Experts Tell NEWSNAC Indiana State Fair Broke Nearly All the Rules in Deadly Stage Collapse.

On Saturday night August 13, 2011, thousands of fair-goers at the Indiana State Fair watched in horror as an outdoor stage collapsed just moments prior to an appearance by country music stars Sugarland. The catastrophe claimed five lives and left over 40 injured. In the week that has followed both state and fair officials have come under fire for trying to dismiss the event as an unforeseeable freak accident caused by an extremely rare and highly localized wind burst that obviously crushed the stage but left the many rides on the near-by midway undamaged.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniel’s early description of the event as a ‘fluke’ as well as a preliminary plan that would have left the State of Indiana (the sponsor of the fair) in total control of the accident investigation has raised a chorus of criticism. Late in the week officials finally gave way to the pressure and announced that outside independent consultants had been hired to assure the public of transparency in the final accident report.

Meanwhile in Brussels Belgium on Thursday night (8/18/11), another powerful thunderstorm slammed into a music festival killing five and injuring seventy others just as an American band from Chicago were about to perform. In this incident, other tents and temporary festival structures were also collapsed by the storm.

The two major aspects of the Indiana tragedy investigators plan to focus on are: (1) Why weren’t advance warnings of an approaching severe storm acted upon sooner, and (2) Was there a defect in the design or construction of the outdoor stage?

According to the experts NEWSNAC consulted, the Indiana State Fair failed miserably in both areas.

Arnold Carter is a retired entertainment producer and promoter with decades of experience in staging outdoor events. He’s also a pilot with a keen knowledge of weather.

“For many of the years I was working and promoting outdoor events we did not have the assets they have today like Doppler radar or direct lines to the National Weather Service, we used plain old common sense,” Arnold recalled.

“It is just unbelievable to hear the stories coming out now about when was a severe thunderstorm watch issued, when was the warning issued, what did they say to crowd, it’s just ridiculous. Just look at the facts. You have a forecast of storms and you have a huge black cloud approaching the location. You have hundreds, maybe a few thousand people out in the open between the grandstands and the stage which, regardless of the wind, is sitting like 50 or 60 feet in the air, a big metal box in the middle of an open field with a thunderstorm approaching…and no one has the common sense to say, let’s move people to safety until this storm goes by because this stage is a giant lightening rod waiting to get hit!”

“The Governor (Daniels) has really been putting the spin to the facts when he says this was a fluke because there was no damage to the midway rides. It’s the exact opposite, the fact that the midway rides stood and this stage fell over when both were obviously subjected to the same storm tells you the stage was all wrong.”

“I have not heard if they closed some of the tall midway rides like the Ferris wheels and if they didn’t then they deserve to be called doubly stupid! I don’t want to date myself too much but when I started in this business way back when, your kids could ride the biggest rides on the midway for a quarter or less and that’s certainly not true today. One reason is, just like a lot of other things, is the cost of the liability insurance a carnival has to carry.”

“I know for a fact because I was right there when it happened thirty years ago. There was a state fair, not Indiana but a smaller state that had a bad week due to rain and was trying to make it up on the last weekend of the fair. On the Friday night we had storm warnings and by nine o’clock you could see a lot of lightening coming towards the fairgrounds. I remember the fair manager and the manager of the carnival nearly getting into a fistfight because the carnival guys wanted to shut down the tall rides and the fair manager told him if he did then they (the midway operators) would never be invited back again.”

“The fair manager kept saying he’d accept the responsibility and the midway guy kept yelling he wasn’t going to risk his liability insurance. Well, they kept the damn things running until the storm was right on top of us and I can tell you, as a pilot I’ve been in some scary situations but that night I was really scared with both feet on the ground. By the time we got everyone off the talls (tall rides) lightening was hitting the light poles in the parking lot, the wind was blowing at 60 and everyone was getting soaked.”

“The next day here comes the midway operator to the fair office and his face is bright red. Sure enough, there was an insurance guy there that night and to make a long story short, they told the carnival their policy was cancelled until they came up with an additional risk adjustment $30,000 payment for not shutting it down sooner the night before. The fair was supposed to open at noon and there was a lot of scrambling and board meetings and ended up they were going to let the midway shutdown on the last and biggest night of the fair until a couple of the wealthy farmers actually pooled the money to cover the midway’s insurance.”

“Deep down, I can’t help but fear that those folks out in Indiana were thinking a little too much about the dollars and not enough about the dangers. They certainly would not be the first nor the last.”

While most engineering experts are obviously reluctant to speak openly about the disaster at this early stage NEWSNAC was able to persuade one engineer to offer his unofficial observations on condition of anonymity.

SJ, as we will call him, has over twenty years experience in design and construction of open frame steel architecture. His work has included both permanent and temporary stages similar to the one which collapsed as well as broadcasting towers and other structures which employ the use of cross-braced hollow steel tubing beams.

NEWSNAC: What are your first impressions or gut reactions to the videos and pictures you’ve seen so far?

SJ: Sickening would be my only gut impression. As a designer you don’t ever want to see something you or someone else designed fail like that and kill and maim people. It’s hard to sit here and try, as an engineer, to tell you what went wrong when all I have is the same pictures and news accounts everyone else has, but putting that aside, if I was asked to offer an opinion solely on the evidence at hand, I would have to concede some people made some terrible errors here. There are three which to me, really stick out and there’s some visible evidence in these pictures which I think will be valuable in the final judgment of what went wrong.

NEWSNAC: So what were those three errors?

SJ: Well let me start by saying there is nothing at all inherently dangerous about using cross-braced tubular steel(CBTS). It is used in all types of structures, offers a tremendous strength-to-weight ratio and in all honesty, without these you’d be using something like wooden poles for tents and stages.

NEWSNAC: So are you saying it probably was not a construction or design flaw but actually the strength of the wind that hit it?

SJ: No not at all. In engineering we like to say, when a failure occurs, that capacity exceeded design. In the case of the World Trade Center, even after the planes hit, the capacity of the damaged sections to support the sections above was not immediately exceeded, but the subsequent fires obviously weakened them until that threshold of capacity exceeding design was reached and they collapsed.

The capacity of CBTS to handle vertical loads is unmatched. If you look at a typical radio tower, the kind that are a single beam going straight up with guide wire cables supporting it laterally, the sections at the bottom are the same as the ones at the top. You have the bottom 30 foot section carrying the weight of hundreds of feet of additional sections above it. But again, using the radio tower as an example, once you get up in the air 60 to 80 feet, you lose lateral stability which is why you then need guide wires to keep it upright. But in the case of a stage like the one in Indiana, you can easily build in lateral support with perpendiculars to the verticals, which it appears is exactly what they did. So now you have this CBTS box and what is or should be a very stable and reliable structure.

NEWSNAC: So what went wrong.

SJ: The very first images I saw of this I just could not believe they built this thing and then put a gable roof on it. I actually had to go online to find some examples of outdoor temporary stage designers using that design and there aren’t many and none that I could find for a stage that large. Most stages are a single slope falling off from front to back or in some cases an open arch but not a gable roof because in a strong wind a gable roof becomes a dihedral, literally a wing! The air going over the top has a further distance to travel than the air flowing beneath it so you get lift. This is going to torsion or twist the whole structure and place excessive lateral loads on the vertical supports.

The second major issue I saw, and again, it’s going to generate the same kind of off-balance loads, was that they closed up the back of the stage and some of the sides. CBTS by itself has very low wind loading because it has a very small and rounded surface area. But when you laterally span a structure like this with huge swaths of canvas or tarp, now you have a sailboat, but it’s not in water, it’s anchored to the ground! The wind loads even from a 50 or 60 m.p.h gust on an area that large would have been huge.

Finally, the third issue was the height. Now again, normally, if this stage had been left totally open and all they did was hang the lights and sound without the gable, the tarps or stage backdrop – I doubt we’d be talking about any tragedy. But building such a tall structure and then closing part of it in meant you were risking some huge potential lateral loads when a strong wind hit those tarps. As I said regarding the radio tower, after 60 or so feet, CBTS starts to get unstable to lateral loading.

It’s like almost any other event of this nature, change one of these elements and it probably doesn’t happen. I can almost guarantee you that if you had changed all three it would not have happened.

NEWSNAC: You said there was evidence in some of the photography that may offer a clue?

SJ: The video everyone has seen has some basic information in it. I cannot be certain because of the camera but it does appear that the vertical supports start to wobble, then you see the tarp covering the gable on the right side of the stage blow off and then the collapse happens from left to right with a slight forward twist on the front right.

But I think the most informative picture is one attributed to Joey Foley/Getty Images and is a snapshot taken much closer and slightly to the left of the stage right as the collapse is starting. The first thing you notice is two of the verticals have snapped in the same place about eight to ten feet from the top perpendicular. It appears the verticals are still securely anchored and the critical junction at the top where the vertical meets the perpendicular is still intact. Now this does not rule out a failure of those areas on some of the other supports we can’t see but it indicates to me the entire top of the structure has shifted off center placing an unbalanced lateral load at roughly the same place on both of those verticals.

You can clearly see the stage backdrop is still mostly intact and obviously adding wind load to the structure. So when you combine the right gable tarp blowing off, the left staying on and the backdrop staying in place you clearly have a sudden combination of lift, twist and lateral loading

NEWSNAC: Do you see anything that would support Governor Daniel’s assertion that the wind that blew the stage down was a ‘fluke’?

SJ: No, quite the opposite. Again if you look at the Foley photograph you can clearly see on both the right and left side of the stage what appear to be typical fairground style pole-tents which are not being damaged. It appears the sides are flapping but there’s no indication from this picture or any of the reports I have read to indicate these simple stake, rope and pole tents were collapsed. You have to ask if this event was so rare why did it destroy the stage and not these generally less well constructed structures.

[End SJ Interview]

As the investigation into this tragedy begins one other question which relates to the comments offered by Arnold Carter and SJ will beg an answer.

For decades, country music stars have conveyed themselves, their bands and all of their instruments, costumes and equipment aboard a single customized bus. Today, many of these performers are accompanied by convoys of semi-trailers and a small army of stagehands greater than those which many iconic “coliseum” rock bands toured with in years past.

These large productions place greater demands on venues like state fairs to provide ever larger and more elaborate stages. But it also places extremely tight time restrictions on the touring company. Itineraries are literally scheduled down to the minute. Performances must begin and end at a precise time to allow the elaborate stage-show to be disassembled, trucked to the next venue and then reassembled in time for the next show, often in less than twenty-four hours. As a consequence performers force promoters to sign contracts that allow them to cancel or shorten an appearance to stay on schedule. This in turn places the promoter at risk of possible significant financial losses which may, as Arnie Carter noted, drive them to, “thinking a little too much about the dollars and not enough about the dangers.”

But What if it is not Just a Test?

The United States is moving towards the somber milestone of the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Next September (2012), the world will no doubt pause to remember the 40^th year since the terrorist attack on 20^th Olympiad in Germany where 11 Israeli athletes were killed. Meanwhile the nation of Norway is still struggling to understand the tragedy of last month which left nearly 80 young people dead and scores of other wounded. What do these three events have in common aside from the obvious common denominator of terrorism? In each case, lives were lost due to deficiencies in emergency planning.

On September 11^th there was a breakdown in the Four-C’s of coordination, communications, command and control caused by the fact that New York City’s Emergency Command Center was located in World Trade Ctr. Building seven. In Munich in 1972, much blame was placed on the German police for not having a SWAT or Rapid Response Team, trained and equipped to deal with the hostage crisis. In Norway, there is still a degree of outrage being expressed over the 60-90 minute response time it took police to get to the island camp and apprehend the confessed shooter.

Also last week saw the conviction of five New Orleans Police officers for their role in unjustified shootings which occurred in the chaotic wake of hurricane Katrina.

As state and local governments reduce police and fire forces due to budgetary constraints and private businesses continue to downsize in all areas there is growing concern among some safety experts that training and real-world execution of comprehensive emergency planning may suffer.

According to the experts we spoke with, an outdated or unpracticed emergency plan is like a ticking “time bomb” just waiting to go off. The event may be terrorism, fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, chemical leak or any number of other possible scenarios. Here are some comments the experts shared with NEWSNAC.

“People tend to write emergency plans then treat them like the Bible. As a practical matter they are reluctant to update them and sometimes to even share them within an organization. In the private sector they are usually kept locked up in the office of the facilities manager or head of security. So even if they are current and applicable unless the event occurs during the time that person is on the job and the event does not prevent them from reaching their office, they may as well be on Mars.”

“Fire is a common threat so most emergency plans are primarily just fire evacuation plans. The occupants are taught simply to respond like Pavlov’s Dog and walk to their assigned fire exit when they hear the alarm, but there are numerous emergency scenarios where this is the wrong choice. If there’s a gunman in the building the last thing you want is a hallway crowded with people trying to reach the fire escapes. Same thing is true if there’s something like a tornado warning. In the case of a gunman the right move is usually going to be a lock-down, for a tornado it’s shelter-in-place, preferably in a room or hallway without windows. People need to be trained and drilled on lock-down and shelter-in-place just as much as on escaping fire. You need to establish how you would communicate this information because obviously you do not want people pulling the fire alarm for any type of emergency.”

“I am gravely concerned with some of the comments I have been hearing regarding cancellations of annual full-scale drills in favor of desktop drills. Many first responder agencies are being told that there simply is not the money for overtime, or extra fuel or the other costs associated with these drills.”

“There should be concern with the current cuts in government budgets and how that will impact routine maintenance of equipment. So many agencies have helicopters which play a multifaceted role in their overall operations. Helicopters are very maintenance intensive and even the slightest deviation from full due diligence there can lead to a tragedy. But you can say the same about fire and rescue vehicle and the specialized gear worn by firemen or hazmat teams.”

The experts even spoke to the possible economic issues which may impact the emergency plans of the individual American family.

“The tragedy in Norway killed as more people in 90 minutes as usually die in an entire year in that country due to fire because they have a mandatory smoke detector law for all residences. I think we started to see in recent years with oil so high and people having trouble making ends meet, a return to kerosene and electric space heaters, both of which are safe if properly used and maintained but are deadly when they are not.”

Following the controversial Debt Ceiling debate and passage, congress adjourned for their summer recess without authorizing funding for the Federal Aviation Administration. While the issue did not impact air traffic controllers it should have impacted some safety inspectors. The only reason it did not was because of the dedication of these civil servants who not only worked without pay, but funded their agency travel from their own money. A stop-gap bill has been passed putting the inspectors back in full employment with expenses starting Monday August 8, 2011. It was a noble example of single-minded public concern for safety, but it will be a dangerous illusion if other cash-strapped agencies decide that shortfalls in public safety budgets will always be covered by their workers at the workers’ expense.

America - Going or Already Gone?

In the 2006 motion picture V for Vendetta, Great Britain has apparently survived a global upheaval mostly intact albeit an Orwellian right-wing dictatorship. Little is known of the fate of the United States except for a glimpse offered during the TV monologue of the state-sanctioned talking head Lewis Prothero who notes:

“So I read that the former United States is so desperate for medical supplies that they have allegedly sent several containers filled with wheat and tobacco. A gesture, they said, of good will. You wanna know what I think? Well, you're listening to my show, so I will assume you do... I think it's high time we let the colonies know what we really think of them. I think its payback time for a little tea party they threw for us a few hundred years ago. I say we go down to those docks tonight and dump that crap where everything from the Ulcered Sphincter of Arse-erica belongs! Who's with me? Who's bloody with me?”

The imagery of an impoverished and desperate America ironically laced with references to the original ‘tea party” seem apocalyptically too close for comfort as America’s unresolved battle to raise the national debt ceiling now looms barely 72 hours from this writing. But many economists are now saying the simple fact that our fractured political system allowed the debate to reach this far has already resulted in irreparable damage. According to some, the global community can no longer look at the United States as somehow above the storms that have frequently rocked lesser nations and all but destroyed others.

The grand promise embodied in that notion which came to be known as The American Dream was rooted in the infallible assurance that each new generation of Americans would live in a better, stronger and greater nation than the one their parents were born into. Today, most would argue that it takes not only blind idealism but an unrealistic degree of optimism to truly believe that this historical dynamic will survive or even if in fact it has survived. Have we reached the tipping point where the salvation of a legacy of national greatness can still be achieved or has the tipping point occurred? Has our center of gravity shifted so far over the abyss of mediocrity that no force in the universe exists to save us from the fall described by the fictional Prothero?

To answer that question, NEWSNAC requested interviews with several leading historians who also have occasionally shared the label of ‘futurist.” Most declined, one accepted but did request anonymity. We have assigned him the simple name Lewis in honor of the character from “V”. The nearly verbatim content of that interview follows.

NEWSNAC: I think our readers may wonder why someone like you, a historian, author, and lecturer would feel the need to have anonymity on the subject of the downfall of America? Can you speak to that?

LEWIS: Well (laughs) until such time as it all really goes to shit I have to earn a living and doing what I do is very much like politics. I may speak at five separate events in one week and if you were to get all five groups in one room there’d probably be one huge fist-fight.

No, seriously, I discuss this topic all the time but I’m always careful to leave a kind of Hitchcock ending like in the Birds when you don’t know what happened and perhaps…just perhaps…somebody catches the hail Mary pass as the clock hits zero and the underdog wins…or maybe the birds ate everybody on earth and that was that,

NEWSNAC: So first, has America lost all that made it great?

LEWIS: Without question, yes. I was a kid in eight-grade back in the mid 60’s when the Gemini missions were happening and it was so exciting. We’d all smuggle transistor radios into school and hide them in our shirts so we could listen to Chris Craft’s reports from Mission Control. I remember one day, I think it was when we were doing the first space walk, and everyone was so excited. It happened on the same day that they sold the old US Savings Stamps in School. You could but stamps for a nickel and then when you’d filled up a book you could trade it in for a bond. I remember Mr. Holt our Social Studies teacher doing this long lecture on how buying those stamps paid for that space walk. I gave up lunch that day and bought Saving Stamps so I could feel like I was part of it. And I always remember that was the first place I heard the term “backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.” I kept thinking back to that day last week when the manned space program ended and all the debate on the debt ceiling. It was like finding out there was no Santa, no Easter Bunny and no Tooth Fairy all at once…except in this case, I knew that at one time, they all had existed. It’s like they were killed in a place crash or something.

NEWSNAC: So was it the space program that made America great.

LEWIS No, no, that’s the big picture point people always miss. The space program was one of hundreds of examples of where we, America, solved a problem. We weren’t the first in space but we really did some things after we got there, like repeatedly go to the moon and back and the Russians never even tried. We built the Panama Canal and the first railroad that spanned a continent. We split the atom and invented the telegraph, telephone, airplanes, light bulb, movies and computers. We clearly won every war we fought until Vietnam. You can read countless history books and you can’t find something where America said “we’re going to do this” and then we got frustrated and gave up.

Our politics never got in the way either and even the rancor in Washington today is nothing. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1786, Benjamin Franklin and a few other delegates were quietly trying to lobby for amendments to bar Jewish immigration, some even wanted to bar Catholics. There’s plenty of documented history of threats of violence, drunkenness, and delegates having to be rounded up from some of Philadelphia’s more distinguished whorehouses. The popular romantic notion that our so-called Founding Fathers were a collection of pious conservative Christians devoted to democratic principles is total revisionist bullshit! Some wanted to go right back to a monarchy and have Washington crowed the first king for godsake!

What made us great was very simple, whether you were a pilgrim landing in Virginia in the early 1600’s or an immigrant Italian or Irish landing on Ellis Island in the early 20^th century, you mostly came with just the clothes on your back but with a wide expanse of opportunity. The first thing everyone had to do was take responsibility for their own survival and use their wits, be creative be inventive. When a person does that for so long, then even after they get a little comfortable those same energies would drive them and that’s what made us a nation of problem solvers and that’s what made us great.

NEWSNAC: So when or where did we go wrong?

LEWIS Well, now you’ve touched the nerve of why I’m not comfortable having my true identity known if I’m going to be perfectly honest and flatly answer that question. We went wrong in 1980 with the Presidency or Ronald Reagan. To some degree, the current crisis is part of the on-going legacy myth of Reagan’s trickle-down tax-cut economic theory which has been shown to be totally disproven. Remember when Bush-41 was running against him in the Republican Primaries he called it ‘voodoo economics.” Tax cuts don’t stimulate job growth, it’s just the opposite. If you have a business and you hire people and pay them a salary or buy new equipment, you don’t pay taxes on that money! You only pay taxes on what you want to keep, so tax cuts for the rich don’t make them hire people, it just lets them buy bigger houses, bigger yachts and take more high-priced vacations. But it wasn’t tax cuts that really killed us, it was when Reagan said we needed to convert America to a “Service Based Economy” This is what I call, “Coconut Economics.” See 1980 was the beginning of the real exodus of traditional good-paying American manufacturing jobs to countries like Korea, Japan, China and Mexico. Big business loved it because labor costs plummeted and profits soared, Reagan loved it because he hated unions, even though he’d been the President of the actors union at one time…and a Democrat.

NEWSNAC: So why do you call a service based economy Coconut Economics?

LEWIS Ok, let’s start with the simplest example of how wealth grows. Every American household exports work in the form of the jobs of the working adults living there and the value received for those exports is measured by the dollars in the paychecks they receive. Equally, every American home imports goods and services like the electricity, the mortgage, groceries, clothing, etc. As long as the value of your exports, your labor, exceeds the value of your imports, expenses, your wealth has to grow. When you grow your wealth you can use it to do other things like add a pool or an addition to your home.

Here’s where we get into the coconuts. Let’s say you and I move to an island where there are just the two of us and we establish a sovereign nation. This island has two things, coconuts and sand dollars. Now some days I don’t feel like collecting coconuts so I pay you some sand dollars to collect them for me. Some days it’s the other way. So we have this nice little service based economy with a back and forth of sand dollars. But once a month, there’s a cruise ship that stops by the island and both of us decide there are things on the cruise ship we’d like to buy..but they don’t accept sand dollars. So we decide to start making little souvenirs from the coconuts and selling them to the tourist on the cruise ship to get hard currency we can use to spend on things we want to buy from the store on the cruise ship. As time goes buy we get really successful and before long we’re both sitting on a pile of dollars. But then something happens. We got lazy and tired of all this work of making these trinkets out of coconuts so we decide to go back to a simple service based economy. Once a month you’ll come over and cut my hair and once a month I’ll cut yours and then once a month we’ll both go to the cruise ship and buy our goodies from the store using the money, the wealth we amassed. It works fine for awhile but eventually, with a service based economy, we wind up right back with nothing but sand dollars and coconuts.

See, the only way to build wealth is to win in the import/export game. When America was first settled, long before it was even a nation, it was all about the exports, tobacco, cotton and lumber. Then, as the industrial revolution kicked in we not only exported our vast array of raw commodities but our labors. Then, as we added invention we also exported cars, and planes and locomotives and all kinds of technology. We built wealth because we had more of what the world needed from us than of what we needed from the world. The entire premise of a service based economy in a global marketplace is flawed because the only way to build wealth is by exporting a raw material, like OPEC, cheap labor, like China or technology, like Japan.

Look at the story of MBNA, a small specialty credit card operation started in a Delaware supermarket in the early 1980’s. It eventually built several sprawling business campuses around Wilmington, DE including the total remaking of several whole city blocks in the downtown. A few years back it was purchased by Bank of America and most of those “service based economy” jobs shipped to India.

Japan was the epicenter of cheap labor for many years until their economy imploded in the late 1990’s and now it’s moved to China. China will take a little longer to mature than Japan because the population is much larger but eventually the people there will want all the trappings of successful middle-class and the global manufacturing center will move elsewhere, like Indonesia or South America. Who knows, eventually things may get so bad here in America that it eventually finds its way back here, but it won’t be the America that existed when it left.

It probably won’t be, or I hope it won’t be Lewis Prothero’s “Ulcered Sphincter of Arse-erica” but it’s gone too far down the road to ever come back to what it was. Whether we default or don’t default is academic at this point, it’s kind of like the first time you and your wife actually have a conversation about divorce, regardless of what comes afterwards, things are forever changed from that point forward simply because the topic came up.

Inadvertent disclosure reveals possible pre-invasion Iraq secret operation..but why?

Long before the world heard the name Osama bin Laden there was another name which was often associated with terrorist activity around the world – Abu Nidal.

Nidal was born in 1937 in what was then still Palestinian Jaffa. Like bin Laden, his father was a wealthy businessman. Nidal was the child of one of his father’s 13 wives but one who the family shunned after the father died because she was a 16 year-old household servant at the time of her marriage.

Nidal’s father died in 1945 and the family property was lost in 1948 when Israel came into existence. Nidal, (whose real name was Sabri Khalil al-Banna) became politically active in the 1960’s. But his as yet, non-violent activism, caused him to leave Saudi Arabia and eventually settle in the West Bank town of Nablus. When Israel captured the West Bank during the 1967 War, Nidal again fled and his political activism and his personality became darker and violent.

Nadal would eventually rise to prominence in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s “Fatah” branch. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s he was directly or indirectly linked to numerous attacks from the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre to eventually, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, but Nidal’s rage was not exclusively focused on western or Israeli interests. His Fatah cell would eventually breakaway from the PLO and even claim credit for killing a PLO representative. The cell would ultimately become so radically independent that it was referred to simply as ANO (Abu Nidal Organization). By the mid 1980’s Nidal was forced into exile in Libya, hiding from not only Israeli and American agents but from Jordanian efforts to extradite him to face a death sentence in Jordan.

In the wake of western attacks and sanctions arising from the Pam AM 103 bombing, Libyan leader Gaddafi felt Nidal’s presence in his country was too great a liability. Already deemed persona non-grata throughout the Arab middle east, Nidal finally found refuge under the protection of Saddam Hussein and would spend the remainder of his life in a Baghdad apartment until his death on or around August 16, 2002.

The events surrounding Nidal’s death are a confusing and contradictory weave encompassing everything from suicide to assassination to a pitched gun battle with Iraq security forces motivated by a belief that Nidal may have been conspiring to assist the United States in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Some reports state that documents found in Nidal’s apartment after his death indicate he was engaged in finding links between Hussein and bin Laden. These various accounts of how Nidal died are summarized on several Internet sites.

On May 6, 2011, in the wake of the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden, CNN's Anderson Cooper interviewed former National Security Advisory and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her reaction to the Bin Laden story. As his last question, Cooper inquired, “Was there ever a moment over the years -- you know, there were a time -- I remember an article in "The Washington Post" I think in 2003 and 2004, saying that the trail had gone stone cold -- was there ever a time where you felt we may not get this guy?"

Rice replied, "Oh, no, I always felt we would get him. I didn't know when. And I rememberwhen we killed a terrorist, Abu Nidal, and you know what, that was some 20 years after. And so, I thought, we'll stay after this." (Emphasis Added) (Video)

To date, Rice’s comment has gone totally ignored by both CNN and other news media who were alerted to the apparent revelation that the National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush at the time of Nidal’s death had stated flatly, “when we killed a terrorist, Abu Nidal, and you know what, that was some 20 years after.”

First, the perspective offered of “some 20 years later” seems to preclude a simple misstatement by Rice and appears to be a clear recall of an event that occurred “some 20 years,” (23 to be exact) after the bombing of Pan Am 103. But why, if as stated in various news reports and by some mainstream publications including Jane’s Defense Weekly, would we kill Nidal if he was assisting the US in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and in particular with finding justifications for that invasion? Why would Saddam’s security forces allow suspicion to fall on them when if, as Rice seems to indicate, Nidal was killed by a secret American hit team? The abiding question of whose side Nidal was on at the time of his death opens the door to whose side was he loyal to in previous years. Were Nidal and his group, like Bin Laden and Al Qaeda - at some time in the past in collaboration with western intelligence? According to a number of published reports in Great Britain, mostly ignored in the US, the answer would seem to be yes.

The link between Nidal, the CIA and Britain’s MI5 is woven into the much larger scandal involving BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. BCCI was shuttered in 1991 but not before establishing a documented legacy of corruption, money laundering and fraud on a massive scale. Its list of documented clients ranged from Columbian drug cartels to Col. Oliver North who maintained accounts there in order to funnel money for arms purchases by the Nicaraguan Contras.

Although officially barred from operating in the United States, BCCI investors were able to purchase Washington based Financial General Bankshares which was morphed into First American Bankshares and was shown for all purposes to function as a US based branch for BCCI.

A lengthy investigation conducted in Great Britain following the collapse of BCCI indicated that Nidal was actively engaged in money and arms trafficking deals, some which may have been directly or indirectly involving the CIA or MI5. One of the most intriguing elements of the BCCI story involves another mysterious suicide death – the case of American author Danny Casolaroin Martinsburg, West Virginia in August of 1991. Casolaro reportedly was on the verge of releasing a political nuclear bomb squarely in the lap of President George H. Bush. Casolaro had developed and reportedly nearly completed documentation of a conspiracy linking the scandals of Inslaw, October Surprise, BCCI and Iran/Contra. He had dubbed the expose ‘The Spider’ and had traveled to Martinsburg to reportedly met a source who had promised to provide the keystone needed to complete the puzzle.

Rice’s apparent revelation would appear to offer some added validity to statements which have been made at various times by critics of George H Bush’s invasion in 2003 and the illusive “weapons of mass destruction” justification. Those critics have proposed that Bush’s father chose not to finish off Saddam Hussein following the successful retaking of Kuwait from the Iraqi Army in 1991 because Hussein had information showing American involvement with and occasional collaboration with terrorists and despots, including Saddam himself. It has been offered that the younger President Bush launched the war in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt against his father by Hussein during a visit to Kuwait in April of 1993 shortly after Bush had left office. President Clinton subsequently authorized a Tomahawk cruise missile attack against the Iraqi Security Force’s headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for that attempt.. Some have offered that W Bush felt that as long as Hussein was alive and in power, he posed a lethal threat to the legacy of Bush’s father because of information he could reveal about American involvement in the same scandals which formed the backbone of Casolaro’s investigation.

But what threat did Nidal pose? By 2002 he was a terrorist has-been living in constant fear of the Jordanians and under the protection of a regime that had little history of truly helping the Palestinian cause.

Why, at a time when nearly every available resource was supposedly hunting for 911 mastermind Osama bin Laden, would we risk a ‘hit’ team’ on Nidal? If, as Rice’s comment implies, we had the ability to assassinate protected persons within Iraq months prior to our invasion, then why not go after someone critical in the Hussein Regime?

The answer keeps coming back to what Nidal knew and was doing not in 2002, but in 1990-91 when George H Bush was President.

Today’s generation of investigative reporters are either too young to appreciate the implications of Casolaro’s ‘Spider’ or perhaps are old enough and cautious enough to remember it and chose not to revisit it for obvious reasons.

We offer these words in the sincere hope that someday the American news media will again be smart enough and brave enough to ask the truly hard questions…and not relent until they have the truthful answers.

American hospitals face increasing threat of violence

For most Americans, the local community hospital serves as a backdrop for contrasting milestone events in their lives. It is the place where children are born, and the place where loved ones are often lost. It is the place we long to reach when in the midst of a medical crisis but dread to enter when the purpose is to diagnosis a potentially life-threatening disease. It is perhaps these dramatic contrasts which in the end, leave most people with a neutral passion with regards to the local hospital. But top security experts and even regulators are growing increasingly concerned that violence in the hospital setting is escalating and may spike even further as passions and perceptions are shaped by the ongoing national health care debate.

According to the federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) more assaults occur in the health care and social services industries than in any other. Reliable statistical data is difficult to obtain because physical violence in the hospital setting is generally manifested in one of three forms – and sometimes protected from disclosure by privacy laws.

Patient Violence (PV)

Since the beginnings of medical science, healers have been subjected to the threat of physical violence from the very patient they are trying to help. Persons with mental or neurological disorders have long been appreciated as having a propensity for violence when first brought into the clinical setting of a hospital. In more modern times the risk posed by powerful drugs like cocaine and pcp have added to this threat.

Jeff Aldridge of Security Assessment International noted in 2010 that the increasing trend in hospital violence could be the result of, “more people are on alcohol and drugs and a lot more people with health issues can’t afford medical care.”

Aldridge also noted that the aging American population is resulting in more patients with dementia and behavioral problems.

Non-Patient Episodic Response Violence (NPERV)

Hospital Emergency rooms have long dealt with violence triggered between families and friends following a medical emergency. This form of violence frequently accompanies scenarios such as fights breaking out in the waiting room while the injured combatants are being treated. Another familiar circumstance occurs when the conflict erupts between the loved ones of automobile accident victims where one party is deemed to have been at fault for inflicting injury or death on a second party.

Aldridge also noted that violence in the hospital setting is more prevalent because society as a whole is more violent.

Recent years have seen cash-strapped Emergency Departments forced to spend more money on items like armed security guards, metal detectors, video surveillance and advanced access control entry systems in response to this violence.

Institutionally Specific Violence (ISV)

The third category, Institutionally Specific Violence, and its increasing occurrence in the past three years is the area that raises the most concern among security experts. ISV incidents can occur between any of the three general groups to be found in a hospital: caregiver, patient and visitor as well as a fourth group –intruders. But unlike the foreseeable typical examples of Patient Violence and Non-Patient Episodic Response Violence, ISV events are almost impossible to anticipate and difficult to prevent.

Some recent examples of ISV include:

· A wife who brought a gun into a cardiac intensive care unit and shot her husband to death.

· An unconscious drunk being wheeled into treatment on a stretcher suddenly produces a gun and shots several hospital staff.

· A retired school teacher distraught over the recent death of his mother comes into a hospital and opens fire killing three people.

· A hospital employee comes to work with a gun and proceeds to kill two fellow employees before committing suicide.

· A man, who officials say was neither a patient, employee or visitor, is shot to death by police outside the emergency room of a major hospital following a violent confrontation.

Last year, in response to the rising tide of violence in hospitals the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals, (now known as simply ‘The Joint Commission’) took the dramatic step of issuing a ‘Sentinel Event Alert’ on the issue.

A Sentinel Event is broadly defined as something that can happen in the hospital setting resulting in injury or death to the patient. The term has traditionally been applied to events such as medication errors, acquired infections and general patient safety. Alert 45 did not include violence against hospital staff but rather focused specifically on, “assault, rape or homicide of patients and visitors perpetrated by staff, visitors, other patients, and intruders to the institution.”

The JCAH Alert offered guidelines for hospitals on balancing between security and access to the facility while remaining open and accessible for patients and visitors.

Among the wide range of possible violent scenarios which could occur in a hospital is the threat of a possible terrorist attack. Concerns over the likelihood of one or two heavily armed terrorists attacking a vulnerable facility such as a hospital have increased in the wake of the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and other high level Al Qaeda operatives. On Friday (June 3, 2011) Al Qaeda Spokesman American Adam Gagahn, also known as “Jihad Joe” issued a nationwide call for Islamic radicals living in the west to purchase guns at American gun shows and immediately go out and kill Americans. Gagahn called the easy availability of assault rifles a, “golden opportunity and a blessing” and implored followers to, “rush” to capitalize on this opportunity. He ended the brief statement with a frightening challenge to followers in the words, “so what are you waiting for?”

All these factors form a witch’s brew of potential conflict ingredients just waiting for a catalyst which may come in the form of the passionate and highly polarized debate over health care reform legislation.

The American public, which is just beginning to come to terms with accepting the intrusive security associated with aviation travel may soon discover that getting into a hospital as either a patient or visitor may be as demanding as boarding a commercial airliner.

Regardless of WHO advisory, cell phone danger is simple matter of proven science.

The question of which technology played the greatest role in securing victory for the Allies in World War II has a plainly obvious answer: the atomic bomb. But the opportunity to develop and eventually use the A-Bomb may never had occurred if not for another technology which in fact, was actually used in the Fat Man and Little Boy devices to determine the altitude for detonation: radar. Radar was also critical to the British efforts to resist a German invasion and thusly provide a critical base for the eventual invasions of Europe on D-Day in 1944.

Radar, the term meaning RAdio Distance And Ranging is a title given in 1940 to a phenomena of radio waves discovered fifty years earlier by Heinrich Hertz. For decades, radio researchers observed that high frequency radio waves bounced off solid objects and actually reflected part of their signal back to the transmitting location. It was the British during the precarious years between their declaration of war against Germany in September 1939 and the entry by America in December 1941, who made the greatest advances in radar science. These advances allowed them to counter the relentless attacks by German submarines on the vital supply line of ships transiting the Atlantic sea lanes. Radar also proved indispensible in the Royal Air Force’s victory during the Battle of Britain air war of 1940. Without radar, the under staffed and poorly equipped British air force may have faltered leading to the defeat of Great Britain. The result would have allowed Hitler to concentrate his forces totally on the invasion of Russia and ultimately achieve a Eurasian Nazi empire stretching from Ireland to the Bering Sea.

Emphasis on radar research and development actually intensified in the years following the war as governments saw the need to see further and better to guard against attacks from missiles carrying nuclear weapons. But radar safety training for troops was not always emphasized. While exact numbers are hard to determine, more than a few servicemen standing guard at radar installations in the frigid northern latitudes sought the strange warming effect realized by standing in front of fixed high-powered radar antennas. What few knew or appreciated was that they were in effect being cooked from the inside out in exactly the same way a microwave oven functions. Most of the victims simply dropped dead from organ failure within a few hours of exposure.

In the 1950’s, some sailors engaged in a dangerous short-term self-sterilization process prior to shore leave. It was generally believed that radar treatments killed off most sperm cells. Taking a “radar treatment” was seen as a safeguard to assure that if their shore bound spouse conceived while they were on active duty the pregnancy could not be attributed to them (the sailor father) and had to be the result of infidelity.

Radar signals are of such high power and frequency they cannot travel through wire cables and instead are channeled from transmitter to antenna in special hallow tubes knows as “wave guides”. For a typical shipboard radar treatment the radar operator disconnected the waveguide at a convenient point and the sailor simply stood in front of the open tube as radar waves were beamed directly at his groin. Anecdotal research in the years that followed are said to have shown that many men who developed testicular and prostrate cancers were Navy veterans who admitted to taking “radar treatments”

By 1960 the issue of radar safety had grown into an international concern as the super powers fired increasingly more powerful rays at each other, often with innocent persons in the line of fire. An international conference was convened and experts agreed on a universal safe exposure limit of one micro-watt (one-millionth of a watt) per square centimeter of body surface area. But when the standards were published in the United States, something was lost in translation.

In the nomenclature of scientific terminology a measurement of ‘micro’ is defined by the character mu ‘µ’. The unit of measure for ‘milli’ (one-thousandths of a unit) is represented by a lower case ‘m’. In America where few typewriters offered the ‘µ’ character, technical writers often used an upper case “M” for milli and a lower case “m” for micro. In some cases they used the lower case ‘m’ for Milli and a lower case ‘u’ for micros. When the standards were published to the scientific community as 1 mw/cm they were taken at face value and the safe limit of radar microwave exposure was assumed to be 1 milliwatt; a level 1,000 times greater than the actual standard of 1 microwatt. As a consequence, for decades the allowable leakage of high frequency radio waves from a typical American microwave oven was one thousand times more than the allowable amount of exposure for an active duty Russian military person.

The many dangers of radar, microwaves and other forms of manmade non-ionizing radiation were explored in great depth in 1978’s controversial book The Zapping of America by Paul Brodeur.

Brodeur’s work which was published before the cell phone communications revolution focused not only on the possible dangers of radar and microwave radiation but also that which radiates from low frequency high voltage electric power transmissions lines. His work was robustly attacked by the electric power industry as ‘scaremongering’. The issue of radar and microwaves is important to understand in that they operate very near the same frequencies as cell phones.

The recent announcement by the World Health Organization that cell phones may pose a health risk was driven not by a single conclusive scientific study but an increasing volume of work which seems to be pointing to a possible risk-link with cell phones. The great problem for scientists and lay persons in understanding the issue of the possible effects of electromagnetic radiation lay in the relationships between the power, the frequency and the length of exposure to a particular type of electromagnetic radiation.

The above illustration from the EPA helps to understand the science and the debate. (A better image and more information can be found on the EPA site)

The Electromagnetic Spectrum is defined by the frequency at which repeating pulses of energy occur. These pulses are sometimes referred to as cycles-per-second (cps) or simply after the Father of Radio Science as “Hertz” after Heinrich Hertz. They begin at the familiar 50-60 Hertz rate used to send alternating current through the world’s electrical transmission systems. When an electrical signal approaches a frequency of 100,000 Hertz it begins to want to leave its wire conductor and propagate into space as radio waves.

AM broadcasting occurs in a narrow band of frequencies around one million or one Megahertz. Moving up the broadcast spectrum from AM you’ll find shortwave bands and some older police and fire radio bands before arriving at FM radio which begins at around 88 Megahertz. From there it’s a rapid rise through the broadcast television bands and then finally the ultra high frequencies approaching 1 Gigahertz (1 billion oscillations per second).

Most cell phones operate at a frequency around 900 Megahertz. Just above them is the beginning range for microwave ovens and radar which cover the 1-30 Gigahertz part of the spectrum. Moving ever higher in frequency, electromagnetic energy manifests itself as forms of visible and invisible light. Finally, at its highest regions you enter the ‘death zone’ of ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation simply means the energy is so powerful it can literally strip away parts of the atom and has been proven to break apart human DNA.

Even at these highest levels, scientific debate still rages over the possible health risks of exposure to ionizing radiation. The issue is a confusing jumble of terms including Roentgen, RAD, REM, and Millisevert. The issue is further complicated by considerations of the amount of time of the exposure, percent of the body exposed and even the age of the person exposed.

Up to a point, the human body has the ability to repair itself from very large doses of radiation provided there are no subsequent exposures (as evidence by the many survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). But such survivors are known to face significantly increased risks of certain cancers as the years progress.

Today, scientists generally agree that an exposure of between 3,000-5,000 Milliseverts over a 1 hour period is usually lethal with the value of 4,500 msv assumed as universally lethal provided it is a “full body exposure” and last for about 1 hour.

Ionizing radiation kills by literally ripping apart cellular DNA. The immediate impact is generally seen in those body systems which are known for rapid cellular replacement: skin, digestive tract, hair and bone marrow. Victims of radiation sickness usually lose their hair and the ability to keep food in their stomachs within hours of exposure. Their skin becomes blackened and boiled and their bone marrow stops producing red blood cells leading to death in 3-5 days.

The problem, which ultimately manifests itself later down the electromagnetic spectrum as you move from ionizing into non-ionizing radiation, is: “does the body eventually suffer cellular/DNA damage due to the cumulative exposure to lower frequency but much longer term non-ionizing radiation?”

A good example of the confusing benefits/risks of ionizing/non-ionizing radiation can be found in that band of frequencies generally referred to s ultra-violet. The highest UV frequencies are regarded as ionizing with the same dangerous aspects of gamma and beta radiation. But a large segment of the UV spectrum is also deemed as non-ionizing.

UV light is known to kill pathogens and is often used in sterilization. It also can break up excess bilirubin in infants with neonatal jaundice. Of course, it is also part of normal sunlight and artificially generated in tanning beds for cosmetic purposes but there is no debate, excess exposure here can lead to cellular damage leading to deadly skin cancers like melanoma.

As we move lower in frequency away from the visible and invisible light spectrum we arrive in the radio spectrum where-in lies the cell phone debate. As indicated in the chart, the known effects of the radiation in this segment are thermal (heating i.e. microwave) and high electrical currents.

At this point it is important to understand the exponential component which impacts the strength of a single-point energy source, such as a cell phone antenna. Whether the electromagnetic source is a cell phone or a 1 megaton hydrogen bomb, the amount of energy dissipates to the square root of the distance. If the power of any energy is ‘X’ at a given distance, then if you increase the distance by a factor of two, you actually decrease the amount of energy by a factor of four (X/4). Double it again and you drop to just 16^th of the power at your starting location (X/16).

The current cell phone risk debate follows the same hypothesis as that offered by Brodeur in Zapping, namely that while the lower non-ionizing frequencies are not known to cause DNA damage and thusly cancer, when living tissues is exposured to sufficient power over a long enough period of time the effect becomes cumulative. Just as the human body suffers measurable damage over time to longer and higher power exposures of the ionizing energies, the very same “point of lethal danger” can be achieved with much lower frequency over much longer time.

The second line of thought on the possible impact of non-ion ionizing radiation does not assume a DNA altering impact similar to ionizing radiation, but instead seeks to understand if the known effects of heating and/or induction of electrical current could be responsible for carcinogenic pathology. This is where proven science comes into the argument.

It is absolute that the electromagnetic field generated by a cell phone pressed against the skull will induce stray electrical currents inside the brain. While these voltages are very small there is also proven science that suggests human cells subjected to electrical stimulation grow faster. Each year, thousands of people are treated with the FDA approved therapy provided by ‘Bone Growth Stimulators (BSG)”. BGS’s are most often used to pass a small electrical current across a broken bone that is slow to heal (non-union fracture). While not always successful, BGS’s are regarded as an effective treatment.

The logical conclusion leaves little uncertainty. Small electrical charges are essential to cellular metabolism. BGS’s are known to stimulate this metabolism and promote cellular growth. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that a small cluster of cancerous brain cells would not be stimulated to grow faster and more aggressively when exposed to the induced voltages generated by the electromagnetic field of a cell phone.

Just as the electric power industry waged all out war against Brodeur, the cell phone industry is certain to counter the WHO’s pronouncements on cell phone safety.

One interesting note from an ‘inside-the-industry’ perspective on the possible dangers of exposure to all radio waves has been quietly in evidence for over a decade. Starting in the 1990’s, a company or person selling a standard broadcasting (AM-FM-TV) outlet in the US has been forced to indemnify the buyer from: “any and all future claims which may arise from the negative health effects of exposure to RF (Radio Frequency) radiation emitted by the Facility during Sellers ownership of the Facility.” In simple terms while the industry is vigorously denying any connection it is covering its’ bet by pushing the responsibility backward onto owners and corporate entities which no longer exist.

Over the coming years, a definitive link between cancer, birth defects and other illnesses will almost certainly be linked to the exposure to non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation (NIEMR). When this happens the position of the cellular industry will likely change from one of denial to one of shifting responsibility to other ‘emitters’ of NIEMR, and the point may be valid.

Over 3 decades ago Brodeur lamented on the fact that our modern world was awash in sources of NIEMR. Today’s world with cell phones, WiFi, security scanners, and a myriad of other NIEMR emissions makes Brodeur’s 1978 world seem nearly pristine.

Long before medical science understood how the human body worked, there was an understanding that many bodily functions were a careful balance of chemistry and when the body was exposed to some chemicals, that balance was destroyed and the body died.

Today, we know that electricity also plays a vital role in the functions that regulate and maintain life. NIEMR , like chemical poisons, must be researched and assessed for its true impact and where warranted, treated the same as a potentially toxic substance.

This Summer's Best Investment - FOOD!

A sampling of NACs analyst gathered recently to enjoy a traditional Memorial Day cook-out. While there was a deliberate effort to avoid “shop talk” and focus our chatter on sports, family and summer vacation plans, the discussion inevitably melted down to a late evening patio summit replete with laptops, note pads and a energetic and at times dire assessment of a future trend. The subject was food prices and the causative object that launched it was a humble can of Pork and Beans. It was observed that as recently as 2009, a shopper could find Memorial Day weekend sales which offered three cans of ‘P & B’ for $1.00. It was then observed that for Memorial Day 2011, those merchants who continued this traditional offering had replaced the once traditional 15.75 ounce can with a slimmed down 11 ounce container. It was then noted with some nostalgic lamentations that this popular summer food staple had realized a 30% inflationary cost increase in just two years.

The discussion turned serious when all realized that a confluence of events in America and around the world are indicating possibility the sharpest upward spike in food costs which could have a greater impact on consumer spending than the recent spike in petroleum prices.

At the core of this concern are some toned-down but potentially catastrophic crop status reports from the USDA. Assuming the ever-worsening news regarding corn and wheat crop harvests for 2011 is less than a worse-case scenario, food costs based on these staples are certain to see double digit inflationary increases before year’s end.

On May 23^rd the USDA warned of a “poor” to “very poor” winter wheat harvest for North America due to a drought during the growing season. Further complicating matters is a wet spring which has delayed both the harvesting of the winter crop and long delays in plating the year’s second crop. The same meteorological conditions have likewise impacted wheat production in Europe.

The price of wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade are currently trading at nearly 80% above year ago levels. The only nation poised to possibly benefit is Russia where unusually favorable conditions are forecast to increase wheat yields by 30%. But it is unclear if the Russians bounty will be shared with other nations. Chronic shortages and under production have created a political resistance to exporting Russian wheat and some analysis claim the crop itself is likely to be of poorer quality than what is the custom on American and European tables.

More dire than wheat is the possibility of a massive failure of the 2011 American corn crop. The same heavy rains and flooding in the Midwest which has lead to problems are now impacting corn. On May 22^nd the USDA echoed concern in reporting that in Ohio, less than 18% of the state’s corn crop had been planted due to millions of acres of soggy muddy fields. Overall , 18 states are reporting on average 20% or more of their annual seed corn has yet to hit dirt as farmers wait anxiously for the fields to dry out. Meanwhile many areas of already planted corn in the lower Mississippi Valley were accidently drowned due to flooding, or intentionally sacrificed as in Louisiana where over a million acres of sprouted corn was destroyed when flood gates were opened to stave off a potential downstream disaster in New Orleans.

While there is still potentially ample remaining growing season in North America, it is generally desirable to have corn crops planted by mid May so the plant can tassel and begin seed formation before the traditionally hotter and drier months of July and August. With corn already trading at near record levels above $7 per bushel, the prospects of $10 plus bushels remains a solid possibility and a near certainty if there are further delays in planting. There is widespread agreement that $10 per-bushel prices for corn will have significant impact on nearly all foodstuffs and major impact outside the food segment of the economy.

$10 per bushel corn would be the final coffin nail for the domestic ethanol fuel program which has already been decimated by the constant increases in corn prices. Most of the corn destined for human consumption makes its way into the food chain via the preferred alternative to cane sugar; High Fructose Corn Syrup. $10 corn would result in double digit increases for all products with HFCS and significant surges in prices for items like soft drinks, candy and sweetened cereals. The impact will also have a dramatic effect in the meat aisle.

Nearly all corn grown on the flat expanses of the Delmarva Peninsula is consumed by the regions poultry growing industry. Unlike the Midwest, Delmarva farmers have enjoyed ideal planting and growing weather so far. Unfortunately, they will not benefit from the short term spikes in corn prices since most pre-contract with the areas major poultry farms at a fixed rate. None-the-less at least one major poultry producer was quoted recently as saying they plan to cut back on the number of chicks placed with growers who raise the birds to market size and also to focus production on the already higher margin products like boneless chicken breasts because of corns surging price. Chicken of course will not be the only food impacted by the surge in corn prices. Similar increases will apply to domestically raised beef and pork which also rely on a mostly corn-based diet.

While weather in the US, Canada and Europe has been the major force driving future prices and predictions it is not the only one. The jump in global oil prices is certain to have some impact on all crops due to the cost of fuel used to plant, tend and harvest along with the cost of petroleum based pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. The March 11 earthquake in Japan which resulted in disruption to the Japanese auto industry is believed to have had similar impact on the worldwide export of Japanese manufactured farm machinery and spare parts just as growers throughout the Northern Hemisphere were preparing to plant their 2011 warm weather crops.

Just as with oil and gasoline prices, when Americans have to pay more for an essential commodity like food, there are less available monies for discretionary spending. When this happens, unemployment in sectors such as entertainment, fast food, and retail can rise further exacerbating the current slow pace of recovery.

There are some signs that Americans may be aware of the potential crisis in food costs. There is a reported increase in backyard gardening and the stockpiling of canned food items. Whether these actions are motivated by awareness of the commodity markets, the increasing fears of natural disaster or a belief that one of the many recently forecast “doomsday” prophecies may come to pass; the result is many will be able to mitigate to some degree, a sudden spike in prices or reduction in actual food supplies.

It may not seem as attractive as gold or a hedge fund, but that $1,00 you invest right now in 33 ounces of Pork and Beans may, by Thanksgiving dinner, have grown in value to $1.50. A 50% return, regardless of size or nature of the investment is always worth celebrating.