States of Emergency

The natural disasters grow more devastating.

We don't know to what degree human activity contributes to magnitudes beyond what Japan ever expected and prepared for, as much as the country knows to expect earthquakes, and coined the word tsunami.

The misery unleashed by the tsunami would have been staggering enough, but proximity to the nuclear reactors has cut off some survivors from aid.

The potential consequences of the man-made catastrophe are only beginning.

As of today, Japanese reporting of radiation in foodstuffs has started.

Yesterday, detection of "not harmful" radiation reaching the U.S. began.

Even if further meltdowns and leakage are averted, opponents of nuclear power have always been right. At Fukushima, corrupt corporate management was in charge of reactors long known to be unsafe: deadly waste ("spent fuel") stored above the reactors; waste controlled only when cooled by water pumped by the electricity that the plant could no longer produce (the disaster destroyed emergency generators)... Six of these, crammed onto an earthquake fault in such a densely populated country... And whether the plutonium reactor is contained is not at all certain.

Images here suggest just how vulnerable these reactors were.

As elsewhere, the record in Japan is one of corporations and government colluding over a technology that will never be safe.

Today: another March 19, another anniversary (Year Eight) of our glorious Iraq adventure.

And a future anniversary in the making? Today, we began a third war— where the emergency just may have to do with interests other than humanitarian ones.

Elsewhere in the region, nothing is stopping minority elites from declaring their own emergencies and violently cracking down on their masses, presumably with weapons we've sold them.

In the midst of it all, our Republican House discovered a dire emergency at home.

The GOP governors have been busy finding emergencies in their states, to be solved by handouts to corporations and the rich, paid by higher taxes for the lower classes, as well as by radical legislation written for them by ultra-Right think tanks.

On Monday's Thom Hartmann show, John Nichols described the Madison rally on the previous Saturday (March 14).

With a turnout of 100,000 or more, it took the fourteen returning Democratic state senators an hour to reach the stage. They got the heroes' welcome they so deserved, for shining light on legislation Walker had expected to pass before the public knew what had happened.

When they addressed the rally, said Nichols, "even the most conservative Democrats spoke the language of solidarity," over the assault on democracy and working people.

As much as we seem to be hurtling into an age as dark as some wish for us, the creativity of Wisconsinites is inspiring.

In homage to Faux News, they brought their own palm trees— And simply stood up for a way of life. By this Friday, a judge in Madison had issued a restraining order against implementing the anti-collective bargaining law, as both sides continue legal action.

And as Wisconsin Republicans flew to DC to pick up the lobbyist cash, activists got into this palace—where the palms are not inflatable plastic— The start of a slideshow—and a good view of those palms—is here.

While the Right is a many-bellied beast, some demonstrators were briefly inside one of the biggest—when a group that had marched to the White House spontaneously decided to cross the street and visit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.