should ask whether it ever will be competitive without public subsidies. There are no projections that nuclear electricity costs will decline.

The United States needs to get serious about how such subsidies are measured. When an industry “matures” in such a way that it requires more subsidies, nor fewer, just to operate, with costs to consumers rising, instead of falling, there are better options available, and those better, safer, more cost effective options should be explored.

Nuclear power plants, like the one at Fukushima Daiichi, contain 1,000 times more radioactivity to leak than the Hiroshima bomb. Nuclear scientists estimate 1,000,000 people would be killed or injured in a major accident, were one to occur at the San Onofre plant in southern California. But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Monday compared the risk to a bridge collapse or a plane crash.

Alexander literally suggested that the scale by which the people of the United States should measure the potential risk of a catastrophic nuclear disaster should be according to their fear of a highway bridge collapse. A highway collapse could kill people, and is and would be tragic, but it would be very unlikely to kill more than a few dozen people. It would be tragic to lose those lives, but such a tragedy is not comparable in scale to death or severe long-term injury to a million people.

It is one of the most astonishing examples of pathological ignorance displayed by any public official in this country for years. It is a sign that Sen. Alexander is willing to put his allegiance to industry ahead of his service to the people and the nation he has sworn to serve. Only a very cynical and corrupt mind could dare to make such a comparison or be so willing to mock the tragedy experienced by victims of radiation fallout.

Sen. Alexander may have made some astonishingly ignorant remarks in the past, or he may not. By comparison, it hardly seems to matter now. He has gone on the record telling American citizens he would be as concerned about the grave need for nuclear security as he would be about highway construction.

It should be so far beyond the acceptable limit for politically motivated misstatements for any public servant to make a remark of the kind Sen. Alexander has seen fit to interject into the debate about nuclear power that no intelligent adult would ever make such an irresponsible and flagrantly offensive statement. But it is not.

Sen. Alexander clearly holds one of two views: either he views the American people as so hopelessly benighted that there will be no political backlash whatsoever to his manipulative and grossly negligent lie, or he actually is ignorant enough to believe what he said, that a nuclear catastrophe is no worse than a highway accident.

Either way, it would seem the people of Tennessee have some thinking to do about how they plan to replace this senator with an individual who is willing to use genuine intellect and moral conscience to serve the better interests of the people of his state.

Tennessee deserves better, and the people of the United States deserve better, than a senator so deeply in league with a private, for-profit interest that makes its living on taxpayer subsidies, that he would suggest the public should not have a serious discussion about whether it is safe to put the most dangerous scientific process known to man in our communities.

A fourth reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has now reportedly lost its cooling system and is on fire, while a third of the troubled reactors has suffered an explosion. The exclusion zone has been expanded to 19 miles, and international monitors now say the Fukushima nuclear emergency is officially the second worst nuclear disaster in history, after the Chernobyl disaster. 

United States service personnel on the USS Ronald Reagan were reportedly “exposed” to radiation in or near Japan,and the ship is being moved, despite already being 60 miles from the site. A BBC World Service report today cited American pilots that may have been exposed while flying over the site. 

There are now questions being raised about whether Japanese authorities or industry officials have been concealing information about what now appears to be the extreme gravity of the crisis. While worldwide news reports have spread the news that the Fukushima plant could easily be brought under control, the news now coming to light appears to show the crisis has been steadily worsening.

On Monday, much attention was devoted to a failed attempt to cool the failing reactors using a rush of cool sea water, a risky process that was expected to increase pressure and which some suspect could be responsible for the latest explosion. 

Japanese authorities now report radiation leakage beyond legal limits and dangerous enough to cause serious harm to human health. It is not known how much radiation has leaked, but a press conference delivered by the power company running the plant suggested that both the reactor core and the outer containment vessel were breached. 

A graphic shown on Japan’s NHK television, and repeated on CNN was used to illustrate the interior of the reactor that suffered yesterday’s massive explosion. While there had not been a specific admission by operators of a serious radiation leak, it was reported that pressure inside the containment vessel dropped and radiation levels outside the containment vessel reached levels a human being could not safely absorb over an entire year.

UPDATE, 10:01 am EDT: Major aftershocks rock Japan, with several registering more than 6.0 magnitude. The nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi has been elevated to a level 6 nuclear emergency, the only such disaster to reach that level other than Chernobyl. 

Radiation levels outside one of the reactors is now listed as 400 times the level a human being could withstand in one year. While authorities refraining from publishing information they fear could lead to panic, the math seems simple: 400 times 365 days, the radiation exposure at the Fukushima plant could be over 14,000 times acceptable daily limits.

As of 10:00 am EDT, there were reports from two US military bases near Tokyo that background radiation levels were elevated, and precautions might need to be taken to ensure there is no impact on human health.

The condition of the Fukushima plant now appears to be deteriorating. Authorities have confirmed the containment vessel inside at least one reactor was breached, and there are reports the fire at Reactor #4 is releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere. 

Ongoing questions about the transparency of the plant operators’ reports regarding the status of the disaster so far are leading to speculation that radiation has been leaking out since well before yesterday’s explosion and fire.

UPDATE, 10:44 am EDT: MSNBC is now reporting radiation levels in Tokyo are at ten times normal, and radiation levels at the Fukushima plant are now elevated enough to kill an adult man in just five hours. The new numbers are a sign of how rapidly the situation is deteriorating. 

The IAEA has reportedly imposed a no-fly zone across a 19 mile or 30 km radius around the plant. The IAEA also reported that the reactors are “safe and stable” and efforts are ongoing to prevent total meltdown. The power company has reportedly requested that the Japanese and US militarize assist by running air drops of water from helicopters. 

This last revelation suggests there is mounting desperation and that no other option seems viable on the ground, at the site of the nuclear release.

Japanese authorities are reporting, just after 3:00 am EDT, that two of the reactor cores at the Fukushima nuclear plant may have begun meltdown. At least nine people are reported to have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. A 20km exclusion zone is being established, and authorities say they are evacuating an estimated 200,000 people from the area.

On Saturday, there was an explosion at the Fukushima complex, and there are reportedly fears of another explosion at the second troubled reactor. The second reactor potentially in meltdown, said to be Fukushima number three, has been reported to be using a plutonium-uranium fuel blend which is much more dangerous than the uranium fuel being used at the other Fukushima reactors.

The mass evacuation has raised discussion of the ultimate security of nuclear energy technology. The nuclear emergency has conjured memories of the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania and of the far worse Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine.

<--more-->Experts on Japan’s nuclear industry say it is the world’s most advanced in terms of earthquake preparedness, but that the technology is really designed to withstand a quake as much as 50 times weaker than this quake, by far the worst in Japanese history.

There are serious disparities between the security planning and the security requirements of the nuclear industry. While the physics dictates that some radioactive waste materials, with half-lives as long as 1 million years, will need to be absolutely secured for that length of time, the industry itself has not established a protocol for protecting waste material reliably verey far beyond the expected operable life of a nuclear power plant, some 30 to 40 years.

UPDATE, Monday 14 March, 12:40 am EDT: Reports from Japan and from the IAEA now put two more nuclear power plants in trouble: in Tokai, there is a cooling system malfunction, and at Onagawa, there is a reactor listed as emergency level one, with fear about the possibility of explosion or radiation leakage.

There was also a second explosion reported today at the Fukushima plant, where there is still concern that reactor number three, which uses a mix of plutonium and uranium fuel, might be in meltdown and release radiation or radioactive material into the environment.

According to the New York Times: The release of radioactive steam, as a stopgap emergency measure of cooling malfunctioning reactors could continue for weeks or months. The scale of the nuclear emergency is now said to be spreading, and there are concerns the logistics of getting all the necessary resources, technology and materials to the reactor sites may prove difficult given the collapse of infrastructure across the tsunami affected region.

The Fukushima nuclear plant contains 5 nuclear reactors, which combine to produce the world’s largest concentrated power generation. At least one of the reactors is reported to have radiation levels 1,000 times normal inside one of its control rooms. Today, RussiaToday is reporting that white smoke seen rising from the plant may be due to an explosion. Authorities have warned that some radioactive material may have seeped out into the environment already. There is an ongoing concern that the plant may be vulnerable to meltdown, as plant operators have not been able to resume cooling of nuclear fuel.

Google yesterday launched a “person finder” for Japan, to help people looking for relatives and loved ones who may be lost in a communications outage or in physical danger, due to the earthquake and tsunami. Facebook also has a disaster relief service at facebook.com/DisasterRelief. There is also a surge in information on Twitter at hash-tags like #tsunami or #sendai or Fukushima.

Two nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, are now reported to be unable to cool the nuclear fuel in their cores, and radioactive materials may have seeped into the environment. The reactors reportedly suffered service interruption after the worst earthquake in Japanese history. The magnitude 8.9 quake unleashed a massive tsunami the pushed far inland at Sendai, northeast of Tokyo.

The tsunami pushed as far as six miles inland. Reports of catastrophic damage from debris pushed along by the massive force of the waves have been pouring in from Sendai. Major oil refineries were on fire throughout the day, and Japan’s ambassador to the US told CNN that six million people are without power. As of 10 pm EST, there were reports that Japanese authorities were concerned the affected nuclear reactors might not be able to resume cooling fuel and that if a remedy is not found, a nuclear meltdown could ensue.

The United States, which has 40,000 military personnel stationed in Japan, is sending ships and troops to the Miyagi Prefecture, where the worst devastation occurred, to provide aid and possibly search and rescue assistance. CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported shortly after 10 pm EST that one or more nuclear power plants in Japan have resorted to radioactive venting —the release of radioactive steam— as an alternative means of cooling the radioactive fuel, to prevent meltdown.

The Kyoto News Agency is reporting temperatures are elevated at one of the malfunctioning nuclear plants. At the other, radiation levels are reported to be eight times normal outside the plant, as much as 1,000 times normal inside a control room inside the plant. There is no direct confirmation available from inside the plants. There are reports Japan’s government is rushing to get new power sources —possibly including generators and batteries— to the plants to resume regular cooling of the nuclear fuel.

The number of people dead or missing is not known, though official reports confirm at least 357 people have been killed. While Japan is thought to be the world’s most prepared nation for dealing with earthquakes, it is not known how thoroughly the nuclear industry there was prepared to deal with the violent aftermath of a major tsunami.

Observers have expressed confidence the industry can deal with the emergency in time to prevent a catastrophic meltdown and release of radiation. Critics, however, say the industry may be little more prepared for this kind of unforeseen disaster than BP was to deal with the unstoppable gusher released by the blowout of its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last year in the Gulf of Mexico.

The scale of the human tragedy in Japan is already breathtaking, and fears of a nuclear accident have sent chills through world media, world governments and the population of Japan. The power station at Fukushima is reportedly 100 times more powerful than the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, which suffered the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history, more than 20 years ago, and the two power plants combined generate the world’s largest concentrated amount of energy.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, however:

Farzad Rahnema, a Georgia Tech professor of nuclear engineering, had been reading stories that hinted at the possibility of a meltdown at the plant, which was shaken by the massive earthquake there. But he said the details he’d gleaned from those accounts, and from industry reports, suggested that a meltdown was unlikely.

There are safety and containment measures in place that were not in place at Chernobyl, according to numerous reports, and it is possible the authorities could maintain necessary cooling of nuclear materials using substitute power generation, even if the plant cannot be brought back to full power.

At present, however, the world is watching as Japan deals with its worst natural disaster in decades, facing the prospect of thousands of lives lost and the need to rebuild an entire region, while also facing the most immediate danger of nuclear disaster seen since the 1980s. The Japanese government has requested rescue and humanitarian aid assistance from the US military and it has been granted; it is not clear whether there may be high level security contacts relating to advanced nuclear containment methods.

IRAN: Demonstrators in Tehran yesterday defied an official ban on their proposed rally to support the people of Egypt and their ongoing process of democratic change. Security forces clashed with demonstrators, firing tear gas into the crowds. There are reports at least one person was killed, and hardliners within the regime are now calling for opposition leaders to be rounded up and executed.

The US government has reacted with intense criticism, saying the Iranian people have “universal human rights” to organize, protest and seek political reform. The White House and the State Dept. have both noted the “hypocrisy” of the Iranian regime’s treatment of the issue: while consistently praising the “people’s revolution” in Egypt, they are engaging in the same kind of authoritarian crackdown (with deadly consequences) at home.

BAHRAIN: In Bahrain, the ruling family says it supports the people’s right to demonstrate publicly, yet police attacked demonstrators there yesterday, firing not only tear gas, but also “bird shot” into crowds of unarmed civilians. At least one person was killed. When thousands marched today in the funeral procession to honor the victim, the scene was repeated.

Amid intense domestic and international outcry, and a spreading demand for the end of the monarchy, the royal family again said it supports the right of Bahrainis to peacefully demonstrate, and that the police violence was inexplicable. According to NPR’s reporting, after this morning’s attack on the funeral procession, police have not been seen near the demonstrators.

JORDAN: In Jordan, where any statement critical of the royal family can result in three years’ imprisonment, protesters are calling for major action to counter official corruption, but are not calling for an end to the monarchy. King Abdullah is widely seen as a source of “stability” and a positive figure for the nation. But in recent days, allegations his wife, Queen Rania, may have used her influence to “enrich her parents’ family” have been spreading.

The royal family says there is no truth to the allegations, but pro-democracy demonstrators are said to be discussing a campaign to have the allegations investigated. Queen Rania is widely seen as a committed proponent of human rights and democracy, internationally. Political observers say the King’s handling of the situation could be crucial for containing the protest movement within the parliamentary system.

LIBYA: Pro-democracy organizers are planning protests in Libya for Thursday, and there are calls on social networking sites for the end of Qadhafi’s rule. There are rumors of a brutal crackdown in the works, and there is mounting pressure on Qadhafi, who has sought to improve relations with the west, especially with the European Union, in recent years, to let the Libyan people demonstrate peacefully.

Qadhafi (also commonly spelled Gaddafi) has warned against the use of sites like Facebook and taken action to suppress online organizing. According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information: “Gaddafi has hired agents to attack activists who call for political reform and an end to corruption in Libya.”

Today, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on all governments to respect the “universal right” of all people to free expression and to share information. She said efforts to block access to the Internet were illegitimate and would not work. She echoed Pres. Obama’s recent statements about authoritarian obstruction of people’s rights being “unsustainable”.

Clinton said the US would support the right of pro-democracy movements to call for democratic change, especially where that effort is carried out through peaceful means. She called on all governments to show their legitimacy by recognizing the right of their people to self-determination, peaceful assembly and free expression.

EGYPT: Lara Logan —a courageous CBS News reporter who was abducted by the Mubarak regime, falsely accused of being an Israeli spy and held without charge, for reporting on the protest movement in Egypt— is now reportedly recovering from a sexual assault she suffered while covering the demonstrations. She reportedly was attacked by a “dangerous element” on the very day Hosni Mubarak left power.

She suffered the regime’s persecution directly, returned home after her release, then chose, courageously, to go back and to continue reporting. Human rights observers worry that hers was just one of many cases in which the regime attempted to silence its critics by any means necessary. According to the LA Times, “The [CBS] network said that a group of 200 people were then ‘whipped into a frenzy,’ pulling Logan away from her crew and attacking her until a group of women and Egyptian soldiers intervened.”

Logan was shooting footage for a report on 60 minutes, in which she was hoping to get a sense of the mood of the crowds in Tahrir Square. Journalists were routinely brutalized by the Mubarak regime amid the recent wave of protests. The Committee to Protect Journalists, of whose board Logan is a member, says at least 140 journalists were wounded or killed in the Mubarak government’s violent crackdown on dissent.

CPJ released this statement:

The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by news that CBS correspondent and CPJ board member Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and beaten in Cairo on Friday while covering rallies marking the resignation of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. “We have seen Lara’s compassion at work while helping journalists who have faced brutal aggression while doing their jobs,” CPJ Chairman Paul Steiger said. “She is a brilliant, courageous, and committed reporter. Our thoughts are with Lara as she recovers.”

The news raises still more concern that the crimes committed by the Mubarak regime before the dictator relinquished power may have been just the tip of a cruel iceberg, a systematic regime of arbitrary detention, false charges, brutal assaults and disappearances. There are renewed calls for criminal investigations into the exact nature of all high-level discussions relating to the government’s response to the protests.

China’s president Hu Jintao is visiting the United States and will be the focus of several state-level functions, including a full state dinner and a special luncheon hosted by the vice president, Joe Biden. In the face of US demands that China remove rate controls and allow its currency to appreciate, Pres. Hu has said the yuan should be thought of as the world’s currency standard, with other currencies priced against its value.

Is Pres. Hu so tone-deaf as to pave the way for a lavish state visit —where major issues of economics, security, human rights and more, will be discussed— with a call to sideline the United States’ dollar as the leading guide for international trade valuations? Or is this just an attempt to raise the stakes, put pressure on the US and bargain China’s way out of US pressure to let the yuan appreciate?

The US has been pressuring China to loosen its control of yuan valuations and allow the marketplace to drive the value of the yuan higher. The effect would be to reduce the US trade deficit with China, but China is resisting the move, because it could undermine Chinese exports and manufacturing, the main drivers of its economic boom. Hu may be raising the stakes of the debate deliberately, in order to persuade the US to accept something less.

Still, in the week preceding the visit, the yuan has appreciated, and is expected to continue, which may be, in part, a sign that China is responding to the pressure and/or interested in collaborating with its biggest trading partner. While some in the US have painted China as a liability to the US, owning too much debt and ready to “call it in”, others say the relationship is symbiotic, so much so that China cannot act in a way that would harm US buying power.

Even as GM is making major inroads in the Chinese auto market, Chinese firms are buying up American green energy businesses, ranging from manufacturing to wind farms and energy companies. In fact, while Pres. Obama’s Recovery Act will over its full life devote more funding to clean energy than all previous administrations combined —$80 billion—, China has become the global leader in funding, with $230 billion.

If Hu’s call for a global economy rooted in the value of the yuan is a diplomatic gambit, it is in keeping with China’s history of raising the stakes before asking allies and/or opponents to settle for less. The US has been known to do the same, and it can be expected the Obama administration was ready for such a maneuver, though perhaps as startled as anyone else by Hu’s aggressiveness on this point.

China has been hoping to bargain over another point, which is US praise for jailed Chinese democracy activist and 2010 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Liu Xiaobo. Pres. Obama has been “forward leaning” —in the words of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs— in his support of Liu, adding that “he should be free, that he certainly should be free to go Oslo and accept his prize”.

Liu was not allowed to travel to Oslo, remains in jail, and even his wife has been subject to house arrest and prohibited from traveling to receive the award. Mr. Liu was one of the framers of the Charter ’08 reform program, a kind of pro-democracy constitution whose release was timed to coincide with the Beijing Olympic Games. China treats Liu and the Charter ’08 movement as guilty of sedition.

Pres. Obama and Sec. of State Clinton are both expected to press Hu and his diplomatic corps on the need to advance human rights in China, but both are also cited as indicating that they cannot let deep differences on those issues stall urgent negotiations on nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, or trade issues relating to China’s potential as a market for US goods.

The Burmese ruling military junta, which officially corrected the English translation to Myanmar —a more traditional pronunciation— after it seized power, has staged the first democratic elections in two decades, and observers both inside and outside the country are saying the vote process was rigged to favor pro-junta politicians. The military also retains no less than 25% of all seats in the new parliament, which will double as an electoral college to choose the president.

The party of Nobel laureate and chief opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for most of the twenty years since she won a landslide victory in the 1990 presidential vote, has been barred from participating. The party called for a nationwide civilian boycott of the vote, to demonstrate the illegitimacy of the process.

Still, preliminary reports suggest turnout may have been as high as 60%. Most outside observers say turnout is a symbolic issue, given the numerous ways in which it is alleged the military government rigged the vote to bar dissidents or opponents from winning office. But the Christian Science Monitor reports that some pragmatists say this is a meaningful first step and could open the way to more pluralistic and adversarial politics.

International election monitors have been banned, journalists have been forbidden from entering the country to report on the polling process, and opposition leaders have been detained or refused release. Aung San Suu Kyi, the most visible and respected pro-democracy activist in the country, remains under military guard under “temporary” house arrest, which the junta says is for her safety.

Most international observers believe that since she has effectively been denied the presidency since 1990, by use of military force, there could be no legitimate vote without her active political involvement in the campaign. The generals, however, have another vision, which seems to be to fashion a semi-democratic process through which pro-military parties with differing views on issues of policy compete for public backing.

The idea of a “Fidel Castro lite” type of constitutional democracy has gained ground as a way of analyzing the peculiarities of the process. Castro has forbidden any party other than his Communist Party of Cuba to compete in national elections, since taking power in 1959, but still claims elections are democratic. By comparison, Iran’s hardline clerical regime has permitted opposition victories and at least one period of serious reformist government.

The Burmese junta, however, appears to be determined to prevent any such opposition figures from coming to power. In effect, they would need only 25% (plus one) of the new parliamentary ministers to support their candidate, as they retain fully 25% of the electoral college vote. Most casual observers and comment from the street seem to suggest that while many will vote their conscience, many who participate may view this first election as a great step forward, but a formality, and be afraid to vote against the junta.

With allegations of ballot-box-stuffing and widespread voter intimidation, including unconfirmed reports of physical violence against opposition volunteers and party supporters, it appears the outcome of the vote will be widely considered illegitimate. It now looks, however, like the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which is supported by the ruling junta, will take 80% of the seats in the new parliament, which means it will have earned the support of voters for 73% of the vote-determined seats.

The BBC is reporting that the election has spurred regional hopes that Burma will now be able to emerge from a long night of dictatorial regression:

Chinese papers strongly urge Burma and the rest of the region to ignore the West’s condemnation and press on with their own methods of political change.

A Thai paper says that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will have no choice but to endorse the results as Burma’s inclusion in the group helps support its high economic growth.

The same report says India has tentatively expressed the view that this first step toward electoral democracy could “open the floodgates” and lead to a pro-democratic progress that could not be rolled back by the military. The National Unity Party (NUP), associated with supporters of the former military dictator Ne Win, who ruled from 1962 through 1988, won the second most votes.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the vote was “insufficiently inclusive, participatory and transparent“, and demanded that Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners be released “without delay”. The clear reaction of the world’s top diplomat was that this election could not be considered legitimate with so many obstacles to participation and so many people held prisoner simply to prevent their playing a role in the campaign.

The question will now have to be: will the Myanma (Burmese) people find a more solid footing in the sphere of parliamentary politics, and carry out the substance of the reforms the opposition has so long sought, or will the military junta continue to exercise its extreme control of the political sphere, despite voters having officially chosen civilian leaders whose authority should supersede that of the generals?

There is also some question as to whether the programming of a bloc of 25% of parliamentary seats for representatives of the military is a legal ploy to allow top officials responsible for serious crimes to avoid prosecution, following a strategy like that tried by Chilean former dictator General Augusto Pinochet, who declared himself senator for life, retaining immunity for the brutal crimes he was alleged to have ordered on behalf of his regime.

The following text is an official transcript of Pres. Obama’s remarks to a joint session of the Indian Parliament, as delivered on Monday, 8 November 2010, at Parliament House, New Delhi, India

5:40 P.M. IST

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Vice President, Madam Speaker, Mr. Prime Minister, members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, and most of all, the people of India.

I thank you for the great honor of addressing the representatives of more than one billion Indians and the world’s largest democracy. (Applause.) I bring the greetings and friendship of the world’s oldest democracy —- the United States of America, including nearly three million proud and patriotic Indian-Americans. (Applause.)

Over the past three days, my wife Michelle and I have experienced the — and dynamism of India and its people — from the majesty of Humayun’s Tomb to the advanced technologies that are empowering farmers and women who are the backbone of Indian society; from the Diwali celebrations with schoolchildren to the innovators who are fueling India’s economic rise; from the university students who will chart India’s future, to you —-leaders who helped to bring India to this moment of extraordinary promise.

At every stop, we have been welcomed with the hospitality for which Indians have always been known. So, to you and the people of India, on behalf of me, Michelle and the American people, please accept my deepest thanks. (Applause.) Bahoot dhanyavad. (Applause.)

Now, I am not the first American President to visit India. Nor will I be the last. But I am proud to visit India so early in my presidency. It’s no coincidence that India is my first stop on a visit to Asia, or that this has been my longest visit to another country since becoming President. (Applause.) For in Asia and around the world, India is not simply emerging; India has emerged. (Applause.)

And it is my firm belief that the relationship between the United States and India -— bound by our shared interests and our shared values -— will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century. This is the partnership I’ve come here to build. This is the vision that our nations can realize together.

My confidence in our shared future is grounded in my respect for India’s treasured past -— a civilization that’s been shaping the world for thousands of years. Indians unlocked the intricacies of the human body and the vastness of our universe. It’s no exaggeration to say that our Information Age is rooted in Indian innovations —- including the number zero. (Applause.)

Of course, India not only opened our minds, she expanded our moral imaginations — with religious texts that still summon the faithful to lives of dignity and discipline, with poets who imagined a future “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high” — (applause) — and with a man whose message of love and justice endures -— the father of your nation, Mahatma Gandhi. (Applause.)

For me and Michelle, this visit has, therefore, held special meaning. See, throughout my life, including my work as a young man on behalf of the urban poor, I’ve always found inspiration in the life of Gandhiji and his simple and profound lesson to be the change we seek in the world. (Applause.) And just as he summoned Indians to seek their destiny, he influenced champions of equality in my own country, including a young preacher named Martin Luther King. After making his pilgrimage to India a half-century ago, Dr. King called Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance “the only logical and moral approach” in the struggle for justice and progress. (Applause.)

So we were honored to visit the residence where Gandhi and King both stayed —- Mani Bhavan. And we were humbled to pay our respects at Raj Ghat. And I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as President of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared and inspired with America and the world. (Applause.)

An ancient civilization of science and innovation; a fundamental faith in human progress — this is the sturdy foundation upon which you have built ever since that stroke of midnight when the tricolor was raised over a free and independent India. (Applause.) And despite the skeptics who said this country was simply too poor, or too vast, or too diverse to succeed, you surmounted overwhelming odds and became a model to the world.

Instead of slipping into starvation, you launched a Green Revolution that fed millions. Instead of becoming dependent on commodities and exports, you invested in science and technology and in your greatest resource —- the Indian people. And the world sees the results, from the supercomputers you build to the Indian flag that you put on the moon.

Instead of resisting the global economy, you became one of its engines —- reforming the licensing raj and unleashing an economic marvel that has lifted tens of millions of people from poverty and created one of the world’s largest middle classes.

Instead of succumbing to division, you have shown that the strength of India —- the very idea of India —- is its embrace of all colors, all castes, all creeds. (Applause.) It’s the diversity represented in this chamber today. It’s the richness of faiths celebrated by a visitor to my hometown of Chicago more than a century ago -— the renowned Swami Vivekananda. He said that, “holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character.”

And instead of being lured by the false notion that progress must come at the expense of freedom, you built the institutions upon which true democracy depends —- free and fair elections, which enable citizens to choose their own leaders without recourse to arms — (applause) — an independent judiciary and the rule of law, which allows people to address their grievances; and a thriving free press and vibrant civil society which allows every voice to be heard. This year, as India marks 60 years with a strong and democratic constitution, the lesson is clear: India has succeeded, not in spite of democracy; India has succeeded because of democracy. (Applause.)

Now, just as India has changed, so, too, has the relationship between our two nations. In the decades after independence, India advanced its interests as a proud leader of the nonaligned movement. Yet, too often, the United States and India found ourselves on opposite sides of a North-`South divide, estranged by a long Cold War. Those days are over.

Here in India, two successive governments led by different parties have recognized that deeper partnership with America is both natural and necessary. And in the United States, both of my predecessors —- one a Democrat, one a Republican -— worked to bring us closer, leading to increased trade and a landmark civil nuclear agreement. (Applause.)

So since that time, people in both our countries have asked: What’s next? How can we build on this progress and realize the full potential of our partnership? That’s what I want to address today —- the future that the United States seeks in an interconnected world, and why I believe that India is indispensable to this vision; how we can forge a truly global partnership -— not just in one or two areas, but across many; not just for our mutual benefit, but for the benefit of the world.

Of course, only Indians can determine India’s national interests and how to advance them on the world stage. But I stand before you today because I am convinced that the interests of the United States —- and the interests we share with India -—are best advanced in partnership. I believe that. (Applause.)

The United States seeks security —- the security of our country, our allies and partners. We seek prosperity -— a strong and growing economy in an open international economic system. We seek respect for universal values. And we seek a just and sustainable international order that promotes peace and security by meeting global challenges through stronger global cooperation.

Now, to advance these interests, I have committed the United States to comprehensive engagement with the world, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. And a central pillar of this engagement is forging deeper cooperation with 21st century centers of influence -— and that must necessarily include India.

Now, India is not the only emerging power in the world. But relationships between our countries is unique. For we are two strong democracies whose constitutions begin with the same revolutionary words —- the same revolutionary words — “We the people.” We are two great republics dedicated to the liberty and justice and equality of all people. And we are two free market economies where people have the freedom to pursue ideas and innovation that can change the world. And that’s why I believe that India and America are indispensable partners in meeting the challenges of our time. (Applause.)

Since taking office, I’ve, therefore, made our relationship a priority. I was proud to welcome Prime Minister Singh for the first official state visit of my presidency. (Applause.) For the first time ever, our governments are working together across the whole range of common challenges that we face. Now, let me say it as clearly as I can: The United States not only welcomes India as a rising global power, we fervently support it, and we have worked to help make it a reality.

Together with our partners, we have made the G20 the premier forum for international economic cooperation, bringing more voices to the table of global economic decision-making, and that has included India. We’ve increased the role of emerging economies like India at international financial institutions. We valued India’s important role at Copenhagen, where, for the first time, all major economies committed to take action to confront climate change —- and to stand by those actions. We salute India’s long history as a leading contributor to United Nations peacekeeping missions. And we welcome India as it prepares to take its seat on the United Nations Security Council. (Applause.)

In short, with India assuming its rightful place in the world, we have an historic opportunity to make the relationship between our two countries a defining partnership of the century ahead. And I believe we can do so by working together in three important areas.

First, as global partners we can promote prosperity in both our countries. Together, we can create the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future. With my visit, we are now ready to begin implementing our civil nuclear agreement. This will help meet India’s growing energy needs and create thousands of jobs in both of our countries. (Applause.)

We need to forge partnerships in high-tech sectors like defense and civil space. So we’ve removed Indian organizations from our so-called “entity list.” And we’ll work to remove — and reform our controls on exports. Both of these steps will ensure that Indian companies seeking high-tech trade and technologies from America are treated the same as our very closest allies and partners. (Applause.)

We can pursue joint research and development to create green jobs; give India more access to cleaner, affordable energy; meet the commitments we made at Copenhagen; and show the possibilities of low-carbon growth.

And together, we can resist the protectionism that stifles growth and innovation. The United States remains —- and will continue to remain —- one of the most open economies in the world. And by opening markets and reducing barriers to foreign investment, India can realize its full economic potential as well. As G20 partners, we can make sure the global economic recovery is strong and is durable. And we can keep striving for a Doha Round that is ambitious and is balanced —- with the courage to make the compromises that are necessary so global trade works for all economies.

Together, we can strengthen agriculture. Cooperation between Indian and American researchers and scientists sparked the Green Revolution. Today, India is a leader in using technology to empower farmers, like those I met yesterday who get free updates on market and weather conditions on their cell phones. And the United States is a leader in agricultural productivity and research. Now, as farmers and rural areas face the effects of climate change and drought, we’ll work together to spark a second, more sustainable Evergreen Revolution.

Together, we’re improving Indian weather forecasting systems before the next monsoon season. We aim to help millions of Indian farmers — farming households save water and increase productivity, improve food processing so crops don’t spoil on the way to market, and enhance climate and crop forecasting to avoid losses that cripple communities and drive up food prices.

And as part of our food security initiative, we’re going to share India’s expertise with farmers in Africa. And this is an indication of India’s rise —- that we can now export hard-earned expertise to countries that see India as a model for agricultural development. It’s another powerful example of how American and Indian partnership can address an urgent global challenge.

Because the wealth of a nation also depends on the health of its people, we’ll continue to support India’s effort against diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, and as global partners, we’ll work to improve global health by preventing the spread of pandemic flu. And because knowledge is the currency of the 21st century, we will increase exchanges between our students, our colleges and our universities, which are among the best in the world.

As we work to advance our shared prosperity, we can partner to address a second priority —- and that is our shared security. In Mumbai, I met with the courageous families and survivors of that barbaric attack. And here in Parliament, which was itself targeted because of the democracy it represents, we honor the memory of all those who have been taken from us, including American citizens on 26/11 and Indian citizens on 9/11.

This is the bond that we share. It’s why we insist that nothing ever justifies the slaughter of innocent men, women and children. It’s why we’re working together, more closely than ever, to prevent terrorist attacks and to deepen our cooperation even further. And it’s why, as strong and resilient societies, we refuse to live in fear. We will not sacrifice the values and rule of law that defines us, and we will never waver in the defense of our people.

America’s fight against al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates is why we persevere in Afghanistan, where major development assistance from India has improved the lives of the Afghan people. We’re making progress in our mission to break the Taliban’s momentum and to train Afghan forces so they can take the lead for their security. And while I have made it clear that American forces will begin the transition to Afghan responsibility next summer, I’ve also made it clear that America’s commitment to the Afghan people will endure. The United States will not abandon the people of Afghanistan -— or the region -— to violent extremists who threaten us all.

Our strategy to disrupt and dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates has to succeed on both sides of the border. And that’s why we have worked with the Pakistani government to address the threat of terrorist networks in the border region. The Pakistani government increasingly recognizes that these networks are not just a threat outside of Pakistan —- they are a threat to the Pakistani people, as well. They’ve suffered greatly at the hands of violent extremists over the last several years.

And we’ll continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks must be brought to justice. (Applause.) We must also recognize that all of us have an interest in both an Afghanistan and a Pakistan that is stable and prosperous and democratic —- and India has an interest in that, as well.

In pursuit of regional security, we will continue to welcome dialogue between India and Pakistan, even as we recognize that disputes between your two countries can only be resolved by the people of your two countries.

More broadly, India and the United States can partner in Asia. Today, the United States is once again playing a leadership role in Asia —- strengthening old alliances; deepening relationships, as we are doing with China; and we’re reengaging with regional organizations like ASEAN and joining the East Asia summit —- organizations in which India is also a partner. Like your neighbors in Southeast Asia, we want India not only to “look East,” we want India to “engage East” —- because it will increase the security and prosperity of all our nations.

As two global leaders, the United States and India can partner for global security —- especially as India serves on the Security Council over the next two years. Indeed, the just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a United Nations that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate. That is why I can say today, in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed United Nations Security Council that includes India as a permanent member. (Applause.)

Now, let me suggest that with increased power comes increased responsibility. The United Nations exists to fulfill its founding ideals of preserving peace and security, promoting global cooperation, and advancing human rights. These are the responsibilities of all nations, but especially those that seek to lead in the 21st century. And so we look forward to working with India —- and other nations that aspire to Security Council membership -— to ensure that the Security Council is effective; that resolutions are implemented, that sanctions are enforced; that we strengthen the international norms which recognize the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all individuals.

This includes our responsibility to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Since I took office, the United States has reduced the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and we’ve agreed with Russia to reduce our own arsenals. We have put preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism at the top of our nuclear agenda, and we have strengthened the cornerstone of the global non-proliferation regime, which is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Together, the United States and India can pursue our goal of securing the world’s vulnerable nuclear materials. We can make it clear that even as every nation has the right to peaceful nuclear energy, every nation must also meet its international obligations —- and that includes the Islamic Republic of Iran. And together, we can pursue a vision that Indian leaders have espoused since independence —- a world without nuclear weapons. (Applause.)

And this leads me to the final area where our countries can partner —- strengthening the foundations of democratic governance, not only at home but abroad.

In the United States, my administration has worked to make government more open and transparent and accountable to people. Here in India, you’re harnessing technologies to do the same, as I saw yesterday at an expo in Mumbai. Your landmark Right to Information Act is empowering citizens with the ability to get the services to which they’re entitled — (applause) — and to hold officials accountable. Voters can get information about candidates by text message. And you’re delivering education and health care services to rural communities, as I saw yesterday when I joined an e-panchayat with villagers in Rajasthan.

Now, in a new collaboration on open government, our two countries are going to share our experience, identify what works, and develop the next generation of tools to empower citizens. And in another example of how American and Indian partnership can address global challenges, we’re going to share these innovations with civil society groups and countries around the world. We’re going to show that democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for the common man —- and woman.

Likewise, when Indians vote, the whole world watches. Thousands of political parties; hundreds of thousands of polling centers; millions of candidates and poll workers — and 700 million voters. There’s nothing like it on the planet. There is so much that countries transitioning to democracy could learn from India’s experience, so much expertise that India can share with the world. And that, too, is what is possible when the world’s largest democracy embraces its role as a global leader.
As the world’s two largest democracies, we must never forget that the price of our own freedom is standing up for the freedom of others. (Applause.) Indians know this, for it is the story of your nation. Before he ever began his struggle for Indian independence, Gandhi stood up for the rights of Indians in South Africa. Just as others, including the United States, supported Indian independence, India championed the self-determination of peoples from Africa to Asia as they, too, broke free from colonialism. (Applause.) And along with the United States, you’ve been a leader in supporting democratic development and civil society groups around the world. And this, too, is part of India’s greatness.

Now, we all understand every country will follow its own path. No one nation has a monopoly on wisdom, and no nation should ever try to impose its values on another. But when peaceful democratic movements are suppressed —- as they have been in Burma, for example — then the democracies of the world cannot remain silent. For it is unacceptable to gun down peaceful protestors and incarcerate political prisoners decade after decade. It is unacceptable to hold the aspirations of an entire people hostage to the greed and paranoia of bankrupt regimes. It is unacceptable to steal elections, as the regime in Burma has done again for all the world to see.

Faced with such gross violations of human rights, it is the responsibility of the international community —- especially leaders like the United States and India —- to condemn it. And if I can be frank, in international fora, India has often shied away from some of these issues. But speaking up for those who cannot do so for themselves is not interfering in the affairs of other countries. It’s not violating the rights of sovereign nations. It is staying true to our democratic principles. It is giving meaning to the human rights that we say are universal. And it sustains the progress that in Asia and around the world has helped turn dictatorships into democracies and ultimately increased our security in the world.

So promoting shared prosperity, preserving peace and security, strengthening democratic governance and human rights — these are the responsibilities of leadership. And as global partners, this is the leadership that the United States and India can offer in the 21st century. Ultimately, though, this cannot be a relationship only between presidents and prime ministers, or in the halls of this Parliament. Ultimately, this must be a partnership between our peoples. (Applause.) So I want to conclude by speaking directly to the people of India who are watching today.

In your lives, you have overcome odds that might have overwhelmed a lesser country. In just decades, you have achieved progress and development that took other nations centuries. You are now assuming your rightful place as a leader among nations. Your parents and grandparents imagined this. Your children and grandchildren will look back on this. But only this generation of Indians can seize the possibilities of the moment.

As you carry on with the hard work ahead, I want every Indian citizen to know: The United States of America will not simply be cheering you on from the sidelines. We will be right there with you, shoulder to shoulder. (Applause.) Because we believe in the promise of India. We believe that the future is what we make it. We believe that no matter who you are or where you come from, every person can fulfill their God-given potential, just as a Dalit like Dr. Ambedkar could lift himself up and pen the words of the constitution that protects the rights of all Indians. (Applause.)

We believe that no matter where you live —- whether a village in Punjab or the bylanes of Chandni Chowk — (laughter) — an old section of Kolkata or a new high-rise in Bangalore — every person deserves the same chance to live in security and dignity, to get an education, to find work, to give their children a better future.

And we believe that when countries and cultures put aside old habits and attitudes that keep people apart, when we recognize our common humanity, then we can begin to fulfill these aspirations that we share. It’s a simple lesson contained in that collection of stories which has guided Indians for centuries —- the Panchtantra. And it’s the spirit of the inscription seen by all who enter this great hall: “That one is mine and the other a stranger is the concept of little minds. But to the large-hearted, the world itself is their family.”

This is the story of India; this is the story of America —- that despite their differences, people can see themselves in one another, and work together and succeed together as one proud nation. And it can be the spirit of partnership between our nations —- that even as we honor the histories which in different times kept us apart, even as we preserve what makes us unique in a globalized world, we can recognize how much we can achieve together.

And if we let this simple concept be our guide, if we pursue the vision I’ve described today —- a global partnership to meet global challenges —- then I have no doubt that future generations —- Indians and Americans —- will live in a world that is more prosperous and more secure and more just because of the bonds that our generation has forged today.

So, thank you, and Jai Hind. (Applause.) And long live the partnership between India and the United States. (Applause.)

END 6:17 P.M. IST

The following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Joseph Robertson, Cafe Sentido’s editorial director, with Davoud Geramifard, a Persian mixed-media artist and filmmaker living in Toronto, Canada, whose documentary Voices of the Unheard was screened at this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City…

CafeSentido (editor Joseph Robertson): Was it a difficult choice to film undercover in Iran knowing you might not be able to return as a result?

Davoud Geramifard (director): Going back to make this film was a conscious decision. I knew that I might be arrested, or even killed, as it happened before to many Iranians who tried to do the same thing. The saddest case was Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian who was murdured and raped just for taking pictures outside the notorious Evin prison. But how could I live in peace if I had chosen to be indifferent or silent about the brutalities that I felt for many years in Iran. Someone had to do it, and I hope others continue on this path, because unless we expose these critical issues, we would not be able to gain what our people has been fighting for.

CS: How are the people who were filmed? Have any of them expressed concerns about repercussions? Or are they excited to be speaking out?

DG: My participants are OK at the moment. I have constant contact with them, and till now, there has not been any issue for them. However we are still preventing the mass distribution of the film, and our goal is to show the film in festivals across the globe for now. My participants are proud of what they did, otherwise, they would not have been in the film from the beginning. The Iran that they have portrayed has been missing from the the psyche of outside world for such a long time, that they wanted to take the chance and speak out. I think now it is the responsibility of the international community to respect their courage and HEAR their stories, and do not leave them alone.

CS: Did you have a specific structure of three or four key areas you wanted to cover? Or did you break the film into chapters only after shooting?

DG: I had the structure planned carefully prior to the shoot. I did an academic research that took about two years. I identified and categorized various secular communities, and wanted to have the best structure, so that each category could have a member in the film. I knew the style that I wanted to use, and I wanted to add something to the filmmaking language as well as being fare to the topic. Each participant and his/her environment actually dictated and formed the style, and I wanted the film to allow them to be comfortable.

CS: If there’s a corner of life (or multiple) in Iran you’d like to film but weren’t able to, what would it be? And why? Will you try to do that work without a change in administration?

DG: There are many topics that I want to explore and put into film in Iran. Currently I’m working on my next documentary, Cyber Revolution which is about the use of web-based social media in the formation of emancipatory movements in Iran. This is something I can do without returning back to Iran. I dream of doing docs on topics such as the woman’s rights movements, worker’s situation, and the bitter story of the Iranian oil industry which from my perspective is the real problem of Iran and Iranians. I’m also writing a script for my first fiction film, which I hope I can bring in front of the camera it in a neighboring country, before it is too late!

CS: What role do you believe economic trends play in the mindset of the people you spoke to? Does this vary by generation?

DG: Economics trends play a crucial role. Many of my participants see Iran as a rich country that should be strong, regardless of its oil reserves. The new generation needs work, they demand a good lifestyle, at least something similar to their father’s generation, but the Iranian government prefers to spend the Iranian money on expanding their influence in the region, or buying more arms and building a stronger repressive “Revolutionary Guard”. Inflation rate is galloping in Iran, gas is rationed, but they send billions of dollars for Hezbullah. Iranian people are not happy with that. I personally believe that the deterioration of economics combined with free communication with the outside world will be the Achilles heel of the Islamic Republic. The moment they cannot find buyers for their oil, they are on the verges of collapse.

CS: What issues (aside from political change) did you find are central to the reformists’ agenda?

DG: I think that the 30 years-long experience of the Islamic regime has convinced a fraction of the “insiders” (AKA the reformists) that free trade can prevent the total collapse of the regime. These people who are also famous as “technocrats” want people to have jobs and a little bit of freedom, so that they can be able to buy, spend and be “happy” on a consumerist or liberal democratic level. In order to make this minute change take shape, they have to for example give more freedom to the women, or to the students. Real political change, or the change of the constitution or the theocratic system has not been a part of their agenda. This notion has been forced on them just after the election, by the people whose need for change is much more drastic than the change the reformists were seeking.

CS: Were you conscious of crafting an aesthetic or a mood for the film or for any of its chapters?

DG: Absolutely. I wanted the film to have something to say with its form and aesthetics. Documentary filmmaking is an important part of cinema. I have studied it in academia and as a maker I wanted to add to this rich legacy. I studied form in both fiction and documentary extensively and wanted the film to blur the boundary between these two, because that is what satisfy me the most as a maker. In addition to that, I wanted the film to be poetic and non-expository. Poetry is the most important form of art in Iran. Even in our daily conversations we use tropes, so I always and almost unconsciously go back to that legacy and try to use it in a visual way. Finally I should mention that I think the style of this film was partly dictated by the subject. I wanted the viewer to feel as a member of the communities that they are encountering in the film. Thus I went for a verite style to create that comfort.

CS: What role did sound play in how you put the final cut together?

DG: Music and sound are my passion right after cinema. Sometimes I feel if my love affair with cinema was not this much dominant, I would have been a musician. However this secondary love story has crafted a good listener out of me. I think sound and music should add another layer to a film, and they should be able to speak for themselves. In the film, if you compare the use of sound in the opening of the first chapter with the second one, you will get the most important message of the film. In urban Iran, one wakes up with the dominant sound of religion in the morning (call to prayer); that is how ideology tries to penetrate one’s personal space. But in a nomadic regions with the lack of a religious order, one wakes up with the sound of nature, the sound of a rooster.

CS: Are there more unheard voices you feel it would be important to highlight?

DG: There are many. Iran has not passed its civic rights movement yet. Discrimination is vivid in that society. Gender inequality still persists. Gay rights has been ignored in Iran. Women rights are neglected on daily basis. Religious minorities still does not enjoy equality. In fact Iranian constitution only recognizes 5 religions officially, and there is no chance for agnostics or atheists to voice their existence openly. Ethnic minorities are heavily suppressed to a degree that their languages cannot be taught in the schools of their region. Iran has once been the land of diverse groups of people who shared the same motherland, regardless of their differences. It is heartbreaking to me as an Iranian to see what this regime has made out of Iran. But one day we will take it back, we will build it again and once that day comes if I was alive, I’m going to make sure that no human being faces repression and voicelessness in our land.

CS: What advice would you give journalists and filmmakers who want to report on situations like the one in Iran?

DG: Please familiarize yourself deeply with Iran before going there. Please read the contemporary history of Iran, as well as a bit of ancient history. Iranians are still sad about Alexander’s attack, the Arab invasion, and the Ajax operation. We live with our past, so learn it well before going there. Please read from authentic sources, I will recommend Edward G. Browne, and Morgan Shuster to begin with. Please recognize our 150 years fight for democracy. Please go inside the houses, rather than staying outside on the sidewalks. Iranians cannot speak freely with you in the middle of the streets. The Iran you will see in people’s houses is the uncensored Iran. If you want to understand Iran, travel in every region. Iran is not only Tehran.

The following is a transcript of the text of Mir Hossein Mousavi’s draft of a charter the Green Movement opposition coalition in Iran, released for the one-year anniversary of the nationwide election protests…

Preamble

On the first anniversary of the 10th presidential election we proudly stand tall — even if we have been whipped, wounded, and imprisoned — with demands for freedom, social justice, and national sovereignty, and assured of victory with the help of God, because we want nothing other than the nation’s rights.

From the lies, fraud, and violations of the law that were used in the election, the question of “where is my vote” was born, and you the people, with utmost clarity and without any ambiguity, shouted this question powerfully in a historic, peaceful march on Khordad 25, 1389 [June 15, 2009]. Except for those made blind and deaf by their superstitions and greed, everyone at the national and international levels heard you. But what was the response [of the ruling elite]? Was it anything other than murder and imprisonment, putting chains on the bare feet of the jailed and attacking the university dormitories?

The crimes in Kahrizak [detention center] and the murders on Khordad 25 and 30 [June 20, 2009), and on the Day of Ashura [December 27, 2009] will never be erased from the national memory. And they must not, because that would be tantamount to committing treason against the blood of the martyrs and the innocents [who were murdered]. How can we forget about the shots fired directly at the people and the police cars that ran them over [on the Day of Ashura]?

But the blood and pains [of the innocents] also tore apart the lies of the dictators and revealed the corruption that had been concealed behind the pretense to sacredness. These bitter events and the way the government opposed all the strata of our nation, from day laborers, teachers, and university students to journalists, academics, clerics, managers, bazaaris, women, men, the young and the old, all the social activists, and the poor and middle classes, demonstrated to everyone what the root cause of all of [our] problems is.

That our country executes more people than any other nation relative to its population is not due to the sins of the sinners, but due to the destruction of justice, good management, and good government in our society. The fact that even the daily expedience and urgent affairs of government have not forced the bureaucracy and those who demand absolute power to cease their lying, corruption, and contempt for our Constitution and laws, only indicates the deep penetration of malfeasance into the innermost layers of the political system. It is at such layers that those whose interests are based on the [exploitation of] hundreds of billions of dollars in oil income and the importation of $70 billion a year in goods and products, as well as the control of all financial and monetary institutions without any effective monitoring, have entrenched themselves.

Today, the nation’s wealth is being plundered by those who pretend to be holy, but the nation has yet to see any of the most corrupt prosecuted and brought to trial, despite all the claims and loud declarations [by the ruling elite]. What happened to the great case of [corruption] that was investigated by the Majles, but was closed overnight in a barter deal? [*]

Who dares to talk about the great case of corruption whereby, under the guise of implementing Article 44 of the Constitution [which mandates privatization of most industries], a great portion of the national wealth has been transferred to centers of power and influence, and reveal the facts about this plundering of the nation’s resources that has created great economic trusts? Who is brave enough to talk about the catastrophe of the absence of any monitoring of the financial affairs of the military and security organizations and the quasi-governmental organs that influence the country’s economy? The nation is asking again: Is this the just Islamic state that we struggled to establish? What problems does transparency create that they [the hardliners] have to resort to secrecy and hiding from the nation? Have you forgotten the golden principle of that old man [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] of Jamaran [where he lived] that states, “Do not do anything that would force you to explain it to the nation”?

My dear comrades of the Green Path of Hope,

It is now a year since the birth of the unique Green Movement, and during this time the Greens have come a long way on the path of hope. By rejecting the ruling establishment, by going back to their own homes and developing and expanding their social networks, strong and reliable relations between the various strata of the nation have been established. The social networks have created miracles in the area of informing [the nation] of political-social and cultural [developments]. All we need to do to understand this is to glance at their artistic productions, the amount of news and information that is exchanged, and the analyses that are going on in a completely democratic way. The Green Movement has created a powerful wave of debate and discussion concerning the critical problems among the people that is unique in our recent history.

Today, more than any other time in history, the people recognize those who violate the fundamental rights of the nation. They are aware of the repeated violations of their human rights and dignity by the judiciary-security establishments. They know full well those who have ignored and destroyed the national accord [the Constitution], particularly with regard to the fundamental rights of the people. At the same time — in spite of all the bitter, sad, and bloody events — due to the widespread discussions, wisdom has dominated emotion throughout, which is why those who have done everything in their power [to manipulate the Movement] have not been able to force the people, who have been hurt and had [their loved ones] martyred and jailed, to resort to violence. Resistance and peaceful struggle has been our best weapons against bullets and electric shocks and foulmouthed, cultureless vigilantes.

Millions of our people can see today how those with daggers in their hands run after our women and men, old and young. They know those who, due to their debased sensibilities, use the ugliest words against those [participating] in peaceful demonstrations. In response, our people have created the most beautiful songs, have given each other the most meaningful posters, and have made numerous films and photos about the lives and struggle of the people, circulating them to make their sad stories permanent, eternal.

My dear comrades of the Green Path of Hope

At the beginning of the second year of the Movement, and at the recommendation of some friends, a Charter for strengthening the collective identity of the Green Movement has been prepared that is now presented to you.

It is only natural that the suggested Charter may not be able to address every different view and demand. But what motivated and encouraged your humble comrade to draft it was the solution that some of the voters found last year just before the election. In the human chain [formed by Mousavi supporters just before last June's election] from Tajrish [in northern Tehran] to Railway Station Square [in southern Tehran], there were people who said that they were prepared to elect the bad [Mousavi] over the worse [Ahmadinejad], and this choice strengthened that unforgettable chain. True reforms begin with recognizing and accepting the responsibility for electing this or that [candidate].

This Charter is a first step and, God willing, over the course of its evolution, the Green Movement will make it more complete and more beautiful.

The Root Cause and Goals

1. The emergence of various deviations from and gradually erected impediments on the path of achieving such goals and ideals as justice, independence, freedom, and the Islamic Republic for which the people won the glorious Islamic Revolution; the emergence of authoritarian tendencies among some government officials; violations of the fundamental rights of citizens; insults to human dignity; government mismanagement; the growing [economic] gap and economic and social poverty; neglect and even violation of laws by those responsible for enforcing the law; and the gradual and painful abandonment of morality are what gave rise to the people’s protestations, whose powerful emergence as the Green Movement was demonstrated after the 10th presidential election in 1388 [2009].

2. The Green Movement is loyal to human, moral, Iranian, and religious values and principles, and is dedicated to the reform and cleansing of the system that has existed in the Islamic Republic of Iran in the years after the Revolution. It is based on these principles that it considers its struggle as taking place within the framework of the Constitution and regards respect for people’s views and votes as the target of its efforts.

3. The Green Movement represents the continuation of the struggle of the Iranian people for freedom, social justice, and national sovereignty, goals that were also pursued in the Constitutional Revolution [1905-1911], the movement for nationalization of the oil industry [1951-1953], and the Islamic Revolution [1978-1979].

4. Rereading of the recent [national] history of the struggle for social-political goals indicates that only by strengthening civil society, expanding the environment for societywide debate, elevating the level of the awareness [of the people] and the free flow of information, [enabling] effective participation by political groups and parties, and providing the necessary setting for the free activity of intellectuals and social-political activists who are loyal to the national interests within the framework of changing existing conditions, can we achieve the goals of the Green Movement. This necessitates an accord on a minimum number of demands and common goals, and the establishment of harmony among all the forces that, despite their own independent identities, accept pluralism in the Green Movement and are willing to work under the same banner.

The Fundamental Solutions

1. The Green Movement is an all-encompassing movement that never considers itself mistake-free and, by rejecting any sort of absoluteness, emphasizes the expansion of the environment for debate both within and beyond the Movement. The monitoring of the path of the Movement and its development by all supporters, particularly the intellectuals and analysts, is vital to protect the Movement from slipping into the path of authoritarianism and corruption.

2. In the view of the supporters of the Green Movement, the Iranian people all want a free, proud, and developed Iran. The Green Movement supports pluralism and is against exclusion of any thinking. As result, enmity toward any segment of society is not acceptable to the Green Movement. Making efforts to discuss and debate with our competitors and enemies in a healthy environment and informing the various segments of our society about the aims and principles of the Movement are the duty of all those who consider themselves supporters of the Green Movement. We are all Iranian and Iran belongs to all of us.

3. Activating and expanding the social networks — both real and in cyberspace — and enriching the environment for debate over the fundamental goals and identity of the Green Movement are activities deserving of particular attention by all Green Movement supporters.

4. While the Green Movement emphasizes its independence and separates itself from those forces that are foreign or not nationalist, it does not seek an isolated, chauvinistic path. Justice, freedom, independence, human dignity, and morality are universal values, and learning from the experience of those nations that struggled to realize such values, accepting the critiques and insights of all freedom fighters and those who peacefully struggle for human freedom and dignity, is also part of the Green Movement’s way.

The Green Identity:

The Iranian-Islamic Treasure Trove

1. While accepting pluralism within the Green Movement, the Movement emphasizes the necessity of a faith that is about kindness, morality, and respect for human dignity and rights, and believes that the way to strengthen the religious values in society is by strengthening the moral aspects of Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Uniting our Iranian-Islamic heritage, creating social zeal for the development and advancement of the country, avoiding forcing people to follow a certain ideology and manner, challenging the use of religion [to advance one's agenda], and preserving the independence of the clerical and religious organizations from the government are the only means that can protect the high moral position of religion [in Iran] and the continuation of its distinguished role in Iranian society, which is one of the most important principles of the Green Movement.

2. The secret to the survival of the Iranian-Islamic civilization is the coexistence and convergence of national and religious values in the history of our land. In this vein, the Green Movement emphasizes the protection and strengthening of the high values of Iranian culture and our accumulated wealth in the form of our national traditions and customs, and sets as its goal making people aware of the special national and religious traditions that give us our identity.

3. Throughout the history of its struggle for freedom and independence, the Iranian nation has demonstrated time and again its self-reliance and unity based on [certain] principles. Relying on this national heritage and collective wisdom and rejecting self-centrism and arrogance, the efforts of the Green Movement of Iran in pursuit of its goals are based on collective agreement and rejecting those elements that want to create chaos. It believes that this [agreement] is possible if it is the result of collective wisdom based on a monotheistic understanding.

4. The Green Movement is an Iranian-Islamic movement that seeks a free, developed, and advanced Iran. On this basis, any Iranian who accepts reliance on monotheistic collective wisdom as the way to build a better tomorrow is counted among the supporters of the Green Movement. The Movement considers Iran as belonging to all Iranians.

People’s Sovereignty

1. People’s determination of their own fate is a fundamental principle of the Green Movement, and elections are the best way to put this principle into practice. It is on the basis of this principle that the Movement will continue its efforts to safeguard people’s votes until such time as free, competitive, fair elections, without any vetting [of candidates], can be guaranteed. The people’s will and vote are the source of legitimacy for political power, and the Green Movement views any vetting of election candidates [by the Guardian Council] as violating the Articles of the Constitution that recognize people’s rights, and will challenge it.

2. Achieving such goals as freedom and justice is possible only if the national interests and sovereignty are taken into account. The Green Movement, adhering to this principle, opposes any action that undermines the national interest and violates national independence, and considers this one of its basic tenets.

Values of the Green Movement:

Human Dignity and Avoiding Violence

1. The first social value of the Green Movement is defending human dignity and human rights, regardless of ideology, religion, gender, ethnicity, and social position. The Green Movement emphasizes that the establishment and guarantee of human rights is one of the most important human achievements and a result of collective wisdom. These are God-given rights that no ruler, government, parliament, or power can annul or unjustifiably limit. Attaining such rights necessitates respect for such principles as equality, compromise, debate, and peaceful resolution of conflicts, whose realization is possible only when the necessary environment for a free press, the prevention of censorship, the free activity of nongovernmental social networks, and the modification and reform of laws in order to prevent any discrimination between citizens is provided.

2. The Green Movement is a civil movement that believes, as one of its core principles, in avoiding violence within the framework of the civil struggle. Believing that only the people will be the victims of violence, the Movement believes in debate, peaceful struggle, and the employment of peaceful means as core values. The Green Movement will use all peaceful methods in its struggle.

Justice, Freedom and Equality

3. Justice has a special, high position among the values and ideals of the Green Movement. Fair distribution of all resources, whether social, political, economic, or otherwise, is one of the Green Movement’s unalterable goals, for whose attainment it is necessary to make an all-out effort. Spreading justice in society is possible only if the political system acts independently, both internally and externally, without any kind of servitude to or reliance on political, economic, and social organizations and power centers, and can guarantee the economic development and advancement of the country in such a way that there is social justice for all.

4. Due to the necessity of addressing the needs and demands of all the strata and classes of the society, the Green Movement emphasizes the links between the middle and lower classes of society — those that are most vulnerable to social-political pressures. Relying on Article 9 of the Constitution, the Movement opposes denying people’s rights in the name of protecting the independence and territorial integrity of the country. While emphasizing the political, cultural, economic, and military independence of the country, it views recognition of people’s right to decide their own fate as the only way of defending the nation’s interests and borders.

5. Establishing freedom and equality is one of the core, undeniable goals of the Islamic Revolution that the Green Movement also emphasizes. Rejecting the elimination of any type of monolithic or exclusionary thinking, [applying the same] to the press and political [groups], and opposing the physical elimination of any thinking or viewpoint are at the top of the Green Movement agenda. In this vein, it is necessary to make efforts to free the people from any type of domination: political (dictatorship), social (discrimination and social inequality), and cultural. The Green Movement emphasizes its support for women’s rights and rejection of any type of discrimination based on gender and ethnicity, and emphasizes the rights of ethnic minorities.

6. The Green Movement believes that security does not imply security only for the government, but security for every Iranian. Security must be established for all Iranians, so that they can live free of fear under protection of the law. The independence of the judiciary, noninterference by military forces with political and economic affairs, and dealing with the organizers and members of the so-called plainclothesmen are central demands of the Green Movement.

7. Executing all Articles of the Constitution, particularly those that govern the rights of the people (chapter 3 of the Constitution), is a primary goal of the Green Movement.

8. Some of the best ways to achieve this, which deserve special attention, include releasing the political prisoners; eliminating all illegal limitations on the activities of political groups and social movements, such as the feminist movement, and the framing of their activities as security issues; putting on trial the perpetrators of the election fraud and the torture and murders of the election protestors; and identifying and putting on trial those in the various layers of the government who justify violence against the people.

Respect for Individual and Societal Creativity

1. Unfortunately, it must be admitted that the many iniquitous political, social, and economic policies of the ruling elite have lowered the society’s moral standards and social capital. The Green Movement emphasizes the necessity of the revival of morality as the basis for the social lives of the people of Iran, and it will be loyal to moral principles.

2. The Green Movement is neither an organized political party, nor an unorganized and aimless collection of various people. Reviewing the historical experience of the Iranian people indicates that, at historic junctions, they have been able to demonstrate their high capabilities, shrewdness, and wisdom; by relying on their creative power, they have paved the way for achieving their goals. The Green Movement relies on its principles and social networks, and the wisdom, ingenuity, and civil creativity of the Iranian nation, and believes that achieving such ideals as justice and freedom is directly linked with the blossoming of such creativity. The [recent] motto “Every Iranian is a center [of news and information]” should now be changed to “Every Iranian is a movement.”

Respect for Laws and Negotiation

1. The Green Movement is pursuing the ideals and goals of the Islamic Revolution, relying on critical rereading of what has happened since the Revolution — particularly in the relationship between the nation and the government — and on the national accord of the people of Iran, meaning the Constitution. It wants a better future for the Iranian nation.

2. In this vein, execution of all articles of the Constitution is the main and fundamental principle of the Green Movement. The Movement believes that only through a return to lawfulness, forcing the various organs to obey the laws and confronting those who break the law regardless of their position, can the nation prevail over the various crises with which it has been grappling and move along the path of development and advancement. At the same time, the Green Movement asserts that respect for the law does not mean its selective use by the ruling elite. Conditions must be provided to ensure that the laws cannot be used to justify arbitrary violence, baseless accusations, and violations of the fundamental rights of the citizens where illegal violence, injustice, and discrimination become the law.

3. The laws of the country, including the Constitution, are not permanent and unchangeable written documents. Every nation has the right to correct its course by correcting and modifying its laws. But it should be recognized that the only changes and modifications in the Constitution that can be accepted are those that result from public debate and discussion, through the participation of every strata of society and all social groups, and without the use of force.

4. Expanding civil society and strengthening the public domain are among the fundamental principles of the Green Movement. The Movement believes that protecting the goals of the Islamic Revolution and ameliorating the consequences of the present crisis require negotiation and discussion among the representatives of various schools of thoughts and political groups, and in this vein the Movement will accept any invitation for transparent negotiation and discussion with the aim of defending people’s rights and resolving social problems.

5. The Green Movement wants to strengthen the national economy in the international arena and investment [in Iran], with the goal of increasing the purchasing power of the Iranian people. The Movement advocates a wise foreign policy based on transparent and constructive relations with the world, and rejects adventurism and demagogy in foreign affairs. The Movement seeks the elevation of the dignity of the great and enduring nation of Iran.

Your humble comrade,

Mir Hossein Mousavi

[* Note from preamble: The "barter deal", as Mousavi calls it, is an alleged arrangement between the administration of Pres. Ahmedinejad and the Supreme Court's chief justice, precluding the prosecution of a top official in exchange for the administration not prosecuting a member of the chief justice's family on allegations of serious corruption.]

On 4 June 1989, the Chinese military moved into Tiananmen Square to disperse a long-running student and citizen protest in favor of democratic reforms. The military were reportedly ordered to use deadly force and opened fire, killing an unknown number of unarmed civilians. The anonymous man in the above photo became known around the world as an icon of human rights, when he stopped a column of tanks by standing in their way, a moral and human challenge to the military crackdown.

In Hong Kong yesterday, thousands joined a candlelight vigil to honor those who died at Tiananmen Square. The annual commemorative ceremony is a reminder of the special political freedoms enjoyed by residents of the former British colony. Communications between Hong Kong and mainland China, however, were constricted, and surveillance of the whereabouts and activities of foreign visitors was reported to be intensified, as the government sought to keep information about the massacre from filtering through to the population.

China has fought hard to avoid entering the open media environment of the 21st century: the current president Hu Jintao notoriously launched a “smokeless war” against press and dissidents in the first Central Committee meeting after taking power. Regional protest movements have been suppressed in national media; the outbreak of SARS was suppressed, raising the ire of public health officials who accused the political elements of the government of endangering the population and the wider world.

The special freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong are not widely known inside China, or at least not publicly discussed. Journalists, government critics, bloggers and even internet cafe owners, have been or are presently jailed, for violating censorship laws. Google and other major western firms were forced to agree to blanket censorship regarding certain search terms like “democracy” or “Tiananmen Square”.

But earlier this year, when it was revealed that someone inside China had hacked into Google’s corporate email and internal communications, Google announced it would no longer filter its searches, challenging China’s government to deal with the problem of an open web. Again this year, websites have been blocked or shut down, traffic redirected, and service disrupted, as China’s government sought to suppress information about the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators.

Google has recently announced it will no longer use Microsoft software, as it was discovered the Chinese hack of Google’s corporate communications was linked to a weakness in Microsoft’s web browser software. China’s government has also had access to Microsoft code, raising fears that access could make computers around the world vulnerable to illegal and possibly harmful surveillance and hacking.

The broader issue for China is how it can fully open its economic system when the central government so forcefully retains control over the flow of information inside China. Google has refused to allow the censored site to remain under Beijing’s control and is now redirecting search traffic to an uncensored site outside of China, but the conflict has only made the matter more urgent: how can China continue to advance if its government cannot allow Chinese people to know what their government does or has done?

The web is democratizing business and innovation the world over, but Tiananmen Square continues to be a measure of how unwilling the Chinese authorities have been to allow true informational freedom to the Chinese people. 2008 saw the Charter ’08 movement demanding the People’s Republic reform politically to allow more personal, organizational and media freedom in mainland China. The leaders have been prosecuted and jailed, and some are in hiding.

“The minds on the margin are not marginal minds” is the guiding philosophy of the project Anil Gupta discusses in this talk, aimed at highlighting efforts to find indigenous Indian entrepreneurs who might have the best ideas for shaping a better future, though they lack the resources to get their ideas into the mainstream culture or the realm of cutting-edge science.

Gupta speaks of the serious lack of information regarding the source of knowledge that emerges from ordinary people and indigenous cultures. He said that since there was no way to measure his income as emerging in part from having harvested that information, he was living in a way that was fundamentally unjust.

He decided that such innovators “must not remain anonymous”, so he created the Honey Bee Network, to find, track and give back to the unsung innovators. If the people with good ideas and creative talent can be found, and rewarded, then “they can be paid for what they’re good at, instead of for what they’re bad at”, a clear benefit to local and global society, and to our collective future.

“There must be a place in the world for solutions that are only relevant for a locality, and yet we are able to find them” says Gupta, warning that “Scalability should not become the enemy of sustainability”. We have the technology and the communicative sophistication to decentralize our search for the best solutions, but we tend to ignore this localizing talent of our new media.

Google has announced it will stop censoring search results for users in China. This radically reverses the dynamic of its relationship with the Chinese government, which had demanded as a condition of being searchable in China that the internet giant systematically bar certain content from appearing in lists of search results. Google had agreed to enter the Chinese market filtering out search results related to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of June 1989, even to the word “democracy”, but a cyber-spying attack that originated in China caused Google to rethink the validity of the initial agreement.

It is presumed the Chinese government will eventually shut down Google altogether in mainland China, should the search giant not revert to filtering certain key words from searches generated by users inside China. But as of Tuesday, full blockage had not gone into effect. The San Jose Mercury News, however, is reporting that “One day after Google stopped complying with China’s censorship rules, state-sponsored media ratcheted up verbal attacks on the search giant, and several of Google’s key business relationships in the country appeared to be in serious jeopardy.”

According to Wired:

The recent hack attack on Google, Adobe and other companies occurred through exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability that affects many versions of Internet Explorer, according to Microsoft and a security researcher with a leading anti-virus firm.

Microsoft learned about the vulnerability only Wednesday evening, said the researcher, who asked not to be identified because he’s not authorized to speak with the press.

Over 30 firms were hacked, in what appears to be a state-corporate espionage operation, though it is still unclear what sort of information was compromised, or if any documents were deleted, altered or accessed. At least 34 companies were attacked, and reports suggest the hack was designed to access the companies’ secret proprietary source code, possibly to allow further future hacks, censorship operations or blanket espionage linked to specific software.

Wired has also reported that:

Anti-virus firm McAfee has published a blog post confirming that a previously undisclosed vulnerability in IE was used to hack into several of the targeted companies. The attacks have been dubbed “Operation Aurora,” believed to be the name the hackers gave their attack. A McAfee spokesman told Threat Level that the company’s researchers had been working with a number of companies that were targeted in the attack since last week, prior to Google’s announcement.

There has been a “bumper crop” of malware, in recent months, meaning a build-up of malicious software that would allow hackers to remotely access private, proprietary information, if anti-virus software is not yet attuned to the specific technical functionality of the attack.

Google’s announcement that it will no long participate in China’s “voluntary” censorship/filtering program is, clearly, a direct accusation against the Chinese government, and a sign the software and search company does not believe it can reasonably defend its interests, or the interests of informational freedom, by agreeing to a pact which it says Beijing has refused to honor.

Google is now redirecting search users inside mainland China to an uncensored site based in Hong Kong. According to the New York Times:

Just over two months after threatening to leave China because of censorship and intrusions from hackers, Google on Monday closed its Internet search service there and began directing users in that country to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong.

While the decision to route mainland Chinese users to Hong Kong is an attempt by Google to skirt censorship requirements without running afoul of Chinese laws, it appears to have angered officials in China, setting the stage for a possible escalation of the conflict, which may include blocking the Hong Kong search service in mainland China.

Google says China’s government was involved in the attack, and has violated the terms of the agreement Google made, which allowed certain search terms to be blocked inside mainland China, in exchange for a largely open operating policy. Somewhat surprisingly, China’s government has said through the state-run Xinhua news agency that Google’s move is a violation of its agreement with Beijing, which the government alleges included a ban on accusing the government of illegal hacking.

Clearly, the media environment is too constrained and authoritarian to allow for Google to operate freely as an open information media enterprise. Google’s challenge to Beijing, it is thought, will most likely result in Google’s search engine pages being banned outright in mainland China, and a more intense censorship clampdown on other search engines and social networking websites.

A prominent muslim scholar and cleric has issued a 600-page fatwa, or religious edict, drawing from authoritative historical sources and scripture, to rule that true Islam bars any form of bloodshed. Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, a muslim theologian from Pakistan, who lives and teaches in Britain, said an honest examination of the teachings and doctrines of Islam demonstrates an absolute prohibition on the shedding of blood for political or religious purposes.

In his speech, announcing the fatwa against bloodshed, ul-Qadri said “Whatever these terrorists are doing, it’s not martyrdom”. He sought to illustrate the difference between the kind of holy struggle sanctioned by Islamic teaching and the unjust use of violence for personal or political gain. The scholar said his fatwa has the weight of a jurisdictional finding, and should be taken as direct advice as to the real spiritual meaning of Islam’s treatment of violence.

According to CNN, where he appeared in an interview with Christiane Amanpour:

Ul-Qadri was speaking to CNN just over a week after he issued a 600-page fatwa in London denouncing terrorists as “the biggest enemies of Islam.”

In his fatwa, ul-Qadri also said suicide bombers are destined for hell and strongly criticized Islamic extremists who cite Islam to justify violence.

“Terrorism and violence cannot be considered to be permissible in Islam on the basis of any excuse,” he said.

Ul-Qadri explained that no matter of foreign policy, no act of aggression by a foreign state, no “good intention” could justify terrorism. His fatwa is the most thorough, researched and high-profile such ruling to rule out the possibility of radical terrorists having any legitimate claim to Islam justifying their activities.

He told Amanpour that while the most radical of the violent extremists will likely not accept his finding, he believes that a thorough reading of the document would convince even those on the verge of being “brainwashed” by those violent extremists. He said the most violent and incorrigible of the religiously motivated terrorists are a tiny minority of the global muslim population, even among and widely profiled angry young muslim men.

His aim is to set forth in clear, authoritative, historically founded and spiritually resonant language, once and for all the doctrine that Islam does not and cannot condone violence of any kind.

According to the CBC:

Qadri condemned suicide bombers as destined for hell, a counter to the extremist promise of eternal paradise after death. Qadri said the fatwa outlaws suicide bombings “without any excuses, any pretexts, or exceptions.”

He said he was compelled to issue the fatwa because of concerns about the radicalization of British Muslims at university campuses, most of whom are of Pakistani descent.

The fatwa could be a watershed moment in the struggle for the soul of Islam, across so many denominations where radical fringe elements are trying to radicalize the moderate core population. Ul-Qadri’s finding has been called an “absolute” condemnation of terrorism and bloodshed, allowing for no “excuses or pretexts”.

In 2008, Reuters reported that “An ultra conservative Muslim seminary in India, which is said to have inspired the Taliban, issued a fatwa, or edict, against terrorism during a meeting attended by thousands of clerics and students.” But ul-Qadri’s fatwa is the most sweeping and absolute condemnation of violence within Islam, and comes at a time when there is a proliferation of grassroots protest within Islam against the hijacking of the faith by terrorists and extremists.

Because three issues alone will not adequately describe the breakthroughs we will experience in the coming decade, a second installment of the 2nd decade prognosis is necessary. While denuclearization pacts and a verification process for limiting the threat of nuclear weapons is likely to be key to international relations, and the green technology revolution will spur economic development around the world, international cooperation must also be directed toward issues relating to basic resources, like water and the food supply. Gender equality will be key to peacemaking efforts, and counter-extremism will be a leading aspect of collaborative development efforts.

Gender Equality

Why gender equality? Women constitute more than half the world’s population, but in nearly every country in the world, including the US and even the Scandinavian countries, they still experience a disadvantage in earning and advancement in the workplace. It is likely today’s generation of university students will see true equity in many advanced industrial countries, where women’s rights have a long history of progress. But across the developing world, discrimination against women has a very direct impact on quality of life, access to food and other basic resources, and on the ability of a political order to maintain peace.

Women have shown themselves to be integral in efforts to provide micro-lending opportunities to the poor. The Nobel Prize-winning Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh, discovered this early on: women are more reliable in repaying micro-loans and more disciplined in running the localized everyday businesses they are able to finance with such schemes. Closer bonds to children and family, as well as less tendency to expensive vices, are thought to explain this tendency. It is now widely known that women’s role in developing families and communities, as well as in raising children and providing food and shelter, is key to creating an atmosphere of political stability and peace.

The US Department of Defense has taken direct interest in the status of women’s rights around the world, especially in conflict zones, and is collaborating with the Obama administration’s initiative to promote the rights of women and girls. Pres. Obama has established a panel on which every Cabinet-level department head must report on the status of women and girls as relating to their purview. And women’s rights in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other key nations, is now a focus of Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertive “3D diplomacy”: diplomacy, development, defense.

Promoting the rights and the needs of women and girls will help to create a more educated, more civil and cooperative population, and should help to speed development to remote areas where improvements to basic infrastructure and economic cohesion cannot take root without active, sustained participation, and even leadership, on the part of women. More secure family environments and more advanced educational resources should also mean a reduced risk of armed conflict, factionalism and the collapse of basic services. The rights of women and girls are linked to all efforts to prevent or to combat the proliferation of failed states.

Food Security

There are growing risks of a partial or total collapse of the human food supply in corners of every continent. Arable land is being eroded, split up, sold off and industrialized. Desertification is taking increasing amounts of land south of the Sahara and across northwestern China. Glacial reserves of fresh water are being lost in the Himalayas and in the heart of Africa. At least 3 billion people live in regions where access to arable land is under severe threat, given demographic trends.

World grain harvests have failed to meet global demand for several consecutive years, meaning world grain stores are being depleted, prices are being pushed up, and the most fundamental element of economic stability —the availability of affordable nutrients— is under threat. With irrigation schemes expanding rapidly across much of the developing world, the Nile River, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and other major rivers upon whose flow of fresh water billions of people depend for their sustenance, are becoming threatened rivers.

The extinction of fresh water systems is fast becoming the single most urgent international resource crisis. Negotiations related to resource scarcity, fresh water depletion and threats to the food supply, are now central to regional economic and military collaboration around the world. Democratic governments and authoritarian regimes alike face the possibility of rising extremism and instability due to the risk of long-term deprivation facing increasing numbers of people within and along their borders.

The politics and economics of the coming decade will be heavily and persistently affected by a wide array of issues relating to the security and stability of the human food supply. There will be increasing pressure to reach binding agreements related to cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as the effects of climate destabilization more severely impact the global food supply. Neighboring states, like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and China, or Chad and Sudan, or the US and Mexico, will be faced with opting between mounting hostility or committed collaboration, to secure needed resources.

A paradigm-shift favoring broader international cooperation to help secure and restore resource-generating ecosystems and slow the spread of climate-related environmental degradation should help to move most of these cross-border resource crises in the direction of committed collaboration. Efforts to prevent the collapse of troubled states and impede the spread of armed conflict will be vital to international peace and security and the resilience of increasingly interdependent economic relationships.

Counter-extremism

The 2000s has been a troubled decade, marked by rising economic inequality, expanding scarcity and an explosion of armed conflict around the world. Hate-speech has infiltrated the relationships between nations, with the presidents of Iran and Venezuela referring to the American president as “Satan” or “the Devil” and factionalism and racist violence spreading in tribal regions of many countries, including Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Militant Islamist factions, more closely linked to political violence than to any of the fundamental teachings of Islam, have sought to exploit widespread suffering and deprivation in many countries, in hopes of driving desperate young people to devote their lives to armed struggle. The killing of innocent people has proliferated across the world, and has been justified by one after another political movement or government, even as the international community seeks to prevent such killing of innocents.

In the United States, the political discourse is increasingly poisoned by radical hate-speech, either thinly veiled or overt, with radical ultra-conservatives calling for armed rebellion, bringing loaded weapons to political rallies and threatening the life of the president. Such extremism is a threat to the civic order and to the peaceful practice of democratic process and enlightened public policy. The security of political systems and of populations around the world depends on efforts to counter and to eradicate violent extremism.

Counter-terrorism is a key tactical tool in armed struggle against militants. But counter-extremism, the sincere effort to heal deep political wounds, eliminate hate and secure educated and open populations against the rise of radical militia, requires an intensely complex process of education, development, and collaborative diplomacy. The deployment of advanced diplomatic resources, including highly trained cultural liaisons and media technologies designed to open traditionally closed societies, will be integrated into standard global diplomatic efforts.

The UN system, including a vast reservoir of talent and informational resources linked to non-governmental organizations (NGO), will likely gain influence, as increasing democratization and the specific goal of countering hate-speech and violent extremism demand both the commitment of sustained human effort and highly informed charitable outreach infrastructure. Counter-extremism will be both a political ethic and a strategic necessity in both the wealthiest and the poorest of the world’s nations.

2nd Decade of the 21st Century: What’s in Store?

1. Denuclearization, Green Tech & Cooperation
2. Gender Equality, Food Security & Counter-extremism
3. Particle Physics, Media Freedom & Global Economics

China may be fast moving toward global superpower status, with rates of industrialization and wealth-creation nearly unprecedented in human history. But the ancient imperial state still faces pervasive problems of regional and ethnic disharmony and multiple separatist movements intent on breaking up the map of the modern political state. To hold together, Beijing will have to democratize public and private institutions at a rapid pace and in a credible way.

Hong Kong, once a British protectorate, has been granted special political freedoms —as part of the conditions for its return to Chinese rule, and not without significant amounts of public protest from locals demanding them—, including electoral representation and the right to demonstrate. It is a divergent political model within the still largely totalitarian system planned and managed from Beijing, and it may serve as a credible model for how to democratize Chinese institutions of government and enterprise.

In order to meet the social and political demands of coming decades, China will have to grapple with the very real problem of what impact the information revolution will have on Chinese society, which has allowed for a privileged class of central control to impose a strict authoritarian order for thousands of years. Chinese society is already democratizing in terms of information, in that the government has had to admit mistakes in attempts to reorganize and filter information of vital public interest.

The scandal surrounding attempts to cover up the outbreak of SARS in China angered governments and international bodies, and spurred a wave of dissent in China that gave more power to journalists in the state media who sought to put informational value ahead of Beijing politics. Pres. Hu’s “smokeless war” against the press and dissidents has been a questionable enterprise throughout, with limited practical success in promoting Beijing’s projection of power and apparently sparking a surge in dissent.

Authoritarian urges inherent in Beijing’s use of power, both within China and beyond, have generated a notable backlash. In March 2008, an effort to ‘Sino-ize’ the Tibetan economy and consolidate Beijing’s hold on the region led to an outbreak of violence, with ethnic clashes, street demonstrations and security forces attacking civilians in the streets. The demonstrations spread to other regions of China and to neighboring Nepal. As we reported on 31 March 2008:

Demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet turned violent in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, yesterday, as police wielded bamboo clubs and beat demonstrators, including Buddhist monks and nuns. The UN has said Nepal’s harsh clampdown on Tibetan demonstrators violates international human rights law, including the right to peaceful assembly, as embodied in treaties signed by Nepal.

Demonstrations that began in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, more nearly 3 weeks ago have now spread to neighboring provinces in China, and into Nepal and India. The Kathmandu clashes came as large crowds accusing China of human rights abuses in Tibet tried to approach the Chinese embassy grounds.

A similar outbreak of ethnic violence broke out in the western province of Xinjiang, when efforts to centralize political control of the region and marginalize the local ethnic majority led to violent street battles. The government accused Uighur separatists of stoking the violence, while Uighur muslims from the region accused ethnic Han immigrants of undermining the economic opportunity available to the locals.

For the occasion of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, dissidents organized a high-profile petition for political reform, calling the document itself Charter ’08. The document, far from being an outright repudiation of China’s political establishment, calls for an incremental liberalization of the political process, and diversification of the one-party system. It opens with an explanation of the historical moment and the socio-political imperatives the regime will have to face, one way or another:

This year is the 100th year of China’s Constitution, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Democracy Wall, and the 10th year since China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance. A “modernization” bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity. Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a “modernization” under this kind of authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.

The government’s response has been to suppress the very idea of a need for liberalization and to prosecute those responsible for the petition. Liu Xiaobo, a moderate dissident and respected literary figure, was detained this summer on charges linked to the Charter ’08 movement and has now been sentenced to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power”, a charge the very name of which is a virtual admission of China’s need to democratize. The trial was just two hours long and has been decried across the world as an unfair prosecution without adequate defense or due process for the accused.

Instead of recognizing the constructive role that responsible political reformists can play in crafting a viable future for China —in line with the international system to which China has signed up but whose values it consistently rejects—, those in power in Beijing are treating the very idea of broader political freedoms for the Chinese people as a threat to national security. As the LA Times has reported:

In the last two years, the Chinese government has cracked down on Internet sites, lawyers, consumer advocates and human rights activists, particularly after the collapse of poorly constructed schools in the Sichuan earthquake and the tainted milk scandal in 2008. Liu is a brave democracy advocate and no stranger to jail; he was sent to prison for 21 months after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and to a labor camp in 1996 after demanding clemency for others still imprisoned.

This attack on universal values and persecution of the very dissident voices that could most ably and responsibly shepherd China through a period of needed democratic progress is dangerous in the extreme. Beijing’s hard-line tactics have radicalized and even popularized separatist movements across a number of regions, and efforts to disallow protests and even individual complaints about corruption has sown the seeds of deeper dissent across the country, at a time when tens of millions have lost work due to the global economic crisis.

China has also sought, along with its persecution of dissidents and its use of military force to impose political control over satellite regions, to create a hermetically controlled Chinese-language internet, where information can only be posted if approved by state censors. Instead of seizing the Olympics as an opportunity to plan, test and exhibit meaningful democratic liberalization, the government in Beijing has sought to block websites critical of its policies and control the flow of information across all communications networks in China.

But efforts to impose a blanket censorship-enabling spyware technology on all computers in the country were complicated this summer, when complaints about the substantial security risks and negative impact on business and foreign investment forced the government to back down. In July, we reported:

Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”

The technology may still take effect, under the guise of an effort to block pornography in order to protect young people, but there is intense resistance from the international community, and from media and business interests in China. There are concerns that aside from a gross violation of fundamental rights to open information, the software could actually destroy intellectual property, impede the functioning of computer hardware altogether, and even subject users to added security risks.

According to the OpenNet Initiative:

The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.

Features that allow for intimate monitoring of keystrokes and usage logs could permit attacks either from within government monitoring or from non-government criminal enterprises, to access personal information, create extensive archives of data regarding individual lives and networks of people, and subject individuals to identity theft, harassment, and other kinds of computer-enabled endangerment. Such intrusive harvesting of personal data could even put children at far greater risk of exploitation via the Internet.

One of the most fundamental dangers inherent in this type of digital data-based persecution of dissent at all levels is that it first of all assists in the coverup of abusive or corrupt activity and secondly does nothing to reform areas of the political system itself that are causing anger and the spread of hostility to government policies. While the Green Dam spyware project may allow Beijing to conceal or disrupt the communication of dissent, it will do nothing to prevent the dissent-inducing abuses or systemic inadequacies from occurring.

The only practical way to ensure that government services meet the needs of real people, and thus fashion a more harmonious system, is for a freer flow of information among people and between the people and their government. Failing that, even the best-intentioned government programs will run into trouble and be a source of unrest or opposition. Persecution of dissent is an ancient tool of underdeveloped power structures; China has the wealth and technology to democratize peacefully, and can do so by liberalizing the process for selecting and evaluating party leaders, policy-makers and administrative bureaucrats.

The Hong Kong model is complicated, and has many critics, but for a nation as vast and diverse as China, facing all of the crises, political, economic and environmental, it now faces, the Hong Kong model provides a worthy example for how to usher in more permissive political processes, without giving up the integrity of the existing system or the territorial integrity of the nation.

There will need to be practical solutions that help keep long-simmering tensions in check, if China is to avoid further flare-ups of ethnic violence or the aggressive ramping up of separatist activity. Change is emerging organically, across China, and the current government will eventually have to choose between working with or against the driving forces of change. Addressing economic concerns —like quality of life, education, transport and energy— will be key to being able to shepherd the nation through the coming period of political transformation. The following are a few areas that may help ensure stability throughout:

1. Re-evaluate prosecutions like that of Liu Xiaobo, which cripple the political dynamism of the Chinese system and help ensure a sclerotic policy apparatus, unaware of the best competing ideas going forward;
2. Free political prisoners like Liu Xiaobo and other responsible dissenters, who use no methods of sabotage or violence, only words and ideas, to convey their message of liberalization;
3. Reward local officials who find creative ways to integrate citizens into the process of making and administering policy;
4. Encourage freer expression of critical views, in part to show tolerance of dissent, in part to allow for the discovery of sound ideas for making a better way for the nation;
5. Encourage local political organizing, even where dissenting views are more popular than Beijing policy: a system of competing views need not override established policy, but can allow for competing views to filter in and serve the public good;
6. Liberalize selection process for Communist party officials, as a first step toward general elections;
7. Recognize cultural and political autonomy of regional states, like Tibet and Xinjiang: a Spanish approach may work better than the militaristic all-or-nothing conquest-based approach favored until now;
8. Reform the justice system, so that low-level corruption cases and judgments benefitting ordinary citizens can gain prominence and foster a new respect for judicial process: this helps guarantee order, but also prevents corruption and abuse;
9. Take a leading role in championing fundamental political and civil rights in other nations: doing so does not violate anyone’s sovereignty, but failing to do so shows a reduced hold on domestic support for the exercise of it;
10. Prepare for an issue-based divergence of factions within the Communist party, and a credible legal process by which those factions can establish competing parties loyal to a central constitution.

Long-term stability is often cited by China’s authorities as the reason behind extremely hard-line actions. But as we are now seeing in Iran, and as we have seen in eastern Europe and the Philippines, hard-line oppression often sows unrest and brings about far more radical kinds of political change. China is too closely linked to the information technology revolution to not be affected by it, and its censoring-technology approach to manufacturing consensus is not viable; it will collapse under the weight of the challenge.

Planning for the period of liberalization that will follow is the only responsible way for the government in Beijing to move forward with long-term Chinese development and political planning. It is the only policy response that will build confidence among foreign investors and major enterprises, including banks, that wish to locate offices or factories in the country, and it will prove to be the only practical way to prevent sectarian conflict and the disintegration of political ties with the satellite states where unrest is already brewing.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the jailed Burmese pro-democracy opposition leader, was recently granted visitation rights to meet with three aging leaders of her National League for Democracy. The meeting marked the highest-level contact she has had with her party in years, even as the Burmese junta prepares to clamp down on pro-democracy elements ahead of the first nationwide election since her victory —never realized by taking office— in 1990. Suu Kyi has instead spent most of the last two decades under house arrest.

The pro-democracy opposition leader has been permitted at least three meetings with members of the military government in recent weeks, and appears to be negotiating both for her freedom and for a more democratic environment for the 2010 election campaign. In November, after meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, Suu Kyi was permitted to speak to the media, a rare relaxation of the extreme conditions of her house arrest, and a sign that creative diplomacy from Washington may be playing a role.

According to the BBC:

In her letter Ms Suu Kyi also suggested a face-to-face meeting with Than Shwe and offered her co-operation on matters of national interest.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that Ms Suu Kyi “is also expecting the rest of her requests to be fulfilled. She’s optimistic about her letter. She believes the government will allow her requests”.

Suu Kyi wanted to meet with the party elders in part to move her party toward a new generation of leadership. She reportedly requested that the party elders allow her to “reorganize” the central committee, as the leadership are now very old. There is some hope that new leadership may be viewed with less suspicion by the regime, and the National League for Democracy might be reintegrated into the political fabric of a nation that has struggled under dictatorship for 20 years.

An appeal of Suu Kyi’s house arrest order is underway, though observers are skeptical she will win a supreme court case where her freedom is opposed by the ruling military junta. The appeal has been blocked numerous times by lower courts and by the supreme court itself, though the new appeal relates to the 18-month extension of her detention that resulted from her being charged with “harboring” an American man who mysteriously arrived exhausted at her lakeside home after swimming to get there.

Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, has reportedly been transported by military helicopter to a secure location, on a military base outside Tehran. Reports emerging from Iran suggest the security forces’ brutal crackdown on unarmed civilians during the festival of Ashura has sparked active resistance. There are now reports of ongoing clashes across the capital.

According to Global Post:

Witnesses described demonstrators constructing street barricades and fighting against security forces for the control of squares. Unverified reports claimed that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been transported to a military base in a helicopter from his residence in central Tehran.

“There’s fighting going on across the north of the city, and the number of killed is far more than the four whose death has been announced,” said one witness who described the kind of weapons used as “Colts and a larger handgun.”

There were sporadic reports Sunday of calls for a nationwide general strike for today, to protest the violence against civilians and show support for those killed. The Islamic revolution that brought Khamene’i's predecessor, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to power, and established the current constitution of the Islamic Republic, coalesced around students who had staged a nationwide general strike that shut down the nation’s petroleum industry.

Online reports earlier this month cited unnamed opposition sources saying Khamene’i had been temporarily removed to a “secret place” and that there may be a helicopter standing by to remove him to somewhere in Russia, should the anti-government protests turn the tide against his security forces. There is reason to believe such measures are being taken again, as numerous reports suggest violent clashes continue in the north of the capital.

There are also reports that the son of a state television host is among those killed in the Ashura crackdown. Opposition figures reportedly under arrest include the son of Ayatollah Taheri, Alireza Beheshti —aide to Mousavi aid and administrator of kaleme.org—, two managers of former president Mohammad Khatami’s Baran Foundation, and others.

PBS’ FRONTLINE Tehran Bureau is quoting a nurse in Isfahan, saying of the Ashura crackdown:

They brought a few of the injured today to the Al Zahra hospital in Isfahan. One man, in his 30s, was so severely beaten that he was unconscious and immediately taken to the resuscitation room. He had sustained multiple rib fractures causing a condition known as flail chest, head trauma (he had a depressed skull fracture) and a broken arm, the doctors said.

Minutes after his arrival, plainclothes agents turned up and ordered hospital officials to immediately transfer the man to the Sadoughi Hospital, which is run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. At first there were some protests because of his critical condition, but hospital staff eventually relented and the IRGC agents took him with them. This man needed immediate surgery. I can only hope that he has received the care he needed. He was registered as a motor vehicle accident victim at this hospital.

There are now 9 reported deaths associated with the security forces’ assault on demonstrators. Emerging anecdotal reports suggest there may be more deaths as yet unconfirmed or being concealed by elements close to the Khamene’i-Ahmedinejad power bloc. There are reports of Basij militiamen threatening religious leaders considered critical of the regime and openly calling for the death of dissident figures.

FRONTLINE cites Mohammed Sadeghi, a Facebook administrator for opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, relaying reports from the holy city of Qom:

Beginning this morning, a group ranging from 50 to 250 people — the number fluctuated throughout the day — surrounded the end of two streets, chanting slogans. The streets were cordoned off because one of them led to the office and home of the late Ayatollah Montazeri, and the other to the office and home of Ayatollah Sanei.

Guests and locals were attending ceremonies at these two homes.

Meanwhile, Basijis surrounded Ayatollah Sanei’s office and started chanting, “Death to Sanei,” “Sanei is an unbeliever,” “Sanei is a source of emulation for the British,” and “BBC, Sanei, congratulations on your union.” One slogan they kept repeating was, “This army that has turned up is for the sake of [out of love for] the Leader,” apparently referring to themselves.

The whereabouts of Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i are reportedly unknown at present, and opposition figures say his “disappearance” is a sign the pro-government clerical establishment is “scared” of the demonstrations and believes there is a real possibility Khamene’i will be toppled. There are no known reports as of this writing suggesting opposition figures have urged the Assembly of Experts to convene to remove Khamene’i on charges of violating his constitutional obligations or abusing power, though previous attempts have been reported.