Norman Solomon

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Nuclear Dangers Close to Home

By Norman Solomon

Several decades ago, three expert nuclear
engineers told a congressional panel why
they decided to quit: "We could no longer
justify devoting our life energies to the
continued development and expansion of
nuclear fission power — a system we believe
to be so dangerous that it now threatens the
very existence of life on this planet."

The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy heard
that testimony in 1977, when the
conventional wisdom was still hailing "the
peaceful atom" as a flawless marvel. During
the same year, solid information convinced
me to move from concern to action against
nuclear power.

To read the entire article, click here.

Standing for Peace

To read a note from Norman Solomon, click here.

The Search for War

By Norman Solomon

In times of war, U.S. presidents have often talked about yearning for peace. But the last decade has brought a gradual shift in the rhetorical zeitgeist while a tacit assumption has taken hold -- war must go on, one way or another.

“I am continuing and I am increasing the search for every possible path to peace,” Lyndon Johnson said while escalating the Vietnam War. In early 1991, the first President Bush offered the public this convolution: “Even as planes of the multinational forces attack Iraq, I prefer to think of peace, not war.” More than a decade later, George W. Bush told a joint session of Congress: “We seek peace. We strive for peace.”

While absurdly hypocritical, such claims mouthed the idea that the USA need not be at war 24/7/365.

But these days, peace gets less oratorical juice. In this era, after all, the amorphous foe known as “terror” will never surrender.

     To read the full article, click here.

Running for Congress

Norman Solomon -- the North Bay political activist who has been a leader of the region’s Green New Deal commission and the national Healthcare Not Warfare campaign -- announced on Wednesday (April 13) that he has filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for Congress. He said that his name will be on the June 2012 ballot if Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey decides not to seek re-election.

“After so many years of progressive leadership from Lynn Woolsey, her successor in the House should have a proven commitment to a wide range of progressive values,” Solomon said. “Whether the issue is war in Afghanistan, massive giveaways to Wall Street, chronic deference to corporate power or Washington’s failure to take drastic action against climate change, the North Bay should be represented in Congress by someone with extensive knowledge and a track record of strong public advocacy on key local, national and international issues.”

“I’ve spent decades working for social justice, environmental protection and a rational foreign policy,” Solomon said. “I see Congress as a place where strong progressive voices must be heard and basic changes must be fought for.”

To read more, click here.

"Mad as hell, with a sense of humor"

    With her usual precision, Molly Ivins commented: “If Will Rogers and Mother Jones had a baby, Jim Hightower would be that rambunctious child -- mad as hell, with a sense of humor.”

     Jim is the real deal -- a progressive populist so compelling that he was chosen to be the finale guest on the intrepid PBS program “Bill Moyers Journal.”

     I’m proud that Jim Hightower is making a special trip to California to speak in support of my emerging campaign for Congress.

To read more, please click here.

The Need for Truth About Nuclear Dangers

By Norman Solomon

On the edge of Capitol Hill, day after day, we heard wrenching testimony from people whose lives had been ravaged by the split atom.

That was three decades ago.

I was coordinating the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims in 1980, one year after Three Mile Island. The voices came from uranium miners, atomic workers, veterans, downwinders exposed to atmospheric nuclear bomb tests . . . and many others. The people who testified were from a wide array of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. But in addition to radiation exposure and suffering, they had one huge experience in common.

They'd been lied to—not once or twice, but repeatedly. Year after year.

There is no danger, the officials told them. You are safe. Radiation levels? Not to worry. But gradually, the clusters of cancer or leukemia or severe thyroid ailments or birth defects became too conspicuous to ignore. Still, officials kept saying that the nuclear industry was blameless.

To read the complete article, click here.

On Speaking Truth to Nuclear Power

The other night, as news from Japan took a turn for the worse, I stayed up late and wrote about Nuclear Power Madness. I hope you'll read the article and pass it on.

 

My opposition to nuclear power is longstanding. In the late 1970s, while advocating for solar and wind energy as well as conservation, I devoted two years to public education and nonviolent civil disobedience that aimed to shut down a large nuclear power plant operating just forty miles from Portland, Oregon.

 

Later, I served as director of the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims and co-authored Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation. (The book is now online; if you'd like to take a peek, click here.)

 

Despite the latest in a long line of presidential assurances, the nuclear facts are dire. As the director of Public Citizen's Energy Program wrote this week, "There are alternatives. Had Japan invested in rooftop solar and wind turbines to the degree it spent maintaining and building nuclear reactors, the country wouldn't be grappling with the potential of a full-scale nuclear meltdown."

 

The ominous power of the nuclear industry extends from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., where an atomic lobbying force throws buckets of money at Capitol Hill.

Nuclear Power Madness

Published on Monday, March 14, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Norman Solomon

Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever.

Political elites are still clinging to the oxymoron of “safe nuclear power.” It’s up to us -- people around the world -- to peacefully and insistently shut those plants down.

There is no more techno-advanced country in the world than Japan. Nuclear power is not safe there, and it is not safe anywhere.

As the New York Times reported on Monday, “most of the nuclear plants in the United States share some or all of the risk factors that played a role at Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel generators and batteries that could fail in extreme circumstances.”

Nuclear power -- from uranium mining to fuel fabrication to reactor operations to nuclear waste that will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years -- is, in fact, a moral crime against future generations.

But syrupy rhetoric has always marinated the nuclear age. From the outset -- even as radioactive ashes were still hot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- top officials in Washington touted atomic energy as redemptive. The split atom, we were to believe, could be an elevating marvel.

President Dwight Eisenhower pledged “to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma” by showing that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”

Even after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 -- and now this catastrophe in Japan -- the corporate theologians of nuclear faith have continued to bless their own divine projects.

Thirty years ago, when I coordinated the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims on the edge of Capitol Hill, we heard grim testimony from nuclear scientists, workers, downwinders and many others whose lives had been forever ravaged by the split atom. Routine in the process was tag-team deception from government agencies and nuclear-invested companies.

By 1980, generations had already suffered a vast array of terrible consequences -- including cancer, leukemia and genetic injuries -- from a nuclear fuel cycle shared by the “peaceful” and military atom. Today, we know a lot more about the abrupt and slow-moving horrors of the nuclear industry.

<< To read the rest of this article, click here. >>

Crisis for Working People: The New Corporate Assault

To listen to Norman Solomon's Feb. 22 interview on C-SPAN Radio, click here.

Update -- "Toward a Greening of Politics"

     For a while now, I've been hearing questions like: "Sure you want to jump into that cesspool?"

     I answered with a short essay -- "Toward a Greening of Politics" -- in the current issue of the North Bay Bohemian. To read it, click here.

     Meanwhile, the San Francisco Bay Guardian printed another piece I wrote on some of the key reasons I'm planning to run for Congress if Lynn Woolsey decides not to seek re-election. For that article, click here.

Why I May Run for Congress

San Francisco Bay Guardian -- Jan. 27, 2011

To read this article, click here.

Toward a Greening of Politics

North Bay Bohemian -- Jan. 26, 2011

By Norman Solomon

"Sure you want to jump into that cesspool?"

I've heard countless variations of the same question in recent months, as the possibility of running for Congress has become more real. With all the big-money hit pieces and mud fights that pass for "politics" these days, no wonder so many people see election campaigns as little more than depravity masquerading as democracy.

But there are lives in the balance, near and far, from the North Bay to Afghanistan. A list of what's at stake would be endless: the rights of workers, the ecology of rivers and the injustices of a healthcare system largely run for corporate profit.And with the U.S. military now spending more than $2 billion every day, grim results of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of military" are all around us. Public schools hold bake sales while Pentagon spending continues to go through the roof.

At a time when budget cuts are having dire effects on our own communities, I think of the distorted priorities that I saw in 2009 during a visit to Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world. That nation, in desperate need, does not need Uncle Sam to escalate warfare.

Here at home, an upsurge of hope peaked a couple of years ago with the inauguration of President Obama. Since then, we've come back to earth—which, in the long run, is where we should be—with feet on the ground and eyes on the horizon. Pragmatism and idealism can be a very good match.

To read complete article, click here.

Announcing an exploratory committee for Congress

     I've just formed an exploratory committee for Congress. To read the announcement, please click here. 

     I want to thank everyone who has encouraged me to take this step. The expressions of support that I've received from hundreds of people have been deeply gratifying.

     With so much at stake -- in the midst of perpetual war, a destructive economy, unchecked global warming and so many other dire realities -- our challenge is to create the kind of future that we want to leave for the next generations.

     For a sampling of my statements on policy issues in recent months, please click here. 

     For a summary of my background, click here. 

     You'll find a lot more -- including video, photos and articles -- on the Norman Solomon for Congress Exploratory Committee website.

     I'm very much looking forward to what comes next with this exploratory committee -- house parties, issue forums, listening tours, public debates and more -- an ongoing swirl of activity across the North Bay.

     And I want to invite you to be part of it all.

     To sign up for news on what's upcoming, take a minute to fill out "Get Email Updates" at the top of the exploratory committee website. 

     If you'd like to host a house party where I can speak, hear people's concerns and respond to questions, please send me an email at NormanSolomonNorthBay@gmail.com and put "House Party" in the subject line.

     If you'd like to contribute to this effort, please click here.

     Going forward, there's no better keynote than these words from Senator Paul Wellstone: "In the last analysis, politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine."

Best wishes,

Norman

P.S.  -- I'd appreciate it if you forward this email to people you know. It would also be a big help if you post some of the links on websites, listservs, Facebook and Twitter. And please suggest that people visit the website, www.NormanSolomonExploratory.com.

Progressives and Power in Washington

A live interview with Norman Solomon

KQED Television, Channel 9, San Francisco
January 7, 2011

To watch this six-minute interview, click here.

Speech in Santa Rosa this Wednesday night

Wednesday, January 26 -- 7:30 p.m.

Santa Rosa Democratic Club

Veterans Memorial Building, 1351 Maple Ave., Santa Rosa (95404)

Norman Solomon speaking on the future for progressives, the Democratic Party and our country

Program will be preceded by hors d'oeuvre hour starting at 6 p.m. and optional dinner at 7 p.m.

For details or to make a dinner reservation, click here: More info

 

What's at Stake in Tax-Cut Deal

To read Norman Solomon's article on the implications of the so-called "compromise" tax-cut bill signed by President Obama, click here.

Reflections on recent days... and the political terrain ahead

     Last week, soon after President Obama made his stunning tax deal with Republican leaders, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey told the Marin Independent Journal: “I think when you hold unemployment and the needs of the poorest and most desperate people hostage, that it is blackmail, and I don’t think we should give in to blackmail, ever.”

     In the same article, I made a comment that’s often heard among progressives: “This is not what we worked for.”

     A New York Times story quoted a somber assessment from me: “By giving away the store on such a momentous tax issue, he has now done huge damage to a large portion of the progressive base that helped to make him president.”

     For progressives, already reeling from the grim midterm elections, the last couple of weeks have been disheartening -- all the more so because the huge giveaway deal for the rich came just after the president went to Afghanistan to reaffirm the escalation of war.

     But activists can put up a fight!

     Just this month, progressive Democrats and allies raised enough of an outcry on Capitol Hill and elsewhere to rebuff the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission and its long-awaited recommendations that would seriously undermine Social Security and Medicare. The struggle will rage on.

"START AGITATING: Norman Solomon on getting out there and doing something"

To read an interview with Norman Solomon, published in December 2010, click here. 

 

A Hollow Bomber Jacket

Last Friday [Dec. 3], in a column about economic policy, Paul Krugman focused on "moral collapse" at the White House -- "a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction." Meanwhile, President Obama flew to Afghanistan, where he put on a leather bomber jacket and told U.S. troops: "You're achieving your objectives. You will succeed in your mission."

For the Obama presidency, moral collapse has taken on the appearance of craven clockwork, establishing a concentric pattern -- doing immense damage to economic security at home while ratcheting up warfare overseas.

By the end of the weekend, a deal was just about wrapped up between the president and Republican congressional leaders to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

On the spin-cycle agenda this month is yet more reframing of the president's foggy doubletalk about Afghanistan. Strip away the carefully crafted verbiage and the picture is stark -- with plans for a huge U.S. war effort in that country for many years to come.

At the end of a year with massive U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan, parallels with the Johnson administration's unhinged Vietnam War are hard to miss. Conjectures about an inside-the-Democratic-Party challenge to Obama's re-nomination are now moving from shadowy whispers to open discourse.

Some critics of the Vietnam War hesitated to confront it because of President Johnson's laudable domestic record, which included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the founding of Medicare and the launching of other Great Society programs. In sharp contrast, what most distinguishes President Obama's domestic record is its series of major cave-ins to corporate power and income inequality.

Ostensibly battling for economic fairness, the president is flying a white flag high over the White House.

Letter to members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus

November 30, 2010 

Dear Member of Congress,

Two months ago we wrote to you and other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, noting that “in your district, and nationwide, the progressive base will be watching with intense concern and vigilance as you respond to the growing threat to bedrocks of the social compact in our country.”

On behalf of PDA, our letter said: “We expect you to completely follow through with pledges to defend Social Security and Medicare.” And the letter added: “While we will be working to hold the line on these profoundly successful and essential social programs, we will work just as hard to demand the end of the occupation of Afghanistan and the return of war dollars home.”

Since then, the twin crises of economic austerity and war have become more acute. The Bowles-Simpson commission is continuing to advance a pernicious agenda. And the White House has backed away from its nebulous timeframe of July 2011 for halting the momentum of U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan.

Never has principled and unwavering leadership been more needed on Capitol Hill.

We’re heartened by recent statements from CPC leaders expressing unequivocal opposition to any cuts or diminishment of Social Security. At the same time, prior experience tells us that such statements cannot be taken as the last word; they must be continually supported and reinforced.