Obama's stimulus money must NOT be wasted on nuke reactors
A nuke power bailout must NOT be part of the hundreds of billions of federal dollars about to pour out of Washington to revive our Bush-whacked economy.
If the huge Obama stimulus package we all know is coming includes money to build new reactors, the whole venture could turn to radioactive dust.
This is the last gasp both for American prosperity and atomic energy. Nuke promoters are lobbying frantically to get some of that cash for a dying business in which Wall Street would not invest even before the last crash.
In 2007 a national grassroots campaign, led in part by Nukefree.org, helped get a proposed $50 billion loan guarantee boondoggle removed from the Energy Bill. In 2008 a blank check was on its way just as Wall Street tanked.
Now, with renewables booming ahead, this may be the last gasp for a desperate industry. Cut off from Wall Street, hordes of nuke lobbyists will descend like radioactive locusts on this gargantuan stimulus package. They must be stopped.
If the huge Obama stimulus package we all know is coming includes money to build new reactors, the whole venture could turn to radioactive dust.
This is the last gasp both for American prosperity and atomic energy. Nuke promoters are lobbying frantically to get some of that cash for a dying business in which Wall Street would not invest even before the last crash.
In 2007 a national grassroots campaign, led in part by Nukefree.org, helped get a proposed $50 billion loan guarantee boondoggle removed from the Energy Bill. In 2008 a blank check was on its way just as Wall Street tanked.
Now, with renewables booming ahead, this may be the last gasp for a desperate industry. Cut off from Wall Street, hordes of nuke lobbyists will descend like radioactive locusts on this gargantuan stimulus package. They must be stopped.
Be the peace
"Surely, they say, there must, there has to be another way of doing this."
OK, let's start here, with this flicker of anguish, this quick stab of despair and disbelief that war is a rational means to an end. These words, from an essay by Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the Jewish peace lobbying group J Street, describe the complex discomfort felt by what he surmises to be a "third stream of Jews" in the U.S. and elsewhere -- neither committed peaceniks nor "Pavlovian flag wavers" -- over Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip.
"There has to be another way . . ." Let's sit with it for a moment, nurture it before it passes, because it is awareness at the earliest noticeable stage, and most of us on this planet, I think, can no longer repress it, no matter how much we want to and no matter how alone we feel with it. This awareness may be the fire we must harness if we are going to survive.
I say this mindful of how difficult life is without an enemy to blame for our suffering, for everything that's wrong. I say this mindful, also, of the hell that others do create, as we crouch in the hallway with Lubna Karam.
OK, let's start here, with this flicker of anguish, this quick stab of despair and disbelief that war is a rational means to an end. These words, from an essay by Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the Jewish peace lobbying group J Street, describe the complex discomfort felt by what he surmises to be a "third stream of Jews" in the U.S. and elsewhere -- neither committed peaceniks nor "Pavlovian flag wavers" -- over Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip.
"There has to be another way . . ." Let's sit with it for a moment, nurture it before it passes, because it is awareness at the earliest noticeable stage, and most of us on this planet, I think, can no longer repress it, no matter how much we want to and no matter how alone we feel with it. This awareness may be the fire we must harness if we are going to survive.
I say this mindful of how difficult life is without an enemy to blame for our suffering, for everything that's wrong. I say this mindful, also, of the hell that others do create, as we crouch in the hallway with Lubna Karam.
Bill Richardson - Kissinger-American
Bill Richardson is out: Caught with his hand, if not exactly in the cookie jar, at least you could say his sticky finger were near it. I'm not surprised.
For years I've been investigating the second-most corrupt state in the USA (after Alaska). I like to check in on the enchanted state with my bud Santiago Juárez.
I knew it was not a polite question, but it was really bugging me, so I asked him, “Exactly how does a Mexican get the name William Richardson?”
Governor Richardson’s dad, Santiago explained, was a Citibank executive assigned to Mexico City. There he met Governor Bill’s mom, and-milagro!-a Mexican-American was born. Richardson gets big mileage out of his mother’s heritage, and that makes him, legitimately, a Mexican-American, a politically useful designation. But it’s just as legitimate to say that Richardson is a Citibank-American.
But Governor Richardson is more than that. Between leaving Bill Clinton’s cabinet where he was Secretary of Energy and grabbing a Hispanic-district seat in Congress, Richardson became a partner in (Henry) Kissinger and Associates. That would make Richardson a Kissinger-American as well.
For years I've been investigating the second-most corrupt state in the USA (after Alaska). I like to check in on the enchanted state with my bud Santiago Juárez.
I knew it was not a polite question, but it was really bugging me, so I asked him, “Exactly how does a Mexican get the name William Richardson?”
Governor Richardson’s dad, Santiago explained, was a Citibank executive assigned to Mexico City. There he met Governor Bill’s mom, and-milagro!-a Mexican-American was born. Richardson gets big mileage out of his mother’s heritage, and that makes him, legitimately, a Mexican-American, a politically useful designation. But it’s just as legitimate to say that Richardson is a Citibank-American.
But Governor Richardson is more than that. Between leaving Bill Clinton’s cabinet where he was Secretary of Energy and grabbing a Hispanic-district seat in Congress, Richardson became a partner in (Henry) Kissinger and Associates. That would make Richardson a Kissinger-American as well.
For the health of all: Camp Hope
A steady stream of reporters from corporate news media outlets warmed things up at a frigid Camp Hope in Chicago yesterday, when CNN and the local affiliates of ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS all called at Drexel Park on day two of the 18-day vigil urging President-elect Obama to make good on his campaign pledges.
Universal, publicly funded health care was the theme yesterday, highlighted by a presentation from one of the nation’s top authorities on the subject, Dr. Quentin Young, MD.
For decades, Dr. Young has promoted the benefits of a Canadian-type, “single-payer” system like most of the world’s industrialized nations. Young’s office is in Hyde Park, the same venerable neighborhood where Camp Hope is pitched, a few short blocks from Barack Obama’s home. His partner in the practice has been Barack Obama’s personal physician since the Senator moved into the historic district a few years ago.
Universal, publicly funded health care was the theme yesterday, highlighted by a presentation from one of the nation’s top authorities on the subject, Dr. Quentin Young, MD.
For decades, Dr. Young has promoted the benefits of a Canadian-type, “single-payer” system like most of the world’s industrialized nations. Young’s office is in Hyde Park, the same venerable neighborhood where Camp Hope is pitched, a few short blocks from Barack Obama’s home. His partner in the practice has been Barack Obama’s personal physician since the Senator moved into the historic district a few years ago.
Camp hope holds Obama to "Change" pledge
Determined to keep President-elect Barack Obama true to his promise of change, peace and economic justice activists kick off an 18-day outdoor vigil January 1, four blocks from the Illinois Senator’s home in Chicago.
Camp Hope, headquartered in the Windy City’s Drexel Square Park, seeks to have Obama swiftly enact eight initiatives on issues he supported during his campaign.
A Thursday, 1:00 pm news conference will feature ministers, a Chicago City Alderman, a 25 year-old father facing deportation after living in the U.S. for 17 years and the mother of Tomas Young, a paraplegic Iraq war veteran featured in the movie, “Body of War.”
Kathy Kelly, co-director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, the Chicago group organizing Camp Hope, said, “We feel responsible to give visibility to needed, progressive change at a time when the powerful seek to maintain the status quo of warfare and unbridled greed. The reckless abandon they exhibit is a sad reminder of the Bush Regime.”
The Chicago native said the camp is simply saying to President-elect Obama, “Don’t leave these ideas out in the cold. They are from the people who put you in office.”
Camp Hope, headquartered in the Windy City’s Drexel Square Park, seeks to have Obama swiftly enact eight initiatives on issues he supported during his campaign.
A Thursday, 1:00 pm news conference will feature ministers, a Chicago City Alderman, a 25 year-old father facing deportation after living in the U.S. for 17 years and the mother of Tomas Young, a paraplegic Iraq war veteran featured in the movie, “Body of War.”
Kathy Kelly, co-director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, the Chicago group organizing Camp Hope, said, “We feel responsible to give visibility to needed, progressive change at a time when the powerful seek to maintain the status quo of warfare and unbridled greed. The reckless abandon they exhibit is a sad reminder of the Bush Regime.”
The Chicago native said the camp is simply saying to President-elect Obama, “Don’t leave these ideas out in the cold. They are from the people who put you in office.”
The future of civilization
The tight, absurd parameters of “peace,” as they are drawn by the military model we continue to believe in, make real peace —neither bitter nor temporary — impossible even to imagine. God save us, for instance, from New York Times editorials, which inflict as much damage on civilians as F-16s.
“Israel must defend itself,” the paper intoned a few days into the bombing attack on Gaza that quickly left 350 people dead, expressing regret only that the action was “unlikely to weaken” Hamas. The editorial affected a neutral assessment of the situation that failed to mention either the Israeli occupation of Palestine or the month-and-half-long blockade of Gaza that preceded the bombardment and, among much other deprivation, left the region’s few hospitals drastically undersupplied with medicine, gauze or even space to treat the flood of newly wounded.
“Israel must defend itself,” the paper intoned a few days into the bombing attack on Gaza that quickly left 350 people dead, expressing regret only that the action was “unlikely to weaken” Hamas. The editorial affected a neutral assessment of the situation that failed to mention either the Israeli occupation of Palestine or the month-and-half-long blockade of Gaza that preceded the bombardment and, among much other deprivation, left the region’s few hospitals drastically undersupplied with medicine, gauze or even space to treat the flood of newly wounded.
The disturbing death of Michael Connell
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Bob's video blog
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