Orwell

[|**‘Kill that Bill’ – Atlanta Capitol Rally in Solidarity with Wisconsin**]

Thus, the rally at Georgia’s state Capitol this past Wednesday night, called by the State’s AFL-CIO, the Atlanta Labor Council, and other organizations, was a heartening sign. On the steps of Georgia’s capitol in Atlanta, in the shadow of Tom Watson’s commanding presence, five hundred or more union members, community activists, students, and various other citizens–a widely representative sample that split fifty-fifty between men and women, was roughly equally White as Black, with a smattering of Hispanic and Native American advocates–stood up and shouted “Stop the War on Workers.” Present were peace groups, revolutionary proponents, and folks just generally angry at a system that rewards greed and privilege with money and perquisites while it squeezes everyone else out of any semblance of rights and benefits that groups like unions have fought hard to attain. Throughout the United States, the courage and strength of thousands of workers in Wisconsin has given inspiration and leadership to wage-earners elsewhere. At times, the messages of these stalwart souls, braving frigid conditions and, as often as not, a media blackout, or at least a diminution of their struggle and a distortion of their perspective in the press, is exactly what [|**__working people need to hear__**].

“This Land Is Your Land” rings true with class-conscious solidarity and an uncompromising sense of democracy that must guide those who want decent lives. Those who attended this gathering articulated these and other points powerfully. “Don’t let this be a one time rally,” said one preacher near the end. “The people inside that building(the capitol) need to know that we’ll be back, we won’t leave, we’re not going away.” Steve Henson, a progressive-Democratic State Senator, asked, “Why is it that all sorts of associations are OK to come and lobby us in the legislature, but lobbying for working people is not OK?” Another legislator spoke of her five year old grandson “leading the way.’ He wanted to pack up to go and join the fight in Wisconsin. She continued, factually, “If you can take a vacation; if you can take a sick day with pay; if you have a right to overtime pay; you have the labor movement to thank.” In addition to the speakers at the front–a mix of union leaders, Democratic politicians, and religious and community activists–lively outbursts from the vociferous and boisterous crowd were constant, as if a massive labor beast, wild and fierce, were roaming the street. “The people, united, will never be defeated!” “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Union busters got to go!!” These and other chants and catcalls were directed across the intersection of Washington Street and Martin Luther King Drive to the at most one hundred Tea Party counter-protesters whose sole coherent message seemed to be “Leave Poor Governor Walker alone.’

One of the savviest local politicians in America, Billy Mitchell, capsulized the meaning of the gathering when he said, “You always get exactly the government that you deserve,” a take-off on Frederick Douglass’ famous take on power. He continued, wry smile breaking out, “I promise you that the people inside this building are paying attention to you out here, and it will make a difference.” A teacher’s representative, speaking of the 100,000+ American Association of Educators and American Federation of Teachers members in Wisconsin, was fierce in his call for action in Georgia. “The time has come to take back America and democracy from the billionaire’s boy club.” He was referring to the now incontrovertible behind-the-scenes manipulation of the Koch brothers, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, and a working class boycott of Koch Enterprises that is coming. A militant Black woman’s voice rang out from the podium. “A threat to justice in Ohio is a threat to justice in Georgia, and we have to remember that this is not about us, it’s about our children and our grandchildren, and if we want them to live decent lives, we have to stand up now.” Another speaker vowed to follow through on this call. “We have to stand up on the capitol steps of every state in the union; we’re gonna stand up and we’re gonna fight, and we’re gonna win. Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” And the crowd roared its approval as it took up the chant in an electrifying shout into the sun-dappled Capitol building. Karla Drenner, another Democrat who considers herself progressive, spoke of her own family union roots. She continued, “Instead of sending jobs to China, we need to helping out the working people here.” Her voice rising in shrill indignation, she vowed that nothing would stop the persistence of a united people. “You will hear us in the governor’s mansion; you will hear us in the legislature; and you will hear us on the street, because we are not going to go away.” From the sidewalk, one fired-up protester rallied his misguided cohorts across the street. “Worker power is democratic power! Worker power is democracy.” Another young teacher from the Northern Atlanta suburbs where many of the “Tea-Partiers’ keep their cupboards stocked with loot, lamented the implications of their message. “Let’s go back to workin’ 80 hours a week; let’s go back to child labor, your ten year old can get a job. That’s what they’re saying if they say get rid of unions. They’re just completely misguided.” Everywhere, in solidarity with the specifics of the fight in Wisconsin, the message was insistent. “Kill that bill! Kill that bill! Kill that bill!” an unending litany of “we’ve had enough, we’re not going to take any more, we’re drawing a line in the sand.’

Across the street, meanwhile, the so-called “Tea-Party’ counter-protesters sang Sha-na-na. Their message continues to back the reactionary idea that, at exactly the same time that working-class tax dollars give trillions to the hyper-rich, working people who are barely making ends meet should have even less of a livelihood available. They sometimes also support the explicitly fascist notion that unions should not be legal, that labor should have few or no rights compared to money and property. Matt Stoller wrote in a similar vein in his article, “The Liquidation of Society Versus the Global Labor Revival.” His [|**__insights__**] [|**__command attention__**]) from anyone who has a sense of self-preservation or hope for the future. This humble correspondent and his partner wore signs that vocalized this point of view at the rally. One pair, modest sandwich board draped over THC’s shoulders, said, “The Problem Is Not Democrats Versus Republicans–Corporate Masters Own Them Both,” & “The Problem Is Organizing a Working-People’s-Power Party.” The second duo offered these lines. “The Current Crisis Affects Not Just Union Workers or Government Workers, but ALL Workers,” & “Big Business Disempowers All the World’s Working People by Dividing Them From Each Other—Solidarity is the Only Answer.” This humble correspondent insists that only through worker empowerment, involvement, and leadership can the faintest prayer of social equality come to pass. Thus, the events in Wisconsin, and this past Wednesday in Atlanta, like the recent outpouring of activism in the Middle East, are first steps only. Without a more completely defined agenda, one that is both resolutely local and irrepressibly internationalist, one that puts working peoples’ rights and power at the forefront, one that sets aside all jingoistic nationalism and false patriotism, all of the rallies and songs and hopes of solidarity won’t amount to much that working people can take to the bank or put on the stove. Given such a paradigm, the time has come for a grassroots sociopolitical movement that honestly contends for power. The fake “two-party system” doesn’t come close to achieving this possibility. Working people not only deserve better, but they also will gain little or nothing unless they organize and strive to gain, for themselves, of themselves, and by themselves, a conscious leadership role in the manifestation of a transformed society, a society in which property and wealth cannot overturn the social and economic rights and needs of working people.

[|**Egypt – Mass Media Gave Fake Numbers of Protesters. Example: the New York Times Fallacy**]

I added that it would be very simplistic to establish a divide of the type “civil, democratic society supporters vs. an autocratic regime”, and I specified that for many long decades the Western mass media diffused worldwide an altered image of the Egyptian reality, thus helping the local regime myths remain intact in Egypt, and the global public opinion stay in mysteries. In the present article, I will offer a striking example of journalistic fallacy published in the New York Times, which contradicts the diagram they offered to their readers. “Hundreds of thousands” were never in Tahrir square prior to Mubarak’s removal on 11 February 2011, because presently, the famous Down Town Cairo square simply cannot accommodate even 100000 (one hundred thousand) people. As a matter of fact, in front of the Egyptian Museum and on the back side of the former Nile Hilton (that is under reconstruction) and the Arab League building, there are works at the grounds in the sizeable area that was in the past the Tahrir bus station. During the recent manifestations, not a single protester had access to the said construction area which remained out of reach for all; similarly, the small street which, alongside the aforementioned area, leads from the back entrance of the Arab League building to the main entrance of the Egyptian Museum was sealed off to protesters. Finally, the courtyard of the Mogama building remained inaccessible to the gathering people.

** 7. ** The area where the Tahrir square protesters gathered comprises of the following parts: ** a. ** from the end of Qasr el Aini street to the central roundabout of Tahrir square (the space between the American University and the Mogama building), ** b. ** the central roundabout of Tahrir square, ** c. ** the Mogama building gardens (beyond the courtyard in front of the building), ** d. ** the nearby underground garage gardens, ** e. ** the street leading from the central roundabout of Tahrir square to the corniche and the Qasr el Nil bridge, ** f. ** the street leading from the central roundabout of Tahrir square to the intersection with Champollion street (opposite to the Egyptian Museum gardens) and further on up to the intersection with Mahmud Bassiyuny street (opposite to the backside of the enclosure wall of the Egyptian Museum / see here: http://www.touregypt.net/map06.htm), ** g. ** the area between the backside of the enclosure wall of the Egyptian Museum and the Ramsis Hilton Hotel (part of this area is under the 6th October bridge and other passageways), ** h. ** small parts of nearby streets close to the above area, notably in Talaat Harb street, and Champollion street, and to lesser extent in Muhammad Mahmud street, Tahrir street, Al Bostan street, and Qasr el Nil street, and ** i. ** the corniche from the Radio & Television building to the Hotel Intercontinental As it can be easily understood, the above points a to i encompass an area that is far wider than Tahrir square stricto sensu; but the density of the people gathered to protest was scarce to very scarce in the above parts g, h, and i, whereas the density was also meagre in several spots in the above parts **a, c, d, e,** and **f.** In fact, high density was noticed in the central roundabout of Tahrir square and toward the beginning of Tahrir street and Talaat Harb street, let’s say from in front of Hardee’s fast food restaurant and up to the Telephone Office, before the intersection with Al Bustan street (ahead of the nearby intersection with Qasr el Nil street and Champollion street. In the street leading from the central roundabout of Tahrir square to the corniche and the Qasr el Nil bridge, high density was attested only up to the metro station exits (on either parts of the street). With high density meaning four (4) persons per m2, the aforementioned data makes clear that in the high density area there were ca. 32000 to 35000 people. In various degrees of lower density (in above points g and i, it was less than 1 person per m2), there were another 20000 to 30000 people in all the other parts of the aforementioned areas. Comically enough, the disreputable and misleading New York Times [|**__offered their readers__**] a diagram of the above described area that, even under terms of utmost density (four persons per m2), cannot accommodate more than 100000 people (part coloured in light brown as per the above link). Safely enough, they did not offer any map scale (as it can be noticed in the earlier link), because all of their readers would protest against the New York Times’ filthy lie stated in the shameful text under the title “The Battle for Tahrir Square” (“Sunday, Feb. 6 – Defying government calls for a return to normalcy, more than 100000 turned out to protest in the square”). This minor example typifies very well the incredible score of fallacies diffused by the orchestrated mass media of the global word order. On this subject, I will further expand in a forthcoming article.

[|**Saudi America**]

I call for an immediate attack on Saudi Arabia to take over their oil and to install an American-backed regime in Riyadh friendlier to the United States. It’s been eight whole years, and we haven’t attacked a third country yet. We only attack countries weaker and smaller than ourselves. It was Saudi Arabia remember that supplied the hijackers that carried out 9-11.

Why do we love Saudi Arabia? We hate Moslems. Because of 9-11, we hate all Muslims, even those poor slobs in Indonesia, right? We could make Saudi Arabia first an exploited colony garrisoned by American troops and ruled by an American viceroy who looks like John Wayne. He could saunter around with a pair of pistols and say to all the turban-heads, get out of my way, Pilgrim! Eventually, we would annex Saudi Arabia and make it the 51st state in the union. ** We would call it, Saudi America. ** We would flood the country with right wing duck hunters from Minnesota who still believe in Dick Cheney, and white power skin heads with confederate flags on their trucks from the Deep South. They would take to it because Saudi Arabia, (**//excuse me//**), Saudi America, is a sandy, ugly, God-forsaken country just like Texas, home for the rednecks. The new arrivals would establish grease-laden junk fast food takeout shops, tequila growing farms, tattoo parlors, condom dispensers, factories that make specially designed lingerie for transvestite congressmen, motorcycle parts stores, laminated fruit used as sex aids, DVD adult movie rental outlets, and back-yard cottage industries making affordable reproduction World War 2 German helmets for Republican tea-baggers complete with swastikas. We could build the very first adult-and-selected-minors-only X-rated Disney theme park and call it Stud Mickey on the Dunes (**//as in Mickey Mouse with a huge phallus riding a dune buggy across the Saudi sands//**). The center piece of the park would be the largest reality roller coaster in the world, specifically built to eject randomly chosen senselessly singled out certain unsuspecting riders engaged in the act of intercourse at high speed headfirst into a tiled lagoon, the possibility of potential un-rehearsed home movie-style entertainment to be televised for the cruel enjoyment of ignorant and easily impressed visitors, and those who enjoy listening to Sarah Palin. ** This could all be funded by raising the price of gasoline. ** Think what we could do with that oil money. We could turn Mecca into a glittering casino city to rival Las Vegas or even Branson Missouri with Arabic symbols on the slot machines to help fleece native sucker common-as-dirt potential slaves and hook them hopelessly on gambling, diverting them from their current occupations, sheep herding and wife beating. A new industry, the sales of genetically-engineered gnats, would be developed, as hotter global warming sand dunes are prefect breeding grounds for the pesky insects. A rapidly multiplying growth bio-organic type of farming, gnats would be exported from Saudi America all over the world as a way to, after introducing them into the mouth, cleaning (by the insects eating away) decaying food between the teeth, eliminating the need for floss. A black market illegal trade could also be set up to infest the homes and cars of ex-wives and disagreeable bosses, the product to be titled, “**Revenge with a Buzz.**” We could hire Glenn Beck as a spokesman. A special tax will be set up levied on the families of American serial killers back home based on household income to fund the first non-interrupted, elevated freeway running from the coast of Florida to the new state of Saudi America. This will allow the free movement between continents of hordes of Social Security grabbing, leech-like-freebie-sucking salary-less elderly retired loafers, who think the world owes them for the simple act of living, a bunch of non-contributing, seasonal immigrant vagabonds who will flock to a newly-constructed upscale gated condominium development along the Red Sea to be titled, Moses Slept Here, Phase One. The Saudi royal family will be moved out and given property in the fashionable Hamptons of New York State, and posh flats in London, the only things they ever really wanted in the first place. They can thus be rich and drive Rolls Royces and pretend they are successful Englishmen wearing robes. The surrounding ocean would be denuded of all its sea life by over-fishing and the All-Sex Porno Channel cable TV station introduced all across the country to take the place of the native religion, which will be abolished. Every citizen who currently practices any form of religion including Islam, Catholic and Mormon, will be required to convert instead to the selling of Mary Kay Cosmetics, a religion all its own. Solar powered computerized micro chip mechanical camels will be created to run on the world’s first water-gravity-flow-fed pneumatic tube monorail system, the water to be shipped by means of a specially constructed overhead pipeline from the Central Valley of California as that state totally falls apart and no longer needs it. Governor Arnold will attempt to avoid presiding over the California debacle and will seek office in Saudi America, but will be stripped of steroids and escorted to the border where he will be told to go visit long-neglected relatives in Austria who highly doubt his even minimal acting ability. Arnold will find it hard not to put on one of the cottage industry teabag reproduction German helmets.

[|**Has Bangladesh Befallen Captive**]

Bangladesh began its liberation movement to separate from Pakistan through a democratic process. After independence in 1971, the country flirted with democracy for a while but quickly abandoned the democratic process by imposing one party rule. One party rule was supplanted by military rule after the assassination in 1975 of the authoritarian ruler, who also played a pivotal role in the country’s independence struggle. The military ruler himself was a popular freedom fighter and gave his government a democratic label by luring the disgruntled politicians to establish his political party. But his autocratic government also fell like a house of cards following his own assassination in 1981. Then, another military ruler took over and perpetrated his autocratic rule for nine years and quit only when the nation’s democratic forces mobilized an all out movement. Many have come to believe that, following the election of 1990, the country has re-established democracy. Although the democratic process is in place, the reality may be somewhat different. Having gone through various changes and alignments over the years, the country’s politics is firmly under control of two political parties – Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party. These were the parties of the two most celebrated leaders; one who led the nation to freedom fight and the other who led the fight itself. When they were slain, for lack of intra-party democracy, no leader could emerge from within the party as the popular choice of rank-and-file party members to replace them. As a compromise, one party then inducted the daughter and the other the wife of their supreme leaders to take the party leaderships, though both were thought to be inept. These ladies, by taking full advantage of popular sentiments for their slain predecessors and by also getting the needed support from unscrupulous politicians, assumed total dictatorial power within their parties. They determine their parties’ electoral nominations and are brutal in their approach. Earlier, they sacked their parties’ well admired Secretary Generals, deprived the independent minded party stalwarts from holding any party or government posts, and in one extreme case, even compelled the President of the country to leave the office in disgrace shortly after inaugural because he tried to rise above party politics. Obviously, they find themselves invincible and others treat them as permanent political fixtures as well. So the election is mainly to decide which lady to rule. There are also ominous signs that their young sons are being groomed to replace them in due course. Bangladesh is facing serious crises in crucial areas such as, severe gas and electricity shortage (which continues to threaten daily life and investment), rising inflation, unemployment, rampant corruption, political murder, campus riot, law and order deterioration, and climate change effect. Instead of collaborating or working to address these critical issues, the ladies of the land persist on grappling for things like establishing or reestablishing whose predecessor were more relevant, gaining or regaining their personal property and legal protection rights, naming or renaming the national airport, writing or rewriting history books, and most importantly harassing each other by inciting riots or by using state machineries to confirm one’s superiority. All of these heinous acts have come at a tremendous cost in terms of property and human lives, and there is no end in sight for such tit for tat actions. Whereas, economists believe that with better governance, Bangladesh economy could grow at a respectable rate of 7 percent or even more per year, which would indeed go a long way in reducing its poverty level. The world is quite aware how these ladies’ power capturing maneuvers had brought the country to the brink of anarchy in early 2007. Then, a military backed care-taker government tried to deport both of them, failing which it held them under house arrest. The same government also initiated badly needed reforms in structuring political parties, administering election, enacting power decentralization, and making the judiciary independent. Although its actions received immediate praise, it soon had to give in under tremendous pressures from both inside and outside. In the end, by arranging an election the care-taker government was obliged to hand over power to the lady who won the election. Yet, hopes were raised that after the election the long awaited reforms that were initiated would somehow take hold. But apparently nothing has changed and no true reform has materialized. Both ladies are back to their old politics again, and continue to fight to preserve their personal interests. Bangladesh has thus became captive to the two politically dynastic families, and the impact of their family feud is being felt almost everywhere. Some observers believe that the situation cannot go on like this, so the country would inevitably face another upheaval. But if that were to happen its outcome remains very much uncertain

[|**Renewable Energy, Dr. Arjun Makhijani and the IEER**]

Almost by convention, an independent engineer is a maverick. A footloose nuclear engineer, even more so, is inevitably revolutionary. Thus, Dr. Arjun Makhijani cannot escape being both interesting and controversial. This profile examines the man, his ideas, his organizational mission, and, in a preliminary way, his recent monograph, a publication that not only flies in the face of established U.S. energy policy. but also casts that challenging gauntlet with both a richly detailed empiricism and a highly honed conceptual framework. Dr. Makhijani is a rarity among the nuclear priesthood. He has dared to suggest that the denizens of his vocation are other than iconic masters without facing the wrath of excommunication by everyone else in the field. Perhaps his Ph.d in nuclear engineering, with a specialization in understanding fusion, makes him difficult to assail, at least with the impunity that nuclear proponents normally expect when heaping vitriol on their opposites. In any event, when one googles [|**__“arjun makhijani” + energy + critics OR criticism OR controversy__**], one does not encounter the slander and calumny that a [|**__Dr. Helen Caldicott__**] confronts as a daily cost of going about her business. I’m sure that plenty of criticism is present, but he does not invite attack, despite the strength of his position against nuclear weapons and energy. Moreover, his bona fides in regard to energy matters go back a long way. As his official bio states, “He was the principal author of the first study of the energy efficiency potential of the US economy, published in 1971.” He co-authored the Ford Foundation’s energy report during the oil crisis of the mid ’70′s, **//A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future//**. His face page at the National Journal on Energy and Environment, where he is an ‘expert blogger,’ notes that he is a fellow of the American Physical Society, an honor only available to about one out of every two hundred APS members. Furthermore, he has won awards for his science and prizes for his reporting and kudos for his opposition to nuclear weaponry. And until relatively recently, he believed that the U.S. might need to permit nukes to continue operating to the end of their licenses, a step necessary for us to find a path away from carbon spewing coal-fired electricity, which he believes might possibly doom our place on the planet as a result of climate change, and toward a more sustainable future. Such a position–accepting a likely Faustian bargain with fission–characterized his official pronouncements, according to prominent anti-nuclear activists, until 2005 or so, when a coterie of those who believed in both his intellectual honesty and his brilliant acuity, asked him simply to investigate, as fully as he could without significant funding—DOE, after all, already ‘knew’ the answer to the question posed by the activists–what the possibilities were for a fifty year transition to a sustainable business model, in the form of a practically complete reliance on renewable energy sources. Readers should not misread this point and think Dr. M. any sort of nuclear advocate: Arjun Makhijani long ago left behind any willingness to countenance nuclear energy as a positive good. He helped to give birth to the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in 1987 and has led the organization since then. He and the group pointedly evidenced the multiple intersections of weapons and reactors, as well as the multiple drawbacks of these mutually interdependent technologies. But as his understanding of global warming grew, so did his willingness to admit that, for a time and to a limited extent, rational humans might have no choice but to keep present nukes operational. Instead of new nukes, he advocated natural gas combined cycle power plants as a bridge. This tolerance for today’s atomic energy generation was at best grudging, however. In 1999, he published both //The Nuclear Power Deception – U.S. Nuclear Mythology from Electricity “Too Cheap to Meter” to “Inherently Safe” Reactors//, with Scott Saleska and “Stepping Back from the Nuclear Cliff,”in //The Progressive//. Nevertheless, until five years ago or so, neither Dr. Makhijani’s frequent government testimony nor his general punditry totally rejected atomic power. “Never before have I said that a renewable and storage option would be adequate without nuclear.”

Still, roughly two years after he accepted the challenge from friends and collaborators in the anti-nuclear movement, he published perhaps the definitive opus for those who tout solar sources of one sort or another, //Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy//. While the voluble and affable and cogent Dr. M. has managed to appear on just about every major media stage, his book received relatively little upper-level corporate media coverage. How many readers have heard of the book, I wonder? Even fewer have noted the publication in 2006, marking his shift to an all-renewable option, of “Nuclear is Not the Way,” which the //**Wilson Quarterly**// published in its Autumn issue that year. It laid the groundwork for his monograph, a blueprint for a sustainable future that is little known at the level of CNN or MSNBC, and certainly not proffered a favorable spot on Energy Secretary Chu’s reading list. Unexpectedly given this lack of major promotion, the volume, which he preceded with an entire issue of IEER’s Science for Democratic Action devoted to the topic, has steadily gained readership. A search of the title, “Carbon Free and Nuclear Free,” produces 262,000 hits on Google. And Dr. Makhijani can ply the numbers that he presents; he has gone toe to toe in debates with all manner of personnel for the far-flung pro-nuclear colossus. Some of that fervent cranial battling has made cogent and easily accessible fodder for citizens who recognize that the time is long past when we can simply ‘let the experts decide’ on matters of policy and technology. Readers might examine the following links as exemplary of this available orientation to what our future options are:

** • ** [|**__http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqHmzYe5jw&feature=related__**]

** • ** [|**__http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0tuErPLKWo__**]

** • ** [|**__http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4VDC35his__**]

These excerpts concern relative costs of power, advantages of renewable sources such as wind power, and his ‘first affirmative’ presentation about taking an all renewable route into the future. Readers can segue from these POV’s to perspectives more favorable to nuclear options at their leisure. In particular, Dr. M. has had several skirmishes with the former head of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, who underwent a rebirth as radioactive proponent and has been promulgating a “nukes are ‘clean energy’” line that is one of the major propaganda coups of the new century. After all, here is a genuine ‘greenie,’ a dyed-in-the-wool tree hugger and bird lover and proponent of environmentalism, Gaia, and ecology, who now says that the techniques of atomic legerdemain represent the best option for humanity, that our past rejection of using fission to boil water was “a big mistake.”

Dr. Makhijani’s answers are solidly empirical and represent his own “surprise, actually,” that he was able to “f(ind)that we could do (a transition to renewables), rather rapidly actually.” “Wind energy is cheaper today than nuclear,” and the costs are dropping for this proto-solar option. If nukes are better than renewables, then why do we need loan guarantees. To “put sunshine in your tank,” he says, “the foundation is efficiency,” including the ‘smart grid’ that almost all parties to these debates agree is a sound goal. Though decidedly critical of corporate power–an earlier book, From Global Capitalism to Economic Justice: An Inquiry into the Elimination of Systemic Poverty, Violence, and Environmental Destruction in the World Economy, severely criticizes big money and big business–he labels the highly cited French example, which pro-nukers simply adore, as “nuclear socialism,” where the government robs the rate-payers to give to the reactor manufacturers and others attached to the fission feed bag. Basically, Dr. M. says that while markets will continue to bring about thriving growth in wind and solar sources, without massive government support, nuclear electricity will fizzle out and die. As Amory Lovins, green guru extraordinaire has put it, “The nuclear industry is dead from an overdose of market forces.” Readers who stay tuned will have a chance to read a close review of the book in an upcoming article. When ‘leaders’ at all levels are trying to sell the snake-oil of a ‘Nuclear Renaissance,’ the common people need the guidance that Arjun Makhijani proffers. Then they need to be willing to stand up and speak, and, furthermore, to insist that policy must be ‘of the people and by the people,’ not just, supposedly, ‘for the people.’