Sue Sturgis: Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety

By Sue Sturgis

Global Research, July 24, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25757

This article originally appeared on Facing South, online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies. also posted on Alternet, July 22, 2011

It was April Fool's Day, 1979 -- 30 years ago this week -- when Randall Thompson first set foot inside the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa. Just four days earlier, in the early morning hours of March 28, a relatively minor problem in the plant's Unit 2 reactor sparked a series of mishaps that led to the meltdown of almost half the uranium fuel and uncontrolled releases of radiation into the air and surrounding Susquehanna River.

It was the single worst disaster ever to befall the U.S. nuclear power industry, and Thompson was hired as a health physics technician to go inside the plant and find out how dangerous the situation was. He spent 28 days monitoring radiation releases. 

Today, his story about what he witnessed at Three Mile Island is being brought to the public in detail for the first time -- and his version of what happened during that time, supported by a growing body of other scientific evidence, contradicts the official U.S. government story that the Three Mile Island accident posed no threat to the public. 

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Sen. Bernie Sanders: The Fed Audit -- "U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out US and foreign banks"

By Senator Bernie Sanders

Global Research, July 23, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25750

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.

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Brian Moench: It's the Empathy Crisis, Stupid

Published on Sunday, July 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/24-0

by Brian Moench

I'm sure everyone reading this already knows that our "debt crisis" is a mirage, a canard manipulated by the radical right wing who are theologically devoted to allowing society's rich to become even more so. Our supposed spending problem is nothing more than a "We won't tax the rich no matter what" problem. The media has played along; Pres. Obama and many of the Democrats are also playing along. And the political barometer has taken yet another sharp lurch to the right. But while we don't really have a debt crisis, we do have an empathy crisis and it's the empathy ceiling that has come crashing down on us and desperately needs to be raised.

Recall that in campaigning for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush actually advertised himself as a different breed of conservative, a "compassionate conservative". I'm under no illusion that this was anything other than Karl Rove branding "W" solely for the purpose of electability. (I went to high school with Karl Rove. There's never been a stray, compassionate bone in the man's entire marshmellow, conniving body). But the fact that compassion was touted as a desirable trait in a politician in 2000 illustrates how far we have degenerated into a truly brutal society, a modern day Mordor. The only difference I can see is the Orcs in Lord of the Rings had better costumes than the Tea Partiers.

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Global Research: Who Rules America? An Investment Manager Breaks Down the Economic Top 1%, Says 0.1% Controls Political and Legislative Process

Global Research, July 24, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25759

Article Sent in by G. William Domhoff, author of Who Rules America? ^[3]

This article was written by an investment manager who works with very wealthy clients. I knew him from decades ago, but he recently e-mailed me with some concerns he had about what was happening with the economy. What he had to say was informative enough that I asked if he might fashion what he had told me into a document for the Who Rules America Web site. He agreed to do so, but only on the condition that the document be anonymous, because he does not want to jeopardize his relationships with his clients or other investment professionals.

G. William Domhoff

---

I sit in an interesting chair in the financial services industry. Our clients largely fall into the top 1%, have a net worth of $5,000,000 or above, and if working make over $300,000 per year. My observations on the sources of their wealth and concerns come from my professional and social activities within this group.

Work by various economists and tax experts make it indisputable that the top 1% controls a widely disproportionate share of the income and wealth in the United States. When does one enter that top 1%? (I’ll use “k” for 1,000 and “M” for 1,000,000 as we usually do when communicating with clients or discussing money; thousands and millions take too much time to say.) Available data isn’t exact. but a family enters the top 1% or so today with somewhere around $300k to $400k in pre-tax income and over $1.2M in net worth. Compared to the average American family with a pre-tax income in the mid-$50k range and net worth around $120k, this probably seems like a lot of money. But, there are big differences within that top 1%, with the wealth distribution highly skewed towards the top 0.1%.

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James Ridgeway: Mass Psychosis in the US

How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs

By James Ridgeway

AL JAZEERA, July 22, 2011

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117313948379987.html

Drug companies like Pfizer are accused of pressuring doctors into over-prescribing medications to patients in order to increase profits [GALLO/GETTY]

Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.

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Lenore Daniels: The First Lady and The Monsanto-Washington Unification Process Vs. Our Human Rights

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-First-Lady-and-The-Mon-by-Lenore-Daniels-110723-957.html

July 24, 2011 By Lenore Daniels The First Lady and the Monsanto-Washington Unification Process Vs. Our Human Rights The effect is again a magical and hypnotic one--the projection of images which convey irresistible unity, harmony of contradictions. Thus the loved and fear Father, the spender of life, generates the H-bomb for the annihilation of life; "science-military' joins the efforts to reduce anxiety and suffering with the job of creating anxiety and suffering. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man Monsanto has great respect for all of us, little people, and for Mother Earth, the source of all its (Monsanto's) material wealth. But Monsanto would like to remind the world that however much those activists transgressors in Brazil condemn its connection to the use of dioxin in a current project to defoliate the rain forest or however much those Vietnam Vets agitators shout about the long-term harmful effects of Agent Orange, Monsanto is a new humanitarian enterprise, working with struggling farmers on behalf of the poor and starving children of the world. Monsanto, along with the cooperative government of the U.S. and other Western nations, envisions a future filled with healthy and happy humans.   Chuckle. Chuckle.

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Adele Stan: In Bid for Control of GOP, Tea Party Brings U.S. to Brink of Economic Calamity

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on July 23, 2011, Printed on July 24, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151750/in_bid_for_control_of_gop%2C_tea_party_brings_u.s._to_brink_of_economic_calamity

For many, it's a head-scratcher. Don't those Republicans see the danger in their hardline stand against allowing the U.S. government to borrow the money it needs to continue operating? GOP members of Congress not only insist on tying any deal for raising of the debt ceiling to a deficit-reduction scheme, they are demanding that such a scheme not raise a dime of revenue -- not even from the wealthiest Americans, who are still basking in their Bush-era tax-cuts. On Friday, House Speaker John Boehner walked out of debt-limit talks with President Barack Obama, even after Obama offered the speaker a plan that would have made $650 billion in cuts to safety net programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

But, really, Boehner had no choice but to walk out -- if he wants to continue on as speaker, that is. The Obama deal, you see, included the elimination of certain tax breaks for the rich, and the closing of corporate tax loopholes, the president told reporters. And Boehner is on notice from the Tea Partiers within the ranks of the GOP that no means of increasing revenue is acceptable, not even for the easing of America's economic woes. Hot on Boehner's heels is the ambition of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

There's a temptation, when assessing the showdown over the debt ceiling that is bringing the United States to the brink of defaulting on its debt, to view the confrontation in terms of Republicans vs. Democrats, liberals vs. conservatives, Obama vs. Boehner.

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Matthew Rothschild: No Wonder Obama Is Losing Support from the Left

Published on Sunday, July 24, 2011 by The Progressive

http://www.progressive.org/wx072111.html

by Matthew Rothschild

CNN has just come out with a poll that shows Obama losing support from his left flank.

“Roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he's not been liberal enough,” the poll said. “Obama's approval rating among liberals has dropped to 71 percent, the lowest point in his presidency.”

Overall, the poll had Obama with an approval-disapproval rating at 45%-54%.

For anyone within shouting distance of most progressive communities, this is not a surprise.

The dissatisfaction with Obama has been building steadily over the past three years, and it has grown more audible by the month.

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Joel Hirschorn: Semantic Propaganda Feeds Stupidity -- Lies are being fed to the Public by America's Two-party Plutocracy

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Global Research, July 23, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25753

We would already have had a much needed American revolution in response to the tyranny of the money-fed two-party plutocracy that is destroying the middle class except for one big problem: so much of the American population is just plain stupid.  Too stupid to behave like angry Greeks and rise up in the streets to rebel against the dysfunctional government.

In the never ending fight of Republicans and their cancerous (make that stupid) Tea Party members to gain even more control of the US political system, economy and culture they have fixed on another semantic weapon.  The latest attack on intelligence is the constant use of the term job creators in place of words like the rich or wealthy.  Not just plain Republicans in Congress are doing this, but especially the large crop of Republican presidential candidates.

This bit of cleverness surely was deemed necessary because much of the nation was beginning to appreciate the class warfare going on.  Rising economic inequality, unemployment set in concrete, and merging of the middle class into the poverty stricken lower class were all becoming clearer.

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Frank Schaeffer: Christian Jihad? Why We Should Worry About Right-Wing Terror Attacks Like Norway's in the US

By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet
Posted on July 23, 2011, Printed on July 24, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151751/christian_jihad_why_we_should_worry_about_right-wing_terror_attacks_like_norway%27s_in_the_us

The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a 32-year-old man, whom they identified as a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing connections, over the bombing of a government center and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together left at least 91 people dead.

In my new book "Sex, Mom and God" I predicted just such an action. I predicted that right wing Christians will unleash terror here in America too. I predict that they will copy Islamic extremists, and may eventually even make common cause with them.

There is a growing movement in America that equates godliness with hatred of our government in fact hatred of our country as fallen and evil because we allow women choice, gays to marry, have a social safety net, and allow immigration from other cultures and non-white races.

According to the Guardian newspaper, the killer wrote:

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