Duty to Warn

As the "reactor renaissance" desperately demands new billions from a lame duck Congress, one of its shining stars has dropped dead. Other much-hyped "new generation" plans may soon die with it.

For years "expert" reactor backers have touted the "Pebble Bed" design as an "inherently safe" alternative to traditional domed light water models. Now its South African developers say they're done pouring money into it.

The Pebble Bed's big idea was to create a critical mass of uranium particles coated with silicon carbide and encased in graphite. These intensely radioactive "pebbles" would seethe in a passive container, cooled by helium. Without the need for a containment dome, the super-heated mass would produce both heat and electricity. Touted as needing no back-up emergency systems to prevent a major disaster, the plan was to mass-produce these "smaller, simpler" reactors for use throughout the industrial world.

Autumn 2010 is a time of disillusionment for many who deplore the USA’s current political trajectory. Some who’ve been active for progressive causes are now gravitating toward hope that individual actions -- in tandem with higher consciousness, more down-to-earth lifestyles and healthy cultural alternatives -- can succeed where social activism has failed. It’s an old story that is also new.

From economic inequities to global warming to war, the nation’s power centers have repulsed those who recognize the urgency of confronting such crises head-on. High unemployment has become the new normal. Top officials in Washington have taken a dive on climate change. The warfare state is going great guns.

When social movements seem to be no match for a destructive status quo, people are apt to look around for alternative strategies. One of the big ones involves pursuing individual transformations as keys to social change. Forty years ago, such an approach became all the rage -- boosted by a long essay that made a huge splash in The New Yorker magazine just before a longer version became a smash bestseller.

I started the Afghanistan War Weekly several months ago because it seemed important to learn more about how the war was being fought on the ground, and what was the impact or what were the results of the military and civilian programs being put in place.

My conclusion so far is that the war, from the US point of view, has been lost. Not just that the war is in trouble, but that from a military and political point of view, things have gone so badly that they cannot be turned around, even with more time and resources.

I think this conclusion is important because the "war is lost" perspective or slogan addresses the likely future moves of the war managers in a way that our current slogans and perspectives do not.

Our antiwar slogans or perspectives now broadly include:

The war is immoral; it kills civilians

The war is not a good response to terrorism; it is making us less safe
The war is expensive; we need the money to build real security at home; and
The war should be ended through negotiations asap.

The May database is not the May database, and the Election Day Polling place are actually triple-counted absentee votes, and it is not possible to print results reports, and the main server for electronic pollbook data is just an old computer used only for military absentee votes, and we can't print an audit log because we never do and by the way, no one can look at the bank of live touchscreens being operated a week after the election together with a do-it-yourself poll tape manufacturing kit.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Let's review the latest whoppers, and then please read on for additional material misrepresentations, big fat lies and links to the actual documents. See for yourself that Shelby County elections officials deserve your nomination for the Pinnocchio Award.

BREAKING - Thursday Sept. 23 11:34 am MEMPHIS: Shelby County Aug. 2010 election

"MAY POLL BOOK" DATA PROVIDED TO INSPECTION TEAM DOES NOT MATCH ACTUAL MAY POLL BOOK

Consultants examining the Aug. 5 Shelby County, Tennessee election found 3,221 more votes than voters on documents provided by Shelby County elections officials pursuant to a court order.

Most voterless votes were found in large Republican precincts, a non-random distribution.

The inspection team sought and obtained documents in connection with a lawsuit filed by ten defeated candidates over irregularities in the election.

Read more about the investigation here.

Laurie Goodstein's article, 'American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?' was intended as a sympathetic reading of the concerns of US Muslim communities facing increasing levels of hostility and fear. While generally insightful and sensibly written, the article also highlights the very misconceptions that riddle the bizarre debate pitting American Muslims against much of the government, the mainstream media and most of the general public.

This is how Goodstein lays the ground for her discussion: "For nine years after the attacks of Sept. 11, many American Muslims made concerted efforts to build relationships with non-Muslims, to make it clear they abhor terrorism, to educate people about Islam and to participate in interfaith service projects. They took satisfaction in the observations by many scholars that Muslims in America were more successful and assimilated than Muslims in Europe." (New York Times, September 5, 2010)

This argument is not Goodstein's alone, but one repeated by many in the media, the general public, and even among American Muslims themselves. The insinuation of the above context is misleading, and the timeline is selective.

Children of Catastrophe is a work of courage, love - of family, friends, and country - persistence, grief, sorrow, joy, anger, bravery, fear, and frustration - in short it encompasses all the emotions that not only are part of life, but a large part of life for a child born and raised in a refugee camp. Nahr el Bared refugee camp was established in 1949 after the nakba in Palestine. Set near the northern border of Lebanon with Syria, the camp existed, grew, and to a degree, thrived and prospered until it was destroyed by the Lebanese army in 2007.

Nakba and ethnic cleansing

The first sections of Jamal Kanj’s story outline very quickly the events of the nakba, with references to the even longer history of Zionism going back to 1896 and a declaration from Theodore Herzl concerning the endeavour “to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed, procuring employment for it in transit countries, but denying it any employment in our own country.”

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances...

Contemplating the words of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, that imperfect yet powerful piece of parchment that ostensibly bestows all humans in the US with a set of basic rights enshrined and protected by the legal system, demands that we ask ourselves if we are going to continue apathetically allowing corporations and plutocrats to wrest those rights from us. Will we continue to stand idly by as C. Wright Mills’ “Power Elite” reduces us to over-consumptive, indentured automatons, with no voice and little choice but to devote our lives to the hollow, meaningless pursuits of materialism, the bread and circuses they provide, and narcissistic “fulfillment” via the wage and debt slavery that enables the perpetuation of their obscene gluttony and condemns our souls to pecuniary bondage?

Green IS the New Red

It took the U.S. secretary of defense, for God’s sake, to get a Florida preacher to cancel his plans for pyrotechnic sacrilege on Sept. 11. A few days later, CNN asked some of its blog contributors to reflect on the incident . . . “now that the crisis is over.”

We’re neck deep in two wars (excuse me, one and a half) and an imploding economy, not to mention global warming, endemic violence and hurricane season, but Terry Jones’ creepy publicity stunt has the status of a national crisis: America’s close call! We came this close to offending Muslims!

Oh, we are a sensitive nation.

And Jones was, indeed, dabbling at the margins of holy war, which media coverage managed to turn into a global phenomenon. “. . . he ignited an international conflagration of outrage,” as CNN put it, though he didn’t do it by himself.

A pithy idea -- now going around in some progressive circles -- is that elections are a waste of time.

The idea can be catchy. It all depends on some tacit assumptions.

For instance: elections are a waste of time if you figure the U.S. government is so far gone that it can’t get much worse.

Elections are a waste of time if you’ve given up on grassroots organizing to sway voters before they cast ballots.

Elections are a waste of time if you think there’s not much difference on the Supreme Court between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, or Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito.

Elections are a waste of time if you’re so disgusted with Speaker Pelosi that you wouldn’t lift a finger to prevent Speaker Boehner.

Elections are a waste of time if you don’t see much value in reducing -- even slightly -- the extent of injustice and deprivation imposed on vulnerable people.

Or, if you see the organizing of protests, community groups, unions and the like as “either/or” in relation to working for the election of better candidates.