Grassroots Actions for Peace

Monument Square Vigil

Every Friday 8:00 - 9:00 AM

Vigil at Monument Square, Concord Center every Friday morning from 8:00 to 9:00 AM. Held at the flag rotary at Main and Lexington Street across from the Concord, MA Town Building.

Nine years on the protest line at ATK
Every Wednesday, 7 AM, at Edina Road, Minneapolis - St. Paul, Minnesota

If protesting were an endurance sport, the oldest marathon in the country would still be going on at Alliant Techsystems.

Protest at ATK, Stormi Greener, Star Tribune

More at >> Star Tribune   cached

With Wall Street unwilling to finance new nuclear plants, U.S. Senators Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Warner of Virginia have cooked up a scheme to provide $544 billion –­ yes, with a “b” — in subsidies for new nuclear power plant development.

Their move will be debated on the floor of the Senate Tuesday, June 3.

A Lieberman aide describes the plan as “the most historic incentive for nuclear in the history of the United States.”

The Lieberman-Warner scheme is cloaked in a climate change bill — the claim being that nuclear power plants don’t emit greenhouse gases and thus don’t contribute to global warming. However, the overall “nuclear cycle” ­– which includes mining, milling, fuel enrichment and fabrication, and reprocessing — has significant greenhouse gas emissions that do contribute to global warming.

Moreover, nuclear power is enormously dangerous. Accidents like the Chernobyl explosion of 1986 stand to kill and leave many people with cancer. Nuclear plants routinely emit life-threatening radioactivity. Safeguarding nuclear waste for millions of years is an insoluble problem.

Nevertheless, there have long been powerful forces in government and the nuclear industry promoting atomic energy.

Wall Street is uneasy — rightfully regarding nuclear power as terribly risky. Six of the nation’s largest investment banks including CitiGroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley last year told the U.S. Department of Energy that the risks “make lenders unwilling…to extend long-term credit.”

Enter Senators Lieberman and Warner.

Safe energy advocates are outraged by their scheme. Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, says: “It’s time to focus on real global warming solutions like solar, wind and energy efficiency, not to further fatten the moribund nuclear calf.”

John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA, says: “After 50 years of unresolved safety and waste disposal issues, it perplexes many Americans why Congress would support massive subsidies for the nuclear industry. Nuclear power is a dirty and dangerous distraction from real global warming solutions.”

Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear says: “If the nuclear power industry attains this $500 billion-plus in federal taxpayer subsidies, it would effectively double the subsidies this industry has already enjoyed over the course of the past 50 years which has made it the single most subsidized industry in the energy sector.”

“Taxpayers should not be asked to continue bankrolling a nuclear power industry that has never been financially or environmentally viable,” says Sandra Schubert, director of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group. And this “especially” must not happen “in times of tight budgets.” Instead, government “should do everything in its power to rapidly pursue clean energy solutions like solar and wind.”

Sneakily, the $544 billion for nuclear power is not specifically listed in the Lieberman-Warner measure. It is “covert” legislative sleight-of-hand, says Blackwelder, with the nuclear subsidy contained in a “vaguely-entitled category for zero and low carbon energy technologies.”

“Why are they hiding it?” asks Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “Because they know that the environmental movement in this country is serious about addressing climate change and will not tolerate a reversion to dangerous, dirty and expensive nuclear energy.”

“It’s so deceitful,” says Kay Drey of Beyond Nuclear, who is also incensed that the media have virtually made no mention of “this would-be half-trillion dollar nuclear bail-out.”

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service has organized a campaign for people to e-mail or write or telephone their senators to stop the Lieberman-Warner effort.

But the move has major support in the Senate –­ especially from John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for president.

Among the subsidies nuclear power already gets is $20 billion approved by Congress and President Bush only last year. And there’s a law Congress passed, called the Price-Anderson Act, that limits liability to $10 billion for a catastrophic accident — although, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, this is a small fraction of what a nuclear plant disaster could cause in property damage, not to mention birth defects, cancers and deaths.

Turning to nuclear power to deal with climate change is like trying to treat heroin addiction with crack. Lieberman and Warner would have us pay for hundreds of billions of dollars for atomic crack.

It’s not too late to contact your senators and urge them to vote no on the Lieberman-Warner scheme.

Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, author of several books on nuclear technology and host of the nationally syndicated TV program Enviro Close-Up.

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Tell your friends about us because some people just don't get it

Congress stands at the brink of the global-warmed nuclear powered abyss. Again.

But as you read this, House and Senate Democrats and Republicans are negotiating the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill.

Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) has slipped in $25 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans for new nukes. The nuke reactor guarantees are bundled with $10 billion for renewable energy, $10 billion to turn coal into liquid vehicle fuel, $2 billion to turn coal into natural gas and another $2 billion to build a uranium enrichment plant. [  read more ]

Several large properties in the East End of Watertown, including a nearly 12-acre swath of land at Greenough Boulevard and Arsenal Street that was once used to burn depleted uranium [ed. emphasis added] from a Watertown Arsenal nuclear reactor, are undergoing close scrutiny to determine how badly contaminated they are and who is responsible for cleaning them up.. [  read more ]

What's next folks, had enough yet?

A presidential Executive Order issued on July 17th, repeals with the stroke of a pen the right to dissent and to oppose the Pentagon's military agenda in Iraq. [  read more ]

View this text in the Congressional Record


Mr. Speaker, there is an issue of critical importance facing this Congress, and that issue relates to whether or not this Congress should pass legislation to continue to fund the war in Iraq.

The legislation contains a particular provision that would lead to the privatization of Iraq's oil, a provision that I'm quite concerned about, because I think that if we take that position, it will make it very difficult for us to ever be able to end the war.

So today I'm going to lay out the case as to why this provision that's in the bill would advance privatization and as to what the options are for this Congress. [   read more ]

Diseases and sicknesses of all kinds are gaining ground in Iraq. Activists, doctors, and the media are quick to discuss the potential ramifications of Depleted Uranium, which many argue is still highly radioactive after use. There are many other diseases, some commonplace, such as dysentery and typhoid which were virtually unheard of in Iraq before the Gulf War in 1991, but under the sanctions and instability of the current war, have greatly increased.  [  read more ]

Proof of US orchestration of Death Squads Killings in Iraq

... Since the mainstream western media will not hear such voices as Professor Samarree and Mr Abid, it is absolutely beholden on every decently minded individual as well as every organisation that opposes the illegal occupation of Iraq to demand the truth and bring an end to this monstrous culture of impunity. Jean Paul Sartre noted that the American assault on Vietnam was not only an attack against that nation, but an act of violence directed against the whole of humanity. If we are to have any hope of rescuing our own collective humanity, we must raise our voices to bring an end to the screaming from Iraq. ... [  read more ]

Habeas Corpus

Today, 135 years to the day after the last American President (Ulysses S. Grant) suspended habeas corpus, President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006. At its worst, the legislation allows President Bush or Donald Rumsfeld to declare anyone — US citizen or not — an enemy combatant, lock them up and throw away the key without a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law. In other words, every thing the Founding Fathers fought the British empire to free themselves of was reversed and nullified with the stroke of a pen, all under the guise of the War on Terror.

Jonathan Turley joined Keith to talk about the law that Senator Feingold said would be seen as "a stain on our nation's history."

Turley: "People have no idea how significant this is. Really a time of shame this is for the American system.—The strange thing is that we have become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. It's otherworldly..People clearly don't realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us. And I'm not too sure we're gonna change back anytime soon." [  read more ]

Note: Passed/agreed to in Senate: Passed Senate with an amendment by Yea-Nay Vote. 65 - 34. Record Vote Number: 259. Notable yea votes include Lieberman (D-CT) and Gregg (R-NH) and Sununu (R-NH). See thomas.gov

You can’t trust the media—and you can’t necessarily even trust yourself.

It’s the rare person who approaches a conflict like the one in Lebanon that we are watching every night with the background information to understand what’s in front of our own eyes. Like in baseball, you can’t know the players without a scorecard. Having opinions are easy, developing an analysis is not. ... [  read more ]

The public, on the other hand, not only believes that there are problems but many insist that the elections were stolen. Write Wasserman and Fitrakis: “A recent OpEdNews.com/Zogby People's poll of Pennsylvania residents, found that '39 percent said that the 2004 election was stolen. Fifty-four percent said it was legitimate. But let’s look at the demographics on this question. Of the people who watch FOX news as their primary source of TV news, one half of one percent believe it was stolen and 99 percent believe it was legitimate. Among people who watched ANY other news source but FOX, more felt the election was stolen than legitimate. The numbers varied dramatically.'”

“Here, from that poll, are the stations listed as first choice by respondents and the percentage of respondents who thought the election was stolen: CNN 70 percent; MSNBC 65 percent; CBS 64 percent; ABC 56 percent; Other 56 percent; NBC 49 percent; FOX 0.5 percent.

“With 99 percent of FOX viewers believing that the election was “legitimate,” only the constant propaganda of Rupert Murdoch’s Disinformation campaign stands in the way of a majority of Americans coming to grips with the reality of two consecutive stolen elections.”   [ Read More ]

A milestone in the cleanup of Starmet Corp.'s Super fund site in West Concord was reached with the recent removal of 3,846 drums of depleted uranium and 322 tons of depleted uranium metal, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. [read more]

The Fight Goes On.

Despite final federal approval of the lab and BU’s plans to start construction soon, we have not given up in our efforts to stop the lab. It’s important to get the word out that federal approval is not the end of the road. Since those reviewing BU’s environmental impact statements were the same people who awarded the grant to BU, we never expected them to give serious attention to the major questions raised by critics of the lab about its safety, secrecy and lack of community oversight. Two legal actions are already underway challenging the environmental reviews, and a third is being planned.

Further, state-wide and Boston regulations are currently being debated which would make what goes on in BU’s BSL4 lab much more transparent. Currently, there is a ban on rDNA research in BSL4 labs in Boston. This ban would make it impossible to carry on much of the planned research and we need to make sure that the Boston Public Health Commission fulfills its mandate to protect the public by maintaining this ban. The Fox state legislation would require labs to meet stringent safety requirements and allow public oversight. It is still in the Joint Committee on the Environment and we must insure that it gets to the floor for a full vote.

Most important to remember at this moment is that just because the building goes up doesn't mean it will house a BSL4 lab. In a suburb of Toronto, activists succeeded in keeping the BSL4 component of a laboratory intended as a combined Level 3 and 4 from going into operation. Public outrage forced this outcome. We can do the same in Boston. La lucha continua!

The Coalition to Stop the Bioterrorism Lab is planning a week of street action during the week of Valentine’s Day. Stay tuned for details. [  read more ]

.... The demonstrations are held each November to mark the Nov. 16, 1989, slayings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter in El Salvador. A congressional task force found that some of the soldiers responsible for the massacre had been trained at the School of Americas, which moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984.
....
Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest, founded the group in 1990 in an attempt to come to grips with the violence he had witnessed as a Naval officer in Vietnam and especially as a priest working with the poor in Bolivia in the 1980s.

With polls showing waning support for the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and reports of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bourgeois said the growing anti-war sentiment and outrage over the abuses may boost the crowd beyond the 16,000 who attended last year.
....
A bill introduced this year by US Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass. (Latin America Military Training Review Act of 2005) [ H.R. 1217], calls for the closing of the school, an evaluation of the training and an investigation to determine who created the torture manuals, how the manuals were used and how they might have influenced students.....[read more]

Must See Videos

Imagine Peace

Videy Island, Reykjavik, Iceland:

The IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is a work of art conceived by Yoko Ono in memory of John Lennon. It is dedicated to peace and bears the inscription 'IMAGINE PEACE' in 24 languages. Its construction and installation is a collaboration between Yoko Ono, the City of Reykjavik, Reykjavik Art Museum and Reykjavik Energy. The work is in the form of a wishing well from which a very strong and tall tower of light emerges. The strength, intensity and brilliance of the light tower continually changes as the particles in the air fluctuate with the prevailing weather and atmospheric conditions unique to Iceland. Every year it will light up between October 9th (Lennon's birthday) and December 8th (the day of his death). In addition the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER will be lit on New Year's Eve, during the first week of spring and on some rare special occasions agreed between the City and Ono. The electricity for the light comes entirely from the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant.  [ read more ]

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BushCo's Covert Attempt to Force Iraq Into Giving Up 87% of Its Oil

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Say What???

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Crimes Against Peace - Only We, The Citizens of the United States, Can Do Anything About It.

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There's only you really, to change everything.

Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?

The Communications Act of 1934, as amended, called for stations to offer "equal opportunity" to all legally qualified political candidates running for office. [ read more ]

The Earth today stands in imminent peril

To the Editor: [Cumberland Times-News, Cumberland, MD ]

...

Nuclear power is, simply put, a complex, expensive and dangerous process for boiling water for a steam turbine. Producing the nuclear fuel requires burning vast amounts of fossil fuel to mine uranium, ship it and process it. The enrichment facility at Paducah, Ky., uses two dirty coal-fired plants to produce energy, releasing significant C02 into the atmosphere. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the plant also leaks CFC 144 gas, a powerful greenhouse gas that destroys the ozone. Somehow the industry or its apologists never mention this vast greenhouse-gas-producing infrastructure that supports nuclear power. Water used to cool reactors becomes contaminated with such things as tritium (radioactive life 200 years) and carbon 14 (radioactive life 114,600 years). Instead of insuring that these radioactive isotopes don't enter the environment, the contaminated water is routinely dumped into water we drink. The nuclear power industry also releases enormous amounts of radioactive gases into the atmosphere.

...   [  read more ]

A Low Carbon-Based Economy

Two weeks ago, the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented its sternest warning yet about the need to immediately tackle climate change. "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment," said IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri. Progressive Growth recognizes the need for immediate action on global warming, "the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time." [  read more ]

Except for giant meteorite strikes or other such catastrophes, Earth has never experienced anything like the contemporary human juggernaut. We are in a bottleneck of overpopulation and wasteful consumption that could push half of Earth’s species to extinction in this century. As the newest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stress, we are carelessly destabilizing the planetary surface in ways harmful to our own welfare. Paramount is the irreversible loss of natural ecosystems and species that make up the human life-support system. [  read more ]

In an supplemental budget request, Ramsey County Sheriff Bill Fletcher is expected to ask for considerable funding to pay for security during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Fletcher, who narrowly won re-election in 2006, expects to arrest between three and five thousand protesters during the GOP's presidential nominating convention in September 2008. According to a source close to the policy-making process in St. Paul, the unconfirmed amount of $4,432,804 includes more than $80,000 for chain link fence to build outdoor holding areas for protesters. According Dave Verhasselt, spokesman for Ramsey County Manager David Twa, the Saint Paul Police generally have jurisdiction over arrests, and the Sheriff over jailing once arrests are made.

Verhasselt (who could not cite specific numbers but indicated a request "between three and four million" dollars) also said that discussion of arrest numbers at this point is purely speculative.

Protesters are a part of every large political convention, and the scope of Fletcher's projection seems to split the difference between recent examples. In 2004, six protesters were arrested at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, while approximately 10,000 were arrested during the RNC in New York City. According to sources close to the budget process, however, the St. Paul Police Department has already begun working with groups interested in expressing peaceful opposition to the RNC, and Fletcher's request appears, on its surface, to conflict with that process.  [  read more ]

Global warming is an energy problem, and we cannot have both an increase in conventional fossil fuel use and a habitable planet. Yet the United States is projected to consume 35 percent more oil, coal, and gas combined in 2030 than in 2004.  [  read more ]