Stephen Lendman

For years, Helen Caldicott warned it's coming. In her 1978 book, "Nuclear Madness," she said:

"As a physician, I contend that nuclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced."

More below on the inevitable dangers from commercial nuclear power proliferation, besides added military ones.

On March 11, New York Times writer Martin Fackler headlined, "Powerful Quake and Tsunami Devastate Northern Japan," saying:

"The 8.9-magnitude earthquake (Japan's strongest ever) set off a devastating tsunami that sent walls of water (six meters high) washing over coastal cities in the north." According to Japan's Meteorological Survey, it was 9.0. The Sendai port city and other areas experienced heavy damage. "Thousands of homes were destroyed, many roads were impassable, trains and buses (stopped) running, and power and cellphones remained down. On Saturday morning, the JR rail company" reported three trains missing. Many passengers are unaccounted for.

Striking at 2:46PM Tokyo time, it caused vast destruction, shook city skyscrapers, buckled highways, ignited fires, terrified millions, annihilated areas near Sendai, possibly killed thousands, and caused a nuclear meltdown, its potential catastrophic effects far exceeding quake and tsunami devastation, almost minor by comparison under a worst case scenario.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

A few days ago, I published a short piece about a BBC global poll gauging attitudes towards various countries worldwide. In the poll, Israel came pretty much at the bottom. The world seems to dislike the Jewish State, and this is not a big surprise.

The text of the BBC Poll can be found here. The text is actually far more revealing than I had initially realised. The following diagram illustrates the popularity and unpopularity of Israel in various countries.

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Daniel Ellsberg
Antiwar

President Obama tells us that he’s asked the Pentagon whether the conditions of confinement of Bradley Manning, the soldier charged with leaking state secrets, "are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are."

If Obama believes that, he’ll believe anything. I would hope he would know better than to ask the perpetrators whether they’ve been behaving appropriately. I can just hear President Nixon saying to a press conference the same thing: "I was assured by the White House Plumbers that their burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s doctor in Los Angeles was appropriate and met basic standards."

When that criminal behavior ordered from the Oval Office came out, Nixon faced impeachment and had to resign. Well, times have changed. But if President Obama really doesn’t yet know the actual conditions of Manning’s detention – if he really believes, as he’s said, that "some of this [nudity, isolation, harassment, sleep-deprivation] has to do with Private Manning’s wellbeing", despite the contrary judgments of the prison psychologist – then he’s being lied to, and he needs to get a grip on his administration.

If he does know, and agrees that it’s appropriate or even legal, that doesn’t speak well for his memory of the courses he taught on constitutional law.

The president refused to comment on PJ Crowley’s statement that the treatment of Manning is "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid". Those words are true enough as far as they go – which is probably about as far as a state department spokesperson can allow himself to go in condemning actions of the defense department. But at least two other words are called for: abusive and illegal.

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