WHICH IS SUSTAINABLE?

 

• An underground single-shell tank at the Department of Energy Hanford, Washington nuclear facility is leaking up to 300 gallons of radioactive waste a year. The tanks contain a mix of high-level radioactive and hazardous chemical waste left from chemically processing fuel irradiated at Hanford reactors to remove plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. As many as 67 of the tanks are believed to have leaked in the past.

• Maine Veterans For Peace will hold its annual retreat on Saturday, February 23 at the Viles Arboretum in Augusta.  It will run from 9:00 am til the end of the day.  Part of the retreat will be spent standing in solidarity with Bradley Manning on the Kennebec River Bridge in Augusta from 11:30 to noon.  That day will mark his 1,000th day in prison for having exposed the war crimes, the corruption, and abuses of the U.S. government. Due process has been denied Manning and his rights, in general, have been trampled.  We will be demanding that Manning be released when his pre-trial hearing begins February 26th.

•  Israeli authorities raided the home of Palestinian hunger striker Samer Issawi overnight (Feb 17) in east Jerusalem, harassing his family members and arresting his brother. Issawi, 33, is among several hunger strikers currently held in Israeli prisons who are on strike against the practice of 'administrative detention' in which Israeli authorities detain Palestinians without charge or trial for indefinite periods of time. Issawi has been on hunger strike for over 200 days and is on the verge of death. Reports have suggested that he has been force fed by Israeli guards to be kept alive.

• At Europe's premier security conference in Munich, Germany, this month, the Pentagon's No. 2 official, Ashton Carter, reassured the assembled that the US would not abandon Europe as he made the case for the expensive and destabilizing US "pivot" of its foreign and military policy into the Asia-Pacific. While Asia has prospered for 70 years, "it's not automatic," he added. "And I think a central reason for that peace and prosperity has been the pivotal role of American military power in that part of the world."  This statement is telling and underscores the thinking that it was the US "protection" (which led to wars in Korea and Vietnam and massive killing in Indonesia on behalf of corporate capital) that led to the economic boom in the region.  By creating a new arms race in the Asia-Pacific the military industrial complex will now put Russia, China and North Korea into the "bad guy" box and use them to frighten the American people into giving even more of their hard-earned tax dollars for endless war preparation.