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Showing posts from March, 2011

"Prescription for Survival": A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy Between Anti-Coal Advocate George Monbiot and Anti-Nuclear Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott

Up to a million people have already died from Chernobyl, and people will continue to die from cancer for virtually the rest of time. What we should know is that a millionth of a gram of plutonium, or less, can induce cancer, or will induce cancer. Each reactor has 250 kilos, or 500 pounds, of plutonium in it. You know, there’s enough plutonium in these reactors to kill everyone on earth. Link: "Prescription for Survival": A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy Between Anti-Coal Advocate George Monbiot and Anti-Nuclear Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott

The New American Dream

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Published on Truthout ( http://www.truth-out.org ) William Rivers Pitt | Tuesday 29 March 2011 If you are wealthy, you are living in the Golden Age of your American Dream, and it's a damned fine time to be alive. The two major political parties are working hammer and tong to bless you and keep you. The laws are being re-written - often by fiat, and in defiance of court orders - to strengthen the walls separating you and your wealth from the motley masses. Your stock portfolio, mostly made by and for oil and war, continues to swell. Your banks and Wall Street shops destroyed the economy for everyone except you, and not only did they get away with it, they were handed a vast dollop of taxpayer cash as a bonus prize. The little people probably crack you up when you bother to think about them. Their version of the American Dream is a ragged blanket too short to cover them, but they still buy into it, and that's the secret of your strength in the end. So many of

What Can Afghanistan and Pakistan Teach Us About Nonviolence?

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Published on Truthout ( http://www.truth-out.org ) David Swanson | Wednesday 23 March 2011 I may soon have an opportunity to meet with nonviolent activists in Afghanistan, an area of the world we falsely imagine has earned the name "graveyard of empires" purely through violent resistance. I was educated in the United States and learned in some detail about the lives of several morally repulsive halfwits who happened to have "served" in various U.S. wars, assaults, and genocides. But I was never even taught the name Badshah Khan. Were you? Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, 1890-1988, was given the honorary title Badshah by the people of what was then the northwest frontier of India, much as his friend and ally further south, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was given the title Mahatma. Khan was a Pashtun, or Pathan, as are many members of the Taliban today. The imperial occupier 100 years ago was not the United States, but the British empire, and Khan raised a

Learning From Disaster After Sendai By Richard Falk

Is it possible that the nuclear meltdown in Japan is linked to a Faustian bargain with the West? Link: Learning From Disaster After Sendai By Richard Falk

The 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day: Refuser

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By Eve Ensler, Reader Supported News 08 March 11 (Source: http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/273-40/5199-the-100th-anniversary-of-international-womens-day) n this, the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, I want to take a minute to honor grassroots women's activists across the planet - women, like those working tirelessly in Haiti, who have inspired their communities, united their communities, and led their communities, holding them together and pushing them forward. Today, I want to particularly honor the women on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have organized and worked for peace and freedom over the many years of conflict that has been fought in their country and on their bodies. On February 4, the women of Congo, in partnership with V-Day and the Fondation Panzi (République Démocratique du Congo), opened the City of Joy, a revolutionary leadership community for survivors of sexual violence that will be the headquarters

Remembering Sohan Qadri

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Sohan Qadri 1932-2011 A pure poet and painter Sohan Qadri. Copenhagen. April 1991. Portrait by Amarjit Chandan Punjabi artist and poet Sohan Qadri (real name Sohan Singh Barhing), who has died aged 78 in Toronto after a prolonged illness, leaves a rich legacy of pure poetry and art deeply immersed in Indian tradition. He is one of a few Punjabi painters who have made a mark on the international art scene. Qadri was immersed in painting and meditation for decades. His dye-suffused paintings on meticulously serrated paper reflect his Vajrayana Tantric Buddhist philosophical beliefs. Dr. Robert Thurman, professor of Eastern religions at Columbia University and director of Tibet House, says: “If words were colours, Qadri’s art would not be as essentially necessary as it is.” Qadri lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, for three decades but his career took him across Asia, Africa and North America. He was born in the Punjab, in the village of Chachoki near Jalandhar. At the young age he was ini