Amy Goodman's Blog, page 31
June 22, 2011
"Japan's Meltdowns Demand New No-Nukes Thinking" By Amy Goodman
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
New details are emerging that indicate the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan is far worse than previously known, with three of the four affected reactors experiencing full meltdowns. Meanwhile, in the U.S., massive flooding along the Missouri River has put Nebraska's two nuclear plants, both near Omaha, on alert. The Cooper Nuclear Station declared a low-level emergency and will have to close down if the river rises another 3 inches. The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant has been shut down since April 9, in part due to flooding. At Prairie Island, Minn., extreme heat caused the nuclear plant's two emergency diesel generators to fail. Emergency-generator failure was one of the key problems that led to the meltdowns at Fukushima.
In May, in reaction to the Fukushima disaster, Nikolaus Berlakovich, Austria's federal minister of agriculture, forestry, environment and water management, convened a meeting of Europe's 11 nuclear-free countries. Those gathered resolved to push for a nuclear-free Europe, even as Germany announced it will phase out nuclear power in 10 years and push ahead on renewable-energy research. Then, in last week's national elections in Italy, more than 90 percent of voters resoundingly rejected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's plans to restart the country's nuclear power program.
Leaders of national nuclear-energy programs are gathering this week in Vienna for the International Atomic Energy Agency's Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety. The meeting was called in response to Fukushima. Ironically, the ministers, including U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Gregory Jaczko, held their meeting safely in a country with no nuclear power plants. Austria is at the forefront of Europe's new anti-nuclear alliance.
The IAEA meeting was preceded by the release of an Associated Press report stating that consistently, and for decades, U.S. nuclear regulators lowered the bar on safety regulations in order to allow operators to keep the nuclear plants running. Nuclear power plants were constructed in the U.S. in the decades leading up to the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979. These 104 plants are all getting on in years. The original licenses were granted for 40 years.
The AP's Jeff Donn wrote, "When the first ones were being built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was expected that they would be replaced with improved models long before those licenses expired." Enormous upfront construction costs, safety concerns and the problem of storing radioactive nuclear waste for thousands of years drove away private investors. Instead of developing and building new nuclear plants, the owners—typically for-profit companies like Exelon Corp., a major donor to the Obama campaigns through the years—simply try to run the old reactors longer, applying to the NRC for 20-year extensions.
Europe, already ahead of the U.S. in development and deployment of renewable-energy technology, is now poised to accelerate in the field. In the U.S., the NRC has provided preliminary approval of the Southern Company's planned expansion of the Vogtle power plant in Georgia, which would allow the first construction of new nuclear power plants in the U.S. since Three Mile Island. The project got a boost from President Barack Obama, who pledged an $8.3 billion federal loan guarantee. Southern plans on using Westinghouse's new AP1000 reactor. But a coalition of environmental groups has filed to block the permit, noting that the new reactor design is inherently unsafe.
Obama established what he called his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. One of its 15 members is John Rowe, the chairman and chief executive officer of Exelon Corp. (the same nuclear-energy company that has lavished campaign contributions on Obama). The commission made a fact-finding trip to Japan to see how that country was thriving with nuclear power—one month before the Fukushima disaster. In May, the commission reiterated its position, which is Obama's position, that nuclear ought to be part of the U.S. energy mix.
The U.S. energy mix, instead, should include a national jobs program to make existing buildings energy efficient, and to install solar and wind-power technology where appropriate. These jobs could not be outsourced and would immediately reduce our energy use and, thus, our reliance on foreign oil and domestic coal and nuclear. Such a program could favor U.S. manufacturers, to keep the money in the U.S. economy. That would be a simple, effective and sane reaction to Fukushima.
Denis Moynihan contributed to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," an independent, daily global TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.
© 2011 Amy Goodman
Japan's Meltdowns Demand New No-Nukes Thinking
New details are emerging that indicate the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan is far worse than previously known, with three of the four affected reactors experiencing full meltdowns. Meanwhile, in the U.S., massive flooding along the Missouri River has put Nebraska's two nuclear plants, both near Omaha, on alert. The Cooper Nuclear Station declared a low-level emergency and will have to close down if the river rises another 3 inches. The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant has been shut down since April 9, in part due to flooding. At Prairie Island, Minn., extreme heat caused the nuclear plant's two emergency diesel generators to fail. Emergency-generator failure was one of the key problems that led to the meltdowns at Fukushima.
June 15, 2011
"Failed War on Drugs: Fast, Furious and Fueled by the U.S." By Amy Goodman
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
The violent deaths of Brian Terry and Juan Francisco Sicilia, separated by the span of just a few months and by the increasingly bloody U.S.-Mexico border, have sparked separate but overdue examinations of the so-called War on Drugs, and how the U.S. government is ultimately exacerbating the problem.
On the night of Dec. 14, 2010, Agent Brian Terry was in the Arizona desert as part of the highly trained and specially armed BORTAC unit, described as the elite paramilitary force within the U.S. Border Patrol. The group engaged in a firefight, and Terry was killed. While this death might have become just another violent act associated with drug trafficking along the border, one detail has propelled it into a high-stakes confrontation between the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress: Weapons found at the scene, AK-47s, were sold into likely Mexican criminal hands under the auspices of a covert operation of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Dubbed "Operation Fast and Furious," the secret program aimed to trace arms sold in the U.S. to so-called straw buyers, people who buy arms on behalf of others. The ATF's operation allowed gun shops to sell bulk weapons to straw buyers who the ATF suspected were buying on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. Instead of arresting the straw buyer, considered a relatively low-level criminal by the ATF, tracing the guns as they made their way into Mexico might allow the ATF to arrest more senior members of the criminal cartels. At least, that was the plan.
According to reporting by the Center for Public Integrity, 1,765 guns were knowingly sold as part of "Fast and Furious." Another 300 or so were sold before the operation started. Of these more than 2,000 guns, fewer than 800 have been recovered. Two of the guns recovered were found at the site of Terry's death, in a region known as Peck Canyon, on the U.S. side of the border between Nogales, Mexico, and Tucson, Ariz.
Special Agent John Dodson of the ATF was among many field agents who advised superiors that the covert operation was unwise. Their concerns were not acted on, and the operation continued. After Terry's murder, Dodson blew the whistle, first to the Justice Department, then to Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Grassley has questioned Attorney General Eric Holder, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Republican Darrell Issa, is now engaged in hearings on the case.
South of the border, Sicilia and six other young men were brutally murdered in March, just seven more innocent victims in the raging violence in Mexico that has claimed more than 35,000 victims since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began his crackdown on the drug cartels. Sicilia's father is Javier Sicilia, a renowned poet and intellectual in Mexico. Soon after his son's murder, Sicilia wrote his final poem, dedicated to his son. He is now committed to the nonviolent struggle against the bloodshed in his country. He led a protest march in May from his hometown of Cuernavaca to Mexico City's famous Zocalo, the central plaza, where 200,000 people rallied. Last weekend, he led another march, all the way to the border, and then into El Paso, Texas.
Sicilia is against the cartels, for sure. But he holds Calderon, and the United States, culpable as well. He is calling for an end to "the Merida Initiative," in which the U.S. provides arms and training for the Mexican military to fight the cartels. Sicilia also is calling for the legalization of drugs, a call in which he is joined, surprisingly, by the conservative former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, and increasingly by Calderon himself.
Calderon is traveling in the U.S. this week, and has spoken out about the U.S. arms industry that is profiting from the sales of weapons that end up in Mexico. He also has criticized the repeal of the U.S. assault-weapons ban, which has led to a massive increase in gun violence in Mexico.
A new report released by three Democratic U.S. senators finds some 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico from 2009 to 2010 came from the United States. Of the nearly 30,000 guns seized in Mexico during that period, more than 20,000 came from the U.S.
If anything should be fast and furious in the United States, it should be the push for sane and sensible gun control and drug policies. Perhaps then, Javier Sicilia will start writing poetry again.
Denis Moynihan contributed to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," an independent, daily global TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.
© 2011 Amy Goodman
Failed War on Drugs: Fast, Furious and Fueled by the U.S.
The violent deaths of Brian Terry and Juan Francisco Sicilia, separated by the span of just a few months and by the increasingly bloody U.S.-Mexico border, have sparked separate but overdue examinations of the so-called War on Drugs, and how the U.S. government is ultimately exacerbating the problem.
On the night of Dec. 14, 2010, Agent Brian Terry was in the Arizona desert as part of the highly trained and specially armed BORTAC unit, described as the elite paramilitary force within the U.S. Border Patrol. The group engaged in a firefight, and Terry was killed. While this death might have become just another violent act associated with drug trafficking along the border, one detail has propelled it into a high-stakes confrontation between the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress: Weapons found at the scene, AK-47s, were sold into likely Mexican criminal hands under the auspices of a covert operation of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
June 8, 2011
"Weiner's No Longfellow" By Amy Goodman
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
"The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels."
These two lines were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem "Snow-Flakes," published in a volume in 1863 alongside his epic and better-known "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." Much of the news chatter this week has been about Sarah Palin's flubbing of the history of Revere's famous ride in April 1775. Revere was on a late-night, clandestine mission to alert American revolutionaries of an impending British attack. Palin's incorrect version had Revere loudly ringing a bell and shooting a gun on horseback as a warning to the British to back off.
Pathetically, as well, the media has been awash with New York Congressmember Anthony Weiner's string of electronic sexual peccadilloes. Punctuating the sensationalism, and between the TV commercials from the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries, are story after story of extreme weather events. Herein lies the real scandal: Why aren't the TV meteorologists, with each story, following the words "extreme weather" with another two, "climate change"? We need modern-day eco-Paul (or Paula) Revere to rouse the populace to this imminent threat.
If anyone fits that role, it's Bill McKibben. He's been speaking, writing and organizing globally to stop climate change for more than two decades. I recently asked him about the extreme weather/climate change connection:
"We're making the Earth a more dynamic and violent place. ... We're trapping more of the sun's energy in this narrow envelope of atmosphere, and that's now expressing itself in many ways. We don't know for sure that any particular tornado comes from climate change. There have always been tornadoes. We do know that we're seeing epic levels of thunderstorm activity, of flooding, of drought, of all the things that climatologists have been warning us about."
McKibben, founder of the grass-roots climate-action organization 350.org, critiques media coverage of the disasters: "You didn't see ... pictures from Sri Lanka, from Vietnam, from the Philippines, from Brazil northeast of Rio, where they've had similar kinds of megafloods, now Colombia."
When McKibben speaks of a "more dynamic and violent place," he's talking about the climate. But climate change, increasingly, can cause actual political violence. This week in Oslo, people gathered for the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement, to work on the growing problem of climate refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, warned of two threats: slow onset disasters like drought and desertification that lead to "a tipping point at which people's lives and livelihoods come under such serious threat that they have no choice but to leave their homes," and "natural disasters [that] uproot large numbers of people in a matter of hours."
A principal concern is that these millions, even billions, who are or will be displaced will be denied safe haven. As Naomi Klein, a true Paula Revere, warned recently, "This crisis will be exploited to militarize our societies, to create fortress continents."
UNHCR's Guterres notes that most of the climate refugees will be internally displaced within their home country. And you needn't look as far away as Pakistan to see evidence of that. Just this week in the United States, people have been forced to flee tornadoes in western Massachusetts, flooding in Iowa and Colorado, and wildfires in Arizona. Record-breaking heat levels in Washington, D.C., and Texas are threatening lives, with the hottest summer months yet to come.
Not far from Oslo, in Bonn, Germany, more than 3,000 participants from some 180 countries are gathered to plan for this December's U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa. Addressing the meeting, Tove Ryding of Greenpeace said, "What we are talking about here is actually millions of green jobs, to transform our societies to energy systems that are safe, that are stable and that are based on renewable energy and energy efficiency."
That move, away from fossil fuels and nuclear toward renewable energy, is being embraced now by more and more countries, especially after the Fukushima disaster. Japan just revealed that there were three full nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima.
Switzerland and Germany have announced they will be phasing out nuclear power. China, Germany and Japan, three of the world's top five economies, are charging ahead on renewable-energy research and deployment.
The Obama administration's paltry funding for renewable-energy research pales in comparison with the tens of billions in subsidies for the oil, coal and nuclear industries.
The global climate is changing, and humans are the principal cause. Will we in the U.S., the world's historically largest polluter, heed the warnings of our environmental Reveres, or will the troubled sky, as Longfellow wrote, increasingly reveal the grief it feels?
Denis Moynihan contributed to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," an independent, daily global TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.
© 2011 Amy Goodman
Weiner's No Longfellow
"The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels."
These two lines were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem "Snow-Flakes," published in a volume in 1863 alongside his epic and better-known "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." Much of the news chatter this week has been about Sarah Palin's flubbing of the history of Revere's famous ride in April 1775. Revere was on a late-night, clandestine mission to alert American revolutionaries of an impending British attack. Palin's incorrect version had Revere loudly ringing a bell and shooting a gun on horseback as a warning to the British to back off.
Pathetically, as well, the media has been awash with New York Congressmember Anthony Weiner's string of electronic sexual peccadillos. Punctuating the sensationalism, and between the TV commercials from the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries, are story after story of extreme weather events. Herein lies the real scandal: Why aren't the TV meteorologists, with each story, following the words "extreme weather" with another two, "climate change"? We need modern-day eco-Paul (or Paula) Revere to rouse the populace to this imminent threat.
June 1, 2011
"Hope and Resistance in Honduras" By Amy Goodman
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
While most in the United States were recognizing Memorial Day with a three-day weekend, the people of Honduras were engaged in a historic event: the return of President Manuel Zelaya, 23 months after he was forced into exile at gunpoint in the first coup in Central America in a quarter-century. While he is no longer president, his peaceful return marks a resounding success for the opponents of the coup. Despite this, the post-coup government in Honduras, under President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, is becoming increasingly repressive, and is the subject this week of a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, signed by 87 members of the U.S. Congress, calling for suspension of aid to the Honduran military and police.
As the only U.S. journalist on Zelaya's flight home, I asked him how he felt about his imminent return. "Full of hope and optimism," he said. "Political action is possible instead of armaments. No to violence. No to military coups. Coups never more."
When Zelaya landed in Honduras, he kneeled down and kissed the ground. He was greeted by tens of thousands of people cheering and waving the black-and-red flag of the movement born after the coup, the FNRP, or National Front of Popular Resistance, "the resistance" that Zelaya now leads. His first stop: a massive rally at the memorial for 19-year-old Isis Obed Murillo, who was killed one week after the 2009 coup when Zelaya first attempted to fly back into the country. Murillo was with tens of thousands awaiting Zelaya's return at the airport. The military blocked the runway and dispersed the crowd with live fire, killing the teenager.
Since then, violence and impunity have been constant. Farmers, journalists, students, teachers and anyone else in Honduras daring to dissent face intimidation, arrest and murder. At least 12 journalists have been killed there since the coup, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Scores of campesinos — small farmers — have been killed. High-school students protesting teacher layoffs and the privatization of education were violently attacked by police this week, with tear gas and live ammunition.
At the rally, Zelaya, memorializing Murillo, said, "Blood was not shed in vain, because we're still standing ... resistance is today the cry of victory."
The current Honduran government agreed to allow Zelaya's return to gain readmission into the Organization of American States in an attempt to shed Honduras' pariah status in Latin America for the coup.
Pariah to Latin America, but not the United States. Even though President Barack Obama early on called Zelaya's ouster "a coup," the U.S. government soon dropped the term. But there is no other word for it. On Sunday, I spoke with Zelaya in his home. He recounted what happened.
It was around 5 a.m. on June 28, 2009, when black-hooded Honduran soldiers stormed his house after shooting through the back door.
"They threatened me, that they were going to shoot," he said. "And I said to them: 'If you have orders to shoot, then shoot me. But know that you are shooting the president of the republic.' ... They forced me to go to their vehicles outside with my pajamas on. We landed in the U.S. military base of Palmerola. ... And then to Costa Rica."
Ultimately, more important to Honduras is not just the return of Zelaya, but the return of democracy. Zelaya was gaining popular support for policies like a 60 percent increase in the minimum wage, the plan to take over the U.S. Palmerola air base and use it as the civilian airport in place of the notoriously dangerous Toncontin International Airport, plans to distribute land to peasant farmers, and to join ALBA, the regional cooperative bloc developed to diminish the economic domination of the United States. On the day he was deposed, Zelaya was holding a nonbinding straw poll to assess if the population wanted to hold a national constituent assembly to evaluate possible changes to the constitution. That, he explains, is why he was deposed.
Secretary of State Clinton and close friend Lanny Davis, who is working as a powerful lobbyist for the coup regime, have pushed hard for the legitimization of the current Lobo government, despite Clinton's own State Department cable titled "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup," released by WikiLeaks, that the coup was clearly illegal.
As I headed to the airport to leave Honduras after this historic weekend, I passed a group of teachers, one month into their hunger strike outside the Honduran Congress. They, like a broad network of civil society groups in Honduras, while celebrating the return of their ousted president, are clear in their demand, now joined by 87 members of the U.S. Congress, for an end to violence and repression in Honduras.
Denis Moynihan contributed to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," an independent, daily global TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.
© 2011 Amy Goodman
Hope and Resistance in Honduras
While most in the United States were recognizing Memorial Day with a three-day weekend, the people of Honduras were engaged in a historic event: the return of President Manuel Zelaya, 23 months after he was forced into exile at gunpoint in the first coup in Central America in a quarter-century.
While he is no longer president, his peaceful return marks a resounding success for the opponents of the coup. Despite this, the post-coup government in Honduras, under President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, is becoming increasingly repressive, and is the subject this week of a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, signed by 87 members of the U.S. Congress, calling for suspension of aid to the Honduran military and police.
As the only U.S. journalist on Zelaya's flight home, I asked him how he felt about his imminent return. "Full of hope and optimism," he said. "Political action is possible instead of armaments. No to violence. No to military coups. Coups never more."
May 25, 2011
"Single Payer Healthcare: Vermont's Gentle Revolution" By Amy Goodman
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
Vermont is a land of proud firsts. This small New England state was the first to join the 13 colonies. Its constitution was the first to ban slavery. It was the first to establish the right to free education for all – public education.
This week, Vermont will boast another first: the first state in the nation to offer single payer healthcare, which eliminates the costly insurance companies that many believe are the root cause of our spiraling healthcare costs. In a single payer system, both private and public healthcare providers are allowed to operate, as they always have. But instead of the patient or the patient's private health insurance company paying the bill, the state does. It's basically Medicare for all – just lower the age of eligibility to the day you're born. The state, buying these healthcare services for the entire population, can negotiate favorable rates, and can eliminate the massive overhead that the for-profit insurers impose.
Vermont hired Harvard economist William Hsiao to come up with three alternatives to the current system. The single payer system, Hsiao wrote, "will produce savings of 24.3% of total health expenditure between 2015 and 2024". An analysis by Don McCanne, MD, of Physicians for a National Health Programme pointed out that: "[T]hese plans would cover everyone without any increase in spending since the single payer efficiencies would be enough to pay for those currently uninsured or under-insured. So this is the really good news – single payer works."
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin explained to me his intention to sign the bill into law: "Here's our challenge. Our premiums go up 10, 15, 20% a year. This is true in the rest of the country as well. They are killing small business. They're killing middle-class Americans, who have been kicked in the teeth over the last several years. What our plan will do is create a single pool, get the insurance company profits, the pharmaceutical company profits, the other folks that are mining the system to make a lot of money on the backs of our illnesses, and ensure that we're using those dollars to make Vermonters healthy."
Speaking of healthy firsts, Vermont may become the first state to shutter a nuclear power plant. The Vermont legislature is the first to empower itself with the right to determine its nuclear future, to put environmental policy in the hands of the people.
Another Vermont first was the legalization of same-sex civil unions. Then the state trumped itself and became the first legislature in the nation to legalize gay marriage. After being passed by the Vermont House and Senate, former Governor Jim Douglas vetoed the bill. The next day, 7 April 2009, the House and the Senate overrode the governor's veto, making the Vermont Freedom to Marry Act the law of the land.
Vermont has become an incubator for innovative public policy. Canada's single payer healthcare system started as an experiment in one province, Saskatchewan. It was pushed through in the early 1960s by Saskatchewan's premier, Tommy Douglas, considered by many to be the greatest Canadian. It was so successful, it was rapidly adopted by all of Canada. (Douglas is the grandfather of actor Kiefer Sutherland.) Perhaps Vermont's healthcare law will start a similar, national transformation.
The anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Just replace "group" with "state", and you've got Vermont.
Denis Moynihan contributed to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," an independent, daily global TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.
© 2011 Amy Goodman
Single Payer Healthcare: Vermont's Gentle Revolution
Vermont is a land of proud firsts. This small New England state was the first to join the 13 colonies. Its constitution was the first to ban slavery. It was the first to establish the right to free education for all – public education.
This week, Vermont will boast another first: the first state in the nation to offer single payer healthcare, which eliminates the costly insurance companies that many believe are the root cause of our spiraling healthcare costs. In a single payer system, both private and public healthcare providers are allowed to operate, as they always have. But instead of the patient or the patient's private health insurance company paying the bill, the state does. It's basically Medicare for all – just lower the age of eligibility to the day you're born. The state, buying these healthcare services for the entire population, can negotiate favourable rates, and can eliminate the massive overhead that the for-profit insurers impose.
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