AUGUST 6: HIROSHIMA - NAGASAKI REMEMBRANCE DAY

(These reflections are reprinted from Devil’s Tango: How I Learned The Fukushima Step By Step which I published on the first anniversary of the Fukushima catastrophe, a Hiroshima-Nagasaki under a different name.)

Ever since 1945 when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, much has been written and spoken about August 6. The gist of those remarks can be summed up as “Never Again.” Most Americans are not aware that the U.S. is conducting a nuclear war right now, and has been conducting nuclear war since 1999.

In Kosovo, in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia, the United States and its dark proxy, NATO, have made use of depleted uranium ordnance. It is used in Abrams tanks, A-10 warplanes, and Bradley fighting vehicles, in bombshells, tank armor plating, aircraft ballast in Boeings 747s, Bunker Busters, and fragmentation mines (otherwise referred to as “anti-personnel devices”). At least 15 other countries hold supplies of DU. In all, 320 tons were used in the 1991 Gulf War; an appalling 90 tons were used in only the first 24 hours of the “shock and awe” carpet bombing of Baghdad when uranium aerosols were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and blown across Europe so that 9 days later, on March 28, elevated levels of uranium exceeding Environmental Agency thresholds were picked up in various areas in Great Britain, a clear-cut case of the chickens coming home to roost.

WHAT is DU?

Depleted uranium (DU) is an alloy of the radioactive, heavy metal uranium, with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than naturally-occurring uranium. It is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process that isolates the more radioactive U-235 isotope for use in nuclear bombs and in nuclear reactors as fuel. It has a typical isotopic content of 99.75% U-238 by weight, 0.25% U-235, and 0.005% U-234 with a half life of 4.5 billion, 700 million and 245,500 years respectively (see Wikipedia. “Depleted uranium”).

Its highly ignitable properties allow the DU penetrator to ignite on impact, generating extremely high temperatures. As it pierces its target, it leaves burned-off material behind, dispersing DU dust into the environment. The quantity of aerosol production is proportional to the DU mass within the projectile and the strength of the impact. Up to 70% of DU contained in the projectiles is aerosolized on impact when the DU catches fire. The explosion generates temperatures of between 3,000° and 6,000° Celsius. Nanoparticles so generated are smaller than 10 microns in size and act more like a gas than a particle. Because they remain air and windborne for long periods of time, they constitute the most serious threat to any human population close to battle areas. Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore Lab, identified DU weapons as “dirty bombs in every way.” (Dipnote. Official blog of the U.S. Department of State).

WHY is DU USED?

DU is used by both the US and UK military for four main reasons: 

•  it solves the problem of disposal of the nation’s huge stockpile of radioactive waste. it gets rid of anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 tons of death ash the nuclear industry has so far accumulated on earth.

•  it’s cheap and in plentiful supply;

•  it’s effective in military engagement because its high density and self-sharpening qualities enable it to penetrate hard targets easily; it burns on impact, increasing its ability to destroy enemy targets. 

It contaminates countries we don’t like. But it’s not out of our backyard: returning troops from various theaters of war bring it home—to the United States (and other NATO countries), in the form of radiation sickness (otherwise known as Gulf Disease), cancers, a high incidence of leukemia and birth defects among their offspring.

A COUPLE of DU LINKS 

As early as 1953, Monsanto’s then-vice president, Dr. Charles Thomas, pointed out that nuclear plants could not be a profitable undertaking unless they provided bomb-grade plutonium to the atomic weapons industry. He advocated creating a dual-purpose plutonium reactor, one which could produce plutonium for weapons and electricity for commercial use.

Depleted uranium, as the by-product of the refinement process necessary to create both nuclear fuel and nuclear bombs provides the deadly component of DU-tipped ordnance used by the U.S. and NATO in its on-going nuclear wars. Thus it links the nuclear industry’s two arms, the energy and war making arms. It links both arms of the nuclear war-making industry as well: Low profile use of DU, and high profile atomic weapons.

“The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Pentagon together plan to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to “modernize: all aspects of the nuclear weapons stockpile: The bombs, and warheads, the production facilities, the delivery systems, and command and control systems.” according to Tri-Valley Cares Spring 2016 newsletter.  The 1,000 nuclear-tipped Long Range Stand Off (LRSO) the Air Force plans to field. Indistinguishable from a conventional warhead, it is designed as a first-strike weapon.

As the U.S. moves into the next selection cycle, either corporate candidate when selected will have a finger on the nuclear trigger. Whereas Trump’s nuclear track record is unknown, the Democratic option is known to be trigger happy, the author of two failed states, namely Libya and Honduras, the country with the highest homicide rate in the world. As a great friend of Israel, she has gone on record saying Iran must be obliterated. Never since the Cuban Missile Crisis has the U.S. been closer to experiencing a nuclear war. I like to remember that Hitler (kill record upwards of 6 million), compared to Stalin (kill record over 21 million) was the lesser of two evils.

BIRTH DEFECTS

At the heart of the DU nuclear nightmare is something no one wants to talk about: birth defects, a whitewash word for children born without the attributes we recognize as human. They are the hidden casualties of irradiation in the womb. Thousands of these beings draw breath in the darkened rooms and corridors of orphanages, state institutions, and in families brave enough—or poor enough—to have to keep them, these constant reminders of a man-made tragedy that can never be undone. These beings live in concealment in the Ukraine as the result of Chernobyl—and in Kosovo and Iraq, and wherever else NATO’s occupying armies have irradiated the soil by dropping DU-tipped bunker busters and firing tank-piercing ordnance.

Almost every documentary film made of Chernobyl allows the viewer their full moment to recognize the image content, sufficient light to make it out—with one exception: birth defects, beings born with horrifying malformations: three heads, no eyes, lifeless limbs twisting out of rag-doll torsos. These are the images mankind strives to keep itself from seeing—these, and images of death and dying. These are the dark secrets kept in the subterranean vaults buried beneath the bright and lying surfaces of living. (No other writer that I know of has dealt with buried horror more truthfully than Ursula LeGuin, in her short story titled “Those Who Walk Away from Omelos.”) Yet every day, in our children’s toys, these images abound: the face of swamp man; Mr. Potato Head (minus the popping Disney eyes that make it ‘cute’). Picture these images now but with your own astonished eyes. Recognize in them the misshapen, grotesque beings that live in the hundreds of thousands, shut away in orphanages where none but the merciful with their forgiving eyes and hands manage to find it in their hearts to care for them.

How might a woman feel giving birth to a child with such deformities? In 2011 a Bay Area newspaper described one such woman, a woman accused of leading her four-year-old, severely handicapped child up four storeys in a garage elevator and pushing him off the roof into the street below. He suffered from torticolis, a twisting of the neck, and a condition resulting in a severely misshapen head. To reporters, her weeping husband said his wife should not be held responsible. She did not want this child. After his birth she suffered severe postpartum depression. He said how much he loved her, and that he could not find it in his heart to blame her.

Now imagine appointing one woman whose tragedy it was to be caught pregnant, especially in her first trimester, when Chernobyl blew, or when Fukushima blew, or during the years of  massive Pacific weapons “testing.” Imagine appointing her to join the panel of engineers charged with designing the “new generation of reactors” trumpeted by the Obama Administration, or the board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) or to the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA). What effect would it have on all those men sitting on their boards— the suited hijackers of our planet—to be met with these silent women, holding their atrociously deformed children in their arms? Imagine these women forcing that child into the arms of each board member to examine and caress.

What does it mean for me today, the one hundred sixty-fourth day following our planetary nuclear catastrophe, to plumb the darkened dungeon of my own imagination, the place I have resisted from the beginning, to reach its darkest heart? What do I feel, I, a young-bearing animal, a woman, a mother? At my deepest heart, I feel rage boiling up, a cyclone which, if I let it, would explode, vaporize the walls that contain me. How can I possibly meet this rage without dying of it? How can I stop it from tearing me apart?

(reprinted in part from my  book Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by tap, published on the first anniversary of the catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi.)

See “The Biggest Lie Ever Told by the U.S. Government: The Necessity of Hiroshima”

and “Wars Rage On As Circus Show of National Politics Distracts the Masses”

and “Hiroshima: The Crime that Keeps on Paying”

AUGUST 6: HIROSHIMA - NAGASAKI REMEMBRANCE DAY

(These reflections are reprinted from Devil’s Tango: How I Learned The Fukushima Step By Step which I published on the first anniversary of the Fukushima catastrophe, an Hiroshima-Nagasaki under a different name.)

Ever since 1945 when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, much has been written and spoken about August 6. The gist of those remarks can be summed up as “Never Again.” Most Americans are not aware that the U.S. is conducting a nuclear war right now, and has been conducting nuclear war since 1999.

In Kosovo, in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia, the United States and its dark proxy, NATO, have made use of depleted uranium ordnance. It is used in Abrams tanks, A-10 warplanes, and Bradley fighting vehicles, in bombshells, tank armor plating, aircraft ballast in Boeings 747s, Bunker Busters, and fragmentation mines (otherwise referred to as “anti-personnel devices”). At least 15 other countries hold supplies of DU. In all, 320 tons were used in the 1991 Gulf War; an appalling 90 tons were used in only the first 24 hours of the “shock and awe” carpet bombing of Baghdad when uranium aerosols were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and blown across Europe so that 9 days later, on March 28, elevated levels of uranium exceeding Environmental Agency thresholds were picked up in various areas in Great Britain, a clear-cut case of the chickens coming home to roost.

WHAT is DU?

Depleted uranium (DU) is an alloy of the radioactive, heavy metal uranium, with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than naturally-occurring uranium. It is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process that isolates the more radioactive U-235 isotope for use in nuclear bombs and in nuclear reactors as fuel. It has a typical isotopic content of 99.75% U-238 by weight, 0.25% U-235, and 0.005% U-234 with a half life of 4.5 billion, 700 million and 245,500 years respectively (see Wikipedia. “Depleted uranium”).

Its highly ignitable properties allow the DU penetrator to ignite on impact, generating extremely high temperatures. As it pierces its target, it leaves burned-off material behind, dispersing DU dust into the environment. The quantity of aerosol production is proportional to the DU mass within the projectile and the strength of the impact. Up to 70% of DU contained in the projectiles is aerosolized on impact when the DU catches fire. The explosion generates temperatures of between 3,000° and 6,000° Celsius. Nanoparticles so generated are smaller than 10 microns in size and act more like a gas than a particle. Because they remain air and windborne for long periods of time, they constitute the most serious threat to any human population close to battle areas. Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore Lab, identified DU weapons as “dirty bombs in every way.” (Dipnote. Official blog of the U.S. Department of State).

WHY is DU USED?

DU is used by both the US and UK military for four main reasons: 

•  it solves the problem of disposal of the nation’s huge stockpile of radioactive waste. it gets rid of anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 tons of death ash the nuclear industry has so far accumulated on earth.

•  it’s cheap and in plentiful supply;

•  it’s effective in military engagement because its high density and self-sharpening qualities enable it to penetrate hard targets easily; it burns on impact, increasing its ability to destroy enemy targets. 

It contaminates countries we don’t like. But it’s not out of our backyard: returning troops from various theaters of war bring it home—to the United States (and other NATO countries), in the form of radiation sickness (otherwise known as Gulf Disease), cancers, a high incidence of leukemia and birth defects among their offspring.

A COUPLE of DU LINKS 

As early as 1953, Monsanto’s then-vice president, Dr. Charles Thomas, pointed out that nuclear plants could not be a profitable undertaking unless they provided bomb-grade plutonium to the atomic weapons industry. He advocated creating a dual-purpose plutonium reactor, one which could produce plutonium for weapons and electricity for commercial use.

Depleted uranium, as the by-product of the refinement process necessary to create both nuclear fuel and nuclear bombs provides the deadly component of DU-tipped ordnance used by the U.S. and NATO in its on-going nuclear wars. Thus it links the nuclear industry’s two arms, the energy and war making arms. It links both arms of the nuclear war-making industry as well: Low profile use of DU, and high profile atomic weapons.

“The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Pentagon together plan to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to “modernize: all aspects of the nuclear weapons stockpile: The bombs, and warheads, the production facilities, the delivery systems, and command and control systems.” according to Tri-Valley Cares Spring 2016 newsletter.  The 1,000 nuclear-tipped Long Range Stand Off (LRSO) the Air Force plans to field. Indistinguishable from a conventional warhead, it is designed as a first-strike weapon.

As the U.S. moves into the next selection cycle, either corporate candidate when selected will have a finger on the nuclear trigger. Whereas Trump’s nuclear track record is unknown, the Democratic option is known to be trigger happy, the author of two failed states, namely Libya and Honduras, the country with the highest homicide rate in the world. As a great friend of Israel, she has gone on record saying Iran must be obliterated. Never since the Cuban Missile Crisis has the U.S. been closer to experiencing a nuclear war. I like to remember that Hitler (kill record upwards of 6 million), compared to Stalin (kill record over 21 million) was the lesser of two evils.

BIRTH DEFECTS

At the heart of the DU nuclear nightmare is something no one wants to talk about: birth defects, a whitewash word for children born without the attributes we recognize as human. They are the hidden casualties of irradiation in the womb. Thousands of these beings draw breath in the darkened rooms and corridors of orphanages, state institutions, and in families brave enough—or poor enough—to have to keep them, these constant reminders of a man-made tragedy that can never be undone. These beings live in concealment in the Ukraine as the result of Chernobyl—and in Kosovo and Iraq, and wherever else NATO’s occupying armies have irradiated the soil by dropping DU-tipped bunker busters and firing tank-piercing ordnance.

Almost every documentary film made of Chernobyl allows the viewer their full moment to recognize the image content, sufficient light to make it out—with one exception: birth defects, beings born with horrifying malformations: three heads, no eyes, lifeless limbs twisting out of rag-doll torsos. These are the images mankind strives to keep itself from seeing—these, and images of death and dying. These are the dark secrets kept in the subterranean vaults buried beneath the bright and lying surfaces of living. (No other writer that I know of has dealt with buried horror more truthfully than Ursula LeGuin, in her short story titled “Those Who Walk Away from Omelos.”) Yet every day, in our children’s toys, these images abound: the face of swamp man; Mr. Potato Head (minus the popping Disney eyes that make it ‘cute’). Picture these images now but with your own astonished eyes. Recognize in them the misshapen, grotesque beings that live in the hundreds of thousands, shut away in orphanages where none but the merciful with their forgiving eyes and hands manage to find it in their hearts to care for them.

How might a woman feel giving birth to a child with such deformities? In 2011 a Bay Area newspaper described one such woman, a woman accused of leading her four-year-old, severely handicapped child up four storeys in a garage elevator and pushing him off the roof into the street below. He suffered from torticolis, a twisting of the neck, and a condition resulting in a severely misshapen head. To reporters, her weeping husband said his wife should not be held responsible. She did not want this child. After his birth she suffered severe postpartum depression. He said how much he loved her, and that he could not find it in his heart to blame her.

Now imagine appointing one woman whose tragedy it was to be caught pregnant, especially in her first trimester, when Chernobyl blew, or when Fukushima blew, or during the years of  massive Pacific weapons “testing.” Imagine appointing her to join the panel of engineers charged with designing the “new generation of reactors” trumpeted by the Obama Administration, or the board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) or to the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA). What effect would it have on all those men sitting on their boards— the suited hijackers of our planet—to be met with these silent women, holding their atrociously deformed children in their arms? Imagine these women forcing that child into the arms of each board member to examine and caress.

What does it mean for me today, the one hundred sixty-fourth day following our planetary nuclear catastrophe, to plumb the darkened dungeon of my own imagination, the place I have resisted from the beginning, to reach its darkest heart? What do I feel, I, a young-bearing animal, a woman, a mother? At my deepest heart, I feel rage boiling up, a cyclone which, if I let it, would explode, vaporize the walls that contain me. How can I possibly meet this rage without dying of it? How can I stop it from tearing me apart?

(reprinted in part from my  book Devi’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by tap, published on the first anniversary of the catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi.

See “The Biggest Lie Ever Told by the U.S. Government: The Necessity of Hiroshima”

and “Wars Rage On As Circus Show of National Politics Distracts the Masses”

and “Hiroshima: The Crime that Keeps on Paying”

WELCOME TO THE PUNCH AND JUDY SHOW:

DISSATISFACTION WITH POLITICS-AS-USUAL HAS REACHED CRITICAL MASS IN THE UNITED STATES 

 

Most of the 99%, disenfranchised Americans in all camps, have had it with establishment politics and it’s high time. Unfortunately, either way, I predict the consequences at the polls this November will be disastrous, disastrous for the nation, and especially disastrous for a world at risk from climate collapse and from nuclear war.

The establishment is quite happy to ignore the fact that voting machines are owned by Republican interests, and that as privately owned election machines, their codes are proprietary, and that they have the ability, through the use of back doors, to strip and flip any “election” it may please a “Democracy” such as this one to call.

It will be interesting to see what role they play in this November’s selection. If the margin between the Punch and Judy they offer as candidates is sufficiently narrow, the selection can be decided literally with a coin flip. Be sure to vote! Your vote counts!

The establishment is still operating in the mindset that Barack Obama, although raised by white women, was somehow a Black president. Had Mr. Obama been Black, he would never have been elected, or had he accidentally been elected, he would have had to be assassinated. In the same way it is imagining that Clinton is a first-woman-president-in-the making. Appearances do not make the man—or the woman for that matter. Culture does.

The Clinton candidacy will bring out every single disaffected white male in the Untied States, because they perceive her as a woman, and consciously—or otherwise—they recognize that their day is over. Trump knows how to appeal to them.

Meantime, war, stolen primaries, GMO, oil trains, pipelines, fracking, TPP. new nuclear plants, deportations, exoneration of police lynching people of color will never go ho-hum unopposed again not by the left, and in some cases, notably TPP, not by the right either.

For both the left and the right, the politics of the establishment are toast. Trump, no matter how dumb, seems to get it; the DNC camp does not.  We watched them dig their own grave this past week.

The next White House “resident” will move in sometime in January and his name won’t be Hilary.

I’m making book. But, either way, Punch or Judy, we get the government we deserve.

 If the last two weeks depressed you, then here's a piece to put our fighting spirit in gear! 

THIS WEEK IN NUCLEAR:  REMARKABLE NEW DEVELOPMENTS

 

This past Friday, the UK's new Prime Minister's delayed going ahead with the $24 billion Hinkley nuclear debacle until this fall.  New York will be deciding Monday on whether or not to give the state's ailing nuclear stations a $500-million-a-year bailout.  The New York Times has been using its pro-nuclear bully pulpit to promote a $7.6 billion state subsidy for New York nuclear stations including Indian Point which had previously been targeted by Gov. Cuomo for closure.  The Times has published two attack pieces on Solar Power, the latest of which suggested that solar was no longer financially viable in California.  The piece went on to promote the Electric Industry's national campaign to roll back Net Metering. The New York regulator's decision on Monday is being hyped as a major media splash that will save nuclear power in the country! (petition here).  The nuclear utilities are threatening to close up to five units if they don't get the subsidies.

In no place in the country has this battle had more impact than in California where the largest expansion of solar power in the country has been taking place.  Net metering and the solar energy industry have come under growing attack since Jerry Brown's election. This last January, the electric industry failed to kill net metering at the CPUC but the solar industry submitted 130,000 signatures in its campaign to save it.  Even so, the agency sided with electric companies efforts to phase in monthly connection fees for all Net Metering customers the year before, while the IOU's biggest ally, Commissioner Florio - who earlier voted to kill Net Metering -  has taken on plans to make Metering fairer for the big three.  It was the above New York Times piece that focussed on a California resident whose Net Metering plan was no longer financially lucrative, but failed to give details about the CPUC's rate restructuring plan that will benefit the state's biggest energy hogs at the expense of average energy users! 

With the country's nuclear industry on the ropes, it is desperately hoping for new financial support from Trump who has promised to bring back the coal industry and ignore Climate Change issues.   A court in Utah refused to agree with environmentalists opposing a proposed nuclear facility that could end up contaminating the Colorado River, allowing the project to go ahead, while new nuclear reactor projects in New Jersey, Georgia and by the TVA have been announced.  At the same time, conservatives in Congress held hearings on how to streamline the NRC's licensing process in a desperate attempt to jump start certification for Small Modular Reactors (SMR), while a spike in lobbying has taken place by two utilities which want to use the nearly dead nuclear tax credit for new reactors, as well as allowing SMR's also to be included.  At the same time the Dept. of Energy has been holding Potemkin Nuclear Waste listening sessions almost everywhere except in Texas and NM where the industry is pushing to build a Monitored Retrievable Spent Fuel site.  Deadline for DOE comments are tonight (add your comments by clicking here).

The uranium mining industry is experiencing its lowest prices worldwide as demand has slowed with Japan's nuclear fleet still closed down due to public opposition.  The EPA has been in the news for recently announcing horrible radiation standards for US water supplies.  Republicans are saying that they will reorganize the EPA if they get the administrative reigns this year, while the agency, after 8 years of delay announced plans to restart cleaning up thousands of contaminated uranium mines across Dineh (Navajo) lands. 

Meanwhile a new push to mine uranium around the Grand Canyon continues even with the global uranium glut continues to drive prices down.  And then we have Hillary and Bill's family problem as Republicans launched a full-scale attack on twitter, claiming they let Russia take over 20% of America's uranium mining industry.   This story will only get bigger even though a NY Times piece tamped the flames down a few years ago.  If the right wing pushes too hard on this, it will likely come back to bite them since the Clinton's were actually part of George W. Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) campaign to launch a global renaissance of nuclear power back in 2005.  In the push to build nuclear stations worldwide, the GNEP proposal included a UN plan supported by Russia to make Kazakhstan the world's uranium banking headquarters   Hillary's GNEP nuclear fingers were burned in 2010 when she was caught pushing Chile to build its first nuclear facility just weeks before the country suffered a 9.0 earthquake.

The independent global report on nuclear energy was also released in mid July.  It clearly shows that the industry is struggling worldwide, with the start up of 52 of Japan's 54 nuclear facilities being blocked by the public, while Taiwan voted in a new government dedicated to make the country nuclear free by 2025.  The massive nuclear expansion agendas in South Africa, and India are struggling while China has scaled its plans back from the installation ?commissioning? of over 150 reactors originally planned prior to the 2011 Fukushima triple meltdown. And on the positive side, China announced plans to build a $50 trillion grid globally designed for wind and solar energy. 

And, in clear opposition, over 10,000 people marched last week for Clean Energy in Philly.

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE STATES

Homer Simpson struck again this week: at the Republicrat convention, (the one in Cleveland) while civilians were being allowed to carry military-grade weapons in downtown Cleveland, such items as tennis balls, cans or umbrellas were banned.

On the other hand Nathan Fisher writing for Truthdig had a much more complex analysis to offer, namely that true structural change cannot come about by means of a Sanders program that insists on working within the system. “There is a reason this confusion exists, and the reason is that there is no viable or functioning political force arguing explicitly for a socialist political program. It is what the radical left is hoping to get out of the Sanders campaign and the millions of people whom it has revealed to have an affinity for a left-of-center platform. But the time is now, and we must value clarity.”

A Whiff of the ‘What If’

Political sophisticates would do well to read Nathan Fisher’s entire article (of which the above paragraph introduces the specific analysis he proposes). On the other hand, political pragmatists (and I am one of them) believe that those younger than 40 in this country have gotten a whiff of the green fields lying beyond the crushing and suffocating weights of business as usual and endless war. The Sanders campaign has gone beyond putting lipstick on a pig. It has opened the gates of ‘what if’ speculation. What if  we could begin to consider the Happiness Index of our own retrograde country as far-advanced Bhutan seems able to do?

To that end, I offer SOMETHING YOU CAN DO. AND DO RIGHT NOW:

GO HERE TO LOBBY SUPERDELEGATES FOR BERNIE!

Dear Friends of Bernie,

It’s easy to send letters to each and every superdelegate- it took me about 10 minutes using the above site.  First, compose your letter (see sample letter below).  Go to the site, and click on the first state, Alabama.  Put in your information- you only have to do it once.  Double click on “select all,” then send.  Use the back button and go to the list for the next state.  Very easy. 

1) Hillary’s naming of Tim Kaine as her running mate has antagonized Bernie and his supporters, probably beyond repair. According to David Swanson,     

“Tim Kaine has been consistently ranked as one of the least progressive Democrats in the U.S. Senate, a supporter of “right to work” (for less) law restricting union organizing in Virginia, and he is a supporter of corporate trade agreements including the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) and including fast-tracking the TPP. An extremely loyal Democrat, he nonetheless criticized Democrats in 2011 for proposing higher taxes on millionaires.”

2) On Friday WikiLeaks published roughly 20,000 leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  They show that key figures on the Committee plotted to undermine Bernie’s campaign and boost Hillary’s since early 2005.  Despite this, Bernie has 1,832  delegate votes earned in primary elections.  Hillary has 2,219.  These numbers would surely been reversed if the DNC had maintained its mandated stance of neutrality, if the primaries had been honest  and the media fair in reporting.  Bernie is the people’s choice, and should be the nominee.

3) The Koch brothers are now supporting Hillary.  They are one of the main forces behind climate change denial.  Couple this with the refusal of the DNC to include a fracking ban in the platform, and we have a recipe for dooming life on the planet.  There’s no way that global warming can be stopped or even slowed with influences like this controlling the next president.

4) The gruesome spectacle of the Republican Convention indicates that Trump would be an unmitigated disaster.  Yet despite the blatant stupidity and nascent fascism in Cleveland, the race is still too close to call.  Trump is getting more savvy, and will run a devastating campaign against Clinton.

As of July 21st, 2016, the poll results are:

SAMPLE LETTER 

Here’s a sample letter, easily sent to every Clinton superdelegate by using http://www.lobbydelegates.com/delegates.php  It takes two clicks per state-about 10- 15 minutes.  You can write your own.  If we bombard them this weekend, they just might listen.

Dear Fellow Democrat and Superdelegate for the State of ___________________:

When the roll is called at the Democratic Convention, please keep in mind that given Hilary Clinton’s choice of Tim Kaine, pro-TPP, pro-coal, anti-labor, and anti-progressive taxation as VP, given last week’s Wikileaks revelation of secret DNC memos favoring a Clinton campaign as early as 2005 and plotting to undermine Sanders, given the fraudulent primary vote counts in such key states as California and New York, and given that the Koch brothers are now throwing their support behind Clinton, Clinton’s ability to beat Trump is very much in question, as you may remember from many previously conducted polls. I therefore urge you to vote for the stronger electable candidate, namely,
Bernie Sanders.
Sincerely, ____________________

THE HOMER SIMPSON PUBLIC SERVANT CONSUMER GUIDE (Excerpts)

(In a move to corroborate their competence, today’s newsletter examines the recent competence of a number of public servants)

PROSPECTIVE FEMALE US “CANDIDATE” FOR RESIDENCY (PFUSCR)

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t like coups.  And most governing bodies (GBs) don’t much like them either, because coups might do a lot of damage, not just to the GBs, but they might bring on collateral damage (CD). But there are some happy exceptions. Take Honduras, for example. We had to get in there, we didn’t have a choice. I just want to quote the PFUSCR: “Now I don’t like the way it looked. [And I don’t like] the way they did it…where they sent, you know, the military to, you know, take him out of his bed and get him out of the country in his pajamas.” She’s a real fashionista. She would have preferred a three-piece suit. But you don’t get everything you wish for, even as a PFUSCR. And for sure she knows how to dodge and weave, and she’s a stickler for correct procedure, and that’s what we need in a diplomat and a PFUSCR. Just listen to this: “If the United States (US) government declares a coup, you immediately have to shut off all aid…the support that we were providing…for a lot of very poor people. And that triggers (see how subtly she refers to crosshairs) a legal necessity. So our assessment was, we will just make the situation worse by punishing the Honduran people if we declare a coup and…immediately…stop all aid for the people, but we should slow walk and try to stop anything that the government could take advantage of, without calling it a coup.”
So that’s what a Prospective Female Candidate for the US Residency (PFUSCR)
recently went on the record saying, justifiably claiming that without a coup, the poor little Central County of Honduras (that’s CCH) wouldn’t be able to receive any more US AID, except you can’t call it a coup. It has to be something else, which is why they took him out in his pajamas and not a three-piece suit). Now AID to poor little countries like CCH is what the US always does best. We aid them. We aid them to take out people, people who cause trouble like Berta Cáceres and whose activities delay progress and things like dams. Because the U.S. upholds progress everywhere so we can expand our markets. Because the U.S. markets progress world wide. We want better market-share of better anti-personnel devices, better DIME bombs, better F16s, better AK47s, and better drones that go faster and are lots more effective making the world safe for even better Democracy (that’s capital D).

And without the coup in Honduras, the U.S. couldn’t send any more AID to poor little Honduras (CCH) except diplomacy doesn’t call it a coup. That’s why we have really qualified candidates running for residency because they’re hellbent on giving Democracy a chance.

THERESA MAY, THE UK’S NEW PRIME MINISTER (PM)

Barely sworn in, in fact before Theresa May’s first day was out, as the UK’s current prime minister(PM), Theresa May showed she is on top by ordering the closure of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The facts speak for themselves. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was tasked with developing more energy and more climate change. Next she let bygones be bygones by naming her political rival, Andrea Leadsom, as Secretary for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Andrea is well qualified: as Minister for Energy at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), she kept asking if climate change was real. Which shows she’s a woman who’s deeply concerned. And isn’t all these women in high government office really proof that women have arrived at last—same as Barack proved Black folks are on the move. Anyway, Theresa May may have had other priorities in mind. She’s just launched an investigation about pedophilia in high places (that includes Parliament AND the Royals) which will go back to 1945. It stops there because all the high officials before then are already dead and anyway their victims are no longer kids. It’s just the guilty ones that are not yet dead).



Back to climate change, we all want to slow climate change as best we can. We leave our car motors idling, but just while we complete cell phone calls and send follow up text messages because we’re concerned not to drive while texting. We make sure to drive passenger pick up vans, shuttles, and large industrial scale trucks whose motors won’t start up again unless we allow them to idle while we 1) pick up passengers; 2) wait for departure until the schedule specifies; 3) load those great big trucks with scaffolding as we dismantle it from large construction sites, plywood  masking, wheel barrows and other construction site materials. And we only drive to work because it saves time, and anyway the BART (named after my boy) station is two blocks away from our place of work (although we sometimes have to park six blocks away).

THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA)

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to sign on demanding the EPA stop promotiing radioactive water "protective" action guides.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) keeps protecting us from lead contamination in drinking water, especially in cities like Flint, Michigan, which is primarily Black with a relatively large proportion of children who suffer anyway from stunted growth due to malnutrition. It protected us from FEMA which wants to treat all those 600,000 stumps of trees it plans to cut in the East Bay Hills from too much Garlon and Glyphosate poisoning the run off, which is why FEMA is allowed to spray it only for ten years twice a year, and not eleven years or more.

It protects our water from excessive radiation, which is why recently it upped the amount of nuclear contamination it’s safe to drink, allowing for only a 1 in 23 people cancer rate. Now see, that’s real vigilance because the EPA noticed on May 7 that there was a toxic leak at Hanford, Washington, where workers complained of a metallic taste in the mouth, and other things like high blood pressure (maybe they were unduly scared) and headaches, nausea, and a burning sensation in the nose and throat.

So in June the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced brand new levels allowing for radioactive Iodine 131 at a concentration of 81,000 picocuries per liter, or 27,000 times more relaxed than the old level of only 3 picocuries, because it wants us all to relax. Even the workers at Hanford.

The beauty of this plan is it doesn’t throw taxpayers’ money around. No one has to go out in the field. No one needs to take samples of drinking water, or soil, or air, in Nebraska, or South Dakota or North Dakota, or Utah, or any other of the smaller regions, because the Washington-based Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the big (federal) picture (BFP), at heart and can do it just with numbers, crunching them between 9 AM and lunch; and after lunch till 3 PM, and after the happy hour, maybe until till 5.

(We interrupt this message: Please go to

https://secure.foodandwaterwatch.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2639

to sign on demanding the EPA stop promotiing radioactive water "protective" action guides.

Sign and share please.)

 

THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC)

On July 15 the Washington Free Beacon announced that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave a dummy corporation license to acquire enough materials to build a “dirty bomb.’ This was just a dirty tricks operation that the General Accounting Office (GAO) designed to trap the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

So first of all the General Accounting Office (GAO).  The General Accounting Office (GAO) tried to pull a fast one by calling what was really a sting operation just an oversight report. The General Accounting Office (GAO) has been screaming jealous for years and years about the effectiveness of the FBI’s sting program setting up dummy terrorists. That’s probably why it decided to set up the Mother of all Stings. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) actually detected that two out of three of the General Accounting Office’s (GAO’s) fake corporations were dummies, giving it a score of 66.66666% success.  It only gave one corporation the go-head for a ‘dirty bomb.’ That’s the kind of success that guarantees that the NRC will only have to deal with less than 33.33333% nuclear plant meltdowns because there are less than a hundred nuclear plants operating in the U.S. now, that’s until James Hanson and Bill McKibben bring a lot more of them on line twenty years from now and just in time to freeze global warming in its tracks.

FRACKING FOR URANIUM at the NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC)

Harry Anthony does a great job as the President of the Uranium Producers of America (UPA). He’s a terrific spokesman. Listen to this: “This is the most regulated industry in the world, but it’s never harmed anything….The industry has tried to work with the EPA to demonstrate that there is no risk to groundwater from uranium mining.” Now that’s a good spokesman. Especially for an industry which is tanking big time.

And guess what? Mr. Anthony even got the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the industry’s pocket. Because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) came out with a ruling that if an aquifer is dead anyway, it can be used for uranium fracking, especially if it’s not somebody’s drinking water, except maybe when it’s connected to another aquifer—except you can’t be sure of it anyway.  

And Mr. Anthony has lots of uranium history behind him. Like the City of Grand Junction took advantage of the Climax Corporation’s three hundred thousand tons of uranium tailings to mix with constructions materials. Just think of it: a whole city, so economical you didn’t even have to install street lights because it glowed in the dark anyway. (The whole thing had to be replaced at a cost to tax payers of only over a billion dollars.)

And plus Rocky Flats. Under the Bush administration Rocky Flats got cleaned up cheap and dirty—well maybe not so dirty. It’s now a National Park. You can play night time golf over the surface of buried nuke waste, with golf balls that glow in the dark. (It only cost the taxpayers over a billion dollars, which is pretty cheap when you think  about it.)

I, Homer Simpson have seen and approve this message.

THE HOMER SIMPSON PUBLIC SERVANT CONSUMER GUIDE (Excerpts)

(In a move to corroborate their competence, today’s newsletter examines the recent competence of a number of public servants)

PROSPECTIVE FEMALE US “CANDIDATE” FOR RESIDENCY (PFCUSR)

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t like coups.  And most governing bodies (GBs) don’t much like them either, because coups might do a lot of damage, not just to the GBs, but they might bring on collateral damage (CD). But there are some happy exceptions. Take Honduras, for example. We had to get in there, we didn’t have a choice. I just want to quote the PFCUSR: “Now I don’t like the way it looked. [And I don’t like] the way they did it…where they sent, you know, the military to, you know, take him out of his bed and get him out of the country in his pajamas.” She’s a real fashionista. She would have preferred a three-piece suit. But you don’t get everything you wish for, even as a PFCUSR. And for sure she knows how to dodge and weave, and she’s a stickler for correct procedure, and that’s what we need in a diplomat and a PFCUSR. Just listen to this: “If the United States (US) government declares a coup, you immediately have to shut off all aid…the support that we were providing…for a lot of very poor people. And that triggers (see how subtly she refers to crosshairs) a legal necessity. So our assessment was, we will just make the situation worse by punishing the Honduran people if we declare a coup and…immediately…stop all aid for the people, but we should slow walk and try to stop anything that the government could take advantage of, without calling it a coup.”
So that’s what a Prospective Female Candidate for the US Residency (PFCUSR)
recently went on the record saying, justifiably claiming that without a coup, the poor little Central County of Honduras (that’s CCH) wouldn’t be able to receive any more US AID, except you can’t call it a coup. It has to be something else, which is why they took him out in his pajamas and not a three-piece suit). Now AID to poor little countries like CCH is what the US always does best. We aid them. We aid them to take out people, people who cause trouble like Berta Cáceres and whose activities delay progress and things like dams. Because the U.S. upholds progress everywhere so we can expand our markets. Because the U.S. markets progress world wide. We want better market-share of better anti-personnel devices, better DIME bombs, better F16s, better AK47s, and better drones that go faster and are lots more effective making the world safe for even better Democracy (that’s capital D).

And without the coup in Honduras, the U.S. couldn’t send any more AID to poor little Honduras (CCH) except diplomacy doesn’t call it a coup. That’s why we have really qualified candidates running for residency because they’re hellbent on giving Democracy a chance.

THERESA MAY, THE UK’S NEW PRIME MINISTER (PM)

Barely sworn in, in fact before Theresa May’s first day was out, as the UK’s current prime minister(PM), Theresa May showed she is on top by ordering the closure of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The facts speak for themselves. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was tasked with developing more energy and more climate change. Next she let bygones be bygones by naming her political rival, Andrea Leadsom, as Secretary for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Andrea is well qualified: as Minister for Energy at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), she kept asking if climate change was real. Which shows she’s a woman who’s deeply concerned. And isn’t all these women in high government office really proof that women have arrived at last—same as Barack proved Black folks are on the move. Anyway, Theresa May may have had other priorities in mind., She’s just launched an investigation about pedophilia in high places (that includes Parliament AND the Royals) which will go back to 1945. It stops there because all the high officials before then are already dead and anyway their victims are no longer kids. It’s just the guilty ones that are not yet dead).

Back to climate change, we all want to slow climate change as best we can. We leave our car motors idling, but just while we complete cell phone calls and send follow up text messages because we’re concerned not to drive while texting. We make sure to drive passenger pick up vans, shuttles, and large industrial scale trucks whose motors won’t start up again unless we allow them to idle while we 1) pick up passengers; 2) wait for departure until the schedule specifies; 3) load those great big trucks with scaffolding as we dismantle it from large construction sites, plywood  masking, wheel barrows and other construction site materials. And we only drive to work because it saves time, and anyway the BART (named after me) station is two blocks away from our place of work (although we sometimes have to park six blocks away).

THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA)

 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) keeps protecting us from lead contamination in drinking water, especially in cities like Flint, Michigan, which is primarily Black with a relatively large proportion of children who suffer anyway from stunted growth due to malnutrition. It protected us from FEMA which wants to treat all those 600,000 stumps of trees it plans to cut in the East Bay Hills from too much Garlon and Glyphosate poisoning the run off, which is why FEMA is allowed to spray it only for ten years twice a year, and not eleven years or more.

It protects our water from excessive radiation, which is why recently it upped the amount of nuclear contamination it’s safe to drink, allowing for only a 1 in 23 people cancer rate. Now see, that’s real vigilance because the EPA noticed on May 7 that there was a toxic leak at Hanford, Washington, where workers complained of a metallic taste in the mouth, and other things like high blood pressure (maybe they were unduly scared) and headaches, nausea, and a burning sensation in the nose and throat.

So in June the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced brand new levels allowing for radioactive Iodine 131 at a concentration of 81,000 picocuries per liter, or 27,000 times more relaxed than the old level of only 3 picocuries, because it wants us all to relax. Even the workers at Hanford.

The beauty of this plan is it doesn’t throw taxpayers’ money around. No one has to go out in the field. No one needs to take samples of drinking water, or soil, or air, in Nebraska, or South Dakota or North Dakota, or Utah, or any other of the smaller regions, because the Washington-based Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the big (federal) picture (BFP), at heart and can do it just with numbers, crunching them between 9 AM and lunch; and after lunch till 3 PM, and after the happy hour, maybe until till 5.

THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC)

On July 15 the Washington Free Beacon announced that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave a dummy corporation license to acquire enough materials to build a “dirty bomb.’ This was just a dirty tricks operation that the General Accounting Office (GAO) designed to trap the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

So first of all the General Accounting Office (GAO).  The General Accounting Office (GAO) tried to pull a fast one by calling what was really a sting operation just an oversight report. The General Accounting Office (GAO) has been screaming jealous for years and years about the effectiveness of the FBI’s sting program setting up dummy terrorists. That’s probably why it decided to set up the Mother of all Stings. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) actually detected that two out of three of the General Accounting Office’s (GAO’s) fake corporations were dummies, giving it a score of 66.66666% success.  It only gave one corporation the go-head for a ‘dirty bomb.’ That’s the kind of success that guarantees that the NRC will only have to deal with less than 33.33333% nuclear plant meltdowns because there are less than a hundred nuclear plants operating in the U.S. now, that’s until James Hanson and Bill McKibben bring a lot more of them on line twenty years from now and just in time to freeze global warming in its tracks.

FRACKING FOR URANIUM at the NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC)

Harry Anthony does a great job as the President of the Uranium Producers of America (UPA). He’s a terrific spokesman. Listen to this: “This is the most regulated industry in the world, but it’s never harmed anything….The industry has tried to work with the EPA to demonstrate that there is no risk to groundwater from uranium mining.” Now that’s a good spokesman. Especially for an industry which is tanking big time.

And guess what? Mr. Anthony even got the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the industry’s pocket. Because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) came out with a ruling that if an aquifer is dead anyway, it can be used for uranium fracking, especially if it’s not somebody’s drinking water, except maybe when it’s connected to another aquifer—except you can’t be sure of it anyway.  
And Mr. Anthony has lots of uranium history behind him. Like the City of Grand Junction took advantage of the Climax Corporation’s three hundred thousand tons of uranium tailings to mix with constructions materials. Just think of it: a whole city, so economical you didn’t even have to install street lights because it glowed in the dark anyway. (The whole thing had to be replaced at a cost to tax payers of only over a billion dollars.)

And plus Rocky Flats. Under the Bush administration Rocky Flats got cleaned up cheap and dirty—well maybe not so dirty. It’s now a National Park. You can play night time golf over the surface of buried nuke waste, with golf balls that glow in the dark. (It only cost the taxpayers over a billions dollars, which is pretty cheap when you think  about it.)

I, Homer Simpson have seen and approve this message.