While children continue to die twenty years after the Chernobyl catastrophe, an out-of-touch (and often corrupt) fringe advocates a "rebirth" for the failed technology that is killing them.

These pro-nuke die-hards seem unable to face the solution to both global warming and our economic future: the exploding revolution in renewable energy and efficiency. Their last-gasp attempt to revive the dead reactor dinosaur may be the last barrier to a truly green-powered planet.

The 1986 explosion at the reactor outside Kiev was the world's worst industrial disaster. It spewed at least 200 times more radiation than the bombing of Hiroshima. It's a fitting tombstone for the most expensive technological failure in human history.

Chernobyl happened exactly 20 years ago. But it is 49 since the first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957.

That day the nuke makers said it was "only a matter of time" before private insurers would protect the public from a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island-style accident, both of which they said were "impossible."

"There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity."~~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If it weren't so dangerously sad, the media gyrations to deflect attention from the sordid mess defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has made in Iraq would be amusing. But efforts to hide the truth are futile because Rumsfeld is literally surrounded by "stars" -- retired general officers speaking publicly about the fatal mistakes Rumsfeld made in his mad dash to "sweep everything up" and dash blindly off to war.

CNN and the Boston Globe say there are six officers, Fox News says "a handful," the New York Times says seven, the Christian Science Monitor plays it safe with "several," and Rumsfeld himself laughs it off with "two or three out of thousands."

There seems to be eight so far -- Gen. Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff, was cut off at the knees a year before his retirement for testifying under oath during a Senate hearing a month before the assault on Iraq that it would take "several hundred thousand" troops to quell ethnic tensions that could lead to an insurgency.

"I didn't want to die for Nixon," said a man I met recently in a Seattle park. He'd served on military bases in a half dozen states, then had a car accident just before being shipped to Vietnam. "The accident was lucky," he said. "It was a worthless war and I didn't want to go."

I agreed. I admired those who fought in World War II, I said. We owe them the debt of our freedom. But to die for Nixon's love of power, his fear of losing face, his deception and vindictiveness-to die for him was obscene. Nixon's war, the man said, had nothing noble about it. And neither did Iraq.

What does it mean to die in a war so founded on lies? Bush may lack Nixon's scowl, but he's equally insulated from the consequences of profoundly destructive actions. He came to power riding on the success of Nixon's racially divisive "Southern Strategy," which enshrined the Republicans as the party of backlash. He won reelection by similarly manipulating polarization and fear. Like Nixon, he's flouted America's laws while demonizing political opponents. His insistence that withdrawing from Iraq would create a world where terrorists reign echoes Nixon's claim that defeat

If water is the oil of the 21st century, then Michigan, smack dab in the middle of the Great Lakes, is Saudi Arabia. And after banging their straws at the Big Dipper for years, Nestle Corporation has finally succeeded in plunging into the liquid gold.

On February 28th Michigan Governor Granholm signed a bill that will, for the first time, permit a multinational corporation to scoop up given amounts of the Great Lakes and sell bottled water across the world. For the first time in history the concept of the Great Lakes as a commons for all to enjoy has been breached. And NAFTA, as we'll see, might insure a run on the Great Lakes.

The new Michigan law allows Nestle Corporation to continue its five-year takings of up to 250,000 gallons per day and sell them at a markup well over 240 times its production cost. Nestle's profit from drawing this water could be from $500,000 to $1.8 million per day. A key proviso is that the bottles can be no larger than 5.7 gallons apiece.