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Today's
Stories
January 5 /
6, 2008
Richard Rhames
Saddam
Who?
January 4,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Good Night in Iowa
Jonathan Cook
War Crimes Airbrushed from History
Paul Craig Roberts
Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime
Stan Goff
Ron Paul's Monkeywrench
Dave Lindorff
Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
To Pindi Station
Allan Nairn
U.S. Elections Over Before They Began
Joshua Frank
The Failures of Sectarianism
Peter Morici
Economy on the Skids
Mary McInnis
Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease
Website of the Day
The Return of Obama Girl
January 3,
2008
Fatima Bhutto
Farewell
to Wadi Bua
Pam Martens
The
Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos
Joanne Mariner
The Presidential Candidates and Torture
Zoltan Grossman
Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the
Web
David Domke
The Echoing Press and Huckabee
Norman Solomon
Edwards Reconsidered
Nikolas Kozloff
Return of the Faux Liberal
Jacob G. Hornberger
The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus
Martha Rosenberg
Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick
Russell Means
This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah
Lands
Website of the Day
WolfQuest
January 2,
2008
Jeff Taylor
The
Left and Ron Paul
M. Shahid Alam
The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy
Gary Leupp
Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan
Paul Craig Roberts
Criminals with Badges
Heather Gray
Georgia's Racist Death Penalty
Fred Gardner
and Shobhit Arora
Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis
David Macaray
Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley
Benjamin Dangl
Fear and Loathing in Bolivia
January 1,
2008
Iain A. Boal
City
of Disappearances
B. R. Gowani
Benazir's Death in Crisistan
Shahid Mahmood
Bhutto and the Press
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling
Harvey Wasserman
Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton
Era
John Ross
2008, Already a Year to Forget
Website of the Day
The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys
December 31,
2007
Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye
2007 and Good Riddance!
Tariq Ali
Pakistan, the Aftermath
Liaquat Ali Khan
The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers
Wajahat Ali
After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan?
Robert Fisk
Who Killed Bhutto?
Ajai Sahni
Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark
Future
Marwan Bishara
You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential
Election Campaigns
Uri Avnery
The Beilin Syndrome
Mark T. Harris
Does This Happen in Canada?
Brenda Norrell
Resistance and Censorship
Website of the Day
A People United Will Never Be Defeated
December 29
/ 30, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Options
in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby
Tariq Ali
Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto
Gary Leupp
The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance
China Hand
Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss
Jacob Hornberger
Stop Medddling in Pakistan
John Chuckman
Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics
Missy Beattie
Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard
Ralph Nader
Who Will Take the Next Step?
Fidel Castro
There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something
Robert Fantina
The Sham of Homeland Security
Greg Moses
Beauty from the Heart of Texas
Catherine Lutz
What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing
Kristin Van
Tassel
Seeing in the Dark
Kim Nicolini
Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage
Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More
Poets' Basement
Landau, Gibbons and Davies
Website of
the Weekend
Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan
December 28,
2007
Farzana Versey
The
Complex Electra
Wajahat Ali
A
Pakistani Requiem
Binoy Kampmark
Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives
Anthony DiMaggio
Turkey's Bombing of Iraq
Ray McGovern
Creeping
Fascism
Jim Goodman
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
Ron Jacobs
Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted
Russell Hoffman
Mini-Nukes by Toshiba
John Murphy
Greens Gone Wild
Website of the Day
Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"
December 27,
2007
Dilip Hiro
A
Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?
Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?
Stephen Soldz
Fallujah,
the Information War and U.S. Propaganda
Bill Quigley
Locked
Outside the Gates
Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up
Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?
Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?
Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim
Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT
Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman
Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink
Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades
Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth
December 26, 2007
Charles Tripp
From
One Saddam to Fifty
Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government
Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War
John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men
Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb
Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within
Website of
the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas
December 25,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Conscience
and Empire
December 24,
2007
Andrea Peacock
A
Dark Ride on the Border
Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said
Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!
Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot
Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington
Mike Whitney
The Big Fix
Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans
John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders
Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion
Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas
Website of the Day
Back in the USSR
December 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Mike
Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
Ralph Nader
Politics
and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way
Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons
in Afghanistan
Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan
Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids
Rev. William
E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?
Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq
Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol
Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques
Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law
William Loren
Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake
Okeechobee
Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita
Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters
David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"
Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford
Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa
December 21,
2007
John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico
Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
Dick J. Reavis
A
Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss
Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon
The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes
Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms
Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie
Kerik)
Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution
Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist
David Macaray
Union Aftermath
Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa
Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA
Website of
the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape
December 20,
2007
David Rosen
Mitt
Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer
Alan Farago
The
Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage
Crisis
Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA
Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot
Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates
Website of
the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter
December 19,
2007
Saul Landau
Is
the NIE Bush's Watergate?
Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk
Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice
Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes
Sen. Russell
Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation
Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags
Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions
Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?
Website of
the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV
December 18,
2007
R. F. Blader
The
Politics of Teen Pregnancy
George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho
Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?
Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar
David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem
Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays
Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home
Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters
Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print
Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit
Website of
the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America
December 17,
2007
Mike Whitney
Staring
Into the Abyss
Tom Barry
Planning
the War on Immigrants
Uri Avnery
A
Gaza Masada?
Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas
Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder
Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers
Stephen Lendman
Police State America
Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way
Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza
Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game
December 15
/ 16, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
A
People's Penny for the Magna Carta
Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb
Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco
Raymond J.
Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas
Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine
Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists
Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the
Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up
Ahmad Samih
Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct
Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op
Missy Comley
Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins
Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims
James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future
Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten
Website of
the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support
December 14,
2007
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him
John Ross
Iraqi
Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax
Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?
Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes
Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners
Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest
Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies
Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?
Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace
Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"
December 13,
2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Shrinking
the Dollar from the Inside-Out
Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding
Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy
Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze
Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch
Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia
Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?
Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It
Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land
Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol
Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!
December 12, 2007
Allan
Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian
Phones
Alan
Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young
Ray
McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts
Evan
Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell
Doom for the US Farm Belt
James
Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers
Joel
Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine
Joshua
Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention
Sherry
Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul
Dan
Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard
Website
of the Day
Men Eating Bugs
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Weekend
Edition
January 5 / 6, 2008
A Powerful (But
Partial and Tentative) Victory Over Atomic Energy
Anti-Nuclear
Renaissance
By HARVEY WASSERMAN
As the presidential primary season heats
up, an "anti-nuclear renaissance" against loan guarantees
for new nuclear power plants will escalate, with the future of
American energy policy and global warming hanging in the balance.
In the last days of 2007, grassroots
activism ran up a stunning and improbably victory. But the triumph
is both partial and tentative, and will be fiercely contested
throughout 2008, with the basic direction of US energy policy
hanging in the balance.
This latest chapter in the
half-century saga of atomic energy began last summer, with an
industry attempt to grab a blank taxpayer check for underwriting
new reactor construction. The charge was been led by six-term
Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, atomic power's prime Congressional
pusher.
Domenici inserted into the
Senate version of the national Energy Bill a complex provision
meant to allow the Department of Energy to underwrite up to 80%
of new reactor construction costs. The nuclear industry envisioned
$25 billion in loan guarantees for 2008, $25 billion more in
2009, and what would amount to a blank check into the future.
The guarantees would be granted at the DOE's discretion, with
no on-going Congressional oversight.
Domenici slipped in the provision
without open debate in Congress or the public. It took the form
of a single obscure sentence referencing the Energy Bill of 2005.
The move only became widely noticed thanks to a front page New
York Times article on July 31.
The loan guarantees generated
intense grassroots and Washington-based opposition. After the
Times article appeared, musicians Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne
and Graham Nash established the www.nukefree.org website, and
joined  with the on-going grassroots
movement against a "nuclear renaissance" meant to revive
an industry whose last successful reactor order was placed in
1973. Raitt, Browne and Nash were joined by Keb Mo and Ben Harper
in a music video that spread through the internet, underscoring
the costs and dangers of such construction.
The video played into an on-going
No Nukes movement. The industry has gone to great lengths to
assert that it has widespread "green" support. But
no major national ecological organization has endorsed nuclear
power, and the core of the movement---including scores of national,
grassroots and internet-based groups---rallied to fight the subsidies.
On October 23, nine national
groups joined with nukefree.org at a Washington press conference
to submit 120,000 signatures against the guarantees. Representatives
Ed Markey (D-MA), Shelley Berkeley (D-NV) and John Hall (D-NY)
spoke along with representatives from the Sierra Club, League
of Conservation Voters, Greenpeace USA, Environmental Working
Group, Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen, USPIRG/Association
of State PIRGs, the Nuclear Information & Resource Service,
and Beyond Nuclear. (Speeches from the press conference can
be found at www.nukefree.org, and accessed directly at www.nukefree.freevolt.org).
The petitions were also circulated
by MoveOn.org, True Majority and other internet groups, and signed
by, among others, Robert Redford, Ozamatli, Patti Smith, System
of a Down, Sheryl Crowe, Herbie Hancock, Susan Sarandon, Robert
F. Kennedy, Jr., and the council of the Hip-Hop Summit Action
Network. The Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS)
submitted endorsements from several hundred local and regional
grassroots organizations.
The Union of Concerned Scientists
circulated a parallel petition opposing the guarantees. Free
market advocates joined in from Forbes Magazine and the Cato
Institute, which objects to billions in taxpayer funds going
to support what Forbes has called "the largest managerial
disaster in business history."
Amidst intense public and private
pressure, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid pulled the loan guarantees out of the Energy Bill.
It was an historic victory for grassroots activism.
In the midst of the campaign,
Domenici admitted to suffering from frontotemporal lobar degeneration,
a form of dementia. First elected to the Senate in 1972, he
announced he would retire at the end of his sixth term, in January,
2008.
Domenici then tried to stick
the loan guarantees into the Farm Bill, prompting critics to
term them "Domenici's radioactive retirement package."
That move failed.
The nuclear industry then attempted
to add to a global warming bill, co-authored by Senators Lieberman
(D-CT) and McCain (R-AZ), a laundry list of reactor subsidies
and regulatory easements. These were removed by Sen. Barbara
Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Energy and Public Works Committee.
Domenici then moved to attach
the guarantees to the Appropriations Bill used to fund the government's
operations. By late December, bickering over this $500 billion
bill deteriorated into intense partisan warfare. Domenici's
back-door move angered House Appropriations Chair David Obey
(D-WI) and the battle intensified, with opposition signatures
continuing to pour in.
The Appropriations Bill finally
passed both houses of Congress in late December. But the legislative
standing and ultimate outcome for the loan guarantees is murky
at best, with legal and procedural experts still debating over
what exactly has been done.
Ostensibly, the DOE has been
authorized to grant $18.5 billion in reactor loan guarantees
over the next two years, plus another $2 billion for uranium
enrichment. There is also some $10 billion for renewable energy
projects (though the definition of exactly what "renewable"
means in the eyes of the Bush DOE remains to be seen). And there
is apparently money for coal liquification and gasification.
The DOE is also required to submit the specific guarantees to
Congress for review 45 days before they can be authorized.
But there agreement ends. Based
on the 2005 Energy Act, the $18.5 billion can be seen as just
a benchmark number, with the DOE technically capable of issuing
all the guarantees it wants. Long-standing Congressional procedures
may also be used to interpret the submission requirement as merely
informational, granting Congress no power to stop the DOE from
issuing the guarantees once they're reviewed.
But Robert Alvarez, a former
long-time employee of the Energy Department, now Senior Scholar
at the Institute for Policy Studies, says the nature of the provision
leaves the legal standing of the guarantees in limbo and could
"paralyze (some say strangle) the loan program."
Among the problems Alvarez
cites are unresolved disputes over the previous Energy Policy
Act of 2005, "scoring" procedures required by the 1990
Federal Credit Reform Act to determine the true cost of a spending
package, the authorization of a two-year guarantee program in
a one-year Appropriations Bill, disputes surrounding Congressional
approval processes, and more. "Instead of clearing up the
growing mess" over the loan guarantees, says Alvarez, this
legislation "has magnified the major hurdles."
Further muddying the waters
is the fact that no proposed American reactor project is likely
to obtain an actual construction license within at least the
next two years. Michael Mariotte of NIRS questions whether loans
can "really be obtained for projects with no official approval
to proceed."
Critics also point out that
while the industry claims new reactors can be built for $4-5
billion each, independent observers put the likely real costs
far higher. A "new generation" reactor in Finland
is some $2 billion over budget and two years behind schedule
after just two years of construction. The US industry continues
to submit a steady stream of significant modifications to its
so-call "standard" construction blueprints. Thus what
actually constitutes 80% of what it would cost to build a new
reactor is very much a moving target.
But nobody doubts that as Congress
reconvenes, Pete Domenici will be resuming his efforts to get
as much more money as possible for new reactors. His time in
office will be limited. And the political, legal, procedural,
technical and financial disputes surrounding the actual nature
of the guarantee program are certain to stretch through Congress
and the courts for years to come.
Meanwhile, Wall Street has
made it clear that it will not fund new reactors without these
guarantees. This sharp vote of financial no confidence means
that fifty years after the 1957 opening of the first commercial
reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, atomic energy still cannot
pay for itself. Nor can it compete with the booming revolution
in renewable technologies.
Thus what's at stake could
not be more critical. With the guarantees, reactor builders
will be insulated from all that, and could simply build as many
plants as the Congress is willing to underwrite. That the Congressional
Budget Office has predicted a 50% default rate on these proposed
loans, may be of no consequence to them. They could simply suck
as much available capital into new reactors as the DOE will underwrite.
But without those guarantees,
the pro-nuclear renaissance will die in a puff of radioactive
hype. As fossil fuels diminish in supply, and are curtailed
due to global warming, no new reactors will be built here. All
available capital for new energy supply must flow instead to
renewables and efficiency.
According to the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory, some $6 billion in new wind farms are currently
under construction in this country. Billions more are pouring
in solar, bio-fuels, ocean thermal, wave, tidal and other forms
of green power.
Indeed, if this tuneful victory
over Pete Domenici's single-sentence insertion into the Energy
Bill of 2007 holds through the end of 2008, it may someday be
remembered as a landmark step toward a green-powered Earth.
Harvey Wasserman, a co-founder of Musicians United
for Safe Energy, is editing the nukefree.org
web site. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA!
Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org.
He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com
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