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Today Al Gore is unveiling a massive campaign to fight climate chaos.

But the hugely funded atomic power industry has jumped on global warming with the Big Lie that its failed reactors can somehow help. It's a sorry replay of the 1950s promise that atomic power would be "too cheap to meter."

Just before the 2000 election, as senior advisor to the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, I wrote then-Vice President Gore asking that he help delete from the Kyoto Accords any reference to nukes as a possible solution to global warming. On November 3, 2000 (the letter is posted at the www.nirs.org web site) Gore wrote back:

March 28, 2008– Antioch College alumni working through the College Revival Fund, Inc. (CRF), restated their unwavering support for Nonstop Antioch today, in response to news that the University Board of Trustees had rejected a significant and viable offer by a group of major donors and educational leaders that would have enabled Antioch College to continue operating past the University's June 30, 2008 date of closure. 

Ellen Borgersen, Acting President of the CRF, said today in a statement: "The suspicion that the University Board of Trustees was negotiating in bad faith and not interested in saving the College has, unfortunately, been confirmed. Over the past four months, the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (AC3) labored mightily to put together an offer that would be a win-win solution for the University and the College, as well as for the community and for everyone who believes in what Antioch stands for."

The Columbus Dispatch is in the middle of its most blatant editorial propaganda campaign since the questioning of the late Columbus School Board member Bill Moss' sanity in a front page article.

Their new target is Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The capitol city's daily monopoly and political bludgeon for the multimillionaire Wolfe family's real agenda is ensuring that the Republican Party control Ohio's Apportionment Board after the 2010 census. The party that controls apportionment gerrymanders the state.

The Wolfe family has not allowed a Democrat to be endorsed for President since the re-election of Woodrow Wilson in 1916. In that campaign, the Wolfe's pro-German sentiments won out over their time-honored role as Republican operatives.

The Republican Party believes that Brunner is the most politically vulnerable of the five-member Apportionment Board. The Secretary of State serves along with the Governor, the State Auditor and two members of the state legislature – one from each party by law. Do the math. Brunner's a Dem, so is Governor Strickland. Mary Taylor, the Auditor, is a Republican. It's now 3-2 for the Dems.
The ground feels a little soft, but we’re going to stand it.

Premise one: Having a fair election — all votes counted, all who are eligible and want to vote allowed to vote — is far, far more important, even in 2008, than who wins.

Premise two: Fair elections are not a given. They never have been, but things are worse now than ever before because of a perfect storm, you might say, of factors that have converged in the new millennium: officialdom’s seduction by unsafe, high-tech voting systems; the seizure of power by a party of ruthless true believers who feel entitled to rule and will do anything to win; a polite, confused opposition party that won’t make a stink about raw injustice; and an arrogantly complacent media embedded in the political and economic status quo.

The result: Benjamin Franklin’s worst nightmare.

"Well, Doctor, what have we got — a Republic or a Monarchy?"

"A Republic, if you can keep it."

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number.
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you--
Ye are many, they are few.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

My friend Bernie says he can't believe the American people haven't figured out what it's all about. "The whole damn political scene is nothing but a corporate media freak show," he said. "There's no breathing room between elections -- no time nor interest in investigating, or even addressing, issues that are critical to our survival as a nation. The minute every last dollar is sucked out of the competition, the candidate who bought the most attack ads -- the most face time -- wins, and the election is over. Then," Bernie said with disgust, "it's time to start raising money for the next election, because the media is already out there campaigning."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," I said. "But, surely electing a president is more important than the media, or who can raise the most money --"

The new imperialists – Ideologies of Empire
Ed. Colin Mooers.
Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England. 2006.

It’s been 15 years since the death of the United Farm Workers’ Cesar Chavez -- way past time to make his birthdate of March 31 a national holiday. Petitions urging Congress to do just that are now being circulated, appropriately on the 40th anniversary of the 25-day fast that was one of the most extreme and most effective of his many truly heroic acts.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., who’s rightly honored with a national holiday, Chavez inspired and energized millions of people worldwide to seek – and to win – basic human rights that had long been denied them and inspired millions of others to join the struggle.

A national holiday would be a well-deserved tribute to Latinos and organized labor. Even more than that, it would be a special opportunity to remind Americans everywhere of the profound lessons of Chavez’ extraordinary life.

He showed, above all, that the poor and oppressed can prevail against even the most powerful opponents – if they can organize themselves and adopt non-violence as their principal tactic.

“We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons,” Chavez explained.

The White House’s chief information officer said the Bush administration should not be compelled to search for millions of emails on individual computers and hard drives that may have been lost between 2003 and 2005 because it would be too expensive and require hundreds of hours of work, according to a filing the White House made with a federal court late Friday.

Friday’s court filing by the White House came in response to an order issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola last week demanding that the White House show cause why it should not be ordered to create and preserve a “forensic copy” of emails from individual hard drives. Facciola entered the order in part because the White House admitted that it did not preserve back-up tapes prior to October 2003.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and George Washington University’s National Security Archive sued the Bush administration last year alleging the White House violated the Presidential Records Act by not archiving emails sent and received between 2003 and 2005.

Remarks at American University Teach-In on March 22, 2008

Robert Dreyfuss's presentation that I now have to follow was tremendous and I learned a lot, but I disagree with his pessimism. I am fond of the saying "Let's save our pessimism for better times." It's a choice to be a pessimist, and it is a wrong one, always.

So, here we are again, a crowd dominated by old white people on a college campus in a black city. But on March 12th and 19th in this city I watched hundreds of college students and African Americans put their bodies in the way of arrest and abuse for peace. If I had to choose, I'd rather have people in the streets than in a teach-in.

Still, I think this all-too-typical turnout suggests how segregation and civic weakness in this country allows mass murder to occur in other countries. We have long term work to do assuming we live long enough to do it.

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