Another socialist blog

Nuclear power is losing some of the stink it acquired in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster and the Three Mile Island accident. This rehabilitation is undeserved.

Most people I talk to are unaware of the fact that nuclear plant operators enjoy a fat subsidy from the public. In a real free market they would have to buy liability insurance like every other power plant operator, indeed, like every other business. But this isn’t a free market and nuclear power gets a special break, courtesy of the Price-Anderson Act of 1957. Price-Anderson sets a ceiling on the total damages that the nuclear industry’s insurance pool must pay in the event of an accident. The current value of the pool is roughly $12 billion, which sounds like a lot unless you know that the potential damage from a catastrophic nuclear accident is 50 times that.

A 1982 Sandia National Laboratories study, leaked to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), quantified the consequences of a catastrophic nuclear power accident in the U.S. Besides potentially causing thousands of early deaths and cancers, an accident could cause as much as $313 billion in damages, or about $600 billion today with inflation. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident has cost Ukraine, Belarus and southern Russia an estimated $350 billion.

If you enjoyed paying for Hurricate Katrina relief, you’ll love getting the bill for the next nuclear disaster.

I’ve mentioned before that corporations oppose government invervention in the so-called free market, except when the free market doesn’t give them what they want. Here is yet another example, from corporate bad citizen Microsoft: the company claims that Linux and other free software products violate Microsoft patents and they expect that people will pay Microsoft for the privilege of using free software. The same company that flouts anti-trust law and bribes politicians would like everyone else to be more reverent about the law, which upholds idiotic patents along with reasonable ones.

The news is full of reports about the foiled plot to attach Fort Dix. It is being reported widely as a “terrorist” attack. Though many news organizations are being careful about it, the Washington Post called it a terrorist plot, and ABC News called the suspects a “terror cell” on their web site and used the word “terrorist” to describe the plot in their broadcast this morning. The FBI has been helping the media along, calling the suspects “homegrown terrorists”.

There was a time when the word “terrorism” had a clear meaning: killing or threatening to kill innocent civilians to achieve a political goal. Using that definition, the Fort Dix attack would of course not be terroristic, because the alleged targets were soldiers. This is not hairsplitting. Soldiers are capable of defending themselves, unlike civilians who generally can’t confront an armed opponent. They aren’t likely to respond to an attack by being terrified. If you don’t agree with that, then you must think Pearl Harbor was a terrorist attack.

But clarity does not serve the purposes of our government. So they use the word “terrorism” to describe almost any opposition to the U.S. Under the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, free speech activities can be construed as terrorist if the prosecutor chooses to do so. And blowing up innocent civilians? Depends on which side you’re on. Luis Posada Carriles is back on the street with his immigration charges dismissed, and his extradition unlikely. Who knows, maybe he’ll get a pardon and a medal.

Luis Posada Carriles faces trial this week for immigration fraud, a trivial charge for a man accused of bombing an airliner and killing all 73 people aboard. Posada enjoys a special status among accused terrorists: he’s a friend of the American right wing because he’s an anti-Castro militant and a former CIA operative.

That means he gets a pass on several terrorist bombings including the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, and a series of bombings of tourist hotels and other tourist sites in Havana in 1997. Or, at least, Posada gets as much of a pass as the Bush administration can arrange. The government is cooperating with the defense to bar potentially damaging evidence from Posasa’s trial, including any mention of his ties with the CIA. On the other hand, a grand jury in New Jersey is weighing evidence in the tourist bombing cases, and there is a growing international clamor for Posada to be extradited.

Both Cuba and Venezuela have demanded Posada’s extradition. The Bush administration has refused, on the grounds—wait for it—that Posada would face torture if he were extradited. As Jon Stewart has pointed out, this administration is no longer capable of doing anything that is not ironic.

It goes without saying that the director of the CIA in 1976, George H.W. Bush, who was Posada’s boss when the airliner was brought down, won’t be facing prosecution.

The Bush regime has since 2001 been telling us that they are starting wars to protect us from terrorism. I pointed out some time ago that far from being a force against terrorism, the U.S. government is itself terrorist, and the so-called War on Terror™ will only create more enemies and more terrorism against us. They went ahead with the wars.

Then terrorism went way up according to the National Counterterrorism Center, so the government stopped producing terrorism statistics to avoid embarrassment. Presumably terrorism kept increasing despite this decisive action against it.

When reporters ask the obvious question, whether terrorism has been increased because of the actions of the U.S. and its allies, the response is to dodge the question and condemn the questioners as somehow sympathetic to the terrorists.

Now comes Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, who has perhaps the most complete database on suicide attacks in the world. His research shows that contrary to the Bush regime’s propaganda,

• Suicide bombers are targeting those they see as foreign occupiers and their collaborators.
• Three quarters of the attackers are from Iraq or from Sunni-dominated states bordering Iraq (i.e., not Iran). Indeed there have been no confirmed Shiite suicide bombers at all.
• More than 50 percent of the targets were military.
• Hundreds of bombers have already laid down their lives in suicide bombings, but the supply of future suicide bombers is getting larger, not smaller. Indeed, most of the bombers are “walk-in volunteers,” not people who’ve been carefully brainwashed by a terrorist organization.

And, not surprisingly, suicide bombing is increasing. Pape notes that:

Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been essentially doubling in Iraq every year that we’ve had more or less 150,000 American combat soldiers stationed there….

Before the invasion there hadn’t been a suicide bombing in Iraq’s history.

Now that the meaningless “showdown” is over, and George Bush has vetoed the war funding bill, it’s time for Democrats to step back and think. They should be thinking about how to do the right thing in Iraq, but if that’s too much to ask (and it is), they should at least think about how to avoid being left holding the bag in 2009.

The Bush regime has no motive to pull troops out of Iraq. War profiteers are still making money hand over fist, and Bush doesn’t want to stop the infusion of cash to loyal Republican supporters. Like every war, this war distracts people from repressive domestic policies, and allows Bush to continue beating the September 11th drum to scare people into voting Republican.

So it’s likely, very likely, that the troops will be in Iraq through 2008 and will become the problem of a Democratic White House. Republicans hope that the Democrats will get the blame for “losing” the war when they pull the troops out during a Democratic administration. And given our experience with Congressional Democrats, the Republicans are right: Democrats can be counted on to continue trying to avoid “defeat” in Iraq by withdrawing oh-so-slowly.

The answer is to end the war now. Rather than passing a war funding bill with conditions, rather than passing a short-term funding bill, the Democrats should heed the voters and pass no funding bill at all. Republicans will cry foul and say the Democrats are causing chaos in Iraq. But that’s happening already. It can only get worse, whether we stay or go, but chaos and American occupation of the Middle East is still worse than chaos.

The Democrats have a lot to answer for. They voted for this war, and they’ve voted for every funding bill for the last four years. Now they want us to believe they “get it” about the war. Well it’s time to prove it. If you’re serious about ending the war, stop paying to prolong it.

Poor George Tenet. The former CIA director is on his book tour, whining about how the Bush administration trashed his reputation.

The hardest part of all this has just been listening to this for almost three years, listening to the vice president go on “Meet the Press” on the fifth year of 9/11, you know, and say, “Well, George Tenet said ’slam dunk,’” as if he needed me to say “slam dunk” to go to war with Iraq, as if he needed me to say that….

[Y]ou know, at the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. That’s all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. When you don’t have that anymore, well, you know, there you go. Trust was broken.

He’s right about the importance of trust and honor. And he’s right to say (now, too late, when everybody knows it) that the Bush regime has proven itself unworthy of trust.

But excuse me, where was George Tenet four years ago? If it was dishonorable for Bush to lie about whether the CIA director was doing a good job, how much more dishonorable was it to stand silent while the White House was lying to drum up public support for the war? Tenet had to know they were lying, because he was in a position to compare what he told Bush, to what Bush told us. And what Bush told us, turned out to be unverified rumors, cherry-picked to serve the decision Bush had already made back in 2000. It’s all very well to denounce them as liars when you’re promoting your book, but a really honorable man would have stood up and spoken the truth when there was nothing to gain. Nothing, that is, but a bit of honor.

But just a little bit. The media should be much, much more skeptical of the honor and trustworthiness of anyone who would agree to serve as head of the CIA in the first place. Historically, the CIA is a criminal organization, and I’ve seen nothing in the last several years of political assassinations and secret prisons to change my mind.