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Student Harassed by Teacher for Not Standing for Pledge

Standing Up for the Right to Sit Down

ACLU | February 23, 2010

GERMANTOWN, MD – Despite free speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights, state law, and in the Montgomery County School System’s student guide, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland (ACLU) has had to take action on behalf of a middle school student who was harassed and humiliated by a teacher for declining to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. In a letter sent February 5 to Khadija F. Barkley, Acting Principal of Roberto Clemente Middle School, the ACLU details why what was done to the traumatized student was wrong and humiliating, and seeks an apology and education on the meaning and importance of the First Amendment.

“The law is crystal clear that a public school cannot embarrass or harass a student for maintaining a respectful silence during the Pledge of Allegiance,” said Ajmel Quereshi, an attorney for the ACLU of Maryland. “While expression of patriotism in unsettling times is a worthy and admirable emotion, the Supreme Court says that patriotism is best honored by venerating the civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution and not by punishing or ridiculing those whose views might differ from our own.”

On January 27, a thirteen-year-old at Roberto Clemente Middle School chose neither to stand nor to speak during the school’s daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Instead, she sat quietly while students recited the Pledge. Her teacher demanded she stand for the Pledge. When she did not stand, the teacher ordered her to leave the classroom and stand out in the hall. He threatened to give her detention for refusing to stand for the Pledge, and sent her to the counselor’s office. The next day, the student again declined to stand for the pledge. The teacher then called upon a school security officer to escort her out of the classroom and to the school counselor’s office. When the student’s mother reached out to an assistant principal for help in dealing with the teacher’s abusive and improper actions, the official said her daughter should instead apologize for her “defiance.” The student did apologize, twice.

However, the right of a student to refrain from participating during the Pledge has been settled law since 1943, when the Supreme Court held that students could not be forced to salute the flag. As the Court put it then, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Here in Maryland, the State Court of Appeals, in 1871, struck down as unconstitutional a state law that required students to salute the flag. Maryland law now explicitly exempts from the Pledge of Allegiance “any student or teacher who wishes to be excused.”

In addition, the Montgomery County school system explicitly acknowledges the student’s right to act as she did in the student handbook provision concerning “Patriotic Exercises”:

“You will have the opportunity to participate in and/or watch patriotic exercises in school.

You cannot be required to say a pledge, sing an anthem, or take part in patriotic exercises. No one will be permitted to intentionally embarrass you if you choose not to participate.”

The young girl was so traumatized by her teacher’s humiliating and inappropriate reaction, that she has not felt comfortable returning to school until the situation is addressed. Faced with the school’s unwillingness to acknowledge that the teacher had acted improperly, the mother contacted the ACLU for assistance. Even more shockingly, following the ACLU’s letter to the acting principal pointing out the law, and seeking an apology and explanation to the class to ease the girl’s return, the school system’s lawyer responded that school officials would not meet with the mother if she brought an ACLU lawyer to the meeting.

Quereshi noted that “every other school system has moved quickly to resolve Pledge of Allegiance issues when the ACLU has contacted them on behalf of students. It is appalling that, in this case, the school is refusing to meet to resolve the issue, and thus keeping the traumatized victim out of school even longer than necessary.”

The ACLU of Maryland’s letter asks that the teacher personally apologize to the student, and promise to respect her right to respectfully dissent in the future. We further request that the assistant principal and teacher review with the class that witnessed this incident the county school policy on patriotic exercise, and explain that trying to force a student to salute the flag is wrong, and it should never have occurred. It is our hope that this incident can be used as an educational opportunity for both students and teachers – as has been done in other Maryland schools when Pledge issues have arisen.

CONTACT: Meredith Curtis, ACLU of Maryland, 410-889-8555; media@aclu-md.org

February 25, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , , , | 7 Comments

Federal Bureau of Invention?

Microbiologist Meryl Nass Responds to FBI Closing Anthrax Case

Dr. Meryl Nass, MD | February 25th, 2010

The FBI’s report, documents and accompanying information (only pertaining to Ivins, not to the rest of the investigation) were released on Friday afternoon. which means the FBI anticipated doubt and ridicule. The National Academies of Science (NAS) is several months away from issuing its $879,550 report on the microbial forensics, suggesting a) asking NAS to investigate the FBI’s science was just a charade to placate Congress, and/or b) NAS’ investigation might be uncovering things the FBI would prefer to bury, so FBI decided to preempt the NAS panel’s report.

Here are today’s reports from the Justice Department, AP, Washington Post and NY Times. The WaPo article ends,

The FBI’s handling of the investigation has been criticized by Ivins’s colleagues and by independent analysts who have pointed out multiple gaps, including a lack of hair, fiber other physical evidence directly linking Ivins to the anthrax letters. But despite long delays and false leads, Justice officials Friday expressed satisfaction with the outcome.

The evidence “established that Dr. Ivins, alone, mailed the anthrax letters,” the Justice summary stated.

Actually, the 96 page FBI report is predicated on the assumption that the anthrax letters attack was carried out by a “lone nut.” The FBI report fails to entertain the possibility that the letters attack could have involved more than one actor. The FBI admits that about 400 people may have had access to Ivins’ RMR-1029 anthrax preparation, but asserts all were “ruled out” as lone perpetrators. FBI never tried to rule any out as part of a conspiracy, however.

That is only the first of many holes in FBI’s case. Here is a sampling of some more.

  1. The report assumes Ivins manufactured, purified and dried the spore prep in the anthrax hot room at US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). His colleagues say the equipment available was insufficient to do so on the scale required.
  2. But even more important, the letter spores contained a Bacillus subtilis contaminant, and silicon to enhance dispersal. FBI has never found the Bacillus subtilis strain at USAMRIID, and it has never acknowledged finding silicon there, either. If the letters anthrax was made at USAMRIID, at least small amounts of both would be there.
  3. Drs. Perry Mikesell, Ayaad Assaad and Stephen Hatfill were 3 earlier suspects. All had circumstantial evidence linking them to the case. In Hatfill’s case, especially, are hints he could have been “set up.” Greendale, the return address on the letters, was a suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe where Hatfill attended medical school. Hatfill wrote an unpublished book about a biowarfare attack that bears some resemblance to the anthrax case. So the fact that abundant circumstantial evidence links Ivins to the case might be a reflection that he too was “set up” as a potential suspect, before the letters were sent.
  4. FBI fails to provide any discussion of why no autopsy was performed, nor why, with Ivins under 24/7 surveillance from the house next door, with even his garbage being combed through, the FBI failed to notice that he overdosed and went into a coma. Nor is there any discussion of why the FBI didn’t immediately identify tylenol as the overdose substance, and notify the hospital, so that a well-known antidote for tylenol toxicity could be given (N-acetyl cysteine, or alternatively glutathione). These omissions support the suggestion that Ivins’ suicide was a convenience for the FBI. It enabled them to conclude the anthrax case, in the absence of evidence that would satisfy the courts.
  5. The FBI’s alleged motive is bogus. In 2001, Bioport’s anthrax vaccine could not be (legally) relicensed due to potency failures, and its impending demise provided room for Ivins’ newer anthrax vaccines to fill the gap. Ivins had nothing to do with developing Bioport’s vaccine, although in addition to his duties working on newer vaccines, he was charged with assisting Bioport to get through licensure.
  6. FBI’s report claims, “Those who worked for him knew that Nass was one of those topics to avoid discussing around Dr. Ivins” (page 41). The truth is we had friendly meetings at the Annapolis, Maryland international anthrax conference in June 2001, and several phone conversations after that. Bruce occasionally assisted me in my study of the safety and efficacy of Bioport’s licensed anthrax vaccine, giving me advice and papers he and others had written. I wonder if I was mentioned negatively to discourage Ivins’ other friends and associates from communicating with me, since they have been prohibited from speaking freely? Clever.
  7. The FBI’s Summary states that “only a limited number of individuals ever had access to this specific spore preparation” and that the flask was under Ivins’ sole and exclusive control. Yet the body of the report acknowledges hundreds of people who had access to the spores, and questions remain about the location of the spore prep during the period in question. FBI wordsmiths around this, claiming that no one at USAMRIID “legitimately” used spores from RMR1029 without the “authorization and knowledge” of Bruce Ivins. Of course, stealing spores to terrorize and kill is not a legitimate activity.
  8. FBI says that only a small number of labs had Ames anthrax, including only 3 foreign labs. Yet a quick Pub Med search of papers published between 1999 and 2004 revealed Ames anthrax was studied in at least Italy, France, the UK, Israel and South Korea as well as the US. By failing to identify all labs with access to Ames, the FBI managed to exclude potential domestic and foreign perpetrators.
  9. FBI claims that “drying anthrax is expressly forbidden by various treaties,” therefore it would have to be performed clandestinely. Actually, the US government sponsored several programs that dried anthrax spores. Drying spores is not explicitly prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention, though many would like it to be.
  10. The FBI report claims the anthrax letters envelopes were sold in Frederick, Md. Later it admits that millions of indistinguishable envelopes were made, with sales in Maryland and Virginia.
  11. FBI emphasizes Ivins’ access to a photocopy machine, but fails to mention it was not the machine from which the notes that accompanied the spores were printed.
  12. FBI claims Ivins was able to make a spore prep of equivalent purity as the letter spores. However, Ivins had clumping in his spores, while the spores in the Daschle/Leahy letters had no clumps. Whether Ivins could make a pure dried prep is unknown, but there is no evidence he had ever done so.
  13. FBI asserts that Bioport and USAMRIID were nearly out of anthrax vaccine, to the point researchers might not have enough to vaccinate themselves. FBI further asserts this would end all anthrax research, derailing Ivins’ career. In fact, USAMRIID has developed many dozens of vaccines (including those for anthrax) that were never licensed, but have been used by researchers to vaccinate themselves. There would be no vaccine shortage for researchers.
  14. Ivins certainly had mental problems. But that does not explain why the FBI accompanied Ivins’ therapist, Ms. Duley (herself under charges for multiple DUIs) and assisted her to apply for a peace order against him. Nor does it explain why Duley then went into hiding, never to be heard from again.
  15. FBI obtained a voluntary collection of anthrax samples. Is that the way to conduct a multiple murder investigation: ask the scientists to supply you with the evidence to convict them? There is no report that spores were seized from anyone but Ivins, about 6 years after the attacks. This is a huge hole in the FBI’s “scientific” methodology.
  16. FBI claims it investigated Bioport and others who had a financial motive for the letters attack, and ruled them out. However, FBI provides not a shred of evidence from such an investigation.

FBI gave this report its best shot. The report sounds good. It includes some new evidence. It certainly makes Ivins out to be a crazed, scary and pathetic figure. If you haven’t followed this story intently, you may be convinced of his guilt.

On the other hand, there are reasons why a conspiracy makes better sense. If the FBI really had the goods, they would not be overreaching to pin the crime on a lone nut.

JFK, RFK, George Wallace, Martin Luther King, all felled by lone nuts. Even Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin was a lone nut. Now Bruce Ivins. The American public is supposed to believe that all these crimes required no assistance and no funds.

Does the FBI stand for the Federal Bureau of Invention?

-###-

Dr. Meryl Nass, MD is a leading expert on anthrax and anthrax vaccine. She has offered her research and expert testimony at several Congressional hearings in the U.S. Dr. Nass’s website anthraxvaccine.org offers in depth insight into anthrax, anthrax vaccine, biological warfare and related topics.

February 25, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , | 1 Comment

EU court strikes blow against Israeli settlers

By Andrew Rettman | EU Observer | February 25, 2010

The EU court in Luxembourg has ruled that Israel cannot pass off products made by its settlers on occupied Palestinian land as its own in order to get customs perks.

The verdict on Thursday (25 February) came in the case of German soft drinks firm Brita, which buys syrups from Israeli company Soda-Club in Mishor Adumin in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli customs authorities had put forward documents saying that the goods were made in Israel and fell under the customs rules of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

But the court ruling said Soda-Club should have obtained papers from the Palestinian Authority instead if it wanted any customs breaks.

“Products obtained in locations which have been placed under Israeli administration since 1967 do not qualify for the preferential treatment provided for under that [EU-Israel] agreement,” the court explained in a statement, referring to the 1967 Six-Day War.

The ruling sets an EU-wide precedent for Israeli imports to the union, worth €8.8 billion last year.

It is unlikely to have a big financial impact, however. The European Commission says that exports from settlements currently account for just 0.87 percent of the trade volume and are in many cases labeled as such, meaning they pay full EU customs duties.

But the judgment has political weight in the context of long-standing EU complaints that Israeli support for settlers is damaging the Middle East peace process.

February 25, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | 2 Comments

Al Gore Is Lying Low — for Good Reason

By Rex McBride | February 24, 2010

Maybe Al Gore’s been advised by legal counsel to lie low. He may be the leader of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) movement, but he’s not defending it in public, not even when it’s falling apart and his new fortune is based upon it.

Mr. Gore and his financial backers earned millions of dollars in start-up “green” companies and carbon trading schemes. If the scam worked, he could’ve become the first “carbon billionaire.”
“What goes up can fall down” applies to ill-gotten gains in the stock market or “carbon trading” schemes. In such schemes, it’s foreseeable that trusting investors will (a) not only get hurt when the scam collapses, but they’ll also (b) pursue legal remedies and sue him for fraud.
Mr. Gore’s financial gains were based on the contradictory and error-plagued assertion that man’s release of the trace gas CO2 will fry the planet.
Once it becomes clear to everyone that the AGW theory is based on cleverly manipulated data twisted by rigged computer models controlled by several dozen IPCC politicians/scientists, we can expect that investors who lose millions by investing in these companies will eventually haul Mr. Gore and the insider IPCC scientists into court.
Over the years, American tax dollars were poured down the fantasyland AGW “rat hole.” Sooner or later, Al Gore needs to answer some hard questions. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for lawsuits from private investors. Today, legal counsel will advise him to remain silent.
It’s impossible to predict how many lawsuits, or what kind, might arise once everyone realizes that the AGW scam dwarfs Bernie Madoff’s $50-billion Ponzi operation. New studies appear almost daily that further undercut AGW theory. The biggest daily newspaper in the Netherlands vindicated that country’s leading AGW critic in the article “Henk Tennekes — He was right after all.”
Dr. Tennekes was fired in the 1990s from a prominent research position and blacklisted for debunking AGW theory. He upset the same IPCC scientists who control the leading “peer review” climate research journals and who blocked the publication of all contrary research in those journals for decades.
As investors learn the extent of the scam, Mr. Gore’s start-up “green” companies will lose considerable value, like flaky dot-com companies lacking a real product. Investors in these “green” companies — who reasonably relied upon Gore’s alarming claims — may pursue several possible remedies:
– derivative shareholder lawsuits, disgorging from Mr. Gore and other senior officers in these companies any illicit gains from any insider trading that could be proven; and/or
– lawsuits against brokers who did not perform the SEC’s necessary “due diligence” research before peddling those shares; and/or
– civil RICO lawsuits against Mr. Gore and any IPCC scientists who participated in blocking the publication of contrary research, cooking the data, all of whose annual income skyrocketed from the public hysteria.
On the state level, it’s impossible to predict if one or more state attorney generals will look back on the tobacco industry cases and decide, representing the taxpayers of his or her state, to file criminal and/or civil RICO actions against Gore and the enriched IPCC scientists.
(On the federal level, while President Obama is in office, the Justice Department will not file RICO or SEC actions against their buddy Al Gore. Remember, the president originally hoped that Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade would generate over $600 billion in new corporate taxes — “emergency” measures justified by fantasy AGW theory.
Remember the joke about the government taxing air? In the Twilight Zone of Boxer-Kerry, say hello to cap-and-trade.)
If Mr. Gore’s “green” companies do crash and significantly injure private investors, attorneys in a civil lawsuit could compel Gore to answer questions like:
(1) When you claimed that “the science is settled,” did you mean that it’s “settled” that you and the IPCC scientists could make quick millions by manipulating the data and fomenting public hysteria?
(2) What does “peer review” mean if none of the IPCC scientists who controlled the academic journals protested that there was no original data to support your frightening claim of accelerated temperature increases after 1995?
(3) If the very scientists that the public trusted to act as the “check and balance” against careless research — or worse yet, to protect against research fraud — did not catch a “tiny” problem like not having original supporting data after 1995, does “peer review” mean that IPCC’s scientists would secretly work in concert to cover each other’s asses and keep the grants coming?
Such questions need answers.
In “The Dog Ate Global Warming”, an article at the Cato Institute, Patrick J. Michaels noted that “[i]f there are no data, there’s no science. U.S. taxpayers deserve to know the answer.”
Obviously, Al Gore cannot be compelled to answer questions in a criminal court under the 5th Amendment. However, his admissible bank and stock portfolio records would prove his skyrocketing wealth, making him a “deep pocket.”
Since 1970, the scope of RICO cases has grown far beyond prosecuting mafia operations. The law firm Nixon Peabody explained:
RICO was written in broad terms. To state a claim, a plaintiff must allege four elements: (1) conduct (2) of an enterprise (3) through a pattern (4) of racketeering activity… Each element of a RICO claim requires additional analysis: an “enterprise” is marked by association and control; a “pattern” requires a showing of “continuity” — continuous and related behavior that amounts to, or poses a threat of, continued criminal violations; and “racketeering activity” involves the violation of designated federal laws …
RICO lawsuits are now won in a wide variety of civil disputes — e.g., insurance companies working in concert to delay/shortchange payments owed to dentists.
Other RICO cases resulted in court judgments against the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club, Catholic sex crimes, and Major League Baseball.
It violates federal law to fake taxpayer-funded research and then manipulate or destroy data to enrich oneself. If an insider group secretly conspires to do so, it looks and smells like RICO.
If more AGW-destroying news rolls in, and if Gore’s “green” companies lose significant value, then shareholder derivative lawsuits and/or state RICO lawsuits will follow — more so as the losses grow.
Mr. Gore is in hiding today — no longer the “courageous” leader of the AGW movement. Apparently, Planet Earth is “no longer in grave danger” or “needing to be saved,” but Gore could lose all of his ill-gotten assets.
If the victim list grows and criminal intent is proven, Mr. Gore could do serious time. After a much smaller scam, Bernie Madoff got 150 years.
What if you want answers about the potential misuse of tax dollars that enriched AGW insiders but didn’t invest in one of Al Gore’s fantasies?
Call Congress and demand that the GAO audit all climate change grants. GAO has the professional audit expertise to follow the money, gather objective facts, and report on any significant fraud or abuse.

February 25, 2010 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | 1 Comment

UN envoy: Heritage sites not in Israel

Ma’an – 22/02/2010

Bethlehem – Robert Serry, the UN envoy for Middle East peace, expressed concern on Monday over Israel’s announcement regarding holy sites in Hebron and Bethlehem and the heightened tensions that have resulted.

“These sites are in occupied Palestinian territory and are of historical and religious significance not only to Judaism but also to Islam, and to Christianity as well,” Serry said in a statement.

“I urge Israel not to take any steps on the ground which undermine trust or could prejudice negotiations, the resumption of which should be the highest shared priority of all who seek peace. I also call for restraint and calm,” he said.

“As I underscored in my visit to Hebron last week, I would like to see more positive steps by Israel to enable Palestinian development and state-building in the area and throughout the West Bank, reflecting a genuine commitment to the two State solution,” he added.

February 25, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Comments Off on UN envoy: Heritage sites not in Israel

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | February 25, 2010

Obama’s provision of $54 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry will cost Americans much more than the probable 50% default rate that the Congressional Budget Office anticipates. While the federal government will guarantee the profits of investors, rate payers will suffer the inevitable rate hikes.

Higher electric rates will appear, not when plants begin operating, but years, if not decades, before they come on line. Several states allow customers to be billed for expensive new nuclear plants in advance. Naturally, these are the states where the initial, new, entirely untested, plants are proposed for construction. This arrangement further reduces investor exposure to cost over-runs or rising interest rates that are imposed due to the downgrading of credit ratings for facilities with deteriorating economic prospects.

It should be noted, that relieving investors of exposure to risk results in the elimination of incentives for sound management.

Although ‘prudence’ on the part of utility managers is a legal requirement, once sunk costs are waiting to be recovered it becomes quite elastic. Good money is thrown after bad. Rate payers, whose dollars are committed, will have little to no oversight, or input, into the administration of their investment dollars.

The interest burden of the staggering sums of capital that are tied up for years, or decades, while problems arise with the ‘new generation plants’ will ultimately be borne by the rate payers.

Initial rate hikes to cover ‘advance costs’ were to have gone into effect in Florida by January 1st, but Harvey Wasserman reports that:

Two Florida Public Service commissioners, recently appointed by Republican Governor Charlie Crist (now a candidate for the US Senate), helped reject over a billion dollars in rate hikes demanded by Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy, both of which want to build double-reactors at ratepayer expense. The utilities now say they’ll postpone the projects proposed for Turkey Point and Levy County.

The Associated Press reports that Georgia Power customers will see $9/month billing increases for nuclear power plants that many of them won’t live to see completed. Once the utility is committed, costs escalate, doubling or tripling original projections.

A recent study by Craig A. Severance* puts the generation costs for nuclear power generation (based on the higher cost of current plant designs) at 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour—more than triple present U.S. electricity rates. The study details the ruses that the nuclear industry employs in presenting fraudulent assertions of competitive pricing.

Public Citizen has collected state-by-state data from the U.S. Department of Energy. Using this data they find:

States that rely on nuclear power have significantly higher electricity rates than states that do not. In fact, our research shows that the higher the reliance on nuclear power, the higher the electric rates will be. That’s because nuclear power is significantly more expensive than coal or natural gas due to the higher capital, operation and maintenance costs necessary to protect Americans from radiation releases.

In the 20 non-nuclear states, the 1999 average cost of electricity was 5.52 cents per kilowatt/hour. The average cost of electricity in the 31 states that use nuclear power was 6.88 cents per kilowatt/hour. In other words, consumers in states that use nuclear power pay 25% more for their electricity than consumers in states that do not use nuclear power.

Furthermore, electricity rates increase in proportion to the states reliance on nuclear power. In the five states that get more than half of their electricity from nuclear power, electricity prices were 37% higher than in non-nuclear states.

Higher electric rates are a factor in the selection of business sites. Once the full costs of the new plants are realized, higher rates will drive some existing industries to less expensive locations, exacerbating the de-industrialization of the US. Lost jobs will be another hidden cost experienced by communities that allow new nuclear plants.

The possibility that higher rates could destroy the projected future increase in demand that the new power plants are intended to serve is very real. This is the very scenario that unfolded in India where Enron was provided with subsidies to build power generation capacity that turned out to be too expensive to sell. In fact, US demand for electricity is currently declining as it is, even without rate hikes. Whether or not the new generation of nuclear plants are needed by future consumers, utilities will recover the open-ended costs of their construction from rate payers.

Of course, some of the costs are entirely beyond estimation. For example the burden on future generations for plant decommissioning and waste ‘disposal’. There is always the possibility of an accident resulting in widespread, immediate exposure  to radioactive material as well as long term contamination.

The obvious question is: why is Obama inducing investors and utilities to take risks that the market won’t embrace on its own?

One answer would be that the same motive applies for the new generation of nuclear facilities as for the first. Nuclear power plants are part of the fabric of the larger nuclear industry which is a key element of the military industrial complex.

While it is theorized that the reliable lifespan of today’s nuclear weapons might be extended for decades there is no existing back up if the theories fail. Obama does not appear to foresee a future that includes a reduced number of nuclear warheads. An examination of the US Department of Energy fiscal year 2011 budget shows that funds earmarked for nuclear weapons production are increasing at an alarming pace over the fiscal year 2010 budget while funding for dismantling warheads retired from the current stockpile is being cut by 40%. Energy supply takes only a 15% priority:

Graph by Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at Institute for Policy Studies, where he is currently focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies.

The greatest cost of the $54 billion in loan guarantees that Obama is putting forward may very well be that our children will live in a world teeming with nuclear warheads. Obama is aggressively developing missile ‘defense’ systems, and he is also initiating a new arms race that will require a vibrant nuclear industry composed of all aspects of uranium exploration and mining, processing, enrichment, and weapons production along with the pool of expert technicians that will form the basis of US military dominance (at least in raw destructive power) for the rest of the 21rst century.

*A practicing CPA, Craig A. Severance is co-author of The Economics of Nuclear and Coal Power (Praeger 1976), and former assistant to the chairman and to commerce counsel, Iowa State Commerce Commission.

Permalink

Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 7, 2010

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

January 5, 2010 – Updated February 16, 2010:

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

Older articles by Atheo

February 25, 2010 Posted by | Author: Atheo, Economics, Militarism, Nuclear Power | 12 Comments

China snubs US call for harsher Iran sanctions

Press TV – February 25, 2010

Beijing once again has shrugged off Washington’s call for harsher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said she expects the UN Security Council to impose new sanctions against Iran within the “next 30 to 60 days.”

Clinton claimed that the US administration’s overtures to Tehran have helped Washington gain greater international support for tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

Clinton said, “Iran has left the international community little choice but to impose greater costs for its provocative steps.”

However, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said that his country believes diplomatic efforts have not yet been exhausted.

“We believe there is still diplomatic room for the Iranian nuclear issue,” Qin said.

“We hope all parties concerned can put the overall interest in their mind and enhance consultation and dialogue so as to come to a peaceful solution,” he added.

Qin said China would “continue to play a constructive role” in resolving the issue.

Aside from China, Russia — another veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council — has voiced opposition to new Iran sanctions proposed by Clinton.

Tehran has repeatedly declared that the Western-backed sanctions will not force it to give up the Iranian nation’s legitimate nuclear rights.

February 25, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | 2 Comments

HRW slams Obama’s rights records

Press TV – February 25, 2010

Obama has been criticized for his failure to deliver on his promise for the closure of the notorious Guantanamo prison.
Human Rights Watch has blasted US President Barack Obama’s change in “rhetoric” rather than “policies” as US transfers more Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Europe.

Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, says that vows of change in the US administration have been limited to presidential rhetoric, US media said Wednesday.

When it came to promoting human rights, there has undoubtedly been a marked improvement in presidential rhetoric, Roth said. However, he added, the translation of those words into deeds remains incomplete.

Roth referred to Obama’s failure to deliver on his promise for the closure of the notorious Guantanamo prison one-year after assuming power and urged the president to “aggressively” pursue the rights agenda.

Human Rights Watch and other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have called upon the US government to prosecute detainees in regular federal courts, repatriate them, or resettle them in safe countries.

Roth, however, says that Obama’s refusal to end military commissions and detention without trial continues the spirit of Guantanamo even after its complete shutdown in future.

Roth’s assessment comes amid reports of the transfer of four Guantanamo inmates to Spain and Albania from the US military prison in Cuba.

The four “terror suspects” have been identified as Saleh Bin Hadi Asasi, from Tunisia, Sharif Fati Ali al Mishad, from Egypt and Abdul Rauf Omar Mohammad Abu al Qusin from Libya, reports quoted US Justice Department officials as saying on Wednesday. The identity of the fourth captive has not been disclosed.

Around 190 prisoners still remain in custody in the US Naval detention facilities despite Obama’s own deadline to close Guantanamo by February 2010.

February 25, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | Comments Off on HRW slams Obama’s rights records