March 28, 2004
25-year anniversary of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant disaster
What are the latest US nuclear power developments? Did you know:
- The Bush administration plans to replace safety standards at federal nuclear facilities with requirements penned by contractors
- Government security contractors have been lax in monitoring worker effectiveness
- The White House plans to build 50 new US reactors by 2020
- The Energy Secretary has asked Congress for $30 million dollars to build a nuclear bomb factory, which will produce up to 500 new nuclear bombs each year
Want to learn more? Join Heather Wokusch on The Melanson Answer radio show discussing her recent article Nuke Nation: Putting Profits Before Safety.
Heather's 15-minute interview is available on www.heatherwokusch.com today -
March 26, 2004
The Myth of National Defense
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. has posted a good review of some reasons why it's ludicrous to deny that the Bush administration had an Iraq fixation. He also observes that the partisans exchanging fire over Richard Clarke's book, testimony, and other 9/11 commission revelations will undoubtedly continue to agree on one thing when the page is turned on this particular chapter; the gov't should be given even more money and power to combat terrorism.
Rockwell writes "It implies not less warmongering but merely a different form of imperialism." He also reiterates the chronically ignored point that we should be discussing why the United States became a target in the first place.
He proposes that while the gov't will always fail to make good on its promises to provide this security, the market can succeed, and urges all to read this book before rejecting the idea:
The Myth of National Defense by top libertarian scholars on all aspects of defense, edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. [Click here to buy the book][ Click here to read online (pdf)]
March 25, 2004
Say NO to the U.S. Bomb Factory
I am writing to you about the new United States nuclear bomb factory, and to ask you to sign a pledge opposing the launch of a new nuclear arms race. Despite the end of the Cold War, the Secretary of Energy has this year asked Congress to approve $30 million dollars to fund the construction of a new nuclear bomb factory, which will produce up to 500 new nuclear bombs each year -- a request that Rep. David Hobson (R-OH) called "completely out of touch" at a Congressional hearing last week in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. still has more than 10,000 nuclear warheads in storage, 3,000 in submarines patrolling the world's oceans and 2,500 on hair trigger alert that can be launched within three minutes by the President. U.S. policymakers are funding increased spending levels for new weapons research -- more than during the height of the Cold War.
The U.S. has enough nuclear bombs to destroy life on earth many times over. What possible rationale do we have to build more?
These policymakers represent you. During an election year, we should be telling our representatives that new nuclear weapons make us all more vulnerable -- not more safe -- to nuclear accidents or terrorist attacks.
The Nuclear Policy Research Institute is working with a broad coalition of people to stop this nuclear bomb factory in its tracks. But we must act quickly.
What You Can Do Today.
Sign on to the Pledge Opposing the New Nuclear Arms Race, and ask your family and friends to sign too. Your message will be delivered to the White House. During the next few months, we will e-mail you periodically with updates about how you can take action to prevent the development and use of nuclear weapons. Together, we can build consensus and visibility for a nuclear-free future.
Visit our website to learn more about how to fight the U.S. bomb factory and stop the new nuclear arms race. Click here or visit http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/bombfactory.cfm.
With warm regards,
Helen Caldicott, MD
March 24, 2004
Tripping over the ladder of success
Dennis Kucinich reading the Top Ten list on Letterman. Clever, but here's my advice:
#11: Adopt every plank of the DLC's platform, then once elected, claim amnesia.
#12: Body snatch a steroid-ravaged mysoginist. The women will love you and the men will respect you no matter what you say. For that matter, any GQ pin-up type like the one fronting for the New America Foundation will suffice. Just don't be too gay. Get your swagger down as if your package weighs a ton, thump your chest once in a while to remove all doubt, and make smoldering eye contact with a few panting groupies in the audience. Bob your head when caught by the men as if to say, am I the man, or what? George comes alive in these moments. When he grabs the podium with both hands after making a particularly violent proposal, is he sealing it with a hump? You know he wants to stick his tongue out but the coaching must have paid off.
Is it me or are the social democrats manning the ramparts readying to defend a new wave of humanitarian interventions should Kerry be elected?
I notice that The Washington Monthly has redesigned its site and is now featuring the ever accomodating musings of blogger Kevin Drum. Apparently he's thrilled to bring along his audience to a publication that features Mickey Kaus as a contributing editor and describes him as a brilliant mind. A real step-up on the ladder of success, congratulations. Kevin firms up Sharon's higher rung position by renegotiating his precarious weight, regretfully spoiling everyone's fun by breaking his usual code of silence regarding that stuff going on in Israel long enough to say he too finds Ariel's recent actions 'troubling'.
If your center-right conversion still needs fine tuning hop on over to Amy Sullivan's new digs where she gets tough on progressive constituencies, whoever they are, and wherever they may be cloning.
She slaps them around for such "extreme" positions as seeking an alternative to job outsourcing, claims that faith-based vouchers, a programme that has no established record of success, are a good thing that teacher's unions should get behind because they're popular with African Americans[?], then backhands the black community for "throwing hissy fits" when ignored by the Democrats.
"Enough with the melodrama" she writes.
I never was one to keep an opinion to myself, tossed from two Catholic elementary schools for that very reason. I don't consider it a badge of honour, okay I do, but it's more a testimony to the real experience that befalls individualists who from an early age feel compelled to lock horns with alleged humanitarians who reserve the right to send to hell anyone who doesn't surrender to their revisionist world views.
And I fully support giving tax credits to people who want to send their children to religious schools, just as soon as they figure out how to offset any rise in my taxes when the addition of their lumbering buses adds more wear and tear to public roads as they travel to and fro along their spiritual paths coughing out their toxic fumes. Not only that, but if they don't have to pay into the public school system, why should childless people and those who don't currently have children in the system be forced to support it?
Thankfully I wasn't forced to go to Catholic high school where my old friends became more promiscuous than I ever dreamt of being, achieved infamy for hosting the wildest drunken and drugged out parties in town, and on average, were no more successful academically than their public school counterparts. Their parents simply had more money to finance their push to the next educational level.
And that's really the rub, isn't it? Call me crazy, but I'm still living in the America where the white child of an atheist millionaire fares much better in society than the child of a poor black fundamentalist, no matter how many prayers the latter says in school.
Here's an idea. Take the money you're pouring into this military industrial complex and its chieftans offshore accounts in order to make economic slaves of the people in Iraq and elsewhere and rebuild your own country. Certainly the current arsenal will ward off the evil doers while we dig out of our ruins and they just might be less willing to attack a country that minds its own business. Tear down every one of the public housing prisons you built to warehouse the people you now contend will achieve success through the power of prayer. Trust me. They already know how to pray.
Bring up to code and beyond every school in their district and burn every historical reference in them. Replace the dreck with a curriculum representative of what's really happening in the world and the true role the not so perfect or altruistic United States has played in its crumbling and explosive demise instead of forcing propaganda on the not so stupid children you hope to enlist as cannon fodder in your upcoming pre-emptive strikes.
Technical schools. There's an idea that used to get some attention. I know dozens of people who enjoy a comfortable living working as plumbers, electricians, tool and die makers, etc. 60% of college graduates move back home, for among other reasons, lack of job opportunites. That puts a new spin on one of my Sister Mary's favourite admonishments, "you're just too smart for your own good".
Not only will you be growing a well-adjusted generation who would much rather be working and building a home than facing incarceration for giving in to temptations only saints in a similar environment would rise above, you might even witness a prayer or two of thanks along the way.
Edited @ 5:16am 03/25/04
March 22, 2004
Head of Haiti Force Says Won't Disarm Gunmen
"This is a country with a lot of weapons and disarmament is not our mission. Our mission is to stabilize the country," U.S. Marine Corp. Brig. Gen. Ronald Coleman, head of the 3,000-strong U.N.-sanctioned force, told Reuters.
Army Gen. James Hill, who oversees the Haiti operation as head of Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, told a Pentagon briefing this month the 1,600 U.S. Marines in Haiti would begin confiscating weapons from everyone without a valid permit.
Saying, "you've got to take guns off the street," Hill said Marines would start going after caches.
But in an interview at his headquarters in Port-au-Prince, Coleman described a much less active role for the international force in disarmament -- a thorny issue in the still tense Caribbean nation. He said it was up to the Haitian police.
Israel assassinates Hamas founder
Last Update: 22/03/2004 11:45
Tens of thousands march in funeral procession for Yassin
By Amos Harel and Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondents, News Agencies and Haaretz Service
Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed at daybreak Monday when Israel Air Force helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying the wheelchair-bound head of the radical Islamic group as he left a mosque near his house in Gaza City.
Witnesses said Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at Yassin and his bodyguards around 5 A.M. local time as they left the mosque. Yassin was killed instantly and up to seven bodyguards, reportedly including Yasin's son, were also said to have been killed. Hamas officials confirmed that Yassin had been killed.
Within hours, tens of thousands of mourners jammed the streets of Gaza City for the funeral procession of Yassin and the seven others killed in the air strike. Twenty-one Palestinian police officers formed an honor guard as the coffin holding Yassin's mangled body was carried out of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Palestinian hospital sources said 15 people were wounded in the strike.
Israeli troops open fire in West Bank
The activists were demonstrating against Israeli army bulldozers which were razing and leveling a wide area of Palestinian-owned agricultural land at the village of Kharabtha Bani Hareth, west of the West Bank city of Ramallah, the witnesses said.
The soldiers fired tear gas canisters as well as rubber-coated metal bullets at the protestors, the medics said, adding that one of the wounded was a foreign peace activist who was hit in his eye by a rubber bullet.
Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian Initiative organization in Ramallah, told reporters that the protest was aimed at denouncing the construction of security wall.
Part of the wall which would pass through the village "would swallow wide areas of lands cultivated with olives," Barghouti said, adding that more than 2000 trees of olives, almonds and figs would be outside the wall.
IOF Demolish More than 40 Palestinian Houses in 5 Days
21/03/2004
Palestine Media Center – PMC
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) early Sunday demolished seven in A’basan village east of the central Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis and two more in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, to raise the number of Palestinian homes destroyed in five days to more than forty.
The demolition of houses or destruction of other private property of Palestinians in occupied territories is explicitly forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 53), as is collective punishment (Article 33).
Special Rapporteur on the situation in occupied Palestine submits report
Under its agenda item on the question of the violation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine, opened briefly in advance of general consideration later in the session, the Commission has before it the report of its Special Rapporteur, John Dugard (E/CN.4/2004/6), which concludes, among other things that the Israeli occupation continues to result in widespread violations of human rights, affecting both civil and socio-economic rights, and international humanitarian law. Israel's justification for these actions is that they are necessary in the interests of its own national security, the document states, but the Rapporteur finds it difficult to accept that excessive use of force that disregards the distinction between civilians and combatants, the creation of a humanitarian crisis by restrictions on the mobility of goods and people, the killing and inhumane treatment of children, widespread destruction of property and territorial expansion could be justified as a proportionate response to the violence and threats of violence to which Israel is subjected. The construction of "the Wall" within the West Bank and the continued expansion of settlements, which, on the face of it, have more to do with territorial expansion, de facto annexation or conquest, than security, raise serious doubts about the good faith of Israel's justifications in the name of security, the report states.
National Hunger Awareness Day
On June 3rd, communities across the country will unite to focus attention on the persistent problem of domestic hunger. For the third consecutive year, food banks and food-rescue organizations, soup kitchens and food pantries, and countless individuals, faith-based organizations and businesses will donate time, raise funds, and give food to help their neighbors.
Unfortunately even more of our neighbors need help this year. In December 2003, the number of unemployed persons was 8.4 million, or 5.7% of all Americans. Many of our neighbors have reached the end of their savings and are stretching impossibly tight budgets to put food on their tables. The fact is that the slow economy has only put added stress on what was already a growing problem evidenced by the fact that the number of people living in poverty in the suburbs alone rose from 12.1 million in 2001 to 13.3 million in 2002.
If we can all come together on one day, June 3rd, whether in person or through our individual activities, our call for a hunger-free America might be heard. Please use one of the toolkits provided on this site to get your organization, your company, your family, and your friends involved!
Thanks to Robin for the heads up.
US Afghan allies committed massacre
American experts find that Northern Alliance warlords slaughtered prisoners of war
David Rose
Sunday March 21, 2004
The Observer
Detainee abuse reported in Iraq:
Jurist's Paper Chase points to this DoD release:
March 21, 2004
GOP divided?
Nation-Building Exposes GOP's House Divided by Jacob Heilbrunn in the LA Times today is not merely simplistic in a number of ways, but considering that George is travelling the country pounding his simian chest and promoting the Bush Doctrine, which NRO asserted on 2/23/04 should be renamed the Reagan-Bush Doctrine, I find it disturbingly misleading as well. George hasn't adopted the new wrapper yet that I'm aware of, but did refer to it indirectly in Florida's coming out speech as an extension of, not a departure from, regime change policy embarked upon during Clinton's presidency. I don't expect Bush supporters to care, but when will someone ask Kofi Annan to clarify who was privy to the real story behind the misinformation used to justify that policy decision? I digress.
One would think an editorial writer at the LA Times would at least be hesitant to describe the recent coup in Haiti and years of US economic and political maneuverings there as humanitarian intervention unless of course they were a revisionist. To claim our interventions in East Timor were humanitarian is an insult. Somalia was hardly something Clinton initiated but how can one overlook that he was charged with wrongly applying a military solution to a political problem, a decision that left a bloodbath in the wake of whatever humanitarian objective may have existed. I'm surprised he didn't toss in Colombia as well.
Additionally, the article fails to mention that bases exist today in Kosovo and Bosnia, built under the auspices of international peacekeeping, and doesn't bother to explore their effectiveness even while Kosovo is suffering a resurgence in ethnic violence.
According to Chalmers Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire:
In fact, if you read at least the chapter The Empire of Bases in Johnson's book, whose C-Span Book TV interview is being rebroadcast tonight [3/20-3/22], you'll easily recognise that humanitarian intervention is hardly an accurate description for what's taken place over the years no matter which party's been in control.
Heilbrunn characterises DeLay's condemnations of Clinton's foreign policy decisions as the grumblings of a man who opposed humanitarian intervention as if DeLay was then one of the realists Heilbrunn writes [he names one] are now unhappy with neoconservative nation-building influence on the current administration. Considering DeLay continues to wield one of the biggest sticks in defense of every one of George's interventionist policies, especially if they buttress his own long-held, fervent support of Israel, I find this assessment to be, at best, in the realm of wishfull thinking.
Excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire:
Camp Bondsteel is actually located astride the route of the proposed AMBO (Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria Oil) Trans-Balkan pipeline. This $1.3 billion project, if built, will pump Caspian Basin oil brought by tanker from a pipeline terminus in Georgia across the Black Sea to the Bulgarian oil port at Burgas, where it will be piped through Macedonia to the Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. From there, supertankers would take it to Europe and the United States, thus bypassing the congested Bosporous Strait-as of now the only route out of the Black Sea by ship-where tankers are restricted to 150,000 tons. The initial feasibility study for the AMBO pipeline was done in 1995 by Brown & Root, which updated it in 1999. Bondsteel appears to be a base camp for what the University of Texas political scientist James K. Galbraith has called the "military-petroleum complex," of which Dick Cheney is assuredly a godfather.
The Republican party hasn't been forced to adopt a new vision since 9/11, as Heilbrunn contends, it willingly signed on when in 2000 it supported George W. Bush and his cronies, who've been up to their necks in this business for years.
If they didn't know it then, what's their excuse now?
