Malcolm X Revisited: I find Malcolm X's life endlessly interesting maybe the MOST interesting of the black liberation and nationalist movement's advocates. I only wish Professor Marable lived to comment on his new book as according to the NYT, the Malcolm X biographer died on eve of his revealing work.

For anyone who may be interested, I link below the NYT story about the author and his exhaustive study in his book on Malcolm X's life. It upends many of the preconceived notions of Malcolm. The book is entitled “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” by Columbia University professor Manning Marable. I will add it to my reading list and compilation of 1/2 read texts which somehow I never finish.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/books/malcolm-x-biographer-dies-on-eve-of-publication-of-redefining-work.html?src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

Lendman Let Loose: I am cutting and pasting my relative, Stephen Lendman's, blog. I do not acquiesce to all of it but much of it does reflect truths as both he and I see it. We disagree on some things, yes, but what I think we both agree on is that this country, militarily, is OUT OF CONTROL. Our foreign escapades have cost SO many lives both here and on the soil of the countries we attack. Moreover, these militaristic fiascoes have cost us so much of our treasure. The money we have spent on war in the last sixty years could light New York City for eternity and most importantly could give our people the health care, repair badly decayed infrastructure and create an educated public we all deserve for generations to come.

Here is his article posted today and a link to his blog below which contains opinion on many issues of our time. This particular blog is long but I think well written. Even if one reads only part of it, I believe, it worthwhile to at LEAST give pause for reflection and to question what our government does in our name.

America's Permanent War Agenda: Military Keynesianism on Steroids - by Stephen Lendman

Previous articles discussed America's culture of violence at home and abroad. Its entire history, in fact, is blood-drenched, glorifying conflicts in the name of peace, waging them every year in US history against one or more domestic and/or foreign adversaries.

Moreover, since WW II, America's had a permanent war agenda for unchallengeable global dominance throughout decades without enemies since Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

The Pentagon calls it a "long war." Obama is the latest warrior president following Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II preceding him, as well as all others in between.

In his 2002 book, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace," Gore Vidal said:

"(O)ur rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own."

Rhetorically resisting tyranny, supporting free peoples, and promoting democracy, in fact, masks a destructive, immoral agenda to subjugate and control, no matter the cost in dollars, public welfare, or human lives.

America's Permanent War Economy

It's how Seymour Melman (1917 - 2004) characterized it in his books and frequents writings on America's military-industrial complex. On March 15, 2003, one of his last articles headlined, "In the Grip of a Permanent War Economy," saying:

"(A)t the start of the twenty-first century, every major aspect of American life is being shaped by our Permanent War Economy." Its horrific toll includes:

-- a de-industrialized nation, the result of decades of shifting production abroad, leaving unions and communities "decimated;"

-- government financing and promoting "every kind of war industry and foreign investing by US firms;" war priorities take precedence over essential homeland needs;

-- America's "permanent war economy....has endured since the end of World War II....Since then the US has been at war - somewhere - every year, in Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam, the Balkans - all this to the accompaniment of shorter military forays in Africa, Chile, Grenada, Panama," and protracted ones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, Central Africa, Libya, and increasingly against perceived homeland enemies;

-- "how to make war" takes precedence over everything, leaving no "public space (for) how to improve the quality of our lives;"

-- "Shortages of housing have caused a swelling of the homeless population in every major city (because) State and city governments across the country have become trained to bend to the needs of the military....;" the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) estimates nearly 90,000 homeless Chicagoans during the 2009-10 school year through June 1910, a 19.9% increase over the previous year; the National Coalition for the Homeless estimates about 3.5 million nationwide;

-- the result is a nation of growing millions of poor, disadvantaged, uneducated, and "disconnected from society's mainstream, restless and unhappy, frustrated, angry, and sad;"

"State Capitalism" characterizes America's government - business partnership, running a war economy for greater power and wealth at the expense of a nation in decline, corrupted leadership, lost industrialization, crumbling infrastructure, and suffering millions on their own, uncared for, unwanted, ignored, and forgotten to assure steady funding for America's wars, no matter the cost.

Melman stressed that:

"Further evasion is out of order. We must come to grips with America's State Capitalism and its Permanent War Economy." Re-industrialization is essential "to restore jobs and production competence - industry by industry."

"Failing that, there is no hope for any constructive exit," for the nation or its people.

Dwight Eisenhower's January 17, 1961 Address to the Nation

His farewell address came 30 years to the day before Operation Desert Storm, in which he warned about the "military-industrial complex," citing the "grave implications" of a "coalition of the military and industrialists who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government."

He stated "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence....by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

He added that:

"Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed."

It results from what analysts call the "iron triangle" of Congress, the Pentagon, and war industry, including weapons and munitions makers, as well as producers of sophisticated technology for digital age warfare of a kind Eisenhower never imagined.

Today, militarism consumers over 40% of the national tax revenue at the expense of unmet human needs. It's parasitic, unjustified economically, inefficient, ineffective, self-destructive, immoral, and illegal in all US wars since WW II. It redistributes income and resources to the wealthy, undermines physical and human capital, increases internal vulnerability to natural disasters, is too costly to be sustained, erodes civil liberties and democratic values, and heads America for tyranny and ruin.

America's FY 2011 National Defense Authorization Act

In December 2010, Congress unanimously passed a FY 2011 $725 billion war budget, erroneously called defense.

In April 2010, Independent Institute analyst Robert Higgs broke it down in billions of dollars for 2009 as follows:

-- Department of War - $636.5

-- Department of Energy (nuclear weapons and environmental remediation) - $16.7

-- Department of State (plus international aid) - $36.3

-- Department of Veterans Affairs - $95.5

-- Department of Homeland Security - $51.7

-- Department of the Treasury (for the Military Retirement Fund) - $54.9

-- NASA (half its budget) - $9.6; in fact, NASA is a de facto military operation, space the new war frontier; and

-- military-related debt service - $126.3

Sub Total - $1,027.5

Add to it regular supplemental foreign war authorizations as well as black CIA, other intelligence, and Pentagon budgets totally at least another $500 billion for a grand total exceeding $1.5 trillion annually.

Moreover, since 1998, Pentagon spending doubled. Since 2006, it rose 20%. America spends half or more than the rest of the world combined, and Obama (the peace candidate) spends more than any previous president, waging twice as many wars as George Bush despite no prospect of winning any of them. The idea isn't always to win. It's to fight, the longer the better for huge profits.

At the same time, we're broke, cutting back, slashing public services like education, healthcare, and other social needs, as well as ignoring America's crumbling infrastructure.

America's Addiction to War

Noam Chomsky called Joel Andreas' 2004 book, "Addicted to War: Why the US Can't Kick Militarism:"

An indictment of "the curse of the people - the attackers and the victims. (It) brilliantly tell(s) us why and how we must rid ourselves of this curse, quickly, or else descend to barbarism and destruction."

Howard Zinn said it's a "devastating portrait of US military policy," and

Helen Caldicott called it "an addiction that could, in (the) nuclear age, destroy all life on earth, creating the final epidemic of the human race."

The book chronicles over two centuries of war, now menacing nations globally. It explains who benefits, who pays, who loses, who dies, and why militarists fear peace so create enemies when none exist.

In his 1966 book, "How the World Really Works," Alan B. Jones included a chapter on the "Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace," later published in 1967 by The Dial Press. It became a bestseller, then disappeared. Now few copies are available, but when circulating in the 1960s, it concerned Johnson administration officials enough to downplay it, saying it had nothing to do with policy. In fact, it very much did then and now.

It explained the elements of war and problems of peace, saying conflicts are an economic, political and ecological necessity, important to continue indefinitely. In contrast, peace "would almost certainly not be in the best interest of (a) stable society" and might be "catastrophic."

In fact, general disarmament would require "scrapping....a critical proportion of the most highly developed occupational specialties in the economy."

Diverting an arms budget to a "non-military system (is) remote (in a) market economy." Replacing it with public works is "wishful thinking (and) unrealistic."

War is "the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of social organization conflict or conspire. (It's) the system (that's) governed most human societies of record, as it (does) today."

No other control mechanism approached its effectiveness. War-making potential doesn't result from threats. In fact, "threats against the national interest are usually created or accelerated to meet the changing needs of the war system."

Significant nonmilitary war functions and benefits were claimed to exist, including economic protections against depression, and stimulus contributing to the rise of gross national product and individual productivity. Nothing else devised "can remotely compare to it in effectiveness." It's the "essential economic stabilizer."

In addition, war's political importance is crucial. It defines and enforces relations with other nations. National sovereignty and the traditional nation-state depend on it. The war system is essential to internal political stability. "Without it, no government has ever been able to obtain acquiescence (to) its legitimacy, or right to rule its society."

A nation's authority over its people "resides in its war powers," including local police to deal with "internal enemies in a military manner."

Military service has a patriotic purpose "that must be maintained for its own sake."

Wars also serve an ecological purpose - "to reduce the consuming population to a level consistent with the survival of the species," but mass destruction is inefficient, and nuclear weapons are indiscriminate, removing physically stronger members important to save.

Because of medical and scientific advances, pestilence no longer can control populations effectively, balancing them with agriculture's potential. As a result, other measures are needed to control "undesirable genetic traits."

An effective political substitute for war requires "alternate enemies....of credible quality and magnitude, if a transition to peace is ever to come about without social disintegration." Most likely, "such a threat will have to be invented."

Other extreme considerations were also reviewed, the report concluding that:

Permanent "war is the foundation for stable government. It supplies the basis for general acceptance of political authority." It lets societies maintain class distinctions, ensuring subordination of citizens to the state, run by elites with "residual war powers," to unleash at their whim. In other words, for militarists and profiteers, war is good, the more the better. Winning doesn't matter, just waging them.

Libya - America's Latest "Big Muddy"

Highlighting Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam quagmire, Pete Seeger's "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" condemned "the big fool say(ing) to push on." Today it's Eurasia, Libya Obama's latest entanglement, promising more protracted war against another non-belligerent illegally, menacing world peace, stability, national solvency, and democratic freedoms.

Like his predecessors, Obama glorifies conflicts and the righteousness of waging them, packaged as liberating ones for democracy, freedom, justice, and the best of all possible worlds. He's just the latest in a long line of warrior leaders, waging war for peace, justifying them by bogus threats, and calling pacifism unpatriotic to further an imperial agenda for greater wealth, power, and unchallengeable global dominance - a national sickness heading America for tyranny and ruin.

As a candidate, he campaigned against imperial militarism, promised limited escalation only, and pledged to remove all combat troops from Iraq by August 31, 2010. He lied. War in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan continue unabated, now another in Libya to control the entire Mediterranean Basin, then on to another, and still more ad infinitum, no matter the cost or social consequences.

On March 30, New York Times writers Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt headlined, "CIA Agents in Libya Aid Airstrikes and Meet Rebels," saying:

"....CIA operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force (Obama) hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi's military...."

In fact, CIA agents have been in Libya and throughout North Africa and the Middle East for years along with UK MI 6 officers. Moreover, "current and former British officials said that (hundreds) of British special forces and....intelligence officers are working inside Libya. (They've) been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of" Gaddafi's forces and heavy weapons.

On March 30, Reuters headlined, "Exclusive: Obama authorizes secret help for Libya rebels," saying:

He signed a secret "finding" in recent weeks "authorizing covert US government support for rebel forces," including CIA and special forces aid, as well as weapons, though officially "no decision has been made about providing arms...." On March 29, Secretary of State Clinton tacitly confirmed it, saying:

"It is our interpretation (of SC Resolution 1973 to include) a legitimate transfer of arms (to rebel forces) if a country should choose to do that."

UK Prime Minister Cameron concurred, saying:

"Our view is that this (resolution) would not necessarily rule out the provision of assistance to those protecting civilians in certain circumstances."

In other words, when America and Britain wage war, anything goes, in fact, whether or not any UN resolution authorizes it. Washington especially has its own rules of engagement, concerned only about defeating adversaries by any means, within or outside the law.

The CIA declined comment on involvement in Libya, including about Khalifa Hifter. Once a top Libyan military officer, he spent the last two decades in suburban Virginia. Reportedly he has longstanding CIA ties. On or about March 24, he was appointed top military commander for Libya's rebel forces.

In other words, CIA's man is running insurgent belligerence, directing cutthroat killers, terrorizing areas they control, exposing Washington's disdain for humanitarian intervention, as well as its direct involvement against a sovereign leader, whether democrat or despot.

A Final Comment

On March 28, Global Research published the testimony of Russian doctors in Libya, confirming the bombing of civilian targets, what, in fact, America does in all wars, civilians as fair game as combatants the way they've been waged in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan with no major media discussion, airbrushing truth from all reports.

An open letter from Russian doctors to Russia's president explained saying:

-- "blatant (US and NATO) aggression (is ongoing) against (another) sovereign country - Libya;"

-- "....bombing of Tripoli and other cities in Libya is aimed not only at the objects of air defense and Libya's Air Force and not only against the Libyan army, but also the object of military and civilian infrastructure;"

-- bombing around "densely populated residential areas" is ongoing;

-- "bombs and rockets struck residential houses and fell near the hospital;" a wall in the maternity ward collapsed; 10 miscarriages resulted; the women are in intensive care, doctors fighting to save them;

-- they've been dozens of deaths and injuries; and they call this "protecting the civilian population?"

-- "With full responsibility as witnesses and participants of what is happening, we state that the United States and its allies are thus carrying out genocide against the Libyan people - as was the case in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq."

Clearly, America and co-belligerents France and Britain plan replacing Gaddafi with a subservient puppet, serving Western, not popular, interests. Libya's corpse will be divided and controlled, its people exploited, their freedoms given no chance to materialize, their land irradiated by toxic munitions, harming their lives and futures irreparably.

April 1 marks two weeks of war, the start of months or perhaps years of protracted conflict, assuring widespread death, injuries, disabilities and destruction. A previous article explained it's assured when America arrives - on depleted uranium cruise missiles, bombs and shells, not white horses for humanitarian intervention, peace and democratic values, notions all US administrations disdain.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

To Tell the Truth: The president’s explanatory speech about our latest military incursion into, this time, Libya was delivered succinctly and well. It reminded me of so many others in US military history of, most especially, the past century. I kept hearing as I have decades before about the always “helpful,” spread of democracy through US invasion. From the World War I edict making the Wilsonian world “safe for democracy” fast forwarding almost a century to Libya our president delivers yet another, tired, tedious message with yet another tired tedious rationale for war. Again, again and again the US desire is to attempt merely to set one country or another free so democracy and human rights can take root. T’were American leadership so concerned with our own human rights at home!

The President’s somnambulant speech rang to me hollow as Lyndon Johnson’s speech delivered on August 5, 1964 did lying about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It gave the US cover to conduct a full scale war undeclared in Vietnam for nearly a decade which ultimately incurred nearly 60,000 American dead, hundreds of thousands wounded, one million Vietnamese killed and a Vietnamese country side devastated by chemical defoliation Agent Orange responsible for birth defects today. I have written often on endless, perpetual, constant war with no end in sight ultimately costing our country in precious blood and trillions in treasure. It is always justified by a theater-of-the-absurd rationale which allows the sheeple to allow the carnage with no ability to question the nourishment of the pabulum they are fed.

The illogical inconsistencies are glaring. After the horrific 2001 attack on the Trade Towers in New York, the Iraq War ensued in 2003. It was justified to remove a dictator because the US was 100% sure he possessed weapons of mass destruction. Of course, he did not have them and the Bush cabal managed in brilliant form to bamboozle the American public wounded from the 2001 dastardly attacks. Why did we furnish Sadam Hussein weapons years before when Iraq was at war with Iran? Later Iraqis loyal to Hussein would use those very weapons to kill American soldiers. Ah politics! One can count on the fact things political will often not be the least bit rational. I would not mind that but we are not playing a game. We are talking about human beings sent to their deaths or inflicting and incurring horrifically permanent injury upending the course of human life both of our soldiers who fight it and the innocents who are simply part of the psychopathic term “collateral damage.” Collateral damage; I wonder if it were YOUR child or YOUR life’s love if you would refer to their death at the hands of an enemy as “collateral damage.”

So I ask: Why Libya and why not Darfur, Syria, Saudi Arabia and ultimately even Iran when it cracks the heads of its own people who allegedly want democratic change? The questions and the hypocrisies are endless. War, any war can be justified by a US president IF he uses the words humanitarian and democracy in the same breath.

If ONLY our leaders would wax more honest. I could take that. When they take me for a fool and put one over on the unknowing, unquestioning and unaware, American public who will be the ones to fight leadership’s wars, a cerebral explosion within me occurs.

Our ventures are, of course, NOT about spreading democracy, however, advantageous or disadvantageous that would be. Our rationales are about empire and most especially, in that geographical locale, to keep the oil flowing through the Suez and the Strait of Hormuz to the rest of the world! Okay, I’ll buy that!

So far the Saudi sheiks are in control of their huge oil reserve and we want it that way. We want stability for one of the largest oil depositories in the world – the Middle East. If Bush had been interested in visiting punishment on a nation responsible for 911 he should have chosen Saudi Arabia since 15 of the 19 fanatical Islamics who perpetrated it came from there, but he didn't. There is good reason for that and oil, of course, is the answer. One cannot bite the hand that feeds one. Our wars are with nations we can clearly defeat and ones which our footprint is and stays on or near oil's soil. Hegemony and control in that region is the ONLY rationale that makes sense because the other rationale the president gives makes NO sense. Libya feeds Europe oil so they will, of course, be interested in deposing Kaddafi and facilitating – WE HOPE – stability at a revolutionary time. Does one think the rebels in Libya are so humane? I suspect not. I suspect they have committed their share of brutality and atrocities on THEIR enemy, the loyalist Kaddafi forces. Certain things this nation cannot control and that is the reaction of human beings and natural disasters. So the nation accommodates as it sees fit.

This latest presidential speech is not for the invasion of Iran ... yet. Soon it may be. This is the price of empire and hegemony and it will spell bankruptcy sometime soon! If radiation from the soon-to-be-greatest nuclear plant catastrophe on planet earth does not get North America courtesy of Japan than the economics of perpetual war with its hefty price tag will. If only our government, for once, would tell the truth. I could take it -- really I could!

Who Do You Trust?: I do NOT trust anyone in the mainstream media regarding the Japan leak. I do not trust MSNBC or NBC, CBS or ABC and surely NOT Fox No News News to give straight answers because they are enmeshed in the corporate pushing of nuclear power. I do NOT trust most especially any government either Japan or the United States to tell the truth.

Here is the truth: The catastrophe is being downplayed, saying Plutonium is a small amount of the total radiation. A microscopic speck of Plutonium can kill. Larger amounts can wipe out entire cities and leave permanent contamination. Stuff's been leaking for almost 3 weeks. Millions of Japanese alone will die. Many others across the entire northern hemisphere, including Boston and Chicago possibly will as well.

A single milligram of MOX (uranium/plutonium) fuel is 2 million times more deadly than enriched uranium and lasts forever. Also, virtually the entire Gulf of Mexico is biologically and chemically toxic and unsafe. Now THAT'S the truth!

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here: Rolling Stone Magazine has published and plastered all over cyber space without a doubt the MOST gruesome pics taken of acts allegedly committed by The Kill Team -- American Stryker Brigade in Afghanistan. It shows pics of tortured and dismembered Afghanistanis some probably innocent and unarmed who were allegedly just creamed by our soldiers even dismembering bodies, heads and limbs. It is sickening beyond words -- Holocaust type sickening. Is this the level to which we have stooped -- the level of the oft touted barbarity of our enemy? If you are the faint of heart do not click on the link.

I do not care how many tours of duty a solider has, I do not care how difficult the task a soldier is asked to do, I do not care how psychologically sick a soldier has become because of the nature of war the judgment at Nuremberg instructs -- NO it DEMANDS -- that a code of conduct be followed by the civilized world. The men who perpetrated this madness breached that code, need to be court marshaled and tried for murder. Then the International Criminal Court should try them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It metaphorically in pic No. 9 shows a sign with words taken from "Dante's Inferno": "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here." I would say that sums it up just fine.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/the-kill-team-photos-20110327/0602176

The Cure: My family member's latest blog is on Libya (link below) and the alleged US-led planned ground assault which the president promised would never happen. The question becomes is it true. Time will tell. The more interesting question to me is how American power lies and deceives an unknowing, uncaring, and grotesquely uninformed American public. What kind of a country have we morphed into since the declared just war of World War II? From Grenada and Libya to Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq I and Iraq II we have been at perpetual war with few interruptions for nearly sixty years. Is our cause always just? Or in the alternative, has the history of man been solely a territorial quest for money, raw materials, land and power? If our citizenry were given true information would that obviate war? Must we be lied to like children in the face of the certain killing and death war brings not to our leadership who will NEVER fight it but to the legions of our middle and working classes who always bear the burden of war but often never reap the benefits?

I do not know why Christian verbiage is preoccupying my mind lately but it is. I think it does because so much of it speaks to justice and advocates for the least powerful among us. In view of that I ask as the New Testament does what profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his own soul? Is the world that tarnished, that corrupt, evil, violent and cruel that we must stoop to the level of Attila the Hun to keep our population safe and our powerful in riches? I submit our politics keeps us UNSAFE as nations do not stagnate. The cerebral synapses for some remain fixed -- forever transferred from generation to generation creating the pattern of a nation’s quilt. One has a tendency not to forget bombs dropping on and killing relatives, torture, Agent Orange or the poisonous phosphorous inflicting devastation on crops and even mutating human DNA as reflected in birth defects of the very young.

Much remains secret, of course, until in our computer age it is transferred to the cyber world in a nanosecond. Nuclear war is but a finger tip away from a two bit dictator or tin pot patriot to begin. How safe will you feel when a foreign nation remembers an American inflicting so much pain on an innocent? The cure for this malady is knowledge. The cure for this malady is to remain involved and know what the country in which you live does and most especially so when it says it does not.

US-Led Libyan Ground Assault Planned
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/

End of the Best of Times: I cannot believe what my eyes see when I awaken and check the news. It is the first thing I do. The story at first light I click on is about the Japan nuclear catastrophe spinning out of control (link below.) There are admittedly times when I wish so I could accept belief in a higher power as others do. I wish I could have a faith so strong that it believes what it does despite what science tells us is true because our own problems and the worldly ones go to our own nuclear core reactor. I do believe we are in one of the most dangerous eras of human history. I can understand, at least, why End Times belief lives.

If one reads the link below about the Fukushima reactor it truly seems like the end of the best times and the Beginning of the worst. The sadness of the globe is mind numbing from the destabilization and revolt in the entire Middle East, the nuclear disaster in Japan getting worse every day, economic free fall with a weak recovery and the profound visceral division of hate on both sides of the political spectrum in our own country.

If I believed I would plaintively ask as Christ was said to have asked on the cross in Aramaic "E-lee e-lee l-maa-naa saa-baach-taa-nee?" "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" I am not a believer but there are times when I wish I were. It seems, if I believed in End Times, that this would surely be it.

What is there left for those of us to do who cannot ameliorate any situation, want to but lie helpless at the hands of man and fate? I wish I believed in something I truly do! If I prayed I would get on bended knee and ask God to save the Japanese people and with them, all of us!

Actress Extraordinaire: I was going to try to write an opinion that I hoped would do justice to one of the premier actresses of my time, Elizabeth Taylor, who died this week then I read one written on Salon.com entitled "Paglia on Taylor: A luscious, opulent, ripe fruit!"

I thought Paglia wrote in exquisite form about this actress and woman extraordinaire we just lost. I loved Elizabeth Taylor and so did the writer for Salon, Camile Paglia, who is one of the most unique feminists to grace our political and editorial landscape. She is not the traditional feminist but brings her own unique sardonic wit to the feminist cause.

Camile Paglia is right on the money. Her description of Elizabeth Taylor and the fact that she is possibly one of the greatest actresses that has ever appeared in American film is totally correct.

Elizabeth Taylor was GORGEOUSLY sexy, an actress like none other and Camile Paglia surely can write a BRILLIANT piece about her. I attach the link below as an example
of excellent writing which is about Elizabeth Taylor who is an example of film excellence.

I can only envy the breadth of knowledge Paglia brings to her writing and wish that I could do the same!

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/03/23/camille_paglia_on_elizabeth_taylor/index.html

Harmless, REALLY? Please read this latest New York Times story (link below) entitled "Radiation Over the US is Harmless, Officials say."

It begins: "Harmless traces of radiation from the stricken nuclear complex in Japan have been detected wafting over the East Coast of the United States, European officials said Monday. Since last week, the officials have tracked the radioactive plume as it has drifted eastward on prevailing winds from Japan — first to the West Coast and now over the East Coast and the Atlantic, moving toward Europe."

I will refrain from the I told you so. The question becomes DO YOU BELIEVE THEM? I submit NO radiation is harmless. Sure get a couple of x-rays or CT scans if you want. I personally have had my share but add to that the normal background radiation everyone gets and at least for the Japanese now and maybe for us later what the food has or will have in it why would you want to chance more including the poisonous cesium and, perhaps, at some point, even deadly plutonium irradiating your body over the next ten years?

Man has POLLUTED the earth in case you have not noticed. It has been most egregiously perpetrated by our country and the industrialized world. This country does TWO things VERY well. It BOMBS people into the stratosphere and it has a wonderful way of making rich people even richer at the expense of those who can least afford it -- the elderly, young, disabled and/or poor. But if you are the CEO of Goldman Sachs or a company like it you literally can get away with anything you want including our billions and the billions in bonuses of those billions even if you made that money immorally or illegally extracting a HUGE profit from the marrow of middle class bones! Moreover, if you are the CEO of a nuclear power company YOU can even get the government to pay for it because it's just too darn hard to get insurance for a nuclear power company. Still, you will reap millions. It's a great job IF you can get it but most of us will not.

Do you believe the post below? If you do I ask REALLY? REALLY? Why would ANYONE -- after what has been perpetrated on the middle class by corrupt and incompetent government seizing power, money and control making endless war on our backs -- believe any government irradiating us and feeding at the corporate trough while they do it?

The moral of this story: If you are rich, a rich corporation, or if you are rich and in a position of great power you have it made. But guess what? Radiation from nuclear power plants even THE rich and their children will not escape. Mother Nature WILL take her revenge for man's raping of her beautiful environment and in this case she is an equal opportunity employer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22plume.html

An Editorial of Import and an Overview: This editorial which appeared in Huffington Post entitled "Barack Obama Gets In Touch with his Inner Neocon" written by Doug Bandow of the CATO Institute a Libertarian think tank (link below) illustrates in fine fashion my qualms about this latest Libyan US-led war. I believe this policy is fraught with danger and goes against the foreign policy Barack Obama said he believed in principle during the 2008 campaign.

This does NOT mean I am abandoning the president on other progressive issues for which he advocated and won. I do not forget the repeal of DADT, the Lilly Ledbetter law, the strengthening of the hate crimes bill, two very qualified rather progressive appointees to the Supreme Court and, as Rachel Maddow enumerated on her show, many many more achievements which go under the electorate's radar screen. I do not forget, too, some positive economic reform and some important aspects of the health care law even though it missed on the public option. He is infinitely brighter and appreciated for that intellect in the international arena significantly more than his know-nothing-and-proud-of-it predecessor, George W. Bush.

Because I support certain policy does not mean I do not entertain important doubts and dismay of other policy. On many of the big-ticket items the president is not the man with the hefty progressive ideas I thought he was. At times he seems like George W. Bush light. He was ineffective in the explanation of the health care law and he was absent in the extreme to help ratchet down the right wingnut Tea Bag insanity of the 2010 election eve summer of discontent. It, in part, I submit, accounted for the Democratic shellacking, as the president put it, in 2010 and the ugly takeover of the House by Republicans most of whom are radical right religious extremists. He is all but absent in securing union rights for which he said he would don his comfortable shoes and take to the streets to walk with workers. The Republicans' plan is to crush unions and voter registration of groups like ACORN singularly to destroy any chance of the president's reelection.

I contend the president has punted on the policies of war, morphing war, extending war, abandoning civil liberties and has sorely lacked economic initiatives. He has shown a paucity of economic policy reform and an insufficiency promoting the Holy Grail of present-day politics -- JOBS! Does that mean I think a Republican could do better? HELL NO! It simply means I hope the president realizes the irritation of his base -- people like ME.

The article below sets out many of the thoughts I entertain on this latest military excursion in Libya costing our country $100,000,000 to $3000,000,000 -- yes MILLION -- per week! How's that for deficit busting! I THOUGHT he would go after military expenditure. I HOPE in lieu of that he does not go after the necessities of Social Security and Medicare. The larger problem for me is I don't trust him.

The editorial below is one of import on important foreign policy I think one should read.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-bandow/war-in-libya-barack-obama_b_838049.html

Unsafe at Any Speed: I wrote an opinion the other day called “The Change.” It had to do with the change the disasters in Japan had created in me philosophically, politically, and even psychologically. The opinion appeared in my local newspaper. One blogger, most often less than complimentary toward me challenged and dared me to answer why it changed me politically. I responded:

I was softening about nuclear power and became convinced as to its general safety. I had changed my opinion to a more moderate stance. I believed the government and in particular the Obama administration's view, that because oil is so fraught with deadly ties to the Middle East, so imbued with the costly effects of pollution and its attendant global warming and, moreover, because oil is not without end, that nuclear power was more feasible despite my initial fear of the lack of proper waste facilities. I thought it, perhaps, good to advance on a clean burning fuel with the risks our technological age of expertise now could handle.

Then Fukushima happened. Japan has experienced the worst nuclear power disaster, perhaps, ever recorded on this planet. I believe it to be even worse than Chernobyl although one will never hear that from the mainstream media, nor the government or those corporate big wigs coping with the Herculean effort of clean up. Although the reports of nuclear leaks already are severe, the corporate powers that be and their government lackeys who have so much to lose if nuclear power is stopped cold in its tracks, are, even today, minimizing this nuclear cataclysm.

The catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan has made me return to what I initially thought was true and changed my opinion yet again. I returned to what I knew in my heart was true from the beginning. Nuclear power is UNSAFE at any speed and I believe over the coming years, if we all survive the military disasters around us, the world will see a huge spike, especially in Japan, but maybe even in other parts of North America as well, in the cases of thyroid, bone, leukemia and other cancers caused from this deadly leak.

This was not just one reactor at risk of meltdown like Three Mile Island but SIX reactors plus the leaks in the containment vessels of the spent fuel rods themselves. Radiation is now as you read and I write this showing up in various vegetables and in the milk of cows that eat the grass in Japan. The disaster happened only a little over a week ago. I believe we are all at risk. If you think we are not simply wait for time to pass. Maybe, and I fervently hope, I will be proven wrong. I would love to be wrong on this issue certainly more than I care about being right!

My Japanese Friend: Through my post polio support group I recently became friendly with a lovely Japanese woman whose name is Miwako Hosoda. She is a visiting research fellow at Harvard School of Public Health and is from Tokyo, Japan.

After the disaster in Japan she has been working closely with a newly developed grass roots physicians’ organization and wrote the letter below concerning the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear tragedy which letter, hopefully, will appear in print soon.

Japan, as we all know, has suffered unparalled multiple tragedies heretofore unique in our besieged world. We all have a common humanity which I think should compel us to act. As our charismatic President, John F. Kennedy stated so eloquently “… in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s futures, and we are all mortal.” I believe we should remember those words, treat other’s suffering as our own and take all steps necessary to help ameliorate it with all deliberate speed!

My friend states as following:

Japan Needs Help

On March 11, 2011, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake struck Japan. A subsequent tsunami and nuclear power disaster from it ensued. It has killed ten of thousands of people. People have lost their loved ones, sometimes entire families, their houses, and all their possessions. Entire villages have been swept away leaving a tremendous and incalculable void in their lives.

In response to this disaster many people are helping through fund-raising and other activities. Surprisingly, I have read articles in some media such as the New York Times and Reuters which report that the government keeps refusing the aid, most especially medical aid, from foreign organizations. The reasons for this are hard to fathom. It may be a language translation issue but, I believe, not to accept help does a great disservice to the Japanese people.

According to a grass root physicians’ network in Japan, many healthcare providers who have been working in the affected areas are severely overwhelmed and suffering from a shortage of human power as well as a shortage of drug and medical supplies. Some have not been able to go back to their homes and are working at hospitals without knowing whether their family members are safe or not. In addition, there are a lot of overworked healthcare providers too who are treating so many patients from the affected areas round- the-clock.

Therefore, we urgently need your help. I ask people in the United States and around the world to continue to donate to organizations such as Red Cross, globalgiving, and Mayor’s fund to advance New York, and Japan Society which links I provide below.

There should be no barriers between people who suffer catastrophes such as this. We are all one race, the human race, and obstacles such as language and customs can and should be overlooked. Our main concern as human beings must be the survival and healing of our fellow individuals. Now it is Japan’s moment to ask for help. I urge you to continue to donate to some of the organizations listed and know that the Japanese people will be forever grateful.

American Red Cross
http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main&s_src=RSG000000000&s_subsrc=RCO_BigRedButton

Japanese Red Cross Society
http://www.jrc.or.jp/english/relief/l4/Vcms4_00002070.html
globalgiving

http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/japan-earthquake-tsunami-relief/updates/
Mayor’s fund to advance New York,
https://www.nyc.gov/html/fund/html/donate/donate.shtml

Japan Society
http://www.japansociety.org/earthquake

Lady Liberty Through the Rubble: This picture (link below) brought me to tears! Japan's Statue of Liberty stands whole amid the rubble. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words and this one surely is.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42164532/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

Nuclear Nightmare -- Ralph Nader speaks the truth:

In The Public Interest
Nuclear Nightmare
By Ralph Nader
3-18-11

The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophes in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States—many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.

Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power’s overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.

Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry’s promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area “the size of Pennsylvania” and cause massive casualties. You, the taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power research, development, and promotion from day one with tens of billions of dollars.

Because of many costs, perils, close calls at various reactors, and the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, there has not been a nuclear power plant built in the United States since 1974.

Now the industry is coming back “on your back” claiming it will help reduce global warming from fossil fuel emitted greenhouse gases.

Pushed aggressively by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu, who refuses to meet with longtime nuclear industry critics, here is what “on your back” means:

1. Wall Street will not finance new nuclear plants without a 100% taxpayer loan guarantee. Too risky. That’s a lot of guarantee given that new nukes cost $12 billion each, assuming no mishaps. Obama and the Congress are OK with that arrangement.

2. Nuclear power is uninsurable in the private insurance market—too risky. Under the Price-Anderson Act, taxpayers pay the greatest cost of a meltdown’s devastation.

3. Nuclear power plants and transports of radioactive wastes are a national security nightmare for the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine the target that thousands of vulnerable spent fuel rods present for sabotage.

4. Guess who pays for whatever final waste repositories are licensed? You the taxpayer and your descendants as far as your gene line persists. Huge
decommissioning costs, at the end of a nuclear plant’s existence come from the ratepayers’ pockets.

5. Nuclear plant disasters present impossible evacuation burdens for those living anywhere near a plant, especially if time is short. Imagine evacuating the long-troubled Indian Point plants 26 miles north of New York City. Workers in that region have a hard enough time evacuating their places of employment during 5 pm rush hour. That’s one reason Secretary of State Clinton (in her time as Senator of New York) and Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the shutdown of Indian Point.

6. Nuclear power is both uneconomical and unnecessary. It can’t compete against energy conservation, including cogeneration, windpower and ever more efficient, quicker, safer, renewable forms of providing electricity. Amory Lovins argues this point convincingly (see RMI.org). Physicist Lovins asserts that nuclear power “will reduce and retard climate protection.” His reasoning: shifting the tens of billions invested in nuclear power to efficiency and renewables reduce far more carbon per dollar (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf).

The country should move deliberately to shutdown nuclear plants, starting with the aging and seismically threatened reactors. Peter Bradford, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioner has also made a compelling case against nuclear power on economic and safety grounds (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf).

There is far more for ratepayers, taxpayers and families near nuclear plants to find out. Here’s how you can start:

1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.

2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can’t buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can’t buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don’t stay in business.

3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn’t required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.

The people in northern Japan may lose their land, homes, relatives, and friends as a result of a dangerous technology designed simply to boil water. There are better ways to generate steam.

Like the troubled Japanese nuclear plants, the Indian Point plants and the four plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in southern California rest near earthquake faults. The seismologists concur that there is a 94% chance of a big earthquake in California within the next thirty years. Obama, Chu and the powerful nuke industry must not be allowed to force the American people to play Russian Roulette!

A Letter to Rachel Maddow: Quoting from an MSNBC story: "Crucial to the effort to regain control over the Fukushima plant is laying a new power line to the plant, allowing operators to restore cooling systems. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., missed a deadline late Thursday but said Friday that workers hoped to complete the effort in 10 to 15 hours, said nuclear safety agency spokesman Minoru Ohgoda. But the utility is not sure the cooling systems will still function. If they don't, electricity won't help."

This is, in my non expert opinion, Chernobyl on steroids. What the hell will they connect electricity to? Rachel so well has shown the ugliness and destruction of those plants. They are, understatedly, a total MESS. It would be one thing if it were just another area but it's NOT it is a NUCLEAR area and nuclear reactors that are destroyed. A prediction: ALL of those reactors will be encased ultimately by the Japanese in cement with Borax as Chernobyl was forever. The area surrounding them will be uninhabitable for decades maybe centuries. There will possibly not be at least part of a northern Japan that will exist for human habitation. I cannot say how much I HOPE I am in error, I am wrong and I eat my words. I would love nothing more than to do so.

The optimism does a disservice. People MUST be given the truth for their own physical safety. I believe a cloud will pay a visit to our west coast relatively soon -- not as badly as Japan but who needs it AND if they do not get it under control the plants will still be spewing radioactive material and STILL incurring a multi-meltdown possibility the resulting danger of which will grow exponentially, over years. There will in the future be an increase in deaths from cancer (thyroid, leukemia, bone) especially in the young, the sick and the elderly. There will, of course, be the inevitable birth defects in future generations. Again, I surely want to be in error. The risk of nuclear power is simply not worth it. When it runs well it is wonderfully clean BUT it takes only ONE failure whether human or natural to create an epic catastrophe.

On another bleak front: A THIRD war is opening up in the Middle East similar to Iraq. IF the UN (the US, France, Britain, Germany, etc.) wins we will be there for DECADES with the US in the lead and they will resent our footprint. One only need hear one of history's greats our own Secretary of Defense Gates: He said IF we put another soldier in another country in the Middle East we are crazy. I think we are CRAZY. If we don't win, well, I cannot even contemplate that! And how about that deficit?

President Obama's policy on this one has been sorely lacking as the military industrial complex and neocons wield their ugly might again. Who can stop them? I believe, if one in halls of power advocates for war THEY must physically fight it, Congress should declare it and there should be a draft. They, of course, will not do that as the American public by all polls wants OUT of war in the Middle East and would in Vietnamesque fashion revolt.

If we are dropping bombs on Libya for humanitarian purposes then why did we not go into Dafur? We all know why. Oil, money and the power it bestows are unstoppable. Humanitarian rationales are a Trojan Horse!

UPDATE: Libya Declared a cease fire. This story is still developing. I would LOVE to eat my words on this one!

The Change: The catastrophe in Japan has changed me in ways I never could have imagined -- philosophically, politically AND even psychologically as the Japanese people are incredibly accepting of their fate. It should, I think, teach us the lessons they seem to have learned. I cannot believe the peacefulness, lack of violence and gentleness of this people at least so far. They have shown a fortitude few seem to have.

This catastrophic experience shows, I believe, life and its resources are limited for all of us. We live on life's precarious delicate balance, moored by the laws of physics to a fate which often is not tipped in our favor but can occur at a moment's notice. It is a thing, I believe, we must accept and do what we can do today to show love to those we care about and to help remedy the condition of man one human being at a time!

An event NOT related to the disaster:

Planned Parenthood is a WONDERFUL organization. They, of course, are PRIMARILY involved in family planning and women's reproductive heath care which is the majority of what they do. They save lives! It is important, in view of the radical right wing insanity attack on it, that people who care about family and women's health, support it.

A rally is being organized this Saturday in Boston to do just that. Click on the link below for those of you who are in the Boston area, who think it important as I do to attend, to see the details of the event. For those of you out-of-state, please forward this to any you know in this area or even not in this locale who you may think would want to attend.

Thanks much!

http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/1737

"Red Alert in Japan: An Unfolding Nuclear Catastrophe": Accept this or reject this source as you see fit. It is one man's point of view. This man has been writing, interviewing on his radio show and involved in politics of a left wing persuasion. He is a graduate of Wharton School of Business at Harvard (Donald Trump's alma mater if that means anything.) As I said it is one man's opinion but everyone has a right to hear it, read it and decide for themselves what to believe. I paste his blog below.

In my opinion, it is now out of our hands except for what SHOULD be prescient future policy with regard to nuclear energy and its cousin nuclear weaponry. Japan is crying out and we as part of the human species must help them and heed nature's warning. It is up to you if you want to leave your fate and the future generations which harbor your DNA, to religious stupidity and mythological thinking. If you think a god will come down out of the heavens and swoop you up to safety, I suggest you are in grave error and put your family in grave danger as well to fend off the dire consequences of that disordered thinking. Again, it just my opinion. You and I must choose the correct path. I know where I stand. Do you?

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/

The Visit: Hell came and paid Japan and all of us -- all of the human race -- a visit. Maybe nature or fate came down and said nuclear should not be in our vocabulary. Rachel Maddow explained the overview of a nuclear reactor and what is in it, what fuel rods mean, and how it is constructed. She said, and she is right, a nuclear reactor, is NOT a nuclear bomb BUT -- and this is the important thing -- the two are inextricably linked. This is why the world goes berserk at the thought of nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable states OR really ANY state. It is why when J. Robert Oppenheimer and others who created this monster at the Manhattan Project during WWII to be ultimately dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki quoted from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita "Now I have become death destroyer of worlds."

Humans, do well to head this quote and see what our capacity for evil has done. This can never be undone and nuclear war can never be undone either. Mark well what Japan has shown us. It is our modern day example of the danger of things nuclear. This existential threat can and must never happen again!

THIS is my real feeling after the Japan holocaust taken from CREDO.COM

CREDO Action | more than a network. a movement.

President Obama: Reverse your support of risky nuclear power.

No nukes. Not now.

Nuclear Energy: Not Now, Not ever!

Clicking here will add your name to this petition:
President Obama: Reverse your support of risky nuclear power.
Take action now!

First came the earthquake. Then the tsunami. Then multiple explosions at nuclear reactors. Several Japanese nuclear reactors are at risk of melting down with unthinkable release of radiation.

The crisis in Japan is heart wrenching. The latest reports suggest at least 10,000 dead from one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history followed by a devastating tsunami. And that number is likely to rise.

But perhaps the worst is yet to come as multiple nuclear reactors in Japan are redlining and officials frantically release radioactive steam into the atmosphere in hopes of averting a total nuclear meltdown.

Tell President Obama: No more nukes. Not now. Clicking here will automatically sign the petition.

Even now, politicians of both parties are so beholden to the nuclear industry, that they are racing to microphones to say that the U.S. must EXPAND its taxpayer support of building even more nuclear reactors.

President Obama's 2012 budget includes $36 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear energy industry. With Congressional leaders competing to cut public spending, we face a spectacle where senators in both parties were quick to defend nuclear power in the days following earthquake. Sen. Chuck Schumer, vice chair of the Democratic Senate caucus, has joined with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, in refusing to support a moratorium on building new nuclear reactors in seismically active areas in the U.S.1

Nuclear power generation is so financially risky that it requires government intervention to obtain sufficient financing for development. Even nuclear power proponents admit the stakes. According to John Rowe, the CEO of the nation's largest nuclear operator Exelon, said "Except with massive subsidies, there's really nothing one can do to make a whole lot of nuclear plants economic right now."2
Tell President Obama: We need investment in clean, renewable energy, not more nuclear time bombs. Clicking here will automatically sign the petition.
What does it take for Congress and President Obama to get the message? In just the last year, we have suffered massive disasters as a result of declining and risky energy technologies. Coal, oil, and now nuclear power have been the center of soul searching crises in the past 12 months. First came the massive coal mine collapse in West Virginia courtesy of the rapacious Massey Energy. Then came the massive BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico which failed to slow significant advances by the oil companies in drilling offshore of the United States. And now comes a massive nuclear crisis in Japan, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Yet nothing has been done.

It's time to stand up and defend the planet. Tell President Obama: Enough is enough: No new nukes.

Becky Bond, Political Director
CREDO Action from Working Assets

P.S. If you want to help fund relief efforts in Japan through progressive organizations, Doctors Without Borders, a group CREDO members have long supported with their phone bills, is on the ground with medical teams. Find our more here. Another CREDO supported organization, Mercy Corps, is directing donations to its local partner Peace Winds Japan. You can get updates from Peace Winds Japan and find donation information here.

1 "Will nuclear industry feel the fallout from Japan?," Politico, March 13, 2011.
2 ibid.