Craziest Republican of the Day: Darrell Issa

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Via twitter: 

Darrell Issa compares fracking chemical recipe to recipe for Diet Coke, says Americans have no right to know it. (link)

-- David Roberts (@drgrist)

Interesting. I had no idea you could set fire to the Diet Coke coming out of your tap. Or that some Diet Coke in a river could destroy wildlife. Or that Diet Coke could east away your body from within and destroy your community.

There's a reason Big Gas and its allies don't want their secrets getting out. And it's not because they're afraid of competition from Pepsi.

But maybe Rep. Issa should take a trip to Gasland and go for a swim in one of those pools of fracking water. I mean, if he's so sure of himself and not just a complete moron.

(Then again, Diet Coke may be just as carcinogenic as whatever the hell's in the fracking mix. No, not really, but it made you think, right?)

Tap water shouldn't catch on fire

By Edward Copeland

Just last week, T. Boone Pickens returned to The Daily Show to discuss how natural gas was a safe energy resource that the U.S. had plentiful supplies of that it could use to wean itself off its dependency on foreign oil. However, when Jon Stewart brought up the subject of "fracking," Pickens got tongue-tied. That's probably why he and every major natural gas executive in America refused to be interviewed about the process for Josh Fox's documentary GasLand, which details the destruction that has been unleashed on people, animals, and the environment by the practice.

Fox had never made a documentary before but sort of stumbled into it when he noticed the changes happening in the creek near his family home in rural Pennsylvania following an offer from Halliburton to lease the family's land for natural gas exploration. While they would receive a few hundred thousand dollars from the agreement, as had many rural Americans across the country, they'd also encounter poisoned water sources, dead animals, health problems and more, all which seem to stem from the process used to retrieve the natural gas.

It inspired Fox to go on a cross-country journey to other sites to see the damage done by the hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) process, which the companies insist were safe but which evidence proves otherwise. In a way, it doesn't matter because the 2005 Energy Bill, formed in the wake of the secretive Cheney Energy Task Force, exempts all energy companies from safety regulations that had been in place for decades, some dating back to the Nixon Administration, so the corporations basically can do whatever they want in the least-expensive way without any concerns for the safety of nearby residents, the companies' own workers or the environment itself.

As one man tells Fox, "Amazing. What took millions of years for Mother Nature to build can be destroyed in hours by heavy equipment." If only the equipment were the main problem... What's really causing all the destruction is the seepage of a virtual stew of hazardous chemicals that are used in the fracking process to retrieve the natural gas. It's pretty amazing to watch scene after scene in state after state of people putting a lit match next to a flowing faucet or a stream and see the flames burst forth.

There are other stories that you hear repeatedly as residents complain about contamination only to be told that the water is safe by government or company officials, who then refuse to drink a glass of the tap water when the residents offer one. It's even more disgusting when Fox meets with representatives of state departments of environmental protection and they speak the corporate party line, denying that contamination is as widespread as it is, or at congressional hearings where executives testify that there isn't any evidence of risks and the happy House members, including a particularly dumb-looking and -sounding Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.), side with the businesses.

Meanwhile, Fox learns of those who have contracted cancer and died, the risks of brain damage from repeated exposure, pets losing hair and a Colorado woman who keeps the corpses of mass and sudden animal deaths preserved in her freezer for any potential investigations. Even more frightening is learning how Hurricanes Katrina and Rita scattered the junk from hundreds of thousands of sites all over the place.

GasLand is a pretty good effort for a first-time filmmaker such as Fox and another example of a documentarian doing the investigative work that the Fourth Estate has abandoned. You do learn a lot, though he tends to repeat himself and I don't think it belongs in Oscar's final five documentary features compared to some of the other finalists and nonfinalists from 2010 that I've seen. Still, it's very good and yet another case of showing the indifference both corporate America and our elected leaders have toward the average citizen's wellbeing.

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)

Around the World: China, Zimbabwe, Somalia, the Ukraine, and the Vatican

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The latest in our ongoing series... (for previous entries, see here or here).

1) China: "China's exports have dropped into their biggest decline in a decade. Exports in December were down 2.8% from the same time last year, a bigger decline than November's 2.2% drop, the China Daily said."

Even though "China's economy relies on domestic demand for its goods and services more than any other country in Asia," which is to say, even though the decline in exports is perhaps less of a concern to China than it would be for others, what the numbers show is that "China is no more immune to worldwide trade problems than any other large economy." And it is likely to get worse: "With Japan, the US and Europe now in recession, China's heavily trade-dependent economy is expected to harder hit through the coming year."

Still, a growth rate of 7.5% in 2009 wouldn't be so bad, would it?

2) Zimbabwe: "Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people and almost 40,000 have contracted the normally preventable disease, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday."

As if it weren't already bad enough in that wretched place, what with the tyrant Mugabe clinging to power and continuing to oppress the people, now there's this, which "has spread to all of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces because of the collapse of health and sanitation systems." And the situation will only get worse during the January-March rainy season.

3) Somalia: "Ethiopian troops pulled out from crucial bases in Mogadishu on Tuesday, leaving a power vacuum that was quickly filled by Islamist fighters who seized their positions."

And so, with the Ethiopians soon to be out, within a matter of days, Somalia is left to the Somalis... and to "Somalia’s Islamist movement," which "has made a steady comeback, with Islamist factions again controlling much of the country.

One war is over, but another is already underway: "Many Western diplomats and other Somalia analysts have warned that once all the Ethiopians are gone, the various Islamist factions will unleash their considerable firepower on each other in a scramble to take over the country. Some of that fighting has already kicked off, with dozens of people killed in the past week in combat between moderate and radical Islamist factions."

4) Ukraine: "Just hours after Russia resumed delivery of natural gas to the European Union through Ukrainian pipelines, Kiev has admitted to blocking the supplies. Ukraine is claiming that Gazprom has established 'unacceptable' conditions for the transit of the gas to Europe."

It's a complicated situation, obviously, with Gazprom blaming the U.S. for backing the Ukraine (and accusing the Ukraine of stealing gas), but it is essentially a regional dispute between Moscow and Kiev "over gas pricing and the lucrative transit fees paid to Kiev for gas transported across its pipelines." (Though Anne Applebaum notes that it was actually Putin, who still runs the show in Russia, who actually turned off the gas, not Gazprom. So it's political, not just commercial, and, this year, Russia is very much to blame.)

Russian gas is essential to much of Europe, but what is needed is for Europe to disentangle itself from the situation by reducing its dependency on Russian gas in the first place. And that requires, in Applebaum's view (one I share, though I defer to her expertise here), "a true, unified E.U. energy policy," even if, as Clay Risen points out, there are no "easy or obvious answers" and, to put it mildly, "difficulties inherent in any such effort."

5) Vatican: "Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug traffickers whose war with the government has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year. But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke would probably have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, acknowledged."

You think?