Undernews For April 5, 2009

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
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5 April 2009
WORD

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart
-- HL Mencken

HEADLINES

THE CRASH

THE HUGE FRAUD BEHIND THE FISCAL CRISIS
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM ITALY ABOUT ECONOMIC COOPERATION
LARRY SUMMERS: A WALKING, TALKING CONFLICT OF INTEREST

ECOLOGY & NATURE

ANTARCTIC ICE SHELF ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE
THE HIDDEN STORY OF THREE MILE ISLAND

OBAMALAND

OBAMA ADVISERS GOT BIG MEDIA BUCKS DURING CAMPAIGN

SCHOOLS

BLACKWATER BACK UNDER NEW NAME

CIVIL LIBERTIES

BILL WOULD ALLOW PRESIDENT TO SHUT DOWN INTERNET

MEDIA

PBS SHILLS FOR HEALTH INSURANCE CORPORADOS
PACIFICA AND WBAI IN BATTLE

AF-PAK WAR

OBAMA MAY SEND EVEN MORE TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN

FURTHERMORE

WHAT'S THE LONGEST HOME RUN EVER HIT?

PAGE ONE MUST

THE HUGE FRAUD BEHIND THE FISCAL CRISIS

Raw Story - On PBS' Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called "liars loans" could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive "fraud" at the epicenter of US finance.

But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America's financial insolvency from its citizens. . .

Black's most recent published work, "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One," released in 2005, was hailed by Nobel-winning economist George A. Akerlof as "extraordinary."

"There is no one else in the whole world who understands so well exactly how these lootings occurred in all their details and how the changes in government regulations and in statutes in the early 1980s caused this spate of looting," he wrote. "This book will be a classic."

But that book only covers the fallout from the 1980s Savings & Loan crisis; Black's later first-hand involvement in that scandal being the ensuing liquidation of bad banks.

"A single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than the entire Savings and Loan Crisis," reported PBS. "The difference between now and then, explains Black, is a drastic reduction in regulation and oversight, 'We now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80.'". . .

"The way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better," he told Moyers. "Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you're a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there's going to be a disaster down the road. . .

"This stuff, the exotic stuff that you're talking about was created out of things like liars' loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad," he continued. "And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking during the Bush years. So finally, only a year ago, we started to have a congressional investigation of some of these rating agencies, and it's scandalous what came out. What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I'm quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, "the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined."

He equated the entire US financial system to a giant "ponzi scheme" and charged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, like Secretary Henry Paulson before him, of "covering up" the truth.

"Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?" asked Moyers.

"Absolutely, because they are scared to death," he said. "All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. . .

Ultimately, said Black, the financial downfall of the United States in the wake of the Bush years is due to "the most elite institutions in America engaging in or facilitating fraud."
ANTARCTIC ICE SHELF ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE
DW, Germany - A huge ice shelf in the Antarctic is in the last stages of collapse and could break up within days. Scientists said Saturday that the enormous Wilkins ice shelf, which is about the same size as Jamaica, is now barely attached to land. Satellite pictures provided by the European Space Agency showed that the main bridge holding the ice shelf in place had snapped. The loss of the ice bridge could see the northern half of Wilkins break free, allowing a gigantic iceberg the size of a small country to float off on the ocean.

BBC - European Space Agency satellite pictures had indicated last week that cracks were starting to appear in the bridge. Newly created icebergs were seen to be floating in the sea on the western side of the peninsula, which juts up from the continent towards South America's southern tip. . .

While the break-up will have no direct impact on sea level because the ice is floating, it heightens concerns over the impact of climate change on this part of Antarctica. . .

Separate research shows that when ice shelves are removed, the glaciers and landed ice behind them start to move towards the ocean more rapidly. It is this ice which can raise sea levels, but by how much is a matter of ongoing scientific debate.
OBAMA ADVISERS GOT BIG MEDIA BUCKS DURING CAMPAIGN
Washington Post - Some of President Obama's top economic advisers were paid, in some cases handsomely, for their commentaries in 2008 about tax policy, government bailouts of financial institutions, global trade and the economic recession, according to financial disclosure forms made public by the White House late Friday.

Four White House economic aides, including National Economic Council Director Lawrence H. Summers, received thousands of dollars in payments for newspaper opinion columns or cable television appearances, the documents show. The officials received income for their commentaries before joining Obama's administration in January. Yet at the same time that some were advising Obama's presidential campaign, they were being paid by news organizations, in some cases for commentating on President George W. Bush's economic policies or advocating for policies that Obama supported on the campaign trail.
BLACKWATER BACK UNDER NEW NAME
NY Times - Late last month Blackwater Worldwide lost its billion-dollar contract to protect American diplomats here, but by next month many if not most of its private security guards will be back on the job in Iraq.

The same individuals will just be wearing new uniforms, working for Triple Canopy, the firm that won the State Department's contract after Iraqi officials refused to renew Blackwater's operating license, according to American diplomats, private security industry officials and Iraqi officials. Blackwater - viewed in Iraq as a symbol of American violence and impunity - lost the contract after being accused of excessive force in several instances, particularly an apparently unprovoked shooting in downtown Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed.

Despite the torrent of public criticism against Blackwater, American officials say they are relieved that the old guards will stay on. Otherwise, Triple Canopy, they say, would not be able to field enough qualified guards, with the proper security clearances, before the new contract goes into effect in May. “There is just no other way to do it,” said one Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to discuss the issue publicly.

Critics of Blackwater said they worried that the same people might perpetuate what they believed was a corporate culture that disregarded Iraqis’ lives. “They’re really all still there, and it's back to business as usual,” said Susan Burke, an American lawyer who has filed three civil rights lawsuits against Blackwater on behalf of Iraqi civilians alleged to be victims of it.
LARRY SUMMERS: A WALKING, TALKING CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Timothy J. Burger and Kristin Jensen, Bloomberg News - Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council, took in more than $2.7 million in speaking fees paid by organizations that included Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Bank of America Corp., among other companies now receiving taxpayer funds in the economic bailout.

Summers also was paid more than $1.4 million in salary and over $3.7 million in other compensation by the investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co. in the past 16 months, according to financial disclosure forms of top White House officials that the administration made public today.

Given Summers' resume, "there was considerable interest in hearing his economic insights from companies across various industries," said Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman.

Roberta Rampton, Reuters - Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, was paid about $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the past year, financial disclosure forms released by the White House showed. . .

Summers, who was a part-time managing director of D.E. Shaw after stepping down as Harvard president, had speaking fees of $67,500 from JP Morgan, $45,000 from Citigroup, $135,000 from Goldman and $67,500 from Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt in the mortgage crisis last year.
CRASH TALK
Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest - The Financial Times has posted an article on its website headlined "Bailed-Out Banks Eye Toxic Asset Buys." In it the London paper reports that major U.S. financial institutions that received bailout funds and capital infusions from the federal government are giving serious thought to buying up toxic assets from one another under the "Public Private Investment Partnership" scheme proposed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week.

Yes, that's right: the banks we've been told desperately need to rid themselves of those mortgage-backed securities are thinking about buying more of them. There are only two possible explanations for this. Either the banks have been bamboozling the federal government and U.S. taxpayers from the start about the supposed burden of these holdings. Or the Geithner plan is such a lavish giveaway to major investors that the banks believe they can potentially make a killing simply by reshuffling their portfolios.

The FT mentions that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are among the banks looking at toxic asset purchases. That's not surprising, since Goldman, for example, is in good enough shape that it reportedly wants to buy out the $10 billion holding that the feds acquired in the firm last year. Yet also mentioned is Citigroup, an out-and-out basket case. If Citi thinks it can find a way to participate, you know this is the deal of the century.

This bizarre development further highlights the profound disparity between the way the Obama Administration is treating the banks and the troubled auto industry. If Detroit were getting the same kid-glove treatment as Wall Street, General Motors and Chrysler would be receiving big federal subsidies to buy each other's unsold vehicles.

Alternet - An estimated 6 million families could be facing this question in the next three years, with nearly 1 in 10 mortgage holders either delinquent or in foreclosure. And although we've heard a lot about trying to help people stay in their homes - like President Obama's $275 billion foreclosure-prevention package - it's been far more difficult to follow what happens to these families once they've been forced out.

"We haven't done a good job of tracking those people who were not able to stay in their homes," admits Douglas Robinson of Neighbor Works, an umbrella organization for more than 230 local nonprofits focused on community development. . .

According to Robinson, those victims of foreclosure who do wind up being pushed out of their homes can be roughly divided into two waves.

The first wave consists of those who lost their homes because they were unable to keep up with payments on poor mortgages, often with cripplingly high interest rates. There's no hard research as yet, but anecdotal evidence indicates that, although these people didn't have the financial resources to keep up with their mortgage payments, most were able to rent apartments or even homes in their same communities.

But for the second wave, the transition hasn't been nearly so seamless. These are the people who are unable to make mortgage payments because they've lost their jobs. They no longer have the incomes to afford rentals.

This second wave is creating a strong demand for social services, including homeless shelters - a demand that far exceeds supply. Again, as yet there is no hard data, but anecdotal evidence indicates a far higher percentage of these people are winding up in hotel rooms, with friends and relatives, in shelters, or even sleeping in cars or on the street.

A recent report from the National Center on Family Homelessness estimates that 1 in every 50 American children was homeless between 2005 and 2006, about 1.5 million kids. And the numbers are likely to get worse as the economy continues to decline.

Detroit News - People are leaving Michigan at a staggering rate. About 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in. It is one of the worst rates in the nation, quadruple the loss of just eight years ago. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving - young, well-educated high-income earners - are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild. Long treated as a symptom of Michigan's economic woes, outmigration has exploded into a massive problem of its own, a slow-motion Katrina splintering families, gutting state coffers and crippling an already hobbled economy, one moving van at a time.
NEWS FROM THE COLONIES
Bill Fletcher, Jr. Black Commentator - Sometimes I feel like I am reliving the era of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The era of 'guns and butter,' as they called it. At the same time that Johnson was launching his 'War on Poverty' he was escalating the US war against the people of Vietnam and Laos, as well as carrying out the criminal invasion of the Dominican Republic (1965). Not only did these interventions (and others) isolate the USA and set back the efforts of these various countries at self- determination, but they wrecked the US economy, siphoning off badly needed resources.

So, here we are today with the Obama administration carrying out a cautious and very partial withdrawal from Iraq (50,000 US troops will remain), while at the same time escalating the US troop presence in Afghanistan. Compounding this situation are US military attacks within Pakistan, an activity that is the equivalent of pouring kerosene on an open fire. And just like President Johnson, President Obama has an ambitious domestic agenda.

It has been difficult for many liberals and progressives to outright oppose the Afghanistan war. This was true when Bush first invaded in 2001, and it remains true today. Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, many people in the USA, including but not limited to the Bush administration, were looking for revenge. In fact, there were those who said quite explicitly that revenge should take precedence over justice. And so we got it- revenge that is.

The Afghanistan war was never a 'good war.' Yes, Al Qaeda had bases in Afghanistan. So, let's think about another situation and how it was handled. The Nicaraguan Contras, the US-backed terrorists who waged a war against the Sandinista government in the 1980s, were based in Honduras. The Honduran government did not control those bases, even if they turned a blind-eye to them. And, to emphasize the point, the Contras were supplied, resupplied, and further supplied by the US government. In fact, the USA mined Nicaraguan harbors, a clear act of war by one government against another. . .

The Taliban government of Afghanistan, as despicable as they were, did not carry out the assault on 11 September 2001. It was easier, however, for Bush to carry out a conventional assault against the people that only a few short months prior they had been treating as potential business partners. In carrying out that invasion the US walked into a quagmire that anyone who studied Central Asia could have (and many had) predicted. In fact, the Soviet Union had a horrific experience in Afghanistan a dozen years earlier.

So, now we are being told that the USA must continue its 'good war' in Afghanistan in order to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The problem is that when something starts off wrong, it rarely gets much better. . .
BILL WOULD ALLOW PRESIDENT TO SHUT DOWN INTERNET
Mother Jones - Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) . . . introduced a bill to establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor-an arm of the executive branch that would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure. That broad power is rattling some civil libertarians.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 gives the president the ability to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any "critical" information network "in the interest of national security." The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president.

The bill does not only add to the power of the president. It also grants the Secretary of Commerce "access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access." This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws. . .
PBS SHILLS FOR HEALTH INSURANCE CORPORADOS
Russell Mokhiber, Counterpunch - Last year, former Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid made a great documentary for the PBS show Frontline titled Sick Around the World. Reid traveled to five countries that deliver health care for all - UK, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Taiwan - to learn about how they do it. Reid found that the one thing these five countries had in common - none allowed for-profit health insurance companies to sell basic medical coverage.

Frontline then said to Reid - okay, we want you to go around the United States and make a companion documentary titled Sick Around the America.

So, Reid traveled around America, interviewing patients, doctors, and health insurance executives.

The documentary that resulted - Sick Around America - aired on PBS.

But even though Reid did the reporting for the film, he was cut out of the film when it aired this week.

And the film didn't present Reid's bottom line for health care reform - don't let health insurance companies profit from selling basic health insurance. . .

Instead, the film that aired pushed the view that Americans be required to purchase health insurance from for-profit companies. . .

The producers of the Frontline piece had a point of view - they wanted to keep the for-profit health insurance companies in the game. . .

"We spent months shooting that film," Reid explains. "I was the correspondent. We did our last interview on January 6. The producers went to Boston and made the documentary. About late February I saw it for the first time. And I told them I disagreed with it. They listened to me, but they didn't want to change it.". . .

"Frontline will never touch me a again – they are done with me," Reid said.
PAYOFF CONTINUES TO AL SHARPTON FOR JOINING WAR ON PUBLIC EDUCATION
NY Daily News - The Rev. Al Sharpton will score a big personal and political coup when Vice President Biden makes a visit to the Sheraton New York hotel in midtown to address the annual meeting of the National Action Network, Sharpton's organization. . .

In addition to Biden, whose schedule was confirmed by a White House press official, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan also are speaking at Sharpton's conference. . .

Note the presence of Duncan at the gathering. Here's the earlier story:

NY Daily News - The Rev. Al Sharpton and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein stunned the education world last June when they joined forces to reform the nation's public schools. They called their ambitious venture the Education Equality Project, and they vowed in a Washington press conference to lead a campaign to close the decades-old achievement gap between white and black students. What Klein and Sharpton never revealed is that the National Action Network, Sharpton's organization, immediately received a $500,000 donation for its involvement in the new effort.

The huge infusion of cash - equal to more than a year's payroll for Sharpton's entire organization - was quietly provided by Plainfield Asset Management, a Connecticut -based hedge fund, where former Chancellor Harold Levy is a managing director.

The money came at a critical moment for the National Action Network. Sharpton was then settling a long-running IRS investigation of his organization. As part of that settlement, he agreed in July to pay $1 million in back taxes and penalties both he personally and his organization owed the government.

The $500,000 from the Connecticut firm did not go directly to National Action Network. Levy funneled the cash to another nonprofit, Education Reform Now, which allowed his company to claim the donation as a charitable tax deduction.

The Education Equality Project is part of a corporate backed plan to create a two-track educational system based on favored charter schools and public schools. Involved in this effort are Education Secretary Duncan, Sharpton, Joel Klein and DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee.
PACIFICA AND WBAI IN BATTLE
Richard Prince, Journal-isms - The national board of Pacifica Radio - which owns five politically and culturally "progressive" stations around the country - has taken steps to "secure our broadcast signals should we need to prevent legal liability," the board said in a statement.

The statement was issued after the general manager of the New York Pacifica station, Tony Riddle of WBAI-FM, reportedly wrote to the national Pacifica leadership saying, "It has been brought to my attention that you have issued an order today to change the locks on the WBAI transmitter room in the Empire State Building tomorrow."

A support group, United for Peace and Justice, announced a rally in New York for Saturday morning to "Save WBAI Radio!". . .

The New York Times said last year of WBAI, "its turmoil-filled . . . history has featured a fiesta of staff clashes, board eruptions, station coups and protests. Amid accusations of every imaginable form of -ism, on-air personalities and producers have been summarily banned; on-air resignations have not been unknown."

The other Pacifica stations are KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston and WPFW in Washington.

The national statement was signed by Grace Aaron, who chairs the Pacifica National Board and is interim executive director of the Pacifica Foundation. It began:

"We have received complaints about programming that may be threatening the financial and legal health of the Pacifica Foundation. . Pacifica is the license holder for all five stations and is ultimately responsible for everything broadcast over all of them. . . .

"The Pacifica Foundation is facing a severe financial crisis. Multi-year downtrending listenership at all of our stations has been eroding our membership and net income. . .

In New York, "we are at risk of being sued for breach of our lease agreements, which could have dire consequences," including "a loss of our signal.
THE HIDDEN STORY OF THREE MILE ISLAND
Facing South - It was 30 years ago when Randall Thompson first set foot inside the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa. Just four days earlier, in the early morning hours of March 28, a relatively minor problem in the plant's Unit 2 reactor sparked a series of mishaps that led to the meltdown of almost half the uranium fuel and uncontrolled releases of radiation into the air and surrounding Susquehanna River.

It was the single worst disaster ever to befall the U.S. nuclear power industry, and Thompson was hired as a health physics technician to go inside the plant and find out how dangerous the situation was. He spent 28 days monitoring radiation releases.

Today, his story about what he witnessed at Three Mile Island is being brought to the public in detail for the first time - and his version of what happened during that time, supported by a growing body of other scientific evidence, contradicts the official U.S. government story that the Three Mile Island accident posed no threat to the public.

"What happened at TMI was a whole lot worse than what has been reported," Randall Thompson told Facing South. "Hundreds of times worse."

Thompson and his wife, Joy, a nuclear health physicist who also worked at TMI in the disaster's aftermath, claim that what they witnessed there was a public health tragedy. The Thompsons also warn that the government's failure to acknowledge the full scope of the disaster is leading officials to underestimate the risks posed by a new generation of nuclear power plants.

While new reactor construction ground to a halt after the 1979 incident, state leaders and energy executives today are pushing for a nuclear energy revival that's centered in the South, where 12 of the 17 facilities seeking new reactors are located. . .

Randall Thompson could never be accused of being a knee-jerk anti-nuclear alarmist. A veteran of the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program, he is a self-described "nuclear geek" who after finishing military service jumped at the chance to work for commercial nuclear power companies. . .

The moment the Thompsons heard about the TMI incident, they wanted to get inside the plant and see what was happening first-hand. That didn't prove difficult: Plant operator Metropolitan Edison's in-house health physics staff fled after the incident began, so responsibility for monitoring radioactive emissions went to a private contractor called Rad Services.

The company immediately hired Randall Thompson to serve as the health physics technician in charge of monitoring radioactive emissions, while Joy Thompson got a job monitoring radiation doses to TMI workers.

"I had other health physicists from around the country calling me saying, 'Don't let it melt without me!" Randall Thompson recalls. "It was exciting. Our attitude was, 'Sure I may get some cancer, but I can find out some cool stuff.'"

What the Thompsons say they found out during their time inside TMI suggests radiation releases from the plant were hundreds if not thousands of times higher than the government and industry have acknowledged - high enough to cause the acute health effects documented in people living near the plant but that have been dismissed by the industry and the government as impossible given official radiation dose estimates.

The Thompsons tried to draw attention to their findings and provide health information for people living near the plant, but what they say happened next reads like a John Grisham thriller.

They tell of how a stranger approached Randall Thompson in a grocery store parking lot in late April 1979 and warned him his life was at risk, leading the family to flee Pennsylvania. How they ended up in New Mexico working on a book about their experiences with the help of Joy's brother Charles Busey, another nuclear Navy vet and a former worker at the Hatch nuclear power plant in Georgia. How one evening while driving home from the store Busey and Randall Thompson were run off the road, injuring Thompson and killing Busey. How a copy of the book manuscript they were working on was missing from the car's trunk after the accident. These allegations were detailed in several newspaper accounts back in 1981. .

The evidence that people, animals and plants near TMI were exposed to high levels of radiation in the 1979 disaster is not merely anecdotal. While government studies of the disaster as well as a number of independent researchers assert the incident caused no harm, other surveys and studies have also documented health effects that point to a high likelihood of significant radiation exposures.

In 1984, for example, psychologist Marjorie Aamodt and her engineer husband, Norman - owners of an organic dairy farm east of Three Mile Island who got involved in a lawsuit seeking to stop TMI from restarting its Unit 1 reactor - surveyed residents in three hilltop neighborhoods near the plant. Dozens of neighbors reported a metallic taste, nausea, vomiting and hair loss as well as illnesses including cancers, skin and reproductive problems, and collapsed organs - all associated with radiation exposure. Among the 450 people surveyed, there were 19 cancer deaths reported between 1980 and 1984 - more than seven times what would be expected statistically. . .

With more than $18 billion in federal subsidies at stake, 17 companies are seeking federal licenses to build a total of 26 nuclear reactors across the country, the first applications since the 1979 disaster. .

Harold Denton, a retired NRC official who worked in Three Mile Island during the crisis, recently told Greenwire that changes made after the 1979 disaster "significantly reduced the overall risks of a future serious accident." But the Thompsons . . . point out that the standards the NRC is applying to the new generation of nuclear plants are influenced by assumptions about what happened at Three Mile Island. They say the NRC's low estimates of radiation exposure have resulted in inadequate requirements for safety and containment protocols as well as the size of the evacuation zones around nuclear plants. . .

Given their personal experiences, the Thompsons warn that we may be fooling ourselves into believing nuclear power is safer than evidence and history suggest.

"Once you realize how deep and broad the realignment of facts about TMI has been, it becomes really pretty amazing," Randall Thompson says. "I guess that's what it takes to protect this industry."

FULL STORY
JD SALINGER STILL ISN'T TALKING TO THE PRESS
Alison Flood, Guardian, UK - JD Salinger still isn't talking. The famously reclusive author wasn't persuaded to break his silence by a reporter from the Spectator, who made it as far as Salinger's doorstep in Cornish, New Hampshire before being turned away.

The journalist, Tom Leonard, said he heard the author shout "something that sounds like 'Oh, no!'" when told by his wife who was ringing his doorbell, and then saw "a tall but stooped figure in a blue tanktop" sidle "crab-like" out of his kitchen without meeting his eyes. It's hardly surprising: Salinger withdrew from public life in the 1950s, overwhelmed by the success of The Catcher in the Rye, and hasn't spoken to the media since, apart from a brief conversation with a New York Times reporter in 1974 when he said there was "a marvelous peace in not publishing . . . I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm trying to do is protect myself and my work."
MODERATE INTERNET SURFING ADDS TO PRODUCTIVITY
CNET - A study conducted in Australia found that people who engage in "workplace internet leisure browsing" are more productive than those who don't. Workers who "surf the Internet for fun at work-within a reasonable limit of less than 20 percent of their total time in the office-are more productive by about 9 percent," according to the study's author, Professor Brent Coker, from the University of Melbourne's Department of Management and Marketing.

The reason that WILB increases productivity, he said, is that "people need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. Think back to when you were in class listening to a lecture; after about 20 minutes your concentration probably went right down, yet after a break your concentration was restored.". . .

But this doesn't apply to everyone. Approximately 14 percent of the sample showed signs of Internet addiction and, for them, Web surfing can decrease productivity. The more they surfed at work, the less productive they were. . .

The study found that 70% of the 300 workers surveyed engage in WILB. The report was released in Melbourne on April 2nd when it was still April 1st in the United States. In an email, Dr. Coker assured me that it's not an April fools joke.
W HAT WE CAN LEARN FROM ITALY ABOUT ECONOMIC COOPERATION
Erbin Crowell, Cooperative Business Journal - Italy is an amazing destination for those interested in history, architecture and food. But it is also holds important lessons for those interested in cooperatives. Italy has more co-ops per capita than any other country in the world. In Emilia Romagna, a region in the country's northeast with a population of 4.2 million people, you'll find an astonishing concentration of these enterprises: 7,500 co-ops in total, two-thirds of which are worker-owned. Cooperatives employ ten percent of the workforce, and the region has some of the lowest unemployment rates and highest standards of living in Europe.

Co-ops are such a common feature of daily life in Emilia Romagna that they are hard to miss. While there, we often ate lunch at CAMST, a worker co-op that provides catering and food services across the region, and which generates about $374 million in annual sales. A banner at a construction site we passed declared that the project was managed by CESI, another worker co-op. We visited Emilbanca, a rural credit cooperative with a proud agrarian history, which has evolved into a very modern financial institution with a deep sense of social responsibility. And the shelves in an outlet of COOP, a consumer co-op federation and Italy's largest retailer, were lined with products from producer-owned cooperatives.

We visited farmer co-ops, fishing co-ops and housing co-ops. We even stumbled upon a fair-trade shop and cafe, only to learn that it, too, was a co-op.

The prevalence of cooperation in northern Italy is truly amazing, but it is no accident. In Italy, they cooperate like they mean it.

The Italian cooperative movement has an impressive history that reaches back to the 1800s. . . [It] is, in fact, a movement. Even the Italian constitution recognizes "the social function of cooperation as a form of mutual aid devoid of all private speculative intent." Co-ops also seem to recognize that trade among co-ops of all sectors is not only a philosophical ideal, but is also a lever for economic development, strengthening the movement as a whole. In this sense, they recognize the true importance of cooperation among cooperatives. Co-op sectors are better integrated than they are in the U.S., collaborating through informal networks as well as more formal models such as federations, consortia and funding organizations. This, in turn, enables the movement to engage the government with greater strength, demonstrating that cooperatives are unique community assets, spanning generations, with strong values and local roots. . .

Prior to my visit, I had heard that Italian law requires all co-ops to contribute 3 percent of their annual surpluses to funds that provide lending, investment and technical assistance support. But it surprised me that the co-ops themselves had proposed this law.

The development of the "social cooperative" is a particularly impressive example of what I call "co-opreneurship." Beginning in the 1980s, in response to the decline in government-sponsored health care, educational services and employment services, people began to form co-ops to offer such services themselves. In 1991, the national government passed a law that formalized the model, which contributed to a dramatic expansion of these co-ops into areas such as job training, and care for the elderly and disabled. By 2001, Italy had about 6,000 social co-ops, which employed 160,000 people, 15,000 of whom were disadvantaged workers.

BREVITAS

NAVY SAFETY CENTER
GALLERY

On April 4, 1968, Life photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. They raced to the scene and there, incredibly, had unfettered access to the hotel grounds, Dr. King's room, and the surrounding area. For reasons that have been lost in the intervening years, the photographs taken that night and the next day were never published. Until now.

RON PAUL SUPPORTER HELD BY TSA FOR CARRYING CASH

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