With the news that the UN General Assembly has voted 138-9 to accept Palestine as a “non-member observer state,” fireworks erupted and horns honked in Gaza. Finally, Palestinians were feeling as if they were having their day in the sun.

First, Israel ended its latest attack – which some believe should be re-named “Operation Pillar of Shame” – just eight days after it began, agreeing to a ceasefire that actually offered some concessions and to continue negotiating in the coming weeks.

And then, a Palestinian state received overwhelming recognition and acceptance from virtually the entire rest of the world, with the United States, Israel and Canada now clearly alone and anachronistic. Yes, the U.S. is still able to limit that status to a symbolic one, but the writing is on the wall.

The surprise dividend from these two victories – however small — is a spirit of genuine unity not seen for years between the once-warring political parties – with Fatah cheering on Hamas while it launched a surprisingly strong show of resistance against Israeli drones and F-16s, and Hamas dropping its opposition to Fatah’s bid for UN observer status.

The Middletown, Ohio story continues, like an old soap opera! In response to that city’s council action raising the city manager’s pay, the city’s unions have now pushed back, at least for now killing that increase. Middletown’s city council had inspired last year’s attack on public worker’s bargaining rights by officially asking the Ohio state legislature to “take action to limit public union contracts, so local governments can control their finances.” After last year’s massive struggle by organized labor and regular Ohioans killed SB 5, the state’s attempt to destroy public worker bargaining rights, Middletown’s city voted two week’s ago to change the rules under which the city’s workers are compensated so that only the city manager could get a major pay increase. The council took this action after successfully urging that city’s unions to agree to a wage freeze through the lifetime of their contracts with the city.

In the wake of this fall's election, the disintegration of America's decrepit atomic reactor fleet is fast approaching critical mass. Unless our No Nukes movement can get the worst of them shut soon, Barack Obama may be very lucky to get through his second term without a major reactor disaster.

All 104 licensed US reactors were designed before 1975---a third of a century ago. All but one went on line in the 1980s or earlier.  

Plunging natural gas prices (due largely to ecologically disastrous fracking) are dumping even fully-amortized US reactors into deep red ink. Wisconsin's Kewaunee will close next year because nobody wants to buy it. A reactor at Clinton, Illinois, may join it. Should gas prices stay low, the trickle of shut-downs will turn into a flood.

But more disturbing are the structural problems, made ever-more dangerous by slashed maintenance budgets. 

Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock
By David Margolis
Yale University Press
It is one of the most searing pictures of the modern civil rights movement, and one with which I have always been fascinated: a lone black teenaged girl with her notebook hugged tightly to her chest, her face devoid of expression and her eyes obscured by sunglasses, is walking down the street. Behind her is a crowd of angry whites, one of whom’s face is contorted with rage as she yelled “Go home nigger!”

I always assumed the white girl was an adult whose face summed up the way many whites in Little Rock, Arkansas felt on that fateful day about integration in general and black people in particular. Imagine my surprise when I learned she was just fifteen years old and a student at Central High School, which Elizabeth and eight other black children were attempting to integrate that day. The white girl was Hazel Bryan, the black teenager was Elizabeth Eckford,, and David Margolis does a superb job of tracing their lives from the point of the photograph to the present.

TAKOMA PARK, MD - December 2nd will mark 70 years since scientists achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, without knowing then, or now, what to do with the radioactive waste it would generate. That very first waste was generated by the Enrico Fermi team at the University of Chicago in 1942 as part of the Manhattan Project. Next month, a special nuclear waste conference of experts will be held at that same site, December 1, 2 and 3, both to observe the date and to deliver panels and plenaries that cover every aspect of the radioactive waste challenge, from uranium mining through nuclear weapons production, nuclear energy generation and the unsolved waste “disposal” problem. The conference is hosted by Nuclear Energy Information Service and Beyond Nuclear. (See details at end of press release).