Duty to Warn

The nuke power industry now wants $50 billion and more in loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. As it strong-arms Congress, the warnings of the great Dr. John Gofman, who passed away last week at 88, loom ever larger.

One of history's most respected and revered medical and nuclear pioneers, Gofman's research showed as early as 1969 that "normal" radioactive reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year.

At the time, Gofman was the chief medical researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission. He told the AEC that reactor emissions must be radically reduced. The AEC demanded he change his findings, then forced him out when he refused.

Since then, reactor backers have ceaselessly and erroneously attacked Gofman and his findings. But they could hardly have picked a more brilliant, committed opponent. Gofman was both relentless and uncorrupted. His findings should have doomed from the start an industry he called "insane."

Washington, DC -- We've endured seven years of cascading failures from 911 to Iraq enabled by rigged elections and supported by a decadent set of politicians who lack the will to even fight for themselves. 

But let's not lose hope.  We’ll get a Democratic majority in Congress.  They'll do something!  We’ll be out of trouble in no time.  Plus, we’ll have the type of investigations we need to get the real solution in place – impeachment.  It will be like a Roman triumph – the Truth enters the Capitol to the cheers of the people all across America.

We tried that. It failed.

Now it's up to us, the people, who are ever so inconvenient to the rulers of this country.  We, the citizens, are the last line of defense against the complete removal of any form of freedom and security that we now retain. 

We’re the last line in a defense that to date has never truly formed.  How can you have a strong defense if there’s no communication?  The corporate media has done a sterling job of masking the very information that would have made the current insanity impossible. 

The poster exploits the howling demons of our culture. It’s my morning smack-in-the-eye, bright gold, four feet high, dominated by a female in stark silhouette striding resolutely into the wreckage of post-apocalypse Las Vegas. She wields a wicked-looking blaster in each hand.

The ad, for the movie “Resident Evil: Extinction,” occupies the spot on the elevated train platform where I await the start of my daily commute to work. This is not a movie I’m going to see, but I can’t avoid feeling the impact of its throbbing message: Justice cometh, and she has a nice butt, and she’s armed.

Wow. The gears mesh — yet again! — on the perfect delusion. For entertainment, we hop ourselves up on sex and road rage, and fantasy bleeds into reality. The result is an armed, frightened society and a high-tech war on terror that promises to cut a terrible swath of destruction across the planet before it runs out of, so to speak, gas.

Reading his “Letter From Baghdad” column in the New York Times on Sept. 5, you’d never know that Thomas Friedman has a history of enthusiasm for war. Now he laments that Iraq is bad for the United States -- “everyone loves seeing us tied down here” -- stuck in the “madness that is Iraq.” And he concludes that the good Americans who have been sent to Iraq will not be deserved by Iraqis “if they continue to hate each other more than they love their own kids.”

     The column, under a Baghdad dateline, is boilerplate Friedman: sprinkled with I-am-here anecdotes and breezy geopolitical nostrums. For years now, the man widely touted as America’s most influential journalist has indicated that his patience with the war in Iraq might soon run out. But, like the media establishment he embodies, Friedman can’t bring himself to renounce a war that he helped to launch and then blessed as the incarnation of virtue.

Join the nationwide effort to flood the offices of our member of Congress with calls demanding an end to the U.S. war in Iraq. Let's make it clear: there cannot be "business as usual" in Washington until effective action to bring all the troops home is taken! Call your Representative and both Senators on Thursday, September 6th. Capitol Hill Switchboard: 202-224-3121

Tell them: I want you to act now to end the war and occupation of Iraq. The Congress has the Constitutional right and a moral responsibility to use the power of the purse to withdraw all U.S. soldiers and contractors from Iraq on a rapid and binding schedule. Four and a half years of this war is too long - it has to end now!

Not sure who represents you in Congress? Look Here.

St. Louis – His government broke his heart but it could not break Air Force veteran Charles Powell’s spirit.  Fighting back tears, the 64 year-old vet stood tall and resolute in front of 400 of his comrades, describing in verse the final steps of a painful disillusionment.

Each summer during the national convention of Veterans For Peace, time is reserved for a Veterans’ Speakout, where any member can rise to say whatever is on their mind.

When the veterans gathered in 2002, prior to the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and the hawks of Washington were pounding away on the war drums.  That year, Powell, who had served on a Titan ICBM launch crew during the Cuban missile crisis, read his poem titled, “I Won’t Let Them Take My Flag.”  He noted the warmongers were “again waving my flag” as a buildup to invasion, and he countered what he felt was a manipulation of the national symbol with the following lines reminiscent of the great Langston Hughes.

As the security check line began moving slowly at Washington Dulles airport, one passenger standing a few steps ahead of me appeared particularly uneasy. His dark skin, long beard, trimmed moustache, prayer spot centered on his forehead, and overall demeanor quickly gave away his identity, though he had obviously labored little to hide it. He was a Muslim and a religious one at that. Predictably, a few minutes later he was singled out and his clothes spread across a separate station reserved for those "randomly" selected for extra security check.

U.S. and state government officials refused to allow water or food relief into New Orleans. This was a brazen attempt to "starve people out" - a "war crime" under the Geneva Conventions. Hundreds of people died unnecessarily of thirst. And yet, there was no shortage of water or food being sent.

The questions raised here still are unanswered.

"I'm sick to death of hearing things from uptight narrow-minded pigheaded politicians. All I want is the truth. Just give me some truth."
- John Lennon

AS HURRICANE KATRINA RAVAGED THE GULF STATES, many organizations kicked into high gear to send relief to local groups in Mississippi and Louisiana, with no help from the government or formal relief agencies. Among them was the Malcolm X Grassroots movement, with whom the Brooklyn Greens shared an office. Tons of donated supplies poured into the office and were trucked to Jackson Mississippi, where they were distributed through community-based efforts.

USDA requires Aurora Organics to reduce dairy herd size and remove organic label from some milk

CORNUCOPIA, WI: The USDA issued an urgent news release Wednesday evening announcing enforcement actions taken against the Aurora Organic Dairy, based in Boulder, CO, the nation’s largest organic factory-farm operation. USDA’s enforcement requirements for Aurora include "removing certain animals from the organic herd and ceasing to apply the organic label to certain milk."

The action is the result of an investigation triggered by formal legal complaints filed in 2005 and 2006 with the USDA by The Cornucopia Institute charging multiple violations of federal organic regulations. Cornucopia, a Wisconsin-based farm policy group, made on-site visits to the dairy giant’s factory-farm operations in Colorado and Texas, gathering evidence supporting its complaints.

In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, George Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it".

Again in 2006, during an interview with Charlie Rose, when Charlie asked him about that particular statement, with the following question; "You would have gladly given away ninety percent of your fortune in a minute?" Soros replied; "One hundred percent, because I think it would have made a tremendous contribution to mankind."