although I was vaguely certain I was against nuclear power ... the concerts and the speaker led me to read several books on the subject and eventually to be able to argue effectively ...

At that time, GE was just finishing up the San Luis Obispo plant and, irrc, had plans for more...

It tooks several years of "consciousness raising" but nuclear power DIED in California ... wholesale public opinion simply reached a tipping point and GE stopped trying (and with massive governnent subsidies went abroad).

Prior to "No Nukes", most individuals felt both helpless and confused by all the arguing and men in suits and our "pressing need" for alternative fuels, and so on ...

Live Earth, I hope, will be a similar start of people educating themselves, realizing that what they do and think matters ... it's a good thing.

I cannot tell you how angry I feel at times. I remember the First Earth Day. I remember the oil crisis under Jimmy Carter. I remember gas lines and conserving. Hell, I've been recycling consistently since I was 10 years old, back in 1962, and before then we recycled newspapers ... just because Mom said it was the right thing to do.

is that I think one of our BIG obstacles all along is the OVERT RACISM of much of our personnel. It's come up over and over, usually profanity laced and thus partly censored or cleaned up.

After Abu Ghraib and after the recent revelations of simple massacre and murders by our personnel, see also Falluja ... and the shockingly insulting comments made routinely about the Iraqi army and police ... neighborhood policing (which I anticipated would result in a rise in American casualties) seems like one of better ideas and one that just might, block by block, settle some areas.

Our personnel are back in their humvees getting blown up in their humvees and going home to Baghdad, U.S.A. bases most nights.

Individually and collectively, I think at this time, they're just going through the motions and they know it ... until they get to come home and some other poor bastard takes their place, or the election, or something worse, that ultimate sacrifice thing. Just the old soft shoe.... vamping for time ...

but the song remains the same ....

Oh, and around that time, 1967-1970, I had three friends and a brother shooting speed when I was in high school ... two went state hospital psychotic, one went to prison; two of them later od'd on heroin ... c'est la vie.

However, aside from the "waste" problem, as I recall there were massive cost overruns and quality control problems in construction; placement of plants on the shoreline was resented by locals, coincided with geologic fault lines and made potential contamination in case of an accident that much worse. And then there were the lies and misrepresentations and sweetheart contracts ... oh and your tax dollar at work subsidizing and "insuring" (?indemnifying) the thing.

The other problems with GE's plants, irrc, is that they didn't actually ever actually produce the energy forecasted, their lifespan was MUCH SHORTER than advertised and the demolition costs were gigantic.

wrt safety, GE used the water cooled design ... irrc, France and Japan's power plants (many) use pebble cooling, have much less potential for melt down and anticipated worst case contamination (prolly not including a nuclear strike, y'know) is much less.

Sure, nuclear can be reconsidered .... but as far as I know American companies are still relying on water cooling ...

Economically, nuclear power was both a boondoggle (of Halliburton proportions) and a fraud.

I think if they were serious about implementing the ISG reccomendations, they would be reconvening the ISG to update those recommendations and see what, if any, windows of opportunity remain.

Iraq has not spent the last six months in a bell jar. Things are worse. In fact, they are MUCH worse, and things like our recent "outreach" to Sunni tribal leaders and our raids into Sadr City have "changed things", as they say.

Any proposal to use the greater than 6-month old ISG recommendations without revisit/update should be laughed off the dais as cowardly hindsight 20/20 blame shifting ... yes, they're eager NOW to affix the blame on Bush ... but where were they (and plenty of other voices) THEN?

Time has marched on ... a reconvened ISG might be able to hit the ground walking more quickly, if not exactly running, IF anyone could get them to go through that hell twice.

-- some of their recommendations look rather like the surge.

-- some of their recommendations are nonstarters (their oil proposal, for one, and provincial elections are looking less and less like a solution to anything, with so many Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people)

-- the isg proposal was not embraced, as far as I can tell, by ANY iraq contigents.

if you want to refresh your memory as I did:

url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Study_Group_Report

and so on ...

I hate to say it but BushCo is probably still praying nightly for some sort of "indigenous" "palace coup" or assasinations that can't be traced to THEM ... Juan Cole said yesterday there's talk of a vote of non-confidence wrt Maliki this week ... so some "fresh hell" may break out ...

I'm not sure anyone America beside teambush is going to greet the opportunity of a "do-over" with anything more than a groan and talk of "throwing good money after bad" ... but it will keep everyone distracted for a few months ...