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Because People Mater
Progressive News and Views March / April 2008
Inside this issue:
Editorial.2Plutonium.Paradise.3 A.Community.Peace.Group.4The.Matsui.10.4Bonus.for.Bike.and.Bus.Riders.4Police.State.Flash.Point.5Rx.Dr.Bill.Durston.6Single.Payer.Health.Care.6The.Fong.Mansion.7Stop.Gerrymandering.7Immigration.is.Not.the.Issue.8Corporate.Media.Censors.the.News.9We.Are.Done.Killing.For.Lies.10Poem:.The.God.of.War.10Book.Review:.The.Israel.Lobby.11Sacramento.Area.Peace.Action.12The.New.Capitalism.13Old.Boys.Network.13Torture.14Winter.Soldier.Hearings.14 MLK.Inspires.Us.Again.14Calendar.15Progressive.Media.16
by Chelsea Del Rio
Look out progressive Caliornians, it is happening again.In 2005 we aced Proposition 73 and in 2006 we acedProposition 85. Both aimed at man-dating parental notication in orderor minors to access abortion ser- vices. Both times the people o Cali-ornia decided that such laws wouldonly serve to harm the young womeno our state, oen the ones already in the most dicult and dangeroussituations. Now, in 2008, we ace athird parental notication initiative.Sponsors o the initiative are still inthe process o signature gathering toqualiy or the November ballot buti history is any indication, they willqualiy by the deadline. Pro-choicerswill ace yet another year o divert-ing time, resources and energy rom providing already limited services or women in order to deeat right wingattacks on choice.Currently 35 states require some type o parentalinvolvement, whether notication or consent o one orboth parents, or a minor to have an abortion. But this
by Katharyn McLearan
W
e have a preventable public health prob-lem in this country — an estimated750,000 American teens willbecome pregnant this yearand nearly our million willcontract a sexually transmittedinection.Nonetheless, studies haveconsistently shown that am-ily communication and com-prehensive sex education areimportant actors in saeguard-ing teenagers’ sexual health. Itcan be dicult to talk to yourteen about sensitive issues, butwe also know how important itis to your child’s uture. We alsoneed education programs inour schools that include inor-mation about abstinence aswell as contraception, healthy communication, responsible decision-making, andprevention o sexually transmitted inections.
Family Commnicaion
Consider these acts: Parentsand teens agree that they are notcomortable discussing sex with oneanother yet 87% o teens say it wouldbe easier or them to postpone sexu-al activity and avoid teen pregnancy i they were able to have open, hon-est conversations with their parents.And 97% o girls said “having par-ents they could talk to” could helpprevent pregnancies among unmar-ried teens. eens cite their parents asthe people who most inuence theirdecisions about sex. When parentstalk to their teens about sex, theteens are more likely to delay sex,more likely to use condoms whenthey nally do have sex, more likely to talk about sexual health risks withtheir partner, and less likely to havemultiple partners.
Our ght to deeat parental noticationinitiatives and other attacks on abortionrights not only protectsreproductive health services but also strengthens women’sautonomy and reedom.
“Inaccurate abstinence-only educationis being taught in many schools acrossCalifornia.”
photo courtesy Planned ParenthoodMar Monte
Let’s Talk (About Sex)!
Family communication & comprehensive sex education make the dierence
See Sex Education, page 9
Helpul hints or parents and other responsibleadults: alk with your kids at all stages o develop-ment, not just puberty. alk early and talk oen. Youare a role model or your teen. Set good examples.Show your kids how our lives are enriched by our values. ake advantage o teachable moments. Usetopics like a riend’s pregnancy or a V show to begina conversation. Give accurate, simple, and honestanswers to questions. I your child asks a questionyou can’t answer, it is OK to say you do not know. Usethe opportunity to learn something together. Let yourkids know that you are available.
Sex Edcaion
Comprehensive sex education supports andstrengthens parent–teen communication. AbstinenceOnly programs that do not include amily planning,disease prevention, and responsible decision-makingskills are dangerous and do not prevent pregnancy or disease. Inormation that is wrong, too little, ortoo late can result in long-term and lie threateningconsequences.
is not the only limitation women ace. In 24 states thereexist mandatory waiting periods between receivingcounseling and having the abortion perormed. Tereare 43 states that allow health careinstitutions to reuse to provideabortions. A total o 28 statesmandate counseling prior toabortion, including misinorma-tion about links between breastcancer and abortion, etal painduring the abortion procedureand long term mental health con-sequences or women. Combinethese numbers with an array o additional limitations and the actthat 87% o counties in the UShave no abortion providers andit is easy to see just how compli-cated the picture becomes.Tese restrictions indicate the continued eorts tolegislate and control women’s bodies. Former ArkansasGovernor Mike Huckabee hopes or a “Human LieAmendment” to the constitution that would in eectoverturn Roe. Let’s consider the act that women are notprotected in the constitution and this guy is talking etalrights. What a clear indicationthat right wing concern is moreabout control o reproductionand women’s bodies than it isabout lie! Tus, our ght todeeat parental noticationinitiatives and other attackson abortion rights not only protects reproductive healthservices but also strength-ens women’s autonomy andreedom.It is essential that we work to protect access to abortionnot only or teens in Caliorniabut also or women across thecountry who, more and more,may be orced to look to Cali-ornia. I the parental notica-tion initiative does qualiy orthe ballot we will need yourhelp to deeat it. Stay inormed via Caliornia National Orga-
California Faces Repeat Attacks on Abortion Rights
Another parental notifcation initiative is in the works
nization or Women,
www.canow.org
. In the meantime,consider other action you can take to ensure access toreproductive health services. Become a clinic deenseescort and help women navigate through anti-choiceprotestors to access abortion services. Sacramento NOWprovides training and coordinates weekly escorting.Contact us at sacnowactivist@canow.org. Or, considerhousing or providing rides or women who must travelto the area to receive abortion services. o do so, sign upwith ACCESS: www.whrc-access.org.
Chelsea Del Rio is a long time Sacramento NOW grassroots activist and currently serves as Action VicePresident with Caliornia NOW.
Sacramento NOW taking the NO on 85 campaign to the street
photo courtesy Sacramento NOW
Because People Matter March / April 008
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“Hey,” says my riend, holding up the last BPMwith the cover o aces rom the patriotsques-tion9/11 site. “What is this? All 9/11—All thetime?” And he gives me that look.I nd the dismissive glances and even eyerolling that sometimes come rom activists andother progressive about 9/11 hard to understand.Tese are people who know that every wordCheney and Bush ever uttered is a at-out con-scious lie (or 935 documented pre-war lies, seewww.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/).And yet on this literally world-changingevent they decide to believe these guys? And thencall those o us who challenge the ocial story stupid and crazy? C’mon…..!Yes, I try to get something that undercutsthe ocial story o 9/11 in every issue o BPM.I believe 9/11 truth ino can let some air intothe vacuum-sealed US mind created by the 9/11attacks, a mind so traumatically closed that itseemingly cannot take in the act—now admittedby everyone but Cheney—that Iraq had noth-ing to do with 9/11 and Aghanistan was only tangentially involved. You still hear people say,“Well, they attacked us,” or “We have to ghtthem over there or they’ll come here.” Even theinconceivable (and underreported) suering thatthe US war is causing is depreciated because it’sthe suering o the Arab “enemy.” Te same istrue or the torture. o stop this cruel, illegal war,9/11 truth is key to breaking the spell that hasaficted heart and reason and paralyzed action.I think Manuel Valenzuela is on to some-thing in his description o the psychologicaleects o 9/11:
9/11 was the catalyst to the war on terror,the spring that gave sustenance to the imperial-istic wet dreams o corporatists and neocons. Itwas a moment in time…that sent concussionso ear and hatred and immediate calls o angerand vengeance reverberating throughout theland, as i a nuclear bomb o psychological war-are had been unleashed…transorming us intounthinking animals, our primate psychology andemotions set ree, usurping our normal humanintelligence.At that point, ater seeing the televisedimages o the horror and evil spawned thatday…repeated continuously without end, withangle ater angle o carnage and death…withthe immediate propaganda o journalist bu-oons penetrating our pores, with stenographersor power injecting us with their venom, wemutated into an army o robots, unwilling to lis-ten to reason, unwise to the lessons o humanity,ailing to control our raw emotions, becoming,in the end, a united herd o sheep that was easilycorralled into ollowing and obeying the dictateso the corporatists.We became, with our jingoism, nationalism,patriotism and Nazi-like militarization o thenation a people on the verge o mass psychosis,ready to bomb and murder entire nations, readyto lose all sense o morality in order to attain thevengeance our mammalian brains sought.…The hatred we eltwas manipulated and direct-ed, our attention made toocus on the dark skins andalien religion o the MiddleEast. Our ear was exploited,our ragile psychologyabused, steered toward waragainst Arabs and Persiansand Muslims, or clandestinereasons we did not wish toknow or understand. (
TheMaking of the Enemy,
0-08-06 www.inormationclearinghouse.ino).
We need to “deconstruct” the ocial mytho 9/11 to break through this helpless, hate-lled,ear-lled state and regain the will to end an ugly war that is bankrupting this nation morally andnancially.Likewise, recognizing the alsity o the o-cial story will re up our will to resist the assaultson civil liberties that Bush/Cheney claim areresponses to 9/11.In this BPM Peter Phillips (p 9) and BruceFein (p 8), rom both le and right, ocus withurgency on the chilling and wholesale elimina-tion o constitutional provisions meant to protectthe people o this country rom its government.And while Bush/Cheney hack away at the rule o law, we sit here.What else but the traumatized mind setdescribed by Valenzuela can explain our publicand private apathy in the ace the disappearanceo our constitutional legal protections? 9/11scared us literally out o our wits. Tose explod-ing towers and the huge billowing clouds o dustthat roiled through the streets chasing bystand-ers, the hours we all spent mesmerized in ronto Vs waiting or the next planes to hit—andthe mysteriously still unsolved and no longermentioned anthrax attacks that immediately ollowed—wounded something so deep in ourpsyche that we’re still paralyzed and ready to pay any price, sacrice any reedom, just to save our-selves rom all-powerul demonic Arab terroristswho turned the country into a “helpless giant”that September day.But the 9/11 truth is that we have muchmore to ear rom Bush/ Cheney and the Con-gress people rom both parties who serve theiragenda than we do rom Arab terrorists. We’rebeing spied on, arrested without charges, secretly detained, tortured, sometimes killed, tried inkangaroo courts. Tese things are HAPPEN-ING now—and to US citizens as well as othersunlucky enough to be caught in the nets spreadso widely and with so little legal care. And theperpetrators o these attacks on us are NO ter-rorists—but very likely thetrue gures behind the eventso 9/11—which they are usingas the rationale or destroyingour Constitution.Every day, more promi-nent people publicly expresstheir doubts about the o-cial story. New York imesreporter Philip Shenon in TeCommission: Te UncensoredHistory o the 9/11 Investiga-tion, asserts that the man whocontrolled what evidence commission memberssaw and the direction o the investigation, execu-tive director Philip Zelikow, under advisement by Karl Rove, minimized White House responsibil-ity and tried to insert a alse connection between9/11 and Iraq in the commission’s report.Te ormer President o Italy, FrancescoCossiga, announced that “democratic groups inEurope know that the attack was organized by CIA and Mossad….” Dr Lynn Margulis, recipiento the US’s highest science award, the NationalMedal o Science, citing David Ray Grin’s Te9/11 commission Report: Omissions and Distot-rions, calls the ocial account “glaringly errone-ous” and a “raud” (patriotsquestion9/11.com).And the Japanese Parliament debates the truth o the ocial story in questioning whether to sendmore troops to support the US wars (Rock Creek Free Press, Feb 08).It’s time or a new investigation. With all thequestions presented that have arisen throughthese last 6 years, with access to evidenceunscreened by the White House’s Zelikow, withsubpoenas, testimony under oath rom Bush andCheney—separately this time and recorded—andwith the bright eyes o ruthers and othersocused sharply on public proceedings, the o-cial story would probably collapse in a couple o weeks—that’s how weakly it is cobbled togetherand how much our actual discovery and analysiso the its various aspects has advanced.As scary as such an endeavor would be, it’swhat our country needs to get out o this deadly and deathly slide to disaster.
But the 9/11 truthis that we havemuch more tofear from Bush/ Cheney…thanwe do from Arabterrorists.
Scared Out of Our Wits
Te 9/11 lie has paralyzed s
www.bpmnews.org
March / April 008 BECAUSE PEOPLE MATTER
by Richard Nadeau
I
just can’t believe the cheerul propagandacoming rom the nuclear power industry andits boosters. Tey are tellingus now that nuclear power is a“clean and sae solution” to thecrisis o global warming. Noth-ing could be arther rom thetruth. In my view, we are beingoered a glowing picture o a coolplutonium paradise, a alse bill o goods i there ever was one.Just recently,
Te Sacramento Bee
publishedtwo essays promoting nuclear power as a solutionto global warming (12/12/2007 & 12/29/2007).One rom a ormer Greenpeacer now working orthe nuclear industry claimed that current anti-nuclear activists such as Greenpeace are “living inthe 1970s.”Another essay rom a jazz-critic-turned-nuclear-revivalist sang non-improvised hosannasto “nuclear power or the people.”Neither essay addressed the unresolved prob-lems connected with nuclear power: reactor acci-dents, waste disposal, and the problem o nuclearweapons prolieration. Neither mentioned theastronomical costs or the ossil uels consumedin the mining, building, maintaining, transport-ing waste, and the decommissioning o nuclearacilities.Environmentalists ear that the promisedair-conditioned plutonium paradise will producea toxic, cancer-lled, irradiated earth. Sci- mov-ies have provided us with depictions o mutanthumans and animals evolving into monsters asa result o exposure to nuclear radiation romnuclear weapons testing. I call such horriyingdepictions “nukemares.” (Remember “Te Planeto the Apes”? Remember “Godzilla”?)On Christmas Eve, I drove to see the twoominous towers at Rancho Seco, 25 miles south-east o Sacramento. I enjoyed apicnic lunch at “Rancho SecoPark,” the recreation area SMUDcreated aer the plant closeddown.Rancho Seco was the rstnuclear power plant to be closeddown anywhere in the world asresult o a popular anti-nuke organizing eortand a public vote. In December 1986, the anti-nuclear organization SAFE gathered enoughsignatures to place a reerendum on the ballot. Ina voter reerendum in June o 1989, the majority o Sacramento voters said“Close it down.”Te day aer Christ-mas 1985, a nuclear“event” (traced to a tripwire in a tiny electricbox) caused the reactorto dramatically overheat.Aer the Tree MileIsland incident in 1979,and the meltdown o Chernobyl on April 26,1986, the people o Sac-ramento had reasonablecause to be concernedwhen they voted orclosure.SMUD accepted theresults o the non-bindingreerendum and beganthe expensive process o decommissioning, whichends in 2008. Ranch Secoexemplies whatcan happen whenan alert community aces the dangerso nuclear power. We all breathe easierbecause o those so-called “anti-nukeanatics.”Remember what happened at TreeMile Island in Pennsylvania on March28, 1979? Tere was an explosion insidea containment building, a partial melt-down o the reactor core, and a deliber-ate venting o radioactive gases into theatmosphere. 140,000 people ed the area,where elevated levels o cesium and iodinewere ound in the milk samples collectedrom dairy arms. Ironically, the movie,
Te China Syndrome,
with Jane Fondawas just opening. Yet, we still worshipour advanced technologies as i they areinallible.Does anyone remember Chernobyl in theormer Soviet Union? On April 26, 1986, apowerul explosion instantly killed two people.Dozens o re ghters died rom radiationpoisoning within a ew years. Nuclear radiationallout spread throughout Western Europe tothe point where the people o England could noteat lambs that grazed on their elds. Numerouscancer clusters and other eects o radiationsuch as contaminated mushrooms and berries insouthern Germany, and contaminated reindeerin Scandinavia, emerged throughout NorthernEurope and western Russia.Remember the problems at Oak Ridge,Kyshtym, or Windscale? Remember the wastedisposal accidents at Hanord, where hundredso thousands o gallons o radioactive wastecontaining plutonium leaked out o tanksbetween 1945 and 1973? Are Caliornians com-ortable with the act that coastal nuclear powerplants at San Onore and Diablo Canyon aresusceptible to tsunamis and located adjacent toearthquake aults? So ar, no one has been able toconvince me that today’s generation o nuclearpower plants has eliminated the risk o nuclearaccidents.Yet, people have short memories. Tere istalk in the media about a “nuclear revival,” or a“nuclear renaissance.”In June 2007, Dale Klein, chair o the NuclearRegulatory Commission (NRC), told a gather-ing o industry leaders in Atlanta that he expectsapplications or 27 new reactors over the nexttwo years. One corporate applicant said, “Tere isno serious opposition.”Congress provided help or the “revival” attaxpayer expense. Te Energy Policy Act o 2005had generous subsidies or nuclear power andother alternatives to ossil uels. Billions o dol-lars in tax credits, loan guarantees, and insurancewere oered to cover licensing delays or new
Nuclear links
Centers for Disease Control report
www.cdi.org/issues/proliferation/nuclearproliferation
Fortune Magazine article
www.money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/08/06/100141305
CBS nuclear story
www.fair.org/index.php?page=3086
Anti-nuke power site
www.nukefree.org/
Anti-nuke watchdog
www.prop1.org/anukelv.htm
Nuclear Reactor Maps
www.nukepills.com/
Nuclear resource site
www.nirs.org/
Books
Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer
and
The New Nuclear Danger
by Dr. Helen Caldicott
The New Nuclear Danger
, and
The SeventhDecade
by Jonathan Schell
Perils of the Peaceful Atom
by
Richard Curtisand Elizabeth Hogan
See Nuclear Power, p. 11
We all breatheeasier because o so-called ‘anti-nuke anatics.’
Plutonium Paradise or Nukemare?
Te hidden coss of nclear power
EXTRA
!
Te Department o Energy has released its scal year2009 budget. It seeks a whopping 79 percent increasein unding or the
Nuclear Power 2010
program. It alsoextends the period during which companies that buildnew nuclear power plants can apply or ederal loanguarantees to lower the debt-nancing costs associatedwith the projects.
Diablo Canyon nuclear plant
photo: www.britannica.comgraphic: : www.inkcinct.com.au/Web/CARTOONS
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