Badlands Journal

This is a grim tale about the "greening" of nuclear energy in the US, done by national environmental corporations. -- Badlands

3-18/20-11
Counterpunch.com
How Global Warming Rescued the Atomic Lobby
The "Green" Nuclear Cabal
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
http://www.counterpunch.com/stclair03182011.html

This is an excerpt from Jeffrey St. Clair's environmental history, Born Under a Bad Sky, published by AK Press / CounterPunch Books.

Striding into Kyoto in December of 1997 claiming to be a mighty warrior in the battle against global warming was a familiar beast, the nuclear power industry. Some of the industry's biggest lobbyists, men such as James Curtis (a former deputy secretary of energy during the Reagan years), prowled the streets and sushi bars of this ancient city (itself running on juice from an aging nuke) angling for some positive words in the treaty for their troubled enterprise. The big reactor makers, GE, Westinghouse, and Combustion Engineering, were there too, dissing the oil and coal lobby, downplaying the long-term viability of natural gas and generally treating the eco-summit as if it were an international trade show.

"Unfortunately, we are...being bombarded by sensational headlines and commentary that stretches the bounds of scientific reality to the point of utter fiction," Nunes saidWednesday. "Based on media reporting, one might reasonably assume that the embattled Japanese reactors were soon to engulf the island nation in a nuclear explosion -- sending radioactive debris akin to Chernobyl into the atmosphere." -- Fresno Bee, March 17, 2011

The Dark Imp of Visalia, Rep. Devin Nunes, is at it again folks, giving us the perspective on the complex problem of nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan: any questions about it constitute participation in the liberal conspiracy to obtain accurate information on issues that potentially impact our health in order to attempt to make rational decisions about those issues. The Dark Imp knows that as things appear less and less reasonable, the appeal of irrationality grows stronger. Just taking a stab it the problem, that could be because in an economy built on growth, recessions and depressions don't make any sense to a great many people.

But the imp don't worry about the metaphysics of it. He's just paying his dues to his contributors in the nuclear energy industry. The question of whether politics as usual will end in disaster has never occurred to the imp. And he's not alone. The black hole of leadership is very crowded.

Badlands Journal editorial board

3-17-11
Politicsdaily.com
Obama Says U.S. Safe From Japan Radiation, Orders Review of U.S. Nuclear Plants
http://www.politicsdaily.com/
President Obama reassured Americans Thursday that radiation from Japan's damaged nuclear plants poses no threat to this country, but added that he has ordered safety reviews of U.S. nuclear facilities.

"We do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the United States, whether it's the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska, or U.S. territories in the Pacific," Obama said in an address from the Rose Garden. "That is the judgment of our Nuclear Regulatory Commission and many other experts."

Americans do not need to take any precautions against radiation contamination "beyond staying informed" of what's happening in Japan...

*****

"Never believe anything until it has been officially denied." -- Claud Cockburn

Here are tfhree articles that might have escaped your attention about the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor meltdown. The first two deal with the weakness of the Japanese government and the flak issuing from the utility that owns the reactors, which is beginning to enrage the domestic and international public. They are loading down the media with information and data, presented in incomprehensible forms. But they do not answer the questions vital to the public.

Last, the view of the tragedy from Hiroshima, where several anti-nuclear activists were interviewed. One person interviewed was the incomparable reporter from The Chugoku Shimbun, Akira Toshiro, who has specialized in stories on nuclear power for 30 years. Tashiro's book, Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium, asked the question: what is the cost of sheathing bombs with depleted uranium, the cost to land, water, civilians and soldiers alike? His investigations and interviews took place in the US, the UK, Iraq and Yugoslavia.

Badlands Journal editorial board

3-16-11
The New York Times 
Flaws in Japan’s leadership deepen sense of crisis
No strong political class has emerged to take the place of bureaucrats and corporations
By KEN BELSON and NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42114871/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

"The only thing the Republicans care about is money. The only way you can touch them is through their revenue. They don't care about signs and protesters. They don't care about the opinion of the majority of the people in the state, their bottom line is money." -- Sam Hokin, Wisconsinite, small businessman

3-12-11
The Huffington Post
WI Firefighters Spark "Move Your Money" Moment
Mary Bottari
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-bottari/wi-firefighters-spark-mov_b_834879.html

A tale of two predatory species

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, of Annapolis MD, has never met an endangered species he doesn't want to kick into extinction. He is undoubtedly afraid of the race horses he owns but thoroughbreds aren't an endangered species. However, a fairy shrimp, a three-inch smelt or a salmon smolt? Species that are down on their luck due to the pressures of man, the species destroying the global environment for everyone, even itself? When Cardoza sees a species like that, subject to endangered species regulations that might interfere with one of his contributors, he gets all puffed up and mean. How dare such insignificant creatures stand between a developer or agribusinessman and his next million! It's immoral.

Cardoza & Co. regard the striped bass as an exotic predator that is one of the main causes of the decline of several endangered species in the San Joaquin Delta. Set aside that the stripers have been an established game species in the Delta for more than a century and the crash of endangered species in the Delta has occurred simultaneously with increased demands of agribusiness, Santa Clara and Southern California for Delta water in the last decade.

Global experts on water (for example Steven Solomon in Water: The Epic Struggle for Weatlth, Power and Civilization) consider that California has built the most advanced water-delivery systems in the world. Yet the United Nations "independent investigator for the U.N.'s safe water and sanitation campaign" has decided to study two places in California, a tiny village in Tulare County and the City of Redding. The investigator compares the water situation of the Tulare village of Seville with water problems in Bangladesh as a Congressional research report several years ago unfavorably compared the San Joaquin Valley to Appalachia.

Valley business and political leaders, always ready to spend other people's money on vast projects like a high speed railroad, new reservoirs or the perennial favorite -- cotton subsidies -- for the benefit of the wealthy few to the detriment of the many inhabitants who will experience more environmental degradation as a result, have absolutely not taste for repair and maintenance or anything from deteriorating dams to rusty municipal water pipes. And they are correct. There is apparently no point in a political economy veering ever closer to the simple, disastrous ideal of a "self-regulating free market" in  absolutely everything, of taking care of people or the infrastructure that supports society.

The attack on public employee unions, including teachers, is a brilliant tactic by Republicans against the Democratic Party. President Obama chose a national leader of charter schools, the privatization of public education, his secretary of education. Public school-teacher unions are among the most powerful of all the public employee unions now under such serious attack by several Republican governors. Republicans understand that public employee unions have been an essential part of the Democratic Party for several decades. Public employee union members provide much of the work the party needs to maintain its political power. Obama, following former President Clinton, is selling out the base and the political volunteers in the Democratic Party because the White House is like Congress beholden to Wall Street and Wall Street dictates a policy that no president will use his bully pulpit to recognize the savage class warfare that Wall Street has inflicted on the entire American middle class and its growing population of poor and destitute citizens.

Why did this happen? Why did even the near-collapse of the financial system, and its desperate rescue by two reluctant administrations, fail to give the government any real

leverage over the major banks?

By March 2009, the Wall Street banks were not just any interest group. Over the past thirty years, they had become one of the wealthiest industries in the history of the American economy, and one of the most powerful political forces in Washington. Financial sector money poured into the campaign war chests of congressional representatives.

 

A more critical view of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission than the one offered by McClatchy editorialists a few days ago in a shallow defense of one of its favorite son, Phil Angelides, Sacramento developer, protege of Angelo Tsakopoulos, former state treasurer and gubernatorial candidate, who chaired the commission.
Badlands Journal editorial board

2-2-11
Propublica
In Postcrisis Report, a Weak Light on Complex Transactions
by Jesse Eisinger
http://www.propublica.org/thetrade/item/in-postcrisis-report-a-weak-light-on-complex-transactions/
 The report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has been assailed [1] as a confusing [2] mishmash [3] -- poorly organized, unclear about what's new and weakened by conclusions that are at once obvious and unsatisfying. The problems of the commission were evident from the start: its mandate was too broad, its timetable too short, its budget too small and its commissioners too partisan.

Those criticisms are true, but overdone.

The report is full of fascinating information, rich detail and fine documentary evidence. The commission should be celebrated for putting more than 1,100 documents online [4] for anyone to search.