The Japanese government has raised the emergency at the Fukushima nuclear plant to level seven, from a level five. This puts it at the highest level, as was Chernobyl.

Grossman and others have been advocating raising the emergency level as a first step for weeks. Professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, Grossman is author of "Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power" and "Power Crazy."

He said today: "Finally, the Japanese government is acknowledging a little reality. But the sad fact is that the Fukushima disaster is beyond a level seven disaster, it's off the books. You have multiple reactors and cooling pools.

Grossman just wrote the piece "Fukushima Nuclear Disaster at One Month: The Explosion of Nukespeak,'" which states: "The classic book on disinformation on nuclear technology is 'Nukespeak,' published in 1982. It is dedicated to George Orwell, author of '1984,' and written by Stephen Hilgarten, Richard C. Bell and Rory O’Connor.

It’s been nearly a decade since the PATRIOT Act became law in America. It’s time to put an end to the ongoing abuses under its draconian powers.
Government surveillance has invaded the privacy of innocent Americans en masse. The FBI has used national security letters to seize mountains of private records while gagging the recipients. And the “material support” provision has dramatically eroded First Amendment rights—as demonstrated by raids last fall targeting peaceful activists across the Midwest.

Having endured ten years of invasive and unconstitutional surveillance, we finally have a realistic opportunity to change this law—but only if members of Congress hear from concerned constituents across the country.

From April 18 through May 1, your congressional representatives will leave DC for two weeks and return to your area. Don’t let them leave without hearing your voice.

A battle for the heart and soul of American democracy is being waged in this country. But it might not be the battle you�re watching.

While most news outlets have focused on a possible federal government shutdown, an even more sinister attack on democracy is being waged in Wisconsin.

The battle may come down to a single and unusual race: the contest between incumbent state Supreme Court Justice, David Prosser, and his challenger, Assistant Attorney General Joanne Kloppenburg.

While judges are supposed to be nonpartisan, in reality, as we all learned the hard way in the presidential election of 2000, those who sit on the bench wield a great deal of political power.

In Wisconsin, the stakes couldn�t be higher, politically. Wisconsin�s activist Republican Gov. Scott Walker has already pushed through some radical -- and possibly illegal -- legislation that will surely be challenged in the courts in Wisconsin. The State Supreme Court will likely be asked to rule on that legislation and related issues.

Whatever the strategic — and humanitarian — considerations behind NATO/U.S. intervention in Libya, a larger force utterly indifferent to both, and seldom sufficiently newsworthy to merit mention, unites tyrant and rescuer and keeps the world tangled in an endless cycle of hellish violence far beyond the scope of the conflict that generates it.

I’m talking about the global arms trade, for which wars large and small, whatever their cause, whatever their “legitimacy,” are necessities without which the goods would not move. They’re also more than that, but not the sort of thing we salute or honor with granite statuary.

“This” — the Libyan no fly zone — “is turning into the best shop window for competing aircraft for years. More even than in Iraq in 2003,” said Francis Tusa, editor of the UK-based newsletter Defense Analysis, quoted in a recent Reuters article by Tim Hepher. For instance, enforcement of the no fly zone pitted two European-made jet fighters, the Typhoon and the Rafale, against one another for world leaders to view, and France, Tusa pointed out, “is particularly desperate to sell the Rafale.”

BANGKOK, Thailand -- William Young, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary commander who used Burmese and Lao tribesmen to kill Communists in Laos during the 1960s, died at home of a bullet to the head, reportedly clutching a crucifix alongside a gun, prompting speculation that he committed suicide. He was 76.

"Killing was part of the job", Mr. Young told Edward Loxton, who said he had interviewed Mr. Young extensively.

Mr. Young "became a top CIA Vietnam War-era hit-man in the jungles of Burma, Laos and Thailand," Mr. Loxton wrote on Monday (April 4) in The First Post, a British publication.

"Mr. Young was in poor health," said Susan Stevenson, the U.S. consul general in Thailand's northern town of Chiang Mai, where Mr. Young died on Friday (April 1).

Police said he died of a gunshot wound to the head, with a pistol next to his right hand while his left hand clutched a crucifix, according to news reports.

"In many ways, Mr. Young's exploits in this part of the world mirrored those of the U.S.," the American consul said in a statement dated Monday (April 4).