Stimulus Bill Is the Bomb

From the Peace Team:

We've heard President Obama on the TV alot talking about how he's promoting wind and solar power in the new stimulus bill. But in the Senate version of the bill, it's all a great, big, honking FRAUD, because the 50 billion in loan guarantees for "eligible technologies" there has been deceptively defined so that most of that money will instead go to finance nuclear and filthy coal power plants instead.

We know this because Republican Senator Bennett from Utah made sure that was the intent when he snuck this provision into the bill in the Appropriations Committee. Why it is still there after Bennett himself voted against the whole package is an outrage. But because the House bill lacks this garbage provision, we still have a chance to remove it in the reconciliation between the Senate and house versions.

And if that weren't bad enough, there is another billion for new nuclear weapons development. That's not the kind of infrastructure we were promised.

Because of the urgency of this action, please call your members of Congress toll-free at 800-828-0498 or 800-459-1887 to raise an immediate fuss about this. Then submit the action page below as well as a follow up.

No Nuclear/Coal Subsidies In Stimulus Bill:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum934.php
What a cruel and dishonest trick on the American people if this is all allowed to pass, to foist the sludge spill disasters of the future on us, in the sheep's clothing of a green energy spirit, which is what we thought we were all voting for in the last election.

All they've talked about for years is how vulnerable nuclear power plants would be to a possible terrorist attack, and now they want to build many more?? And this is on top to the fact we have nowhere to put all the dangerous nuclear waste existing plants have already generated. This is not the change we were promised and it's time to make that abundantly clear with our phone calls and emails. Please make your toll-free calls and submit the action page above.

Richardson Says "Out Now"

Reuters reports:

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson criticized his rivals on Thursday for failing to support an immediate and complete U.S. troop pullout from Iraq, saying it is time to "get all our troops out now."

In prepared remarks for a speech at Georgetown University, Richardson said Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all have taken a wait-and-see attitude about when to draw down U.S. troops.

"I say there has been enough waiting and seeing," he said. "If you haven't seen enough to know that we need to get all the troops out, then you aren't watching the same war that I and the rest of America are seeing."

The three leading Democratic presidential contenders -- Clinton, Obama and Edwards -- all call for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

He also proposed cuts of $57 billion in "unnecessary Pentagon spending" and said he would stop construction of new nuclear weapons.

Is It All About the Benjamins in Closing Down North Korea's Reactor?

CNN reports "Pyongyang and Washington have agreed on a three-week timeframe for shutting down the North's plutonium-producing reactor, a top U.S. nuclear envoy said Saturday after returning from a rare visit to the reclusive state.

Christopher Hill -- the chief U.S. negotiator at international talks on North Korea's nuclear programs -- said they were looking at a three-week timeframe for shutting down the Yongbyon reactor, when asked by reporters on his arrival at Tokyo's Haneda Airport."

At the root of negotiations have been frozen North Korean assets that were slow to transfer from a bank in Macau to one in Russia and UN energy aid funds for closing down the reactor.

"North Korea had made the money's release a main condition for its disarmament, and used the financial dispute as a reason to stay away from six-party nuclear talks -- involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. -- for more than a year, during which it conducted its first nuclear test explosion, in October.

North Korea is to ultimately get aid worth 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil and other political concessions when it disables the reactor."

How Many More?

It is Friday May 4th and I'll be out on the corner of Washington and Clinton Streets protesting the war. In the past week, there was Walk out on the War, Dr. Joe Gerson discussing his book Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World at PEACE Iowa, and today, it is the 37th anniversary of the Massacre at Kent State. I sense a building up of people who have had enough with the war and the unnecessary deaths of our soldiers and civilians.

Unfortunately, there are people who are convinced that pulling out our troops will lead to worse things like the "terrorists following us home". I believe there are two wars being waged, the one in Iraq and the psychological war being waged to convince us, against our better natures, that "they" are out to "get us". The Republican minority has been pounding us with that message all this week. Even the Democrats are hedging about our future in Iraq.

The only thing I know as a fact is our government, through our tax dollars, has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons ever assembled on the face of the earth. Our government has threatened to use them on Korea and Iran. While we have signed a number of nonproliferation treaties, we have not reduced our arsenal by even one bomb since inventing them, though we have promised innumerable times to do so. As an example, in November of 2001, President Bush in meeting with President Putin, said, "We will reduce our operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade, a level fully consistent with American security." To date, none of these warheads have been decommissioned. In fact, we want to renew these weapons and make them even more lethal.

The beautiful thing about our country is the ability of its people to live in denial about how our government serves us. I love our country because of the ideals that our nation's founders built it on, not the way our government functions.

It is because of the idea that "we, the people" can change things that I refuse to go over to the side of those who believe there is nothing that we can do about how things are. That is why I will be on the corner tonight holding a sign to end this war. It isn't the only thing I do, but it is the most visible. I don't live in the past, I live here and now.

Bush Administration's Latest Nuke-le-Headed Idea

The Bush administration has selected the design for America's first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades.

US officials say the warhead will not add to the country's nuclear arsenal, but will replace existing missiles.

Critics have complained it sends the wrong signal at a time when the White House is leading efforts to curb Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

The chosen design was developed in a Californian laboratory and is based on a warhead already tested in the 1980s.

The US Congress authorised design work on a new warhead in 2005 on the basis that there would not be any fresh missile tests.

No nuclear underground tests have been conducted since a ban in 1992.

The new warhead, due to be operational in five years' time, will be used to replace Trident missiles on submarines.