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Japan Doubles Admission of Radiation, Admits Three Meltdowns
AP is reporting today: “Japan’s government has doubled the estimate of how much radiation leaked from a tsunami-hit nuclear plant and says the damage to the reactors was greater than previously thought.” CNN International reports: “All three operating reactors at Fukushima Daiichi melted down after the plant was swamped by the tsunami that followed northern Japan’s magnitude 9 earthquake in March, Japanese authorities confirmed Monday.” Obama is meeting today with Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, which just announced it will shutdown all its nuclear reactors within 11 years. ROBERT ALVAREZ, kitbob at erols.com Alvarez is a former senior policy…
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Colbert or Goolsbee: Who’s the Clown?
Nearly two years ago, Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee, told Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert, “A year from now we’re going to be in a very happy place.” (June 15, 2009, 1:40 mark of the video.) TIMOTHY CANOVA, canova at chapman.edu Canova is a professor of international economic law at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters forewarning of financial crisis and examining government intervention in the economy, including “The Federal Reserve We Need” and “Legacy of the Clinton Bubble.”
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Yemen: “Crafted Chaos”
The Christian Science Monitor is reporting: “Yemen slipped closer to a full-blown civil war today as opposition tribesmen attacked the compound of President Ali Abdullah Saleh for the first time. While the president appears to have narrowly escaped serious injury, the escalating fighting represents an unprecedented challenge to his 32-year rule.” ABDUL GHANI AL-ERYANI, agiryani at gmail.com LARA ARYANI, lara.aryani at gmail.com Al-Eryani is a founding member of the Democratic Awakening Movement. Aryani (they are father and daughter) is a lawyer based in New York City. She just wrote a piece titled “Crafting Chaos: Presidential Games and Yemen’s Escalating Violence”…
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Left-Right Alliance Against Libya War
The Wall Street Journal reports: “House Republican leaders on Wednesday abruptly canceled a vote on a resolution forcing U.S. withdrawal from Libya amid signs an … alliance of liberals and conservatives could approve the measure, indicating Congress’s growing dissatisfaction with the extent of U.S. military operations overseas. “The House had been scheduled to vote on a resolution by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio) requiring President Barack Obama to withdraw from Libya within 15 days. The measure cites the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which says the president must get approval from Congress if a military operation lasts 60 days or more.”
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OAS Voting on Honduras, But There’s “Neither Reconciliation nor Democracy”
ALEXANDER MAIN, main at cepr.net Senior associate for international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Main said today: “Following the June 2009 coup d’etat that forcibly removed President Zelaya from power, Honduras’ participation in the OAS was suspended by unanimous decision of the 33 member states. Today, nearly two years later, there appears to be nearly unanimous support for Honduras’ readmission, with only Ecuador indicating that it is still opposed.
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Germans Abandoning Nuclear Energy
AP reports: “Europe’s economic powerhouse, Germany, announced plans Monday to abandon nuclear energy over the next 11 years, outlining an ambitious strategy in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster to replace atomic power with renewable energy sources.”
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Egyptian Military Courts and IMF
Today, online Egyptian media are reporting the noted blogger Hossam El-Hamalawy and TV presenter Reem Maged were scheduled to be questioned by the military prosecution for criticizing Egypt’s ruling military on air; but following an outcry, the military only asked them “to provide evidence of alleged military police violations,” AhramOnline reports. El-Hamalawy has tweeted that he is scheduled to appear on OnTV again tonight.
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Ousted Honduran President to Return Tomorrow
“President Zelaya’s return offers a brief glimmer of hope, but the ongoing repression by current President Porfirio Lobo’s military regime — now even worse than immediately after the coup — remains undiminished, as state security forces now routinely use tear gas canisters as lethal weapons, and teachers, trade unionists and campesinos in the opposition are still being assassinated with complete impunity. Lobo and Secretary of State Clinton insist that democracy has been restored to Honduras. But the reality on the ground remains terrifying, which is why over 75 Congress members are calling for a suspension of U.S. military and police…
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Tornadoes, Global Warming and Causes of “Generation Hot”
MARK HERTSGAARD, mark at markhertsgaard.com “I’m glad the New York Times has started covering what cutting-edge local leaders are doing to adapt to climate disruption,” says Hertsgaard, who has reported on climate change for two decades for outlets including Vanity Fair, The Nation and NPR and recently published the first popular book on climate adaptation, HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. “But the Times’s article leaves out a crucial part of the story: how we got into this mess. For more than 20 years, many of America’s political, business and media leaders have deliberately chosen to ignore scientific…
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G8, European Austerity and Protests
MARK WEISBROT, via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net, Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Weisbrot said today: “While it’s clear that the G8 is able to unite quickly to keep a European as head of the IMF, they have been slow to come up with any feasible solution to the crisis in the eurozone. Continuing to squeeze the economies of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain — driving up unemployment and dragging out the recession — is just making things worse. But they haven’t even been willing to discuss any viable alternative.”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn