Sick of Secrets

[WilliamPitt]

Fracking site where chemical-laden water is injected at high speed into the ground.
(Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Sick of Secrets
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Friday 23 May 2014

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.

- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Regular readers of this space are well aware by now of the joy I take in highlighting and underscoring the bottomless vat of genuine entertainment to be found in the foibles, follies and gut-busting failures provided on a daily basis by this country's far-right fringe. From hilariously misspelled and misapprehended protest signs - "Respect Are Country - Speak English" and "Keep Government Out Of My Medicare" leap to mind - to bottomless calamities like the "Operation American Spring" in DC this past weekend, to the "patriots" at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada pointing their guns at each other over a rumor that Eric Holder was sending a drone to kill them all, these people are well and truly the gift that keeps on giving.

The problem is that some of these brain donors are actually in charge of stuff, as evidenced by the latest doings in North Carolina on the subject of fracking.

Fracking, for those not in the know, is the process of injecting chemical-laden water at high speed into the ground, so as to extract the last vestiges of useable hydrocarbons from a particular site. Bully for those who turn whatever is extracted into folding green, but the neighbors have a tendency to find their tap water undrinkable and/or flammable thanks to the chemicals being injected into the ground, and folks in places like Oklahoma, Texas and California will tell you all about the earthquakes that happen near active fracking sites.

The state fathers of the North Carolina General Assembly, it seems, do not want you or anyone else to know the precise composition of the poisons being injected into the ground in order to lap up whatever mouthfuls of gas and oil there are to be had. Three Republican senators from that august chamber have coughed up a bill that would make it a felony to disclose the chemicals used in the fracking process.

Not for nothing, and try to contain your shock, but the three North Carolina state senators pushing this bill have each received lavish campaign contributions from a lobbying firm called McGuire Woods, which represents gas and oil companies like Koch Industries and Halliburton. Far be it from me to wave the bloody shirt, but it strikes me as singularly obnoxious that elected officials are seeking to criminalize providing information to the public about why the water they drink is probably killing them because of the crud being pumped into their groundwater by the companies doling out money to keep it secret.

I know, I know, it's just the price of doing business. Just Republicans being Republicans, right? Screw the people, because all that matters is the wealth-weighted paymasters lurking just out of sight.

Speaking of which, have you heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? It's this massive multi-nation trade deal that President Obama is just wild about. The thing is, the deal is being negotiated in secret between a few government officials and a few hundred corporate representatives. The only reason we know anything about it at all is because Wikileaks got hold of a few documents pertaining to the deal and was kind enough to share them with the world by way of the internet.

The little we know: TPP would paint some 40 percent of the world's economy with NAFTA-style rules that would, among other things, ship American jobs overseas, subsume our judicial system with corporate arguments that their rights to profit are more important than the standing laws of the land, and forever alter the free exchange of information on the internet. The price of medicines will skyrocket, US companies will no longer be able to pitch their wares under the "Buy American" banner, genetically-altered life forms will be able to be patented, tobacco companies will be let off the our-product-will-kill-you leash, and Wall Street - the biggest TPP fan of all - will make a killing.

And that's just what we know about this thing that is being pushed like mad by the Democrat in the White House.

(snip)

So, yeah, here's the funny part: Republicans in North Carolina want to make it a crime to disclose the chemicals that the people they purport to represent are being exposed to. Meanwhile, the Democrat in the White House wants to sell you and everyone you know out to massive corporate and financial interests, and in an ancillary twist of the knife, that same Democrat's administration is trying to make it harder for you to find out about these things by warping the nature of the internet into a pay-for-play cash cow...and you know what? All of these Republican and Democratic secrets are going to make the same small group of rich people even richer.

I am mortally sick of secrets.

Aren't you?

The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/23891-william-rivers-pitt-sick-of-secrets

[Octafish]

1. I, too, am mortally sick of secrets.

Secret government. Secret agendas. Secret agents. Secret beneficiaries.

Then there was the news out of Ukraine, where one guy made out like the son of HARKEN Energy, which was sickening in a buy-partisan way.

PS: Thank you for another great article, WilliamPitt!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Thomas Jefferson agrees.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

 Thomas Jefferson

[pa28]

3. I'm old enough to remember when secrets were about national security.

Maybe I'm naive but that was the way it seemed.

The new brand of secrecy protects an invasive security state because we'd be outraged if we knew exactly how far the tentacles reach into to details of our daily lives.

The TPP is a secret because the public would know it's being sheared for the benefit of the corporations who are writing it.

The administration spiked the EPA's report on fracking and it's chemical properties are secret because the public might be mad if they knew they were living in a sacrifice zone. A place where your life is expendable in the face of profits.

I don't remember the exact quote but Colin Powell said 'dear god what are they going to do when they find out'. I think that explains quite a bit about the elite's love of this new kind of secrecy.

[cantbeserious]

4. Thank You For Sharing

eom

[smallcat88]

5. Sickening

And almost no one is paying attention to this story. Even on MSNBC the only person I've heard mention the TPP is Ed Schultz. Which means the TPP is likely to happen because there won't be a lot of opposition to something most people know nothing about.

[WillyT]

6. HUGE K & R !!! - THANK YOU !!!

[Voice for Peace]

7. "the Democrat in the White House wants to sell you and everyone you know out..."

try a new framework.

[Stainless]

8. Fracking is not performed with high "speed" injection........

but rather high "pressure" injection. Pressure creates the force necessary for fracking to occur. Speed (or velocity) has nothing to do with it. I learned about fracking when the so called 'Overthrust Belt' was being exploited by gas and oil developers in southwest Wyoming in the early eighties. Dick Cheney's Haliburton was a big player at that time.

No matter how it is accomplished, fracking is bad for the environment and thus bad for people and other living things.

[Enthusiast]

9. Our democracy is in a very unhealthy state.

It grows worse by the minute.

[antigop]

10. well, William, maybe you should just ask Hillary about the TPP

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=67554

[BelgianMadCow]

11. United states of secrets

can't be the home of the brave or the free. There is no freedom in such a society, and people are fearful instead of brave.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/

Not all, however.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

12. We all need to form community rights groups

Celdf.org

Fighting back at the community level with our own community bill of rights.