I've seen a lot of sick stuff in my career, but this was sick on a new level. Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earthquake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could "completely and utterly fail" during an earthquake.

"Utterly fail during an earthquake." And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure.

The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I'm not supposed to have. Good thing I've kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building ....

WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWER 1, FIFTY-SECOND FLOOR NEW YORK, 1986

[This is an excerpt in FreePress.org from Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, to be released this Monday. Click here to get the videos and the book.]

If Congressman Dennis Kucinich becomes simply Dennis Kucinich sans the "Congressman" his value to the peace movement need not diminish.

I admit it's been nice having someone in Congress who would say and do what he would. There have been and remain other relatively strong voices for peace, but none as strong as Kucinich's. His resolutions have forced the debates. His bills have changed the conversation. His questioning of witnesses has afflicted the comfortable while seeking to comfort the afflicted. Perhaps Congressman Norman Solomon will pick up the baton. Time will tell.

Petition: Investigate Betrayal of the Nobel Peace Prize
Endorse as an organization or an individual

Dear Members of Stockholm's County Administrative Board:

The signers of this petition include an array of peace groups and peace activists based in the United States. The undersigned wish to endorse and support the investigation that Stockholm’s County Administrative Board has reportedly begun based on it supervisory role over the Nobel Foundation and information received from Norwegian peace researcher/author Fredrik Heffermehl. We understand your Board has formally asked the Nobel Foundation to respond to allegations that the peace prize no longer reflects Nobel's will that the purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations. According to Heffermehl, “Nobel called it a prize for the champions of peace,…and it's indisputable that (Nobel) had in mind the peace movement, the movement which is actively pursuing a new global order ... where nations safely can drop national armaments.”

The predictable "blowback" is underway in post- Qaddafi Libya. The events in February underscore the chaos wrought by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) illegal coup in the former Italian colony of Libya.

The first week in February, the New York Times ran the headline "Qaddafi’s Weapons Taken by Old Allies, Reinvigorate an Insurgent Army in Mali." Mali’s foreign minister told the Times that "The stability of the entire region could be under threat." The dormant Mali rebel movement, the Tuaregs insurgents are assaulting towns in the northern Mali desert. The Tuarges is in possession of anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft guns, mortars, and other weapons that were part of the former Qaddifi military arsenal.

This should come as no surprise since ABC News reported last October 13 that former Qaddifi regime handheld missiles were popping up at Egyptian bazaars and the price for heat-seeking shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles had dropped from $10,000 to $4,000.

A follow up report by ABC News noted that out of the 20,000 portable shoulder-launch surface to air missiles, 15,000 remain unaccounted for.

The great Republican Contraceptoversy of 2012 further proves the decline of old line GOP moderatism. REPUBLICANS, the so-called "business" party, should be the first to acknowledge that an unintended pregnancy's cost to society is WAY HIGHER than the price of some pills. Republicans, oh yeah, the so-called champions of pro-life, should be first to concede that the more CONTRACEPTION availability, the less ABORTIONS. Unless of course this party's moderate wing is so bent by the religious right, it is no longer allowed to diiferentiate between the two.