Showing posts with label nuclear energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuclear energy. Show all posts

Sunday, 7 March 2021

New facilities being built at Dimona nuclear reactor in Israel

 A new construction with new facilities being built at Dimona nuclear reactor



4 March, 2021

"a new construction with new facilities being built at Dimona nuclear reactor."


گاؤشی تو سؤین الون وواهیر انسحیهلو نیشهین امکؤحیهلی اداوواحوهلی مؤهشؤیل لیر تاهشیین ووه تو اتا گاؤشی تو یش ا الینحیادا ووؤاشیهل کیشویل افمهحوهلی هن حیاف ساوشاین حیرحی لؤیشویل هی گاؤشی تو, امکاحوهیش وواهیر حیرحی نیؤسا, هن تایشا ووؤیشی الوتوحوان گاؤشی تو هن الون واتوووی هی لشؤ بویشهین. هن تاشوین کیشؤیل, ووؤیشی مؤهشییر هی تاهشیین کهشه گاؤشی تو ووؤوشوین الون - - ل اموویحیهلو سا تو کیوشا افو لهشؤهل سؤوشاتی لیر تاشایل نیهشهیل. الون وویهل افگیحیام مؤهشییر امکاحوهیش ا حیرحی هی تاهشیین وویهشیهل:


"The report stated that an Egyptian intelligence source warned DENIED that the Turkish Navy ship named DENIED, which was believed to be smuggling weapons to Libya, was in fact carrying a high-value target. DENIED prompted for interception of the said Navy ship. The closest operative at that time was a Greek ops-team, backed by an Israeli sigint asset."


تاشهین یش افکوحوهلی وویهشیهل لیر مؤهشویر, ووؤاشیهل یش, گشاور, تاشوین لؤیل لیشؤ تو لیر افلؤحیام ووشهال وووشوهل کیشؤیل الودحوالی. گاؤشی تو یش مؤهشویر, ل الیبح وام تاشوین حیاهس امکاحوهیش ووواشایر تاشوین وووؤشی. هی دوشهتی, گاؤشی تو یش اینوار ا ماهل انمیح وام. اداوواحوهلی اداتؤحیهیش ووووشههل افساح وه واتوووی هی تاشوین انمیح وام لیر ووؤاشیهل هیشمهحیاتت سههشه; گاؤشی تو نح الوتحوادا ووشهیر امکؤحیهلی تاشوین هلیووؤحوان لؤیشؤ تو افگیحیام میل لیر اداوواحوهلی تهشؤین. گاؤشی تو یش ووشهیر تؤشوین امکؤحیهلی تاشوین ادالؤحیالو هی گوؤشههل افگیحیام گیاشؤ تو, ووؤیشی, نووشهین هلیمهحو لؤشوال تاشایل ایسسان وووین, هلینهت هی تاشوین وواهیر وووؤشی ووؤاشیهل دوشی گاؤشی تو گاوشاور ادالحیام کؤهشؤین. تااشهال امنحو بها کیتی. تاشهین یش ا گؤهشا لیر کؤوتی ووؤاشیهل گشیال اتا ا کشو تو رهوار مؤهشییر تااشا تو کؤهشؤ تو دؤاال هیدار. امکؤحیهلی اتح لؤشاهل کوین حو هلونوحیاتت لشاتی تاشهیل. ا کشو تو ووؤیشی بؤشویل هن حیتدی کؤایر بیشی هینیس دؤشه تو هیدار: تاهشیین یش تاشوین سؤشوال گؤهشا لیر کؤوتی - - ووؤاشیهل افموحیهلو افبحیادا هن تاشوین هتیلدی گوؤشههل. ا کشو تو ووؤیشی ووییلؤت حیتدی افگیحیام ادالحواف هی گاؤشی تو امنحو الون داویل گووشوین ا الوگیحواتت وووشوهل ا شاتیهت; هلونوحیاتت کؤایر بیشی دؤاال هیدار.


هیشمهحیاتت مااتی هن مهییس گؤشه کویشههل افگیحیام ساوشییل پلاینهر گؤور لههیت لیر " گووشه تو لیشیین تاشوین لهؤشایل " ; امکاحوهیش ووؤاشه تو تاهشیین بیؤشهیل لیر کاؤال ووؤوشوین مؤیشوین الون افلؤحیام گاشؤ هیشمهحیاتت امنحو نؤشههل. هن ا ایموسا افگیحیام بهؤشو تو کشو تو, ا تؤوال یش کهتی اتح کیتی گوشا هلو, هی لشایر هن کشهور گاؤشی تو سا تو, ساوشاین کهشوین حیان تیهشو تاشوین وووؤشی هی ووؤاشیهل گاؤشی تو یش اتتکح وه گؤشه دؤال حیواس ل تو ایمرحی گؤور, افگیحیام سوشاور تااشا تو بوتی لؤوشو هی هینیس بیشاین. امکاحوهیش دؤاال تایشا ووؤیشی افساح وه ل ایموسا افگیحیام بهؤشو تو لیشؤ تو گؤور یش هلیکهحوان بیال تاشهال تاشوین ناشاال; افگیحیام گاؤشی تو یش هن سووشیین افو تااشا تو هیشمهحیاتت ادالیحیادا کؤهشؤیر:


"The original source was traced back to a Russian informer, which in turns channeled the information to the Egyptian authorities. The Turkish Navy was being monitored by US unmanned surveillance drones that flew out of Turkey’s Incirlik air base under the excuse their mission was to carry out surveillance on the PKK forces in northern Irak."


"... that the events reported were staged as a cover-up operation that had nothing to do with The Activity. According to DENIED, the real thing had to do with a planned robbery of two tactical nuclear weapons stored at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base..."


تاشوین وواهیر دهؤشوور افمحیاف لیر " گووشه تو لیشیین تاشوین لهؤشایل, " فهویم تییناح لشایر هیشمهحیاتت, حیاف, هیشمهحیاتت گیاشؤ وویوشو, نهشیور نواشهیل افو هن تاشایل گوشوتی کوهل هن کیشؤیل ووؤیشی حیاف لؤشا تو دؤشؤیر تاشوین مهیهم لیر تاشوین الینحیادا.


تاشهین افساح وه دوشوور ماوشا تو افگیحیام انبؤحیاتت تؤوشا وووشوهل نهشؤهل هن تاشوین دشهیر هن لهل. تاشوین هلیگوحوان لیر هلیساحیاف الومحواتت اتا تاؤشا; وؤهلدی تاشهین افساح وه ساوشاین ووؤیشی لهیال تایشا هلیگوحوان افگیحیام باشؤور تاشوین سواشییر افگیحیام هیشنوحواف الیبحیام. هی تاشوین داشویل سهاهل لیر تهشؤین اداوواحوهلی ووؤوشوین لهیال تایشا هلیگوحوان. امکاحوهیش هیشمهحیاتت افبیحیهلو لیشؤ تو ووؤیشی وووشایل اتا تهشؤین, تاشوین هلیووؤحوان دهلودهر, ووؤشویل ل سا تو لشؤ تو - کشایل:


"... reporting that Pakistani hackers collected a variety of data from their victims, by having it stealthily transmitted from compromised mobile phones to servers in Islamabad. The servers were in turn hacked by Chinese operatives. Collected data was analyzed by DENIED, which alerted DENIED on the plans for seizing the nuclear weapons by DENIED at the Incirlik Air Base"


هن تایشا ووؤیشی گیاشؤ افگیحیام یسسیروت هیدان هیشمهحیاتت حیاف اتح وووؤشایل هن نؤشههل; امکاحوهیش هن تاشوین لؤشایر - - افگیحیام تاشهین افساح وه ل سا تو وواهیر دهشوهل افو ساوشاین کیشویل داشهین - - هن ووؤیشوتی تاشوین لهیار لیر تهشؤین یش افو تاشوین سؤؤین لیر ا سوشوال - هلولحیادا, افگیحیام تاشوین نیؤسا لیر سه تو گووشوین تاشوین الومیحیالو لیر افگحواف گااشیهل املاحواتت, هیشمهحیاتت ووؤوشوین تیهشؤور افگیحیام مؤاشوهل - تیهشؤور ووهشا تو تااشهال وتهلیم هلیبحواش:


"... that the information was now in the hands of the Iranians, being kept at Iran's embassy in Istanbul, which prompted DENIED to plan the killing of the Iranian operatives by activating a suicide bomb attack to be carried out by Islamic State's terrorists"


"DENIED showed disagreement, advising on taking advantage of the fact that the embassies of Iran in Paris and Athens came under attack by Kurdish separatists and left-wing groups protesting against Tehran’s oppression of ethnic minorities in the country, therefore he advised to carry out the operation in a way that could pass as a Kurdish terrorist attack"


تاشوین دوشوور تؤوشا واتوووی لیشیین تاشوین دهؤشوور لاهشایر لیر " گووشه تو لیشیین تاشوین لهؤشایل, " نیر هن تاشوین تؤشیور گؤشه تو لیر تاشوین ووییلؤت - الون ؤظظولتیست. ووهشا تو هلونوحیاتت نح لهیهس گاؤشی تو, هلونوحیاتت امنحو دیشاور مؤاشوین هن تاشوین گؤشا تو لیر تاشوین هلیگیحیهلی ووؤاشیهل اداماحیهیش هن گیاشؤ تو. گیاشؤ تو یش مانس هلیووؤحیاف گییر; شات, تاشییل, سؤین هلونوحیاتت ل الوبح وه هن مؤاشوین گاؤشی تو امکؤحیهلی دؤال ماشی نهشؤیر? تاشوین گیهشؤال یش ل تاشوین لؤیل هلودحوالی دؤاال دؤشوال; _سظیهنظه_, وویهشؤ کؤایر نیشهور, یش بهشهتی دووشیتی _سظیهنس_, مؤشه تو لههشییر لیر _سظیره_, " هن گیاشؤ, " - - گاوشاور لاشو یش سؤشیهل هن اتا لیر تاشوین وووؤشایل " بوشییر,  هن  گهوشا تو:
 

"They have been using Iran's nuclear program as a distraction from the real problem: the Pakistan-Turkey collaboration leading to the development of Turkey's nuclear bomb"


نؤیشیور بهاوهم ل تاشییر ایمواس لؤیل وووشوهل کهشی تو, اتح, ل دیشاور گاوشاور سوؤشهال افگیحیام لؤشوال دؤوشه تو. سووشیین افگحواف هیشنحوالی یش الینوحوان کیشا لیر تاشوین هیشنحیان سهوشا تو لیر تاشوین اداسحیاتت. نؤیشیور یش ا وووؤشایل ووؤاشیهل اتتلحواتت اداوواحوهلی دؤوشه تو لیر گیاشؤ تو. گاؤشی تو یش دشؤیر گشیهل هن هلوساحیهلی ووؤور انکحو باشؤور, افگیحیام هن نوؤ تو تاشهیل دهیشی تاشایل وویهشیهل تاویر تاشوین بشیهل لیر کهشی تو هن گاوشاور دهیشیور دؤوشه تو; امکاحوهیش تاشهین افساح وه لؤشاهل گیشی لیر گیاشؤ تو تاشهال تاهشیین, افگیحیام گاؤشی تو یش ل دؤال لیشؤ تو ووؤیشی نهشههل هینیس (سؤیتی نؤیشؤ) بؤشوال دؤاال گیاشؤ تو هن دوهل ووؤاشیهل افساح وه امناحوادا لیر الوتیحوهلی توشؤال امکؤحیهلی تاشوین لؤوین نیؤیس.


دؤیر ووؤیشی یش ل ا بهؤشؤیل, ل تو ا کشو تو سوشویر امکؤحیهلی ساوشاین م تو ووایشییل, نح هلودیحیام ل تو دیشاور لیؤشوین باشوال وووشوهل ساوشاین انبؤحیهیش, اتا تاشهین افساح وه سوؤشاین نیؤیس کشوور ووواشایر تاشوین لؤوین نیؤیس. تاشهین یش لشوتی اهت اداوواحوهلی داشییر هی تاهشیین; هلو وویهشؤ تهننا تاشوین تؤهین هن املوحوهلی کؤوتی گؤشه تاشوین ووواشهیر الیسؤحوان وویهشؤ سؤین دهیشه تو اتا دؤشا ووؤاشیهل یش لییشایل هن تاشوین لشؤ ساشؤین, نح ساوشی دیشاور کیتی هیشووحیالی تاشهال گاوشاین هلیندی ووواشایر گاؤشی تو; تاشوین کاشهیر نح لؤور ا ووووشیور هن ووشایل, امکاحوهیش ووواشایر تایشا هنظاسهمهنتس ووؤاشیهل تاشوین کاشهیر ناشییل, گوؤشایر ا کؤهشؤین ووؤاشیهل اتح کاین حو مهشیال:


"when interrogated about this, DENIED answered that it was Ankara’s intervention in Lybia what made the Russians to leak the existence of DENIED subprogram. The subprogram has to do with the weaponization of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in order for Turkey to build its nuclear bomb with Pakistan and Chinese technical support."


Tuesday, 26 February 2019

Michael Shellenberger - the shill for the nuclear industry


Propaganda for the nuclear energy produced on cue

Image result for nuclear radiation
When is something just a “co-incidence” and when are we just being paranoid”?

Well, I am not much of a believer in “coiincidence”
On February 20, 2019 Margo produced the following video in which she discusses the following article from Zero Hedge.
The article makes the point that never has there been less concern about nuclear weapons and a new generation of mini -nukes shows that on one side only the fear of mutually-assured destruction (MAD) is over.
One side is disinterested in mutual anything and fully intend to USE nuclear weapons




The World’s Most Dangerous Nuclear Weapon Just Rolled Off the Assembly Line

Within one day this article, penned by one Michael Schellingberger appeared in Forbes the very next day, February 21, 2019
StopLetting Your Cartoon Fears Of Nuclear Bombs Kill The Planet


It's hard to believe that humankind would kill off our best hope for preventing catastrophic climate change out of an exaggerated fear of nuclear weapons, but that is precisely what we are in the process of doing.

***
Last year, on June 18 Margo did a very comprehensive and excellent report on Novaya Zemlya as a smoking gun for rapid Arctic warming.




On cue, the very next day, the same author produced this article with an almost identical title as the one from the other day.

This came together with a cartoon of a poor, frightened woman.

What could be more ridiculous than fearing nuclear waste?

Forget Chernobyl, forget Fukushima. It's all a complete nothingburger and needed the "save the planet" (for the elite).




Everybody wants to do something about nuclear waste. Nuclear plant operators and most House members want to bury it in Nevada. A bipartisan group of senators wants states to compete for it. And Bill Gates and other entrepreneurs want to reuse it as fuel in next generation reactors.
Almost everybody is wrong to do so. Nuclear waste has never been a real problem. In fact, it’s the best solution to the environmental impacts from energy production.

Consider:
  • No way of making electricity other than nuclear power safely manages and pays for any its waste.
In other words, nuclear power’s waste by-products aren‘t a mark against the technology, they are its key selling point.

Who Is the author?

Michael Shellenberger describes hinself as a "ecological modernist" and "eco-pragmatist”


He writes about himself:

"I am a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and President of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. My writings have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Nature Energy, and PLOS Biology. My TED talks have been viewed over 1.5 million times"

You won't see it in print but he is also a sociopathic liar in league with the nuclear energy.  
How much did he sell his soul for?

P.S. Here is Margo's report where she discusses this - 

Wednesday, 12 September 2018

Half a dozen nuclear power plants are in the path of Forence

I reported on this yesterday. Here is confirmation from another quarter.
As 1.5 Million Flee Hurricane Florence, Worries Grow Over Half Dozen Nuclear Power Plants in Storm's Path

"Flooding-prone Brunswick Nuclear Plant among rickety old Fukushima-style reactors in likely path of Hurricane Florence."

by
At least half a dozen nuclear power plants are in the direct path of Hurricane Florence in South and North Carolina. (Photo: Scribble Maps/Google Maps)

With 1.5 million residents now under orders to evacuate their homes in preparation for Hurricane Florence's landfall in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, the region faces the possibility of catastrophe should the storm damage one or more of the nuclear power plants which lie in its potential path.

As the Associated Press reported on Monday, "The storm's potential path also includes half a dozen nuclear power plants, pits holding coal-ash and other industrial waste, and numerous eastern hog farms that store animal waste in massive open-air lagoons."

The plants thought to lie in the path of the hurricane, which is expected to make landfall on the Southeastern U.S. coast on Thursday, include North Carolina's Brunswick Nuclear Power Plant in Southport, Duke Energy Sutton Steam Plant in Wilmington, and South Carolina's V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Jenkinsville.

"Florence will approach the Carolina coast Thursday night into Friday with winds in excess of 100mph along with flooding rains. This system will approach the Brunswick Nuclear Plant as well as the Duke-Sutton Steam Plant," Ed Vallee, a North Carolina-based meteorologist, told Zero Hedge. "Dangerous wind gusts and flooding will be the largest threats to these operations with inland plants being susceptible to inland flooding."


Several nuclear power plants in North and South Carolina lie in the path of Hurricane Florence.Several nuclear power plants in North and South Carolina lie in the path of Hurricane Florence.
In 2015, the Huffington Post and Weather.com identified Brunswick as one of the East Coast's most at-risk nuclear power plants in the event of rising sea levels and the storm surges that come with them.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Hurricane Florence was thought to have the potential to cause "massive damage to our country" according to Jeff Byard, associate administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The storm was labeled a Category 4 tropical storm with the potential to become a Category 5 as it nears the coast, with 130 mile-per-hour winds blowing about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Fear, North Carolina.
Meteorologists warned of hurricane-force winds in the region by mid-day Thursday, with storm surges reaching up to 12 feet or higher.

The 2011 Fukushima disaster remains the highest-profile nuclear catastrophe caused by a natural disaster. The tsunami that hit Japan in March of that year disabled three of the plant's reactors, causing a radioactive release which forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

In 2014, Shane Shifflett and Kate Sheppard at the Huffington Post reported on the risk storms like Florence pose to nuclear plants:
Most nuclear power facilities were built well before scientists understood just how high sea levels might rise in the future. And for power plants, the most serious threat is likely to come from surges during storms. Higher sea levels mean that flooding will travel farther inland, creating potential hazards in areas that may have previously been considered safe.
During hurricanes, many nuclear facilities will power down—but this is not a sure-fire way to avoid disaster, wrote Sheppard and Shifflett.

"Even when a plant is not operating, the spent fuel stored on-site, typically uranium, will continue to emit heat and must be cooled using equipment that relies on the plant's own power," they wrote. "Flooding can cause a loss of power, and in serious conditions it can damage backup generators. Without a cooling system, reactors can overheat and damage the facility to the point of releasing radioactive material."

Saturday, 28 July 2018

Nuclear power plants fail in heatwaves


From Mark Austin

www.nnsa.energy.gov here at work we also have the fact that all older nuclear reactors and spent fuel cooling ponds hit a tipping point when temps are steadily over 37 to 44c. Yet all federal safety standards have recently been De regulated in order to increase energy company profits. Despite monthly warnings that NASA and all agencies see an abrupt impact event by 2023. Please copy and share this. Last chance year for more than 1% of the human race to understand that nuclear power consequence management is serious. Chain reaction meltdowns will impact earth beyond any other effect of methane burps. Radioactivity eats ozone and oxygen. The half life of isotopes is thousands of years destroying the chances of any future evolution!

Hot Weather Spells Trouble For Nuclear Power Plants


NPR,
27 July, 2018

Nuclear power plants in Europe have been forced to cut back electricity production because of warmer-than-usual seawater.

Plants in Finland, Sweden and Germany have been affected by a heat wave that has broken records in Scandinavia and the British Isles and exacerbated deadly wildfires along the Mediterranean.

Air temperatures have stubbornly lingered above 90 degrees in many parts of Sweden, Finland and Germany, and water temperatures are abnormally high — 75 degrees or higher in the usually temperate Baltic Sea.

That's bad news for nuclear power plants, which rely on seawater to cool reactors.

Finland's Loviisa power plant, located about 65 miles outside Helsinki, first slightly reduced its output on Wednesday. "The situation does not endanger people, [the] environment or the power plant," its operator, the energy company Fortum, wrote in a statement.

The seawater has not cooled since then, and the plant continued to reduce its output on both Thursday and Friday, confirmed the plant's chief of operations, Timo Eurasto. "The weather forecast [means] it can continue at least a week. But hopefully not that long," he said.

Eurasto says customers have not been affected by the relatively small reduction in output, because other power plants are satisfying electricity demand. The power plant produced about 10 percent of Finland's electricity last year.

The company also cut production at the Loviisa facility in 2010 and 2011, also due to warm water, but Eurasto said this summer's heatwave has been more severe than previous ones.

Nuclear power stations in Sweden and Germany have also reduced production because of cooling problems, Reuters reported. A spokesperson for Sweden's nuclear energy regulator told the wire service on Tuesday that the Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden had cut energy production "by a few percentage points."

Cooling issues at nuclear power plants may get worse in the future. Climate change is causing global ocean temperatures to rise and making heat waves more frequent and severe in many parts of the world. A 2011 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that warmer seas could affect the efficiency of nuclear power plants, noting:

"...during times of extreme heat, nuclear power plants operate less efficiently and are dually under the stress of increased electricity demand from air conditioning use. When cooling systems cannot operate, power plants are forced to shut down or reduce output."

It's not just warmer oceans that could spell trouble for nuclear power plants. Climate change is also producing more powerful storms and contributing to drought conditions, threatening facilities on coasts with wave and wind damage, and reducing the amount of water available to plants that cool their reactors with fresh water.

Friday, 1 April 2016

John Key, PM of non-nuclear NZ attends 'nuclear security' conference

The question needs to be asked why John Key, prime minister that does not have nuclear power nor uranium and has anti-nuclear legislation on its books is attending a 'nuclear security conference' in Washington that addresses neither nuclear bombs nor nuclear power.


Prime Minister John Key said he would meet with the United States President at an international summit in Washington.

Key confirmed he would be heading to US capital during the Easter break.

"I'm going over the weekend but for the nuclear security summit," Key said on Paul Henry, spilling the beans on the trip before it had been officially announced.

Compiled data shows Govt has voted against anti-nuke stance



Thursday, 31 March 2016, 4:02 pm
Press Release: Green Party

31 March 2016

Compiled data shows Govt has voted against anti-nuke stance

Data compiled for the Green Party shows that the National Government voted against, or abstained, on nuclear disarmament resolutions in the General Assembly 25 percent of the time.

John Key is currently in the US where he was invited to the Nuclear Security Summit. He was initially invited in 2010 because of New Zealand’s strong anti-nuclear stance, since then he has undermined that.

John Key is supposed to be in the US promoting our anti-nuclear position but in reality his Government has not voted in line with that position each time it's had the chance to,” said Green Party Co-leader Metiria Turei.

We have serious concerns that John Key is undermining New Zealand’s strong anti-nuclear stance during his trip to the US to attend the nuclear summit.

For example in 2014, the National Government voted against a resolution that called on States “to take the measures necessary to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in all its aspects and to promote nuclear disarmament”. This is fundamental to our policy, there was no reason to vote against it.

John Key needs to do more to promote New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance than use the Nuclear Security Summit as a photo-op.


It's crucial that New Zealand has an independent foreign policy. We need a government prepared to stand up for what is right,” said Mrs Turei.


Is The DC Nuclear Summit A Sham?




John Key is there, of course to talk up the TPPA. 

Here is the latest from Lori Wallach.

The Choice Is Not Between TPP or No Trade

Lori Wallach
Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

24 March, 2016

The high-profile presidential primary revolt against decades of damaging American trade policy finally has forced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) into mainstream media coverage.

The usual free-trade-agreement cheerleading squad of chronic-job-offshoring corporations, Wall Street, agribusiness and their coterie of think tanks and pundits are unnerved.

After spending billions in campaign contributions, lobbying and PR since the 1990s to enact our current trade policies, they want us to believe there is no alternative. In recent weeks, they have ginned up a PR campaign with two main themes: Critics of free trade agreements in general and the TPP in specific are protectionists who want to stop trade and/or are ignorant and misled.

The recent Washington Post piece by Vice President Biden’s former chief economist Jared Bernstein does a great job explaining why the real choice is not between TPP and no trade. As he notes, we don’t need more free trade agreements to expand trade.

Indeed, U.S. export growth to countries that are not Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to FTA partners by 29 percent over the past decade. By the end of 2015, the aggregate U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners had increased by 418 percent since the FTAs were implemented while that with all non-FTA countries had decreased by 6 percent.

How can that be? For the same reason polls repeatedly show that most Americans are for trade and against our trade agreements: America’s trade policy and trade agreements have been hijacked by special interests.

Indeed, the TPP’s strongest opponents are not against trade and do know what is in such agreements. That is precisely why they oppose them.

This Washington Post infographic shows how our secretive trade negotiating process gives a privileged role to hundreds of official U.S. trade advisors representing corporate interests. They have turned our “trade” agreements into delivery mechanisms for an array of retrograde policies, many unrelated to trade, that have hurt most Americans.

Consider that the agreements sold as expanding exports of Made-in-America goods actually include provisions that make it easier for corporations to export investment and American jobs to low wage countries and import their goods back. The pro-free-trade Cato Institute calls these foreign investor protections, found in pacts since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a subsidy for offshoring. The terms significantly reduce risks and costs for firms that relocate.

Or consider that our “free trade” agreements impose protectionist intellectual property monopolies. Big PhRMA got terms that require every signatory country to extend the periods during which pharmaceutical firms can avoid generic competition and thus charge obscene medicine prices. The pacts also include terms extending copyright protections and limits on Internet freedom that undermine access to knowledge and stifle innovation.

The pacts also provide new tools for transnational investors to attack the environmental and health policies on which we all rely to keep our families safe. Major oil and gas firms have been among the most frequent users of these infamous investor-state dispute settlement provisions. They empower individual foreign corporations and investors to drag the U.S. government in front of foreign arbitration tribunals to demand compensation from taxpayers when the investor believes that policies - applying equally to domestic and foreign firms enacted by Congress and approved by our courts - violate their new trade pact investor rights.

Agribusiness interests got terms that require us to import food that does not meet U.S. safety standards. The GEs, GMs and other manufacturing firms that offshored production pushed rules that forbid us to apply “Buy American” procurement policies. That lets them still benefit from U.S. government procurement contracts after they move production to sweatshops abroad. Yes, our trade pacts also offshore our tax dollars rather than harnessing government purchasing power to create jobs and spur innovation here.

Wall Street got rules limiting financial regulation, even those applying equally to domestic and foreign firms. This includes constraints on policies that limit the size of financial institutions, ban especially risky financial products or require firewalls to limit the spread of risk across financial products.

Every effort at common sense reform has been beaten back - both in the agreements and in U.S. policy.

So we have tax policies that reward job offshoring and provide impunity for ‘American’ firms that invert their corporate structure to tax havens but no rules to stop other countries from cheating on trade by lowering the value of their currency. Currency devaluations subsidize their exports to us - wiping out American jobs, firms and farmers - and make our exports too expensive to sell in the currency-manipulating countries.

There are no limits on trade with countries complicit in horrific human rights abuses. But it would violate the trade rules if we cut off trade with a country after a coup against a democratic government.

In sum, our trade policies reflect the goals of certain privileged interests to the detriment of promoting the broad public interest.

Having lived with the damaging results over the past decades, it should be no surprise that many Americans are against these corrupt special interest trade policies.

And now we have presidential candidates from both parties revealing the truth: There is nothing inevitable about the damage, but rather the rules have been rigged against us.

Trade agreement after trade agreement has not only failed to meet its business sector and political backers’ glowing promises of job creation but has done severe damage.

We have suffered the net loss of nearly 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and more than 57,000 factories, and seen millions of higher-wage service sector jobs offshored.

Americans face flat median wages despite significant productivity gains as those losing jobs to bad trade polices join the glut of Americans competing for non-offshorable service sector jobs. This has been a major contributor to the worst U.S. income inequality in the last century.

The volume of U.S. food exports has stagnated while U.S. food imports have more than doubled in the past 20 years of NAFTA-style deals. The result: family farmers wiped out and all our families flooded with unsafe imported food.

And this is not just a NAFTA problem. The 2012-implemented Korea FTA included the higher labor and environmental standards congressional Democrats forced into George W. Bush’s last trade pacts. But still the U.S. trade deficit with Korea grew over 90 percent in the first three years it was in effect. That equates to the loss of 90,000 American jobs, counting imports and exports in the formula the administration used to predict job gains from the pact.

We can do better and we must.

Trade agreements and policies are how we can write rules for the global economy.

And the United States is uniquely able to set trade policies that others have to follow. That leverage is the only upside to having the largest trade deficit in history.

China, Vietnam, Mexico, Japan and other nations are deeply reliant on being able to sell things here. That means these governments need to come to agreement with us on terms of trade or risk economic disruptions that could undermine their own political viability.

But to date, this leverage has been squandered to obtain special protections for Big PhRMA and U.S. firms seeking to invest abroad rather than to secure terms that work for all of us.

We desperately need a new American trade policy.

To achieve that, first, we must do no further harm. As Paul Krugman put it in a recent New York Times column, we need “a standstill on further deals, or at least a presumption that proposed deals are guilty unless proved innocent.”

We must not enact any more-of-the-same, job-killing, race-to-the-bottom agreements.

Polls show majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans oppose the TPP. Currently there is not a majority in the House of Representatives to pass it. Supporters’ hope is to slime it through Congress in a lame duck session post-election with the votes of retired and fired representatives.

Imagine the fury if the public knew that the Obama administration also is close to a deal with China after years of closed-door negotiations. That China Bilateral Investment Agreement would provide special protections for U.S. corporations that offshore investment to China and give Chinese firms new rights to buy up American manufacturing companies, energy and communications firms, and land.

Second, we must review and replace our existing trade policies and pacts. The special interests that put our current system in place are jealously intransigent about commonsense changes for which there is now growing consensus.

This includes enforceable disciplines against currency cheating; removing offshoring incentives, bans on Buy American preferences, patent extensions and the investor-state tribunal system in trade pacts; conditioning access to the U.S. market on countries meeting international labor, environmental and human rights standards; eliminating existing U.S. tax credits, subsidies such as Export-Import bank loans, and government contracts for firms that ship jobs overseas; enacting domestic tax and procurement policies that reward firms producing here; expanding Buy American procurement preferences; eliminating the corporate benefits for companies that relocate their corporate headquarters overseas to take advantage of a tax loophole and so forth.

Third, before we consider negotiating any new agreements, we must create a new model that ensures any future pacts create jobs here and raise wages.

The TPP’s boosters cynically claim that the TPP is the new model. In fact, the TPP includes word-for-word much of the old NAFTA-style language. Worse, it actually expands on some of NAFTA’s most damaging terms, such as the foreign investor privileges that promote job offshoring.

The TPP rolls back the initial reforms to trade-pact environmental and medicine patent rules that congressional Democrats forced Bush to include in his last trade deals. It would double U.S. liability under the investor-state dispute settlement regime by empowering an additional 9,200 Japanese and Australian firms to attack our laws in foreign arbitration tribunals. (While billions have been paid to foreign investors under this regime, so far we have dodged the bullet because past U.S. pacts have been with developing nations with few investors here.)

The TPP includes notorious human rights violators like Brunei, which recently implemented sharia-based laws for the stoning-to-death of gays and unwed mothers, and Malaysia whose modern day slavery has made it among the worst nations for human trafficking.

What would a good trade agreement look like? In 2009, Congress’ leading fair-trade champions worked with economists, trade experts, businesses and environmental, labor, consumer, faith and family-farm organizations to develop that alternative. They hoped it would shape the approach taken by the new incoming Obama administration.

That is not how history played out, and thus we have the TPP — NAFTA on steroids.

But the 2009 Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act provides a good blueprint for trade pacts that could benefit more Americans. The legislation set forth what must and must not be included in future pacts - basically eliminating the special interest non-trade riders that now comprise the majority of our Trojan horse agreements and adding the rules to make actual trade terms more fair.

It also included criteria for what countries would be appropriate U.S. trade agreement partners - those that offer American exporters opportunities and where strong labor, environmental and human rights standards exist in practice, not just on paper.


Unless and until we enact a trade policy that can harvest the benefits of expanding our exports to create well-paying American jobs and prosperity for American farmers while growing jobs at home, raising wages and promoting democracy, human rights and a healthy environment, the trade fury we are now witnessing will only grow.