For most Palestinians, leaving Gaza through Egypt is as exasperating a process as entering it. Governed by political and cultural sensitivities, most Palestinian officials and public figures refrain from criticizing the way Palestinians are treated at the Rafah border. However, there is really no diplomatic language to describe the relationship between desperate Palestinians -- some literally fighting for their lives -- and Egyptian officials at the crossing which separates Gaza from Egypt.

"Gazans are treated like animals at the border," a friend of mine told me. She was afraid that her fiancé would not be allowed to leave Gaza, despite the fact that his papers were in order. Having crossed the border myself just a few days ago, I could not disagree with her statement.

The New York Times reported on June 8: "After days of acrimony between Hamas and Egypt over limitations on who could pass through the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, Hamas said Egypt had agreed to allow 550 people a day to leave Gaza and to lengthen the operating hours of the crossing."

And so the saga continues.

This may be the moment history has turned definitively against atomic energy.

To be sure:  we are still required to fight hard to bury reactor loan guarantees in the United States.  There are parallel struggles in China, Indian, England, France and South Korea.

The great fear is that until every single reactor on this planet is shut, none of us is really safe from another radioactive horror show.

Thus the moment is clearly marked at Fukushima by three reactors and a radioactive fuel pool still untamed after three months, with the horrific potential to do far more apocalyptic damage than we've seen even to date.

That image includes Japanese school children being issued Geiger counters to carry with them 24/7.

And Fukushima's radiation raining down on the United States, with links to reports of a heightened infant death rate in Seattle.

LONDON -- Before long public pressure might just lead Britain to drop out of participation in US wars, a move that would seriously damage future pretenses of acting as an international coalition.

I've spent the past few days here in London talking with leaders of the Stop the War Coalition, sitting in on a weekly planning meeting, and attending a day-long conference on building opposition to the Afghanistan and Libya wars. This movement is strong, smart, well-organized, and eager to work with other peace movements around the world.

There are twenty thousand nuclear weapons on the planet, a quarter of them ready for launch at a moment’s suicidal impulse, aimed at countries that stopped being enemies two decades ago. It’s six minutes to midnight. “Disarmament” has as much cachet in America’s corridors of power as “socialism.”

And the U.S. House, bless its evil heart, has just sliced the Achilles tendon of peace. It recently passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, which has many seriously worrisome provisions, two of which stand in stark, grinning contrast to one another.

One part of the bill, which now heads to the Senate, would give the president unilateral authority to pursue the “war on terror” anywhere in the world. Anywhere evil resides, the president could go after it, no congressional approval needed. It’s kind of like that already, but this would legalize the streamlining of war and help push the United States, in its role as global superpower, completely beyond the constraints of democracy.

"Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water."~ Albert Einstein
"There is a way of survival which will strengthen and help you. There is also a way of destruction which will push you into oblivion." ~ I Ching



Over the last fifty years it has become apparent that nuclear energy is full of dangers, some of which carry repercussions even greater than those produced by a nuclear weapon. By way of their response to the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear industry, regulatory oversight committees, nuclear engineers, and leading scientific experts have failed the global community. Their actions have proved that they continually underestimated the situation, and did not fully understand it before making crucial decisions.