http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/50oncranes
This is footage from today in Vicenza, Italy, where 50 women and men entered the construction site of the proposed mammoth new US military base in a location called "Dal Molin". They chained themselves to cranes and other machines.
Background: http://afterdowningstreet.org/vicenza
The campaign we need to support: http://www.nodalmolin.it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiTgeaxHLLA&feature=player_embedded
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Since She's Been Gone: O'Connor's Opinion of Citizen's United
http://blogs.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/8386
By Tanya Roth on February 2, 2010 2:10 PM
Unless you have been spending the bulk of your time on the International Space Station lately, and even then, you have heard a great deal about the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC. That ruling, overturning decades of legal precedent and the bulk of the McCain Feingold Act will, most agree, send cannon balls of corporate money whizzing at high speed toward the election process, with potentially devastating results.
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who stepped down from the bench in 2006 and who was a supporter of campaign finance reform, made her thoughts known on the subject this past week. She said that she hoped the ruling would not allow a landslide of corporate money to unduly effect elections, but feared it would.
According to ABC News, Justice O'Connor also highlighted another area of concern when speaking to an audience at Georgetown Law School. Her main worry, and one not often commented on, is the effect the new rules (or lack thereof) for corporate spending will have on the election of judges at all levels of sate courts. "This rise in judicial campaigning makes last week's opinion in Citizens United a problem for an independent judiciary," she said in her speech in Washington. O'Connor went on to note that nearly 80% of state judges face election at some point during their time on the bench.
Last year's case regarding the election of a West Virginia judge only reinforces Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's concerns. According to an ABC News investigation, mining executives spent millions of dollars on the election of a member of the West Virginia Supreme Court. The judge then presided over a case brought before him involving the same mining company. It came as no surprise when the same judge then cast the swing vote in favor of the mining company. That particular case, Caperton v. Massey, made its way to the High Court and was decided by a 5-4 majority, this time finding that the judge's refusal to recuse himself was seen to be, per the majority opinion, "an extraordinary situation where the Constitution requires recusal."
It is clear Justice O'Connor, among others, is concerned over how many more cases like Caperton will continue to spring up like mushrooms after the rain of corporate cash begins.
Related Resources:
* O'Connor Calls Citizens United Ruling 'A Problem' (ABC News)
* O'Connor Worries Corporate Cash Will Taint Judicial Elections (U.S. News & World Report)
* The Supreme Court Rejects a Limit on Corporate-Funded Campaign Speech (FindLaw's Writ)
* Hey Big Spender! Supreme Court Cuts Limits on Corp Campaign Spending (FindLaw)
* Caperton v. Massey (Brennan Center for Justice)
By Tanya Roth on February 2, 2010 2:10 PM
Unless you have been spending the bulk of your time on the International Space Station lately, and even then, you have heard a great deal about the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC. That ruling, overturning decades of legal precedent and the bulk of the McCain Feingold Act will, most agree, send cannon balls of corporate money whizzing at high speed toward the election process, with potentially devastating results.
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who stepped down from the bench in 2006 and who was a supporter of campaign finance reform, made her thoughts known on the subject this past week. She said that she hoped the ruling would not allow a landslide of corporate money to unduly effect elections, but feared it would.
According to ABC News, Justice O'Connor also highlighted another area of concern when speaking to an audience at Georgetown Law School. Her main worry, and one not often commented on, is the effect the new rules (or lack thereof) for corporate spending will have on the election of judges at all levels of sate courts. "This rise in judicial campaigning makes last week's opinion in Citizens United a problem for an independent judiciary," she said in her speech in Washington. O'Connor went on to note that nearly 80% of state judges face election at some point during their time on the bench.
Last year's case regarding the election of a West Virginia judge only reinforces Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's concerns. According to an ABC News investigation, mining executives spent millions of dollars on the election of a member of the West Virginia Supreme Court. The judge then presided over a case brought before him involving the same mining company. It came as no surprise when the same judge then cast the swing vote in favor of the mining company. That particular case, Caperton v. Massey, made its way to the High Court and was decided by a 5-4 majority, this time finding that the judge's refusal to recuse himself was seen to be, per the majority opinion, "an extraordinary situation where the Constitution requires recusal."
It is clear Justice O'Connor, among others, is concerned over how many more cases like Caperton will continue to spring up like mushrooms after the rain of corporate cash begins.
Related Resources:
* O'Connor Calls Citizens United Ruling 'A Problem' (ABC News)
* O'Connor Worries Corporate Cash Will Taint Judicial Elections (U.S. News & World Report)
* The Supreme Court Rejects a Limit on Corporate-Funded Campaign Speech (FindLaw's Writ)
* Hey Big Spender! Supreme Court Cuts Limits on Corp Campaign Spending (FindLaw)
* Caperton v. Massey (Brennan Center for Justice)
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Supreme Court 5 And Their Magic Fact Appearing Cabinet
The Supreme Court 5 And Their Magic Fact Appearing Cabinet, Because Only The People Speaking Out Can Reverse The Dreadful Corporate Personhood Decision
From The Pen:
Read the rant, get the free bumperstickers, add this rant to your favorite social media site! ~Hypatia
This is the third in our series of lambasts against the various multitude of gross errors in the ruling by the Supreme Court 5 (Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Scalia & Thomas) to turn corporations into super citizens. The first alert addressed their constructive treason in expressly empowering foreign corporations to speak in our elections, the second vivisected their haste and derelict abandonment of all prudent procedure.
Be sure to submit the two action pages on this issue from which we are just starting to build the movement and political will to repudiate the rogue Supreme Court 5.
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php
And if you have a web page of your own, please get the simple code from one of the pages above to place a button to help us give away bumper stickers to protest this hideous injustice.
This third installment will demonstrate their ad hoc prestidigitation of findings of fact on which to ground the opinion. Again we will reference specific page citations to the actual opinion, together with our review of all the legal filings in this case, including the so-called "amicus" (friend of the court) third parties, and the transcript of the oral argument, itself telling in many ways.
We had already pointed out that Kennedy, writing for a skin's teeth of a majority, plowed ahead without sending the case back down to the lower court for the development of a factual record on the issue THEY wanted to rule on (in a predetermined and unprecedented way as it turns out). Instead he conjured facts out of thin hot air to justify his holding, and we will have to play detective somewhat to figure out where this factual garbage even came from.
Critical to Kennedy's justification for why corporations should for the first time be awarded the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to tilt the tables of our elections was the finding, as a matter of fact, that existing PAC (political action committee) alternatives were too BURDENSOME and suppressive of this magical new corporation free speech right to drown out the voice of actual citizens in our elections. (opinion pp. 21-22).
And as support for this sweeping and totalitarian assertion of factual reality, what source does Kennedy lean on?? Why, little more than his OWN DISSENT in the one of very Supreme Court cases (McConnell) this opinion revisits and overrules (so much for respect for stare decisis), where HE made that assertion in DEFIANCE of the majority ruling in that case. Again here, he just recites his personal grudge list of the cruel and unusual (in his opinion) filing requirements for PACs, absent any determination by any trier of fact (besides his absolute self) that these requirements are per se onerous.
Oh, but it gets worse. For you see, no actual party to this litigation made any such factual claim that we can find in the record on appeal. Instead, in this part of the opinion Kennedy is just essentially regurgitating verbatim the ARGUMENTS of one of the THIRD PARTY amicus briefs!! (opinion p. 22) What he did here was take the assertions of a non-party in a tangential filing, the ONLY one to make such arguments, totally after the fact of anything tried in the actual case, and he elevated those arguments to the pedestal status of a complete factual record from the court below.
How much more offensive to any sense of judicial fair play could it possibly get? The point of a TRIAL is to take testimony, to try factual assertions in the crucible of a fact finding court, to have a judge determine based on a full and fair record what facts are to be given weight, with both parties given an opportunity to present any relevant evidence. But in our new Supreme Court of the Five Kangaroos, they can sit as judge, jury and executioner of all facts without any such procedural fairness, and based on their OWN prejudicial predetermination.
To her credit, in oral argument Justice Sotomayor attempted to address the fact that the Court appeared to be bent on proceeding in the absence of an adequate factual record on the issue it purportedly was to decide (oral argument p 25, lines 12-22). Here was attorney Ted Olsen's response to her question.
"It is the government has the burden to prove the record that justifies telling someone that wants to make a 90-minute documentary about a candidate for president that they will go to jail if they broadcast it. The government has the obligation and the government had a long legislative record and plenty of opportunity to produce that record and it's their obligation to do so." (oral argument p. 25, line 25 - p. 26, line 7, and please take careful note of Olsen's unbelievably snaky reference to a "legislative" record, as contrasted with a FACTUAL record by trial in a lower court, and his inflammatory use of the word "jail").
Where did this guy get his law license ... out of a cereal box??
In the first place, the government was not the "plaintiff" (the one bringing the case) here. The government was not prosecuting a case here to put anybody in jail. The plaintiff in this case was so-called Citizens United, both on appeal and in the court below. In our system of justice the plaintiff is ALWAYS the one with the burden of proof, and where, as here, they ABANDONED the issue that the Supreme Court 5 raised from the dead by a wave of their unilateral godlike hand, there was NO requirement for the government to make a case to the contrary. Indeed, on the issues that WERE tried below, the government DID develop whatever factual record was necessary to win, even by the biased standards of this Supreme Court (opinion p. 10).
What kind of dishonest advocate would try to throw the obligation of proof back on the defendant so long after the fact of an issue waived?
And what kind of dishonest Supreme Court would try to pass off as justice such a short shrift of a factual record? Kennedy asserts in the opinion that it's really all OK because in one of the stare decisis cases (which they are REVERSING) there was a record of 100,000 pages on roughly the same issue (opinion p. 15), so they can rely on that, totally disregarding that THAT case ruled AGAINST Kennedy's zombie proposition. What has changed? Nothing has changed but an additional right wing drop kick ideologue on the court to vote to take the SAME facts and arrive at the diametrically contrary result many years later. 100,000 pages of record that went the other way against a new record in this case of ZERO pages. Some record!
It just so happens that Anthony M. Kennedy is the LAST person who should ever be allowed to make a finding of a fact about anything in the real world, let alone from the bench of the Supreme Court. Consider this pearl of cave dwelling mentality from his mouth in the oral argument, in defense of the admittedly ad hominem corporate hit piece about Hillary Clinton in this case.
"But, No. 1, the phenomenon of -- of television ads where we get information about scientific discovery and -- and environment and transportation issues from corporations who after all have patents because they know something, that -- that is different." (oral argument, p. 73, lines 5-10)
Oh sure, that's what corporations do all day long with their TV ads, finance educational and enlightening public service announcements. You mean like all those ads from defense contractors pitching their new missile system as being people friendly? If any court ever needed a factual record to tell them what is actually going on out here in the real world it surely must be this one.
But alas, at this point this alert is already quite long, and we have still only scratched the surface of the totally bogus findings of purported fact on which this outrageously heinous decision was based. So we will have to keep you in suspense until the next installment of the analysis of this shameful decision in ... the ongoing and tragic Saga of the Outlaw Supreme Court 5.
Bumper Stickers Shipping Today!!
We have all the labels printed for the many thousands of you who have already requested your "Corporations Are NOT The People" bumper stickers and your "Impeach The Supreme Court 5" bumper stickers protesting the Supreme Court decision, and will be shipping all of those in the next day or so by first class mail. Otherwise, please get your request in from this page so we can all demonstrate our opposition together.
Bumper Stickers for no charge:
http://www.peaceteam.net/bumper_stickers.php
You can have your choice of either action bumper sticker for no charge, not even shipping. If you want both at the same time please make a donation of any amount, and especially please make a donation if you CAN, because this is what allows us to send free bumper stickers to anyone who cannot make a donation right now.
And again, be sure to submit the two action pages on this issue from which we are just starting to build the movement and political will to repudiate the rogue Supreme Court 5, comprising Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy.
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php
Facebook participants can also submit the ALTERNATE action pages at
Corporations Are Not The People:
http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1029
Impeach The Supreme Court 5:
http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1030
And on Twitter, just send the following Twitter reply for the
Corporations Are Not The People action
@cxs #p1029
From The Pen:
Read the rant, get the free bumperstickers, add this rant to your favorite social media site! ~Hypatia
This is the third in our series of lambasts against the various multitude of gross errors in the ruling by the Supreme Court 5 (Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Scalia & Thomas) to turn corporations into super citizens. The first alert addressed their constructive treason in expressly empowering foreign corporations to speak in our elections, the second vivisected their haste and derelict abandonment of all prudent procedure.
Be sure to submit the two action pages on this issue from which we are just starting to build the movement and political will to repudiate the rogue Supreme Court 5.
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php
And if you have a web page of your own, please get the simple code from one of the pages above to place a button to help us give away bumper stickers to protest this hideous injustice.
This third installment will demonstrate their ad hoc prestidigitation of findings of fact on which to ground the opinion. Again we will reference specific page citations to the actual opinion, together with our review of all the legal filings in this case, including the so-called "amicus" (friend of the court) third parties, and the transcript of the oral argument, itself telling in many ways.
We had already pointed out that Kennedy, writing for a skin's teeth of a majority, plowed ahead without sending the case back down to the lower court for the development of a factual record on the issue THEY wanted to rule on (in a predetermined and unprecedented way as it turns out). Instead he conjured facts out of thin hot air to justify his holding, and we will have to play detective somewhat to figure out where this factual garbage even came from.
Critical to Kennedy's justification for why corporations should for the first time be awarded the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to tilt the tables of our elections was the finding, as a matter of fact, that existing PAC (political action committee) alternatives were too BURDENSOME and suppressive of this magical new corporation free speech right to drown out the voice of actual citizens in our elections. (opinion pp. 21-22).
And as support for this sweeping and totalitarian assertion of factual reality, what source does Kennedy lean on?? Why, little more than his OWN DISSENT in the one of very Supreme Court cases (McConnell) this opinion revisits and overrules (so much for respect for stare decisis), where HE made that assertion in DEFIANCE of the majority ruling in that case. Again here, he just recites his personal grudge list of the cruel and unusual (in his opinion) filing requirements for PACs, absent any determination by any trier of fact (besides his absolute self) that these requirements are per se onerous.
Oh, but it gets worse. For you see, no actual party to this litigation made any such factual claim that we can find in the record on appeal. Instead, in this part of the opinion Kennedy is just essentially regurgitating verbatim the ARGUMENTS of one of the THIRD PARTY amicus briefs!! (opinion p. 22) What he did here was take the assertions of a non-party in a tangential filing, the ONLY one to make such arguments, totally after the fact of anything tried in the actual case, and he elevated those arguments to the pedestal status of a complete factual record from the court below.
How much more offensive to any sense of judicial fair play could it possibly get? The point of a TRIAL is to take testimony, to try factual assertions in the crucible of a fact finding court, to have a judge determine based on a full and fair record what facts are to be given weight, with both parties given an opportunity to present any relevant evidence. But in our new Supreme Court of the Five Kangaroos, they can sit as judge, jury and executioner of all facts without any such procedural fairness, and based on their OWN prejudicial predetermination.
To her credit, in oral argument Justice Sotomayor attempted to address the fact that the Court appeared to be bent on proceeding in the absence of an adequate factual record on the issue it purportedly was to decide (oral argument p 25, lines 12-22). Here was attorney Ted Olsen's response to her question.
"It is the government has the burden to prove the record that justifies telling someone that wants to make a 90-minute documentary about a candidate for president that they will go to jail if they broadcast it. The government has the obligation and the government had a long legislative record and plenty of opportunity to produce that record and it's their obligation to do so." (oral argument p. 25, line 25 - p. 26, line 7, and please take careful note of Olsen's unbelievably snaky reference to a "legislative" record, as contrasted with a FACTUAL record by trial in a lower court, and his inflammatory use of the word "jail").
Where did this guy get his law license ... out of a cereal box??
In the first place, the government was not the "plaintiff" (the one bringing the case) here. The government was not prosecuting a case here to put anybody in jail. The plaintiff in this case was so-called Citizens United, both on appeal and in the court below. In our system of justice the plaintiff is ALWAYS the one with the burden of proof, and where, as here, they ABANDONED the issue that the Supreme Court 5 raised from the dead by a wave of their unilateral godlike hand, there was NO requirement for the government to make a case to the contrary. Indeed, on the issues that WERE tried below, the government DID develop whatever factual record was necessary to win, even by the biased standards of this Supreme Court (opinion p. 10).
What kind of dishonest advocate would try to throw the obligation of proof back on the defendant so long after the fact of an issue waived?
And what kind of dishonest Supreme Court would try to pass off as justice such a short shrift of a factual record? Kennedy asserts in the opinion that it's really all OK because in one of the stare decisis cases (which they are REVERSING) there was a record of 100,000 pages on roughly the same issue (opinion p. 15), so they can rely on that, totally disregarding that THAT case ruled AGAINST Kennedy's zombie proposition. What has changed? Nothing has changed but an additional right wing drop kick ideologue on the court to vote to take the SAME facts and arrive at the diametrically contrary result many years later. 100,000 pages of record that went the other way against a new record in this case of ZERO pages. Some record!
It just so happens that Anthony M. Kennedy is the LAST person who should ever be allowed to make a finding of a fact about anything in the real world, let alone from the bench of the Supreme Court. Consider this pearl of cave dwelling mentality from his mouth in the oral argument, in defense of the admittedly ad hominem corporate hit piece about Hillary Clinton in this case.
"But, No. 1, the phenomenon of -- of television ads where we get information about scientific discovery and -- and environment and transportation issues from corporations who after all have patents because they know something, that -- that is different." (oral argument, p. 73, lines 5-10)
Oh sure, that's what corporations do all day long with their TV ads, finance educational and enlightening public service announcements. You mean like all those ads from defense contractors pitching their new missile system as being people friendly? If any court ever needed a factual record to tell them what is actually going on out here in the real world it surely must be this one.
But alas, at this point this alert is already quite long, and we have still only scratched the surface of the totally bogus findings of purported fact on which this outrageously heinous decision was based. So we will have to keep you in suspense until the next installment of the analysis of this shameful decision in ... the ongoing and tragic Saga of the Outlaw Supreme Court 5.
Bumper Stickers Shipping Today!!
We have all the labels printed for the many thousands of you who have already requested your "Corporations Are NOT The People" bumper stickers and your "Impeach The Supreme Court 5" bumper stickers protesting the Supreme Court decision, and will be shipping all of those in the next day or so by first class mail. Otherwise, please get your request in from this page so we can all demonstrate our opposition together.
Bumper Stickers for no charge:
http://www.peaceteam.net/bumper_stickers.php
You can have your choice of either action bumper sticker for no charge, not even shipping. If you want both at the same time please make a donation of any amount, and especially please make a donation if you CAN, because this is what allows us to send free bumper stickers to anyone who cannot make a donation right now.
And again, be sure to submit the two action pages on this issue from which we are just starting to build the movement and political will to repudiate the rogue Supreme Court 5, comprising Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy.
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php
Facebook participants can also submit the ALTERNATE action pages at
Corporations Are Not The People:
http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1029
Impeach The Supreme Court 5:
http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1030
And on Twitter, just send the following Twitter reply for the
Corporations Are Not The People action
@cxs #p1029
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Save California Parks and Their Communities!
California's parks need not close. They need not fail our citizens and our communities, and we need not lose this important heritage.
California's park system is in danger because of the dreadful budget problems in our state. Closure of parks endangers not only the livelihood of those who work in the parks, but also the communities that rely on revenue generated by the associated tourism.
In desperate times like these, old ideas with a new spin can keep our parks out of private hands and open for everyone's benefit and enjoyment. Let the communities take care of the parks.
Communities surrounding parks could establish cooperatives, where the people who work at the park would be funded by park entrance fees. Workers could live at the park in exchange for taking lower pay, and accumulate points based on years of service toward a life-estate ownership interest in a small parcel of land suitable to build a modest sustainable dwelling in, say, five years.
Workers would be chosen by a governing board, at the outset. Once established, the workers themselves would choose new workers based on commitment and knowledge of the park. In this way, those who work there would have a stake in the park as well as the community. To assure that park professionals would have a role, their applications would receive priority treatment.
Title to the park itself would remain with the state, but the revenues would stay with each park. It may be necessary to institute or increase entrance fees to make this model work, but it would be far better than either facing the closure of our parks or turning parks over to the private sector.
Deborah Lagutaris, J.D.
Harris Freeman, M.B.A.
California's park system is in danger because of the dreadful budget problems in our state. Closure of parks endangers not only the livelihood of those who work in the parks, but also the communities that rely on revenue generated by the associated tourism.
In desperate times like these, old ideas with a new spin can keep our parks out of private hands and open for everyone's benefit and enjoyment. Let the communities take care of the parks.
Communities surrounding parks could establish cooperatives, where the people who work at the park would be funded by park entrance fees. Workers could live at the park in exchange for taking lower pay, and accumulate points based on years of service toward a life-estate ownership interest in a small parcel of land suitable to build a modest sustainable dwelling in, say, five years.
Workers would be chosen by a governing board, at the outset. Once established, the workers themselves would choose new workers based on commitment and knowledge of the park. In this way, those who work there would have a stake in the park as well as the community. To assure that park professionals would have a role, their applications would receive priority treatment.
Title to the park itself would remain with the state, but the revenues would stay with each park. It may be necessary to institute or increase entrance fees to make this model work, but it would be far better than either facing the closure of our parks or turning parks over to the private sector.
Deborah Lagutaris, J.D.
Harris Freeman, M.B.A.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Boycott Sarah Palin headlines! Take the Pledge!
After nearly a year of Sarah Palin coverage, let me be among the millions who are disgusted with corporate media's fascination with this dreadful woman and among the millions who have said NO MORE. It's sort of like looking at roadkill.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I set up four blogs about the terror of Sarah Palin last fall, so I should be the last one to speak. But I swore off Sarah after the election. It was making me sick!
Her deliberate lies deserve no space. Let her return to obscurity, where she belongs, as a cultural footnote in the decline and fall of the Republican Party. I will not click on any headline featuring her name.
Please join me in letting corporate media know that they can't sell any more advertising space by relying on this horror of a human being. Add your comment to this post, pledging not to read anything else about Sarah Palin. You know it isn't going to be worth your time, anyway.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I set up four blogs about the terror of Sarah Palin last fall, so I should be the last one to speak. But I swore off Sarah after the election. It was making me sick!
Her deliberate lies deserve no space. Let her return to obscurity, where she belongs, as a cultural footnote in the decline and fall of the Republican Party. I will not click on any headline featuring her name.
Please join me in letting corporate media know that they can't sell any more advertising space by relying on this horror of a human being. Add your comment to this post, pledging not to read anything else about Sarah Palin. You know it isn't going to be worth your time, anyway.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Peak Oil; Life After the Oil Crash
by Deborah Lake
the party's over, by Richard Heinberg Look for it at http://powells.com first. Powell's has a union contract.
If you read it in 2003, like I did, your eyes popped open. My friend Matt got it so much that he gave his life to it. I just sent him an email and it came back! Holy cow.
Matt and I got along from the beginning, during my first taste of the students at a top tier law school. We were like, whut, when they started discussing their designer shoes.
He asked me in 2005 if I knew about Peak Oil. I said, yup. He said, why didn't you tell me? Then he became silent. He said, if I would have known, I would not have passed the Bar. LOL!
And people wonder what's wrong with me.
Here's Matt's site: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
the party's over, by Richard Heinberg Look for it at http://powells.com first. Powell's has a union contract.
If you read it in 2003, like I did, your eyes popped open. My friend Matt got it so much that he gave his life to it. I just sent him an email and it came back! Holy cow.
Matt and I got along from the beginning, during my first taste of the students at a top tier law school. We were like, whut, when they started discussing their designer shoes.
He asked me in 2005 if I knew about Peak Oil. I said, yup. He said, why didn't you tell me? Then he became silent. He said, if I would have known, I would not have passed the Bar. LOL!
And people wonder what's wrong with me.
Here's Matt's site: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Harvey Wasserman: People died---and are still dying---at Three Mile Island
A Columbus Freepress Article
Harvey Wasserman
People died at Three Mile Island
March 24, 2009
People died---and are still dying---at Three Mile Island.
As the thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history.
As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases.
That quickly proved to be false.
The public was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate pressure on the core.
Both those assertions were false.
The public was told the releases were "insignificant."
But stack monitors were saturated and unusable, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later told Congress it did not know---and STILL does not know---how much radiation was released at Three Mile Island, or where it went.
Using unsubstantiated estimates of how much radiation was released, the government issued average doses allegedly received by people in the region, which it assured the public were safe. But the estimates were utterly meaningless, among other things ignoring the likelihood that high doses of concentrated fallout could come down heavily on specific areas.
Official estimates said a uniform dose to all persons in the region was equivalent to a single chest x-ray. But pregnant women are no longer x-rayed because it has long been known a single dose can do catastrophic damage to an embryo or fetus in utero.
The public was told there was no melting of fuel inside the core.
But robotic cameras later showed a very substantial portion of the fuel did melt.
The public was told there was no danger of an explosion.
But there was, as there had been at Michigan's Fermi reactor in 1966. In 1986, Chernobyl Unit Four did explode.
The public was told there was no need to evacuate anyone from the area.
But Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh then evacuated pregnant women and small children. Unfortunately, many were sent to nearby Hershey, which was showered with fallout.
In fact, the entire region should have been immediately evacuated. It is standard wisdom in the health physics community that---due in part to the extreme vulnerability of human embryos, fetuses and small children, as well as the weaknesses of old age---there is no safe dose of radiation, and none will ever be found.
The public was assured the government would follow up with meticulous studies of the health impacts of the accident.
In fact, the state of Pennsylvania hid the health impacts, including deletion of cancers from the public record, abolition of the state's tumor registry, misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide (including an apparent tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more.
The federal government did nothing to track the health histories of the region's residents.
In fact, the most reliable studies were conducted by local residents like Jane Lee and Mary Osborne, who went door-to-door in neighborhoods where the fallout was thought to be worst. Their surveys showed very substantial plagues of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, respiratory problems, hair loss, rashes, lesions and much more.
A study by Columbia University claimed there were no significant health impacts, but its data by some interpretations points in the opposite direction. Investigations by epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Wing of the University of North Carolina, and others, led Wing to warn that the official studies on the health impacts of the accident suffered from “logical and methodological problems.” Studies by Wing and by Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry official, being announced this week at Harrisburg, significantly challenge official pronouncements on both radiation releases and health impacts.
Gundersen, a leading technical expert on nuclear engineering, says: “When I correctly interpreted the containment pressure spike and the doses measured in the environment after the TMI accident, I proved that TMI's releases were about one hundred times higher than the industry and the NRC claim, in part because the containment leaked. This new data supports the epidemiology of Dr. Steve Wing and proves that there really were injuries from the accident. New reactor designs are also effected, as the NRC is using its low assumed release rates to justify decreases in emergency planning and containment design."
Data unearthed by radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass of the University of Pittsburgh, and statisticians Jay Gould (now deceased) and Joe Mangano of New York have led to strong assertions of major public health impacts. On-going work by Sternglass and Mangano clearly indicates that "normal" reactor radiation releases of far less magnitude that those at TMI continue to have catastrophic impacts on local populations.
Anecdotal evidence among the local human population has been devastating. Large numbers of central Pennsylvanians suffered skin sores and lesions that erupted while they were out of doors as the fallout rained down on them. Many quickly developed large, visible tumors, breathing problems, and a metallic taste in their mouths that matched that experienced by some of the men who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and who were exposed to nuclear tests in the south Pacific and Nevada.
A series of interviews conducted by Robbie Leppzer and compiled in a “a two-hour public radio documentary VOICES FROM THREE MILE ISLAND ( www.turningtide.com ) give some indication of the horrors experienced by the people of central Pennsylvania.
They are further underscored by harrowing broadcasts from then-CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-c1PrCLaRw) warning that “the world has never known a day quite like today. It faced the considerable uncertainties and dangers of the worst nuclear power plant accident of the atomic age. And the horror tonight is that it could get much worse.”
In March of 1980, I went into the region and compiled a range of interviews clearly indicating widespread health damage done by radiation from the accident. The survey led to the book KILLING OUR OWN, co-authored with Norman Solomon, Robert Alvarez and Eleanor Walters ( www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO.pdf ) which correlated the damage done at TMI with that suffered during nuclear bomb tests, atomic weapons production, mis-use of medical x-rays, the painting of radium watch dials, uranium mining and milling, radioactive fuel production, failed attempts at waste disposal, and more.
My research at TMI also uncovered a plague of death and disease among the area's wild animals and farm livestock. Entire bee hives expired immediately after the accident, along with a disappearance of birds, many of whom were found scattered dead on the ground. A rash of malformed pets were born and stillborn, including kittens that could not walk and a dog with no eyes. Reproductive rates among the region's cows and horses plummeted.
Much of this was documented by a three-person investigative team from the Baltimore News-American, which made it clear that the problems could only have been caused by radiation. Statistics from Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture confirmed the plague, but the state denied its existence, and said that if it did exist, it could not have been caused by TMI.
In the mid-1980s the citizens of the three counties surrounding Three Mile Island voted by a margin of 3:1 to permanently retired TMI Unit One, which had been shut when Unit Two melted. The Reagan Administration trashed the vote and re-opened the reactor, which still operates. Its owners now seek a license renewal.
Some 2400 area residents have long-since filed a class action lawsuit demanding compensation for the plague of death and disease visited upon their families. In the past quarter-century they have been denied access to the federal court system, which claims there was not enough radiation released to do such harm. TMI’s owners did quietly pay out millions in damages to area residents whose children were born with genetic damage, among other things. The payments came in exchange for silence among those receiving them.
But for all the global attention focused on the accident and its health effects, there has never been a binding public trial to test the assertion by thousands of conservative central Pennsylvanians that radiation from TMI destroyed their lives.
So while the nuclear power industry continues to assert that "no one died at Three Mile Island," it refuses to allow an open judicial hearing on the hundreds of cases still pending.
As the pushers of the "nuclear renaissance" demand massive tax- and rate-payer subsidies to build yet another generation of reactors, they cynically stonewall the obvious death toll that continues to mount at the site of an accident that happened thirty years ago. The "see no evil" mantra continues to define all official approaches to the victims of this horrific disaster.
Ironically, like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island Unit Two was a state-of-the-art reactor. Its official opening came on December 28, 1978, and it melted exactly three months later. Had it operated longer, the accumulated radiation spewing from its core almost certainly would have been far greater.
Every reactor now operating in the US is much older---nearly all fully three decades older---than TMI-2 when it melted. Their potential fallout that could dwarf what came down in 1979.
But the Big Lie remains officially in tact. Expect to hear all week that TMI was "a success story" because "no one was killed."
But in mere moments that brand new reactor morphed from a $900 million asset to a multi-billion-dollar liability. It could happen to any atomic power plant, now, tomorrow and into the future.
Meanwhile, the death toll from America's worst industrial catastrophe continues to rise. More than ever, it is shrouded in official lies and desecrated by a reactor-pushing “renaissance” hell-bent on repeating the nightmare on an even larger scale.
--
Harvey Wasserman has been writing about atomic energy and the green alternatives since 1973. His 1982 assertion to Bryant Gumbel on NBC's TODAY Show that people were killed at TMI sparked a national mailing from the reactor industry demanding a retraction. NBC was later bought by Westinghouse, still a major force pushing atomic power. This article originally appeared at http://freepress.org.
Harvey WassermanPeople died at Three Mile Island
March 24, 2009
People died---and are still dying---at Three Mile Island.
As the thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history.
As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases.
That quickly proved to be false.
The public was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate pressure on the core.
Both those assertions were false.
The public was told the releases were "insignificant."
But stack monitors were saturated and unusable, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later told Congress it did not know---and STILL does not know---how much radiation was released at Three Mile Island, or where it went.
Using unsubstantiated estimates of how much radiation was released, the government issued average doses allegedly received by people in the region, which it assured the public were safe. But the estimates were utterly meaningless, among other things ignoring the likelihood that high doses of concentrated fallout could come down heavily on specific areas.
Official estimates said a uniform dose to all persons in the region was equivalent to a single chest x-ray. But pregnant women are no longer x-rayed because it has long been known a single dose can do catastrophic damage to an embryo or fetus in utero.
The public was told there was no melting of fuel inside the core.
But robotic cameras later showed a very substantial portion of the fuel did melt.
The public was told there was no danger of an explosion.
But there was, as there had been at Michigan's Fermi reactor in 1966. In 1986, Chernobyl Unit Four did explode.
The public was told there was no need to evacuate anyone from the area.
But Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh then evacuated pregnant women and small children. Unfortunately, many were sent to nearby Hershey, which was showered with fallout.
In fact, the entire region should have been immediately evacuated. It is standard wisdom in the health physics community that---due in part to the extreme vulnerability of human embryos, fetuses and small children, as well as the weaknesses of old age---there is no safe dose of radiation, and none will ever be found.
The public was assured the government would follow up with meticulous studies of the health impacts of the accident.
In fact, the state of Pennsylvania hid the health impacts, including deletion of cancers from the public record, abolition of the state's tumor registry, misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide (including an apparent tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more.
The federal government did nothing to track the health histories of the region's residents.
In fact, the most reliable studies were conducted by local residents like Jane Lee and Mary Osborne, who went door-to-door in neighborhoods where the fallout was thought to be worst. Their surveys showed very substantial plagues of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, respiratory problems, hair loss, rashes, lesions and much more.
A study by Columbia University claimed there were no significant health impacts, but its data by some interpretations points in the opposite direction. Investigations by epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Wing of the University of North Carolina, and others, led Wing to warn that the official studies on the health impacts of the accident suffered from “logical and methodological problems.” Studies by Wing and by Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry official, being announced this week at Harrisburg, significantly challenge official pronouncements on both radiation releases and health impacts.
Gundersen, a leading technical expert on nuclear engineering, says: “When I correctly interpreted the containment pressure spike and the doses measured in the environment after the TMI accident, I proved that TMI's releases were about one hundred times higher than the industry and the NRC claim, in part because the containment leaked. This new data supports the epidemiology of Dr. Steve Wing and proves that there really were injuries from the accident. New reactor designs are also effected, as the NRC is using its low assumed release rates to justify decreases in emergency planning and containment design."
Data unearthed by radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass of the University of Pittsburgh, and statisticians Jay Gould (now deceased) and Joe Mangano of New York have led to strong assertions of major public health impacts. On-going work by Sternglass and Mangano clearly indicates that "normal" reactor radiation releases of far less magnitude that those at TMI continue to have catastrophic impacts on local populations.
Anecdotal evidence among the local human population has been devastating. Large numbers of central Pennsylvanians suffered skin sores and lesions that erupted while they were out of doors as the fallout rained down on them. Many quickly developed large, visible tumors, breathing problems, and a metallic taste in their mouths that matched that experienced by some of the men who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and who were exposed to nuclear tests in the south Pacific and Nevada.
A series of interviews conducted by Robbie Leppzer and compiled in a “a two-hour public radio documentary VOICES FROM THREE MILE ISLAND ( www.turningtide.com ) give some indication of the horrors experienced by the people of central Pennsylvania.
They are further underscored by harrowing broadcasts from then-CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-c1PrCLaRw) warning that “the world has never known a day quite like today. It faced the considerable uncertainties and dangers of the worst nuclear power plant accident of the atomic age. And the horror tonight is that it could get much worse.”
In March of 1980, I went into the region and compiled a range of interviews clearly indicating widespread health damage done by radiation from the accident. The survey led to the book KILLING OUR OWN, co-authored with Norman Solomon, Robert Alvarez and Eleanor Walters ( www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO.pdf ) which correlated the damage done at TMI with that suffered during nuclear bomb tests, atomic weapons production, mis-use of medical x-rays, the painting of radium watch dials, uranium mining and milling, radioactive fuel production, failed attempts at waste disposal, and more.
My research at TMI also uncovered a plague of death and disease among the area's wild animals and farm livestock. Entire bee hives expired immediately after the accident, along with a disappearance of birds, many of whom were found scattered dead on the ground. A rash of malformed pets were born and stillborn, including kittens that could not walk and a dog with no eyes. Reproductive rates among the region's cows and horses plummeted.
Much of this was documented by a three-person investigative team from the Baltimore News-American, which made it clear that the problems could only have been caused by radiation. Statistics from Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture confirmed the plague, but the state denied its existence, and said that if it did exist, it could not have been caused by TMI.
In the mid-1980s the citizens of the three counties surrounding Three Mile Island voted by a margin of 3:1 to permanently retired TMI Unit One, which had been shut when Unit Two melted. The Reagan Administration trashed the vote and re-opened the reactor, which still operates. Its owners now seek a license renewal.
Some 2400 area residents have long-since filed a class action lawsuit demanding compensation for the plague of death and disease visited upon their families. In the past quarter-century they have been denied access to the federal court system, which claims there was not enough radiation released to do such harm. TMI’s owners did quietly pay out millions in damages to area residents whose children were born with genetic damage, among other things. The payments came in exchange for silence among those receiving them.
But for all the global attention focused on the accident and its health effects, there has never been a binding public trial to test the assertion by thousands of conservative central Pennsylvanians that radiation from TMI destroyed their lives.
So while the nuclear power industry continues to assert that "no one died at Three Mile Island," it refuses to allow an open judicial hearing on the hundreds of cases still pending.
As the pushers of the "nuclear renaissance" demand massive tax- and rate-payer subsidies to build yet another generation of reactors, they cynically stonewall the obvious death toll that continues to mount at the site of an accident that happened thirty years ago. The "see no evil" mantra continues to define all official approaches to the victims of this horrific disaster.
Ironically, like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island Unit Two was a state-of-the-art reactor. Its official opening came on December 28, 1978, and it melted exactly three months later. Had it operated longer, the accumulated radiation spewing from its core almost certainly would have been far greater.
Every reactor now operating in the US is much older---nearly all fully three decades older---than TMI-2 when it melted. Their potential fallout that could dwarf what came down in 1979.
But the Big Lie remains officially in tact. Expect to hear all week that TMI was "a success story" because "no one was killed."
But in mere moments that brand new reactor morphed from a $900 million asset to a multi-billion-dollar liability. It could happen to any atomic power plant, now, tomorrow and into the future.
Meanwhile, the death toll from America's worst industrial catastrophe continues to rise. More than ever, it is shrouded in official lies and desecrated by a reactor-pushing “renaissance” hell-bent on repeating the nightmare on an even larger scale.
--
Harvey Wasserman has been writing about atomic energy and the green alternatives since 1973. His 1982 assertion to Bryant Gumbel on NBC's TODAY Show that people were killed at TMI sparked a national mailing from the reactor industry demanding a retraction. NBC was later bought by Westinghouse, still a major force pushing atomic power. This article originally appeared at http://freepress.org.
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