Steve Breyman: Nuclear Power and the Nuremburg Code

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Nuclear-Power-and-the-Nure-by-Steve-Breyman-110726-310.html

July 26, 2011

By Steve Breyman

The German Parliament voted last week to phase-out nuclear power by 2022. Thus far lacking a legislative commitment, Prime Minister Naoto Kan says even resource-poor Japan should wean itself from nuclear power. Seventy percent of Japanese parliamentarians agree with him. What is it about World War II's losers and atomic electricity?

Predictable responses to the latest and possibly worst civil disaster of the Nuclear Age? The final victory for (surging) anti-nuke movements? I don't think so. There's more happening here. No Japanese government has ever been accused of over attentiveness to public preferences. Instead, they may know something the war's victors do not.

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Paul Craig Roberts: Is America Caught In The Closed Mind Trap?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Is-America-Caught-In-The-C-by-paul-craig-roberts-110727-582.html

July 27, 2011 By paul craig roberts A reader responded to my recent column about how the US president was becoming a Caesar with a question: "Wouldn't a Caesar be preferable to a democracy in which the people are too ignorant, disinterested, and stupid to engage in self-government?" Before I became a widely read columnist with many reader responses, I would have disagreed with the reader's characterization of the American people. Today, I cannot answer the reader's question with a "no" as confidently as I would like. I receive appreciative words from many readers who are well aware of what is going on. I also hear from many who are so partisan and have such strong emotional responses that they are unable to follow an argument. I don't know what percentage these groups comprise in the population, but there seem to be a number of Americans, both on the left and the right, who are prepared to censor and even to kill in order to defend their illusions and delusions.

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Ralph Nader: Ideological Inebriation on Capitol Hill

Published on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/26-7

by Ralph Nader

Legislating while under the influence of ideological inebriation is not yet a statutory offense. It is only a multi-directional menace to much of what anxious Americans hold dear for themselves and their children.

The dominant Republicans in Congress - both the new and many of the longer-term incumbents - are in heat. It is as if a mob psychology has seized them, starved them of facts, and deprived them of reality. Their chief mad dog is Eric Cantor - he of the sneering soundbites so memorably described in a recent Washington Post column by Dana Milbank.

Cantor is the big burr under Speaker John Boehner's saddle; Boehner himself is terrified of the young fanatic from Virginia and the even younger fanatics elected in 2010 on the Tea Party wave. The Republicans have suckered President Obama into a game of chicken, but fanatic Republicans don't blink. Why not raise the nation's debt limit to pay for debts already incurred by Congressional appropriations, as has been routinely done nearly 60 times since the 1930s? "No way!" say the self-styled Tea Partiers.

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Jon Walker: Disaster Legislating -- A Dangerous New Process

Published on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by FireDogLake

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/07/25/disaster-legislating-a-dangerous-new-process/

by Jon Walker

Some people are worried about the potential Constitutional crisis if President Obama uses the 14th Amendment to declare the debt ceiling voting unconstitutional. The reality though is that we are already in the midst of a full blown Constitutional crisis that is will likely only get worse in the coming years.

Whether or not you think it is a good idea, the Constitution was designed such that any major policy change should take the agreement of the House, the Senate, and the President, unless the President’s veto could be overturned by the House and Senate.

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David Korten: Getting Main Street to Call the Shots

Published on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by OtherWords

http://www.otherwords.org/articles/getting_main_street_to_call_the_shots

America has plenty of cash, but it's in the wrong pockets.

by David Korten

Thanks to massive bailout funding from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, Wall Street survived the financial crash it created. This year, its titans are enjoying record share prices, corporate profits, and executive bonuses. The financial assets of America's billionaires and the idle cash reserves of the most profitable corporations are at historic highs. Their biggest challenge is figuring out where to park all their cash.

Meanwhile, the Great Recession is still raging on Main Street. The unemployment rate is too high, new jobs aren't appearing despite the supposed economic recovery, and the unprecedented crush of foreclosures isn't letting up. Small businesses are starved for credit. Politicians tell us that the government is broke and debate whether we can afford health care, old age security benefits, and student loans.

America is awash in money. But the cash is in the wrong pockets and it's being used for the wrong purposes.

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IAEA Chief: Japan Crisis Will Not End Nuclear Age

Published on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by BBC News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14292167

The UN's top nuclear official says the world's reliance on atomic power will continue to grow, despite the crisis at Japan's Fukushima plant.

Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said many countries believed nuclear power was needed to combat global warming.

Mr Amano visited the Fukushima plant on Monday for the first time since it was crippled by the earthquake and tsunami.

He said he supported Tokyo's plan to shut the plant by January.

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Bill McKibben: Tim DeChristopher Is Going to Jail, Now It's Our Turn

Published on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/27

by Bill McKibben

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders." --Ed Abbey

"The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time." --Terry Tempest Williams

There's something about the redrock canyons that seems to inspire great writing -- I was lucky enough to know Ed Abbey and to count Terry Tempest Williams as a great friend. Both wrote -- and both fought. They fulfilled the duty they owed that great landscape. They fought to protect great chunks of land.

And they're joined by Tim DeChristopher, sentenced today to 24 months in prison for a creative act of resistance straight out of the Monkey Wrench Gang. He didn't damage anything except the pride of the Bureau of Land Management, when he posed as a bidder and won 14 parcels of land at an oil-and-gas lease auction. They were gorgeous pieces of land that he protected -- but far more, he was acting on behalf of every landscape left on the planet.

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"Paul Joseph Watson" - New Study Finds Direct Link Between Vaccines and Infant Mortality

United States, which administers highest number of vaccines in developed world, also has highest number of infant deaths in developed world

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, June 23, 2011

http://www.prisonplanet.com/new-study-finds-direct-link-between-vaccines-and-infant-mortality.html

A shocking new study published in a prestigious medical journal has found a direct statistical link between higher vaccine doses and infant mortality rates in the developed world, suggesting that the increasing number of inoculations being forced upon children by medical authorities, particularly in the United States which administers the highest number of vaccines and also has the highest number of infant deaths, is in fact having a detrimental impact on health.

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Paul Krugman: 'Centrism' -- The Cult That Is Destroying America

Published on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by the New York Times

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/the-cult-that-is-destroying-america/

by Paul Krugman

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.

And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.

No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.

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Mike Davis: Crash Club -- What Happens When Three Sputtering Economies Collide

By Mike Davis
Posted on July 26, 2011, Printed on July 27, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175422/

When my old gang and I were 14 or 15 years old, many centuries ago, we yearned for immortality in the fiery wreck of a bitchin' '40 Ford or '57 Chevy.  Our J.K. Rowling was Henry Felsen, the ex-Marine who wrote the bestselling masterpieces Hot Rod (1950), Street Rod (1953), andCrash Club (1958).

Officially, his books -- highly praised by the National Safety Council -- were deterrents, meant to scare my generation straight with huge dollops of teenage gore.  In fact, he was our asphalt Homer, exalting doomed teenage heroes and inviting us to emulate their legend.

One of his books ends with an apocalyptic collision at a crossroads that more or less wipes out the entire graduating class of a small Iowa town.  We loved this passage so much that we used to read it aloud to each other.

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