Global

Gaza has changed the political equation in Palestine. 

Moreover, the repercussions of this devastating war are likely to alter the political equation in the entire Middle East and to re-center Palestine as the world’s most urgent political crisis for years to come. 

 Since the establishment of Israel, facilitated by Britain and protected by the United States and other Western countries, the priorities have been entirely Israeli. 

     ‘Israeli security’, Israel’s ‘military edge’, ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’, and much more, have defined the West’s political discourse on the Israeli occupation and apartheid in Palestine. 

 This bizarre US-western understanding of the so-called conflict, that an oppressor has ‘rights’ over the oppressed, has enabled Israel to maintain a military occupation over Palestinian Territories that has lasted for over 56 years.

We focus in the GREEP Zoom #155 on the in-your-face crisis at California’s Diablo Canyon nuke reactors.

While the 39-year-old Unit One is shut for refueling, a growing public movement demands the obvious—test this crumbling old nuke for embrittlement and much more BEFORE it’s allowed to re-open.

After four decades of blasting heat, pressure and radiation, Diablo’s Reactor Pressure Vessels are fried to the point of shattering like glass should they be flooded with coolant water in an emergency.

In other words….if the “brakes” are applied at uninsured Diablo during a major accident, the whole place will blow up.

Steam, Hydrogen and fission explosions will blast apocalyptic radioactive cloud into the steady breezing blowing south to Los Angeles.

Then it’ll go west into the Central Valley, then north to the Bay Area….and all across the continental United States.

LINDA SEELEY of the Mothers for Peace explains how her long-lived, incredibly persistent group is fighting to keep Diablo shut in the court system, regulatory agency and Public Utilities Commission.

We — by which I mean most of humanity — are still playing with the so-called “just war theory,” the intellectual justification for war dating back to St. Augustine and the early centuries of the Common Era.

You know, violence is morally neutral — and thus, when the cause is just and sacred, go for it! Kill the non-believers. Make the world a better place.

Our Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Zoom #154 opens with a timely, critical report on Julian Assange from VINNIE DESTEFANO in Los Angeles.

We then join LINDA SEELEY from the Diablo Canyon Mothers for Peace on the status of the critical fight to keep that insane nuke shut.

CATHY WOLF updates us from Portland on the Pine Tree Alliance campaign to take over the electric utilities in Maine.

MAYA VON ROSSUM fills us in further with the power of her GREEN AMENDMENTS in states where environmental protection has been taken to another level.

In the second hour we plunge into the Israel-Palestine horror show with a series of heartfelt, highly intelligent, carefully limited three-minute statements.

This powerful, uniquely civil section includes deeply moving statements from nearly 20 people, including DAVID SALTMAN, LISSA MATROSS, VINNIE DESTEFANO, DOROTHY REIK, DENNIS BERNSTEIN, WENDI LEDERMAN, MIKE HERSH, LYNN FEINERMAN, JUSTIN LEBLANC, MYLA RESON, STEPHEN FRASER, DR. RUTH STRAUSS and many more.

History will not forgive those who have remained silent, exhibited or expressed ‘balanced’ positions - or worse, defended Israel’s ongoing genocide in an already besieged, impoverished and overcrowded Gaza. 

 This is not a cliché declaration, a desperate attempt aimed at jolting the world, especially the Western world, to show a degree of morality as Palestinians are dying in their thousands, as the pulverized bodies of children are scattered in every neighborhood in Gaza. 

 No, this is about history.