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Would you stop a friend from destroying the Earth?

What would you do if someone had a button that could destroy the earth and they were walking across the room to push it? Would you stand in the way? Would you talk them out of it? Would you sit by and watch, maybe make a sarcastic remark or two? What if the button might destroy the earth or might just destroy part of it? What if it might leave most of the earth intact but kill millions of people, but what if you had no way of being sure how far the destruction would spread?

Here is an animation made by the Union of Concerned Scientists on the damage a strike on Iran would likely cause, including the death of three million people.

Here is a New York Times article on what would likely happen next, including a war at least regional in scope and involving the United States.

Book Review: There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice and Equality

There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice and Equality
by Philip F. Rubio
University of North Carolina Press

Obtaining a job at the post office was considered to be a quite a coup for blacks, especially black men. A full-time postal employee could count on steady work, a good salary, paid vacations, health benefits, and for those who stayed thirty years, a guaranteed pension. I can still hear my late Aunt Clara proudly describing the boyfriend of one of her daughters: “Honey he got a good job; he work at the post office.” The only thing that topped dating a postal employee was dating a doctor or lawyer. As one of the largest employers of blacks in America, postal work was also crucial in lifting hundreds of thousands of African Americans into the middle class.

Fracking our way to a warmer and less stable world

Oil and gas corporations, their trade associations, mass media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, and numerous pundits continue to report there is a new day unfolding in the energy future of the U.S. Indeed, they sometimes say it is a revolution in the making. It's now feasible to mine hitherto unreachable or unprofitable sources of "unconventional" oil and gas. As a result, massive, environmentally-devastating mining of tar sands in Canada expands, with a proposed and controversial pipeline to carry the partly processed oil from Alberto to Texas. Drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the arctic, multiple off-shore locations drill ever-more deeply into the ocean floor and beneath it. As far as mining for shale gas and oil goes, the situation is described with words such as gushers, or bonanzas, or energy independence.

America's 2 new nukes are on the brink of death

The only two US reactor projects now technically under construction are on the brink of death for financial reasons.

If they go under, there will almost certainly be no new reactors built here.

The much mythologized "nuclear renaissance" will be officially buried, and the US can take a definitive leap toward a green-powered future that will actually work and that won't threaten the continent with radioactive contamination.

As this drama unfolds, the collapse of global nuclear power continues, as two reactors proposed for Bulgaria have been cancelled, and just one of Japan's 54 licensed reactors is operating. That one may well close next month, leaving Japan without a single operating commercial nuke.

Georgia's double-reactor Vogtle project has been sold on the basis of federal loan guarantees. Last year President Obama promised the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power, $8.33 billion in financing from an $18.5 billion fund that had been established at the Department of Energy by George W. Bush.

The Shifting Strategies of Empire

Remarks at the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) Conference:

President Obama this week declared the war on Iraq to be an honorable success that has given us a brighter future. Are you fired up? Ready to go?

Eric Holder this month explained that it's legal for a president to kill anyone anywhere, or to imprison them, or to spy on them. I started to get upset about this, but then I remembered that Holder is a Democrat. That made me feel much better.

Leon Panetta told Congress this month that a president can launch a war without Congress and without the United Nations and without any legal restrictions, that a NATO decision to go to war makes a war legal, that a decision by an ad hoc coalition to go to war makes a war legal, and that in fact there's no way for a war launched by a U.S. president not to be legal. At first this sounded like a dangerous doctrine, until I remembered that the president is not a Republican, and no Republican is going to be president for at least several months. So, there's nothing to worry about.

Obama declares war on Iraq an honorable success 2 weeks early for April Fool's Day

President Proclaims ‘National Day of Honor’ - American Forces Press Service
On March 19, 2012, the ninth anniversary of U.S. forces moving into Iraq, President Barack Obama proclaimed that day to be “A National Day of Honor.”
Here’s is the text of the president’s proclamation:

"Nine years ago, members of the United States Armed Forces crossed the sands of the Iraq-Kuwait border and began one of the most challenging missions our military has ever known. They left the comforts of home and family, volunteering in service to a cause greater than themselves. They braved insurgency and sectarian strife, knowing too well the danger of combat and the cost of conflict. Yet, through the dust and din and the fog of war, they never lost their resolve. Demonstrating unshakable fortitude and unwavering commitment to duty, our men and women in uniform served tour after tour, fighting block by block to help the Iraqi people seize the chance for a better future. And on December 18, 2011, their mission came to an end."

Young women and healthcare coverage

On March 23, protestors gathered in Cleveland to protest the Affordable Care Act’s mandate of contraception coverage, which brings nearly unprecedented reform to women’s healthcare. For young women in America, the ACA’s preventative-related policies are crucial for the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle.

The transition out of high school or college leaves many young women teetering on the edge of limited healthcare or no healthcare at all. Thanks to the ACA, young people can stay covered on their parents’ policy until the age of 26. Young women are now freer to explore entrepreneurial opportunities, non-traditional jobs, volunteer work or further education without having to worry about how or where they can get basic health care.

Aung San Suu Kyi stoops to conquer Burma

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Burma's Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is predicted to easily win parliament seat in Sunday's (April 1) by-election, amid expectations that Washington will respond by easing economic sanctions, but the polls also symbolize how far she has fallen.

Forty-five of 48 seats in parliament are to be contested on Sunday (April 1). The remaining three seats in Kachin state await a ceasefire between the military and ethnic Kachin rebels.

Several of Mrs. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party candidates are also expected to win slots in the 664-seat bicameral national parliament.

Combined with other opposition politicians, however, Mrs. Suu Kyi and her allies will be little match against the regime.

Ranking military officers permanently occupy 25 percent of all chambers in parliament, and currently enjoy a 75 percent majority of the remaining seats through their pliant Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) parliamentarians.

In addition to the NLD and USDP, 15 other parties are competing in the by-elections.

The Supremes: What on Earth are they thinking?

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has, this week, been considering various aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). While political pundits and court watchers have been holding forth on what this all means, the ability to discern anything from the oral arguments is nearly impossible.

The first day of arguments centered on the whether or not cases brought against the PPACA should even be heard in light of a law called the Anti-Injunction Act. The basic concept under this statute is that a person who has petitioned for relief (brought a lawsuit), must be able to demonstrate actual harm in order to have standing to bring the case. In the case of the PPACA no one has had to pay a penalty for not purchasing healthcare insurance so far. In fact, under the PPACA, this won’t happen until at least 2015 when folks who don’t or can’t purchase insurance will have the penalty enforced by the IRS.

The Bad Apple

So it turns out that mass-murder suspect Robert Bales once used a bad word in a Facebook conversation.

This is one of the more bizarre details of his life that has come breathlessly to light in the media, along with his big smile, arrest record and disastrous financial dealings. The word was “hadji” (misspelled “hagi”), which is the racial slur of choice among U.S. troops to denigrate Iraqis; and stories where I have read about his use of it fixate on it judgmentally, as though to suggest it might explain something: the tiny flaw that reveals a propensity for massacring children.

Something had to be wrong with him, right? As always, the mainstream media’s unquestioning assumption is that the atrocity is the work of an individual nut . . . a flawed patriot, a bad apple. Oh so quietly ignored is the possibility that there’s something wrong with the military system and culture that produced him.

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