War Made Invisible – How America Hides the Human Toll or Its Military Machine
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“Mad as hell, with a sense of humor”
With her usual precision, Molly Ivins commented: “If Will Rogers and Mother Jones had a baby, Jim Hightower would be that rambunctious child — mad as hell, with a sense of humor.”
Jim is the real deal – a progressive populist so compelling that he was chosen to be the finale guest on the intrepid PBS program “Bill Moyers Journal.”
I’m proud that Jim Hightower is making a special trip to California to speak in support of my emerging campaign for Congress.
To read more, please click here.
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The Need for Truth About Nuclear Dangers
By Norman Solomon
On the edge of Capitol Hill, day after day, we heard wrenching testimony from people whose lives had been ravaged by the split atom.
That was three decades ago.
I was coordinating the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims in 1980, one year after Three Mile Island. The voices came from uranium miners, atomic workers, veterans, downwinders exposed to atmospheric nuclear bomb tests . . . and many others. The people who testified were from a wide array of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. But in addition to radiation exposure and suffering, they had one huge experience in common.
They'd been lied to—not once or twice, but repeatedly. Year after year.
There is no danger, the officials told them. You are safe. Radiation levels? Not to worry. But gradually, the clusters of cancer or leukemia or severe thyroid ailments or birth defects became too conspicuous to ignore. Still, officials kept saying that the nuclear industry was blameless.
To read the complete article, click here.
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On Speaking Truth to Nuclear Power
The other night, as news from Japan took a turn for the worse, I stayed up late and wrote about Nuclear Power Madness. I hope you'll read the article and pass it on.My opposition to nuclear power is longstanding. In the late 1970s, while advocating for solar and wind energy as well as conservation, I devoted two years to public education and nonviolent civil disobedience that aimed to shut down a large nuclear power plant operating just forty miles from Portland, Oregon.Later, I served as director of the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims and co-authored Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation. (The book is now online; if you'd like to take a peek, click here.)Despite the latest in a long line of presidential assurances, the nuclear facts are dire. As the director of Public Citizen's Energy Program wrote this week, "There are alternatives. Had Japan invested in rooftop solar and wind turbines to the degree it spent maintaining and building nuclear reactors, the country wouldn't be grappling with the potential of a full-scale nuclear meltdown."The ominous power of the nuclear industry extends from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., where an atomic lobbying force throws buckets of money at Capitol Hill.
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Nuclear Power Madness
Published on Monday, March 14, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever.
Political elites are still clinging to the oxymoron of “safe nuclear power.” It’s up to us — people around the world — to peacefully and insistently shut those plants down.
There is no more techno-advanced country in the world than Japan. Nuclear power is not safe there, and it is not safe anywhere.
As the New York Times reported on Monday, “most of the nuclear plants in the United States share some or all of the risk factors that played a role at Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel generators and batteries that could fail in extreme circumstances.”
Nuclear power — from uranium mining to fuel fabrication to reactor operations to nuclear waste that will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years — is, in fact, a moral crime against future generations.
But syrupy rhetoric has always marinated the nuclear age. From the outset — even as radioactive ashes were still hot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — top officials in Washington touted atomic energy as redemptive. The split atom, we were to believe, could be an elevating marvel.
President Dwight Eisenhower pledged “to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma” by showing that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”
Even after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 — and now this catastrophe in Japan — the corporate theologians of nuclear faith have continued to bless their own divine projects.
Thirty years ago, when I coordinated the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims on the edge of Capitol Hill, we heard grim testimony from nuclear scientists, workers, downwinders and many others whose lives had been forever ravaged by the split atom. Routine in the process was tag-team deception from government agencies and nuclear-invested companies.
By 1980, generations had already suffered a vast array of terrible consequences — including cancer, leukemia and genetic injuries — from a nuclear fuel cycle shared by the “peaceful” and military atom. Today, we know a lot more about the abrupt and slow-moving horrors of the nuclear industry.
<< To read the rest of this article, click here. >>
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Crisis for Working People: The New Corporate Assault
To listen to Norman Solomon's Feb. 22 interview on C-SPAN Radio, click here.
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To visit the website of the Norman Solomon for Congress Committee…
Click here for the Norman Solomon for Congress Committee.
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Update — “Toward a Greening of Politics”
For a while now, I've been hearing questions like: "Sure you want to jump into that cesspool?"
I answered with a short essay — "Toward a Greening of Politics" — in the current issue of the North Bay Bohemian. To read it, click here.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Bay Guardian printed another piece I wrote on some of the key reasons I'm planning to run for Congress if Lynn Woolsey decides not to seek re-election. For that article, click here.
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Toward a Greening of Politics
North Bay Bohemian — Jan. 26, 2011
By Norman Solomon
"Sure you want to jump into that cesspool?"
I've heard countless variations of the same question in recent months, as the possibility of running for Congress has become more real. With all the big-money hit pieces and mud fights that pass for "politics" these days, no wonder so many people see election campaigns as little more than depravity masquerading as democracy.
But there are lives in the balance, near and far, from the North Bay to Afghanistan. A list of what's at stake would be endless: the rights of workers, the ecology of rivers and the injustices of a healthcare system largely run for corporate profit.And with the U.S. military now spending more than $2 billion every day, grim results of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of military" are all around us. Public schools hold bake sales while Pentagon spending continues to go through the roof.
At a time when budget cuts are having dire effects on our own communities, I think of the distorted priorities that I saw in 2009 during a visit to Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world. That nation, in desperate need, does not need Uncle Sam to escalate warfare.
Here at home, an upsurge of hope peaked a couple of years ago with the inauguration of President Obama. Since then, we've come back to earth—which, in the long run, is where we should be—with feet on the ground and eyes on the horizon. Pragmatism and idealism can be a very good match.
To read complete article, click here.
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Announcing an exploratory committee for Congress
I've just formed an exploratory committee for Congress. To read the announcement, please click here.
I want to thank everyone who has encouraged me to take this step. The expressions of support that I've received from hundreds of people have been deeply gratifying.
With so much at stake — in the midst of perpetual war, a destructive economy, unchecked global warming and so many other dire realities — our challenge is to create the kind of future that we want to leave for the next generations.
For a sampling of my statements on policy issues in recent months, please click here.
For a summary of my background, click here.
You'll find a lot more — including video, photos and articles — on the Norman Solomon for Congress Exploratory Committee website.
I'm very much looking forward to what comes next with this exploratory committee — house parties, issue forums, listening tours, public debates and more — an ongoing swirl of activity across the North Bay.
And I want to invite you to be part of it all.
To sign up for news on what's upcoming, take a minute to fill out "Get Email Updates" at the top of the exploratory committee website.
If you'd like to host a house party where I can speak, hear people's concerns and respond to questions, please send me an email at NormanSolomonNorthBay@gmail.com and put "House Party" in the subject line.
If you'd like to contribute to this effort, please click here.
Going forward, there's no better keynote than these words from Senator Paul Wellstone: "In the last analysis, politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine."
Best wishes,
Norman
P.S. — I'd appreciate it if you forward this email to people you know. It would also be a big help if you post some of the links on websites, listservs, Facebook and Twitter. And please suggest that people visit the website, www.NormanSolomonExploratory.com.