Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 8:46 AM
To: Ed Pearl
Subject: Power of protest: From Madison to Opening Day - Tues. 7 pm 3/22/11
Power of Protest
From Madison to Opening Day
Guest speaker DAVE ZIRIN
7 pm Tuesday, March 22, 2011
University of Southern California
Political sports writer Dave Zirin is an eyewitness to the uprising in Madison, WI and a participant in one of the protests against the attack on public workers. Zirin is coming to Los Angeles to report back from that struggle and to discuss how protest inside and outside the realm of sports can transform society.
Dave Zirin joins activists in demanding that Major League Baseball move the 2011 All-Star game out of Arizona after the passage of racist legislation, SB1070. Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick helped fuel the assault on immigrant rights, making a boycott of Arizona baseball particularly relevant. Zirin's visit will be an opportunity to organize action at the Dodgers along side opening-day protests all over the country. Los Angeles Dodgers are opening on March 31st.
In addition, Dave Zirin will show a clip from his movie "It's Not Just a Game". Watch the trailer here:
http://vimeo.com/16742023
Link to the Facebook event page:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=135631843169847
For more information call (213) 309-2713 or email lacityiso@yahoo.com
Sponsored by the USC International Socialist Organization
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Hi. I’m plugging Dave Zirin’s appearance at SC, as the first sportswriter
since Jim Murray to understand and tackle the poltics of the field. It’s of
importance, as one of, if not the top collective interest of our population.
Also, the major distraction from real life woes. Let’s see if
sets an example, or at least jars the bubble of the owners. Anyway,
Zirin is a great writer, who knows and loves the game, while exposing
the garbage. And, he’s funny. We all know it’ll be
maybe
that’s from a true-blue Bruin, looking at next year.
Ed
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/303-211/5337-nuclear-nightmare
Nuclear Nightmare
he unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States - many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.
Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power's overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.
Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry's promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area "the size of
Because of many costs, perils, close calls at various reactors, and the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in
Now the industry is coming back "on your back" claiming it will help reduce global warming from fossil fuel emitted greenhouse gases.
Pushed aggressively by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu, who refuses to meet with longtime nuclear industry critics, here is what "on your back" means:
- 1. Wall Street will not finance new nuclear plants without a 100% taxpayer loan guarantee. Too risky. That's a lot of guarantee given that new nukes cost $12 billion each, assuming no mishaps. Obama and the Congress are OK with that arrangement.
- 2. Nuclear power is uninsurable in the private insurance market - too risky. Under the Price-Anderson Act, taxpayers pay the greatest cost of a meltdown's devastation.
- 3. Nuclear power plants and transports of radioactive wastes are a national security nightmare for the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine the target that thousands of vulnerable spent fuel rods present for sabotage.
- 4. Guess who pays for whatever final waste repositories are licensed? You the taxpayer and your descendants as far as your gene line persists. Huge decommissioning costs, at the end of a nuclear plant's existence come from the ratepayers' pockets.
- 5. Nuclear plant disasters present impossible evacuation burdens for those living anywhere near a plant, especially if time is short.
Imagine evacuating the long-troubled Indian Point plants 26 miles north of
- 6. Nuclear power is both uneconomical and unnecessary. It can't compete against energy conservation, including cogeneration, windpower and ever more efficient, quicker, safer, renewable forms of providing electricity. Amory Lovins argues this point convincingly (see RMI.org). Physicist Lovins asserts that nuclear power "will reduce and retard climate protection." His reasoning: shifting the tens of billions invested in nuclear power to efficiency and renewables reduce far more carbon per dollar (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf). The country should move deliberately to shutdown nuclear plants, starting with the aging and seismically threatened reactors. Peter Bradford, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioner has also made a compelling case against nuclear power on economic and safety grounds (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf).
There is far more for ratepayers, taxpayers and families near nuclear plants to find out. Here's how you can start:
- 1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.
- 2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can't buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can't buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don't stay in business.
- 3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn't required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.
- 4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.
The people in northern
Like the troubled Japanese nuclear plants, the Indian Point plants and the four plants at San Onofre and
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