In a devastating pair of financial reports that might be called "The
Emperor Has No Pressure Vessel," the New York Times has blazed new
light on the catastrophic economics of atomic power.
The two Business Section specials cover the fiasco of new
French construction at Okiluoto, Finland, and the virtual collapse of
Atomic Energy of Canada. In a sane world they could comprise an epitaph
for the "Peaceful Atom". But they come simultaneous with Republican
demands for up to $700 billion or more in new reactor construction.
A paradox of the modern United States is that it wields unprecedented
military power in the world yet its people are constantly kept
frightened about unlikely foreign dangers. Its politics, too, are
dominated by fear.
The
way this plays out most often is that Republicans (aided by the U.S.
news media) exaggerate overseas threats and denounce the Democrats for
being "soft" on whatever the current "threat" might be: the Reds, the
yellow menace, Soviet "beachheads" in Central America, or now Islamic
terrorism.
Last week, we reported
on how retired US Army Colonel Ralph Peters penned an essay for a
leading neocon group calling for future US military attacks on media
outlets and journalists. Writing for the journal of the the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Col. Peters wrote,
"future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately,
military attacks on the partisan media...
The debate over Bush-era torture
tactics like waterboarding has morphed into a full-blown Washington
scandal. But the target isn't the Bush administration officials who
ordered the torture; instead, the corporate media's focus is on House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who claims that she was not fully briefed by the
CIA on the use of waterboarding in late 2002. The prevailing assumption
in much of the coverage is that the CIA couldn't possibly have misled
members of Congress--despite the fact that this has happened
repeatedly.
The "debate"
over all the bad and scary things that will happen if Obama closes
Guantanamo and we then incarcerate those detainees in American prisons
is so painfully stupid even by the standards of our political discourse
that it's hard to put into words, and it also perfectly illustrates the
steps that typically lead to America's National Security policies:
The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of that
city's two major daily newspapers, is in the news itself these days
after hiring controversial former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo
as a monthly columnist.
Maureen Dowd's wholesale, uncredited copying of a paragraph written by Josh Marshall (an act Dowd has now admitted)
-- for what I yesterday called her "uncharacteristically cogent and
substantive column"-- highlights a point I've been meaning to make for
awhile. One of the favorite accusations that Posted in journalism
