David Swanson's Blog, page 167
September 18, 2012
Will the 2012 Presidential Election Be Stolen?
Why would I even ask that question? I've been trying (with virtually no success) to get everyone to drop the election obsession and focus on activism designed around policy changes, not personality changes. I want those policy changes to include stripping presidents of imperial powers. I don't see as much difference between the two available choices as most people; I see each as a different shade of disaster. I don't get distressed by the thought of people "spoiling" an election by voting for a legitimately good candidate like Jill Stein. Besides, won't Romney lose by a landslide if he doesn't tape his mouth shut during the coming weeks? And yet . . .
The Military Spending Cut Scare
The fearmongering is on. Here's a typical article, this one from the only daily newspaper in my hometown:
September 16, 2012
Nuclear Roulette
As the Coalition Against Nukes prepares for a series of events in Washington, D.C., September 20-22, including a Capitol Hill rally, a Congressional briefing, a fundraiser at Busboys and Poets, a ceremony at the Museum of the American Indian, a rally at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a film screening, and a strategy session, the time seems ideal to take in the wisdom of Gar Smith's new book, Nuclear Roulette: The Truth About the Most Dangerous Energy Source on Earth.
Most dangerous indeed, and most useless, most inefficient, most destructive, and dumbest. How does nuclear energy make the human species look like the stupidest concoction since the platypus? Let me count the ways:
1. After the mining, processing, and shipping of uranium, and the plant construction, maintenance, and deconstruction, a nuclear plant only produces about as much energy as went into it -- not counting the need to store the only thing it actually produces (radioactive waste) for hundreds of thousands of years -- and not counting the sacrifice of areas of the earth, including those poisoned with uranium, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years and causes lung cancer, bone cancer, and kidney failure.
2. Wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal have far better net energy ratios.
3. If nuclear power actually worked against climate change, that fact would not be useful, because there is no way enough nuclear power plants to significantly contribute to the required difference could be built quickly enough.
4. If nuclear power plants could be built quickly enough, that wouldn't matter, because the financial cost is prohibitive. Only with multi-billion-dollar bailouts from the government can a tiny number of nuclear plants be considered for construction at all. The sainted Private Marketplace of Freedom will never touch nuclear construction on its own -- or insure it. And the small number of jobs created by the "Job Creator" lobbyists who push for the generous public loan guarantees mostly show up in Japanese and French nuclear companies, thus depriving the whole enterprise of its anti-foreign-oil xenophobic appeal. (Not to mention, most of the uranium used in U.S. nuclear plants comes from abroad just like oil.) Deconstructing the plants when they grow too old to operate costs so much that the job is routinely and recklessly put off -- and that doesn't count the fairly common expense of compensating the victims of accidents.
5. The nuclear industry is in debt up to its ears already, without our feeding its habit any longer. For example, Washington State's Hanford Nuclear Reservation has dumped 1.7 trillion gallons of contaminated waste into unlined trenches. The latest plan to try to deal with the mess comes with a $12.3 billion price tag.
6. Even if nuclear power worked when it worked, it's remarkably unreliable. Between 2003 and 2007, U.S. nuclear plants were shut down 10.6 percent of the time, compared to 1 or 2 percent for solar stations and wind farms.
7. Nuclear power produces greenhouse gases in the mining, production, deconstruction, shipping, and waste storage processes. It also discharges 1000 degree Fahrenheit steam directly into the atmosphere. Considering the entire fuel cycle, a nuclear reactor burning high-grade uranium produces about a third as much carbon dioxide as a gas-fired power plant. As high-grade uranium runs out, low-grade ore will result in a nuclear plant producing just as much carbon dioxide as a gas plant.
8. Climate change may have reached a tipping point. Radioactivity could as well. Birds and insects near Chernobyl are adapting. Humans, too, may be beginning to evolve within the Radiocene era to which the earth has been condemned.
9. Climate change limits nuclear energy, as the heat forces plants to shut down for lack of cool water.
10. The Three Mile Island disaster killed birds, bees, and livestock. Pets were born dead or deformed. In humans, cancer, leukemia, and birth defects spread. Chernobyl gave cancer to about a million people. Fukushima looks to be far worse. Meltdowns and other major malfunctions are common, in the United States and abroad. Gar Smith documents dozens. The worst nuclear disaster in the United States was in Simi Valley, California, and no one was told about it. The rates of disease and death led residents to investigate. I shouldn't use the past tense; the disaster is still there and not going anywhere in the span of human attention.
11. The rate of break downs and failures thus far is very likely to grow as nuclear plants age. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), subservient to the nuclear profiteers, is drastically reducing safety standards.
12. In the normal course of proper nuclear power production, the water, air, and earth are poisoned.
13. The NRC publicly dismisses concerns about earthquakes, but privately panics. Earthquakes are on the rise. Fracking may cause even more of them. Fukushima should scare us all; but closer to home, a plant at Lake Anna, in Virginia, was shut down by an earthquake last year, possibly caused by fracking, and the first response was the publication of lies about the damage.
14. If anticipated solar flares (or anything else) collapse power grids, nuclear plants could overheat, melt down, or explode.
15. An average nuclear plant produces 20-30 tons of high-level waste and 70 tons of low-level waste per year. No proven long-term storage site exists. If one ever does, we won't know what language to post the warning signs in, as no human language has lasted a fraction of the time the nuclear waste will remain deadly.
16. When a country develops nuclear energy, as the United States encouraged Iran to do in my lifetime, it brings that country very close to developing nuclear weapons, which has become a leading excuse for launching and threatening wars. It doesn't help for the CIA to give Iran plans for building a bomb, but ridding the world of that sort of stupidity is just not within our reach. Ridding the world of nukes needs to take priority.
17. There is no purpose in a nation developing nuclear weapons if it wants to target an enemy that possesses nuclear power plants. Sitting duck nuclear catastrophes waiting to happen -- by accident or malice -- exist in the form of nuclear power plants within 50 miles of 108 million people in the United States. Nuclear reactors could have been somewhat protected by being built underground, but that would have cost more. Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist, commented on Fukushima: "This time no one dropped a bomb on us. . . . We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives."
18. The latest designs in nuclear reactors don't change points 1-17.
19. The Associated Press in 2011 found that, "Federal regulators [at the NRC] have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them."
20. Helping to shake the nuke habit would take 30 seconds and be ridiculously easy, and yet many won't do it.
September 15, 2012
It's Us or the Nukes
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor was about to wake him up in the middle of the night to inform the President that 220 Soviet nuclear missiles were headed our way, when he learned that someone had stuck a game tape into the computer by mistake.
September 13, 2012
If You're in New Hampshire
On October 5, 2012, don't miss NH Peace Action's 30th Anniversary Event and Fall Fundraiser, at The Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 South Main Street, Concord, NH.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Featuring Author/Activist and RootsAction.org Campaign Coordinator David Swanson.
And featuring Singer/Songwriter David Rovics.
$30 for tickets in advance, $35 at the door, $10 for students or limited income.
Please be in touch about sponsorship opportunities, silent and live auctions, and ads in our program book!
http://nhpeaceaction.org
NH Peace Action
4 Park Street, Suite 210
Concord, NH 03301
(603) 228-0559
info@nhpeaceaction.org
September 12, 2012
Peace Essay Contest: How Can We Obey the Law Against War?
Most people understand that war is destructive, but few know that it is illegal. On August 27, 1928 many countries signed a treaty called the Kellogg-Briand Pact which outlawed war. After ratification by the U.S. Senate the following year this Pact became the supreme law of the land in the United States and sixty five other countries. How can we respect the law if most of us are ignorant of its existence? Members of the Peace Community have decided to: (1) educate the population on why this law was passed and (2) encourage insight and creative expression on how we can bring our country into compliance.
Peace Essay Rules:
Although we are focusing on the student population, anyone can enter the Peace Essay Contest. In 800 words or less answer the question: How can we Obey the Law against War? Send your Peace Essay to:
Peace Desk
213 S. Wheaton Ave.
Wheaton, IL 60187
Please include: (1) Your Name, (2) Age, (3) Mailing Address, (4) Email Address or Phone Number, and (5) Year and school that you first learned about the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Peace Essays will be judged by members of the West Suburban Faith-based Peace Coalition (www.FaithPeace.org) based on: (1) Knowledge of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, (2) Insight into how the Pact influences U.S. foreign policy, (3) Creativity in recommendations regarding compliance, and (4) Quality of the Peace Essay prose.
Age-appropriate prizes will be awarded for the top 25 Peace Essays received by November 1, 2012. Also, if the award winner identifies the school where she/he learned about the Pact, a book – “When the World Outlawed War” by David Swanson - will be donated to the school library. The WSFPC will also send the best Peace Essays to key members of the U.S. Congress. For more information please contact Frank Goetz at frankgoetz@comcast.net.
Funding Teachers Doesn't Get Embassies Attacked
We're not out of money. We've stopped taxing billionaires and corporations, and we're funding war-preparation so generously that we're sparking a global arms race that will eventually generate some enemies with which to justify the war preparation . . . which will make sense to students who were never taught to put events into chronological order. They couldn't be taught that because their teachers had to be laid off so that greedy billionaires could stuff a little more cash into their fat "Job Creator" tote bags.
Talk Nation Radio: The Risks and Benefits of Political Theater in the West Bank
The Freedom Theater in the Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank produces politically engaged theater and is under assault by both the Israeli military and the Palestinian Authority. We speak about theater as therapy and theater as an alternative to violence with Gary English and Laura Wilson.
Gary English is a Stage Director and Designer with credits that include over 100 productions at many of America’s major repertory theaters. He is a Distinguished Professor of Drama at the University of Connecticut and a member of the Human Rights Institute Faculty at Connecticut. He has been to the Middle East five times in the last two years and will spend the next year on leave from Connecticut when he will serve as Artistic Manager of The Freedom Theatre in the Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank.
Laura Wilson is a professional Stage and Event Manager based in New York City with credits on Broadway and regional theatres who has been involved with active research and development for Freedom Theatre activities in the United States for the past year and a half. She is working with Gary English as Editor on a book project entitled Theatre and Human Rights: The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.
Read: "The Freedom Theatre Under Assault; Building a Cultural Institution Under Military Occupation" by Gary M. English and Laura L. Wilson -- PDF.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Engineer: Christiane Brown.
Music by Duke Ellington.
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The Environmental Antiwar Movement
Events in South Korea are putting U.S. and international environmental groups into coalition with antiwar groups, and in rare opposition to one of the most environmentally destructive forces on earth: the military industrial complex.
WBAI on 9-11 Audio
David Swanson presents a 2012 analysis of how US policy made the military "cure" of "9/11" worse than the original crime, even more under Barack Obama; Steve Ben-Israel contemplates the memory; and Amy Goodman, Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight provide live details from the scene of the crime at the World Trade Center.
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/62846
Program details below...
-Robert Knight
Senior National Correspondent
"Five O'Clock Shadow"
WBAI . 99.5FM . wbai.org
We Are the 99.5!
Nine-Eleven the Eleventh
Series:
"Five O'Clock Shadow" with Robert Knight
Program Type:
Daily Program
Featured Speakers/Commentators:
David Swanson, Steve Ben-Israel, Amy Goodman, Dennis Bernstein, Ryme Kathuda, Robert Knight
Summary:
DAVID SWANSON [ davidswanson.org , rootsaction.org ], author of "War Is a Lie," discusses the 2012 aftermath of 9/11, drone escalation, and political compromise in the progressive-paralytic "Age of Obama"; and
Pacifica's live special coverage of the World Trade Center attacks, with Amy Goodman, Robert Knight, Dennis Bernstein and Ryme Kathuda, combining the on-scene resources of Democracy Now, Flashpoints, Free Speech Radio News, and The Knight Report.
Credits:
Anchor: Robert Knight
Producer: Thiago Barrozo
Engineer: Michael G. Haskins
Origin: WBAI/Pacifica
Support the "Shadow" - give2wbai.org
