“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Trevor Timm: Obama says he’s working towards a nuclear-free world. That’s a lie
Ahead of the 50-country Nuclear Security Summit that met in Washington DC this past week, President Obama publicly touted his administration’s alleged progress towards “a world without nuclear weapons”. In reality, his administration’s record on reducing nuclear weapons is largely a dismal failure.
Early in his presidency, Obama famously gave a speech in Prague in which he described “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”. Not only has the administration barely made a dent in the gigantic nuclear arsenal the United States has, it has committed more than $1tn over the next several decades to further entrenching the system into permanence, potentially sparking a dangerous new arms race.
Garry Leech: Islamic Extremism Is a Product of Western Imperialism
As we struggle to come to terms with the latest terrorist attacks in Brussels, it is important that we understand the causes of such extremism. After all, Islamic extremism was virtually unknown fifty years ago and suicide bombings were inconceivable. And yet today it seems that we are confronted with both on a daily basis. So what happened to bring Islamic fundamentalism to the forefront of global politics? While there are many factors involved, undoubtedly one of the primary causes is Western imperialism. Western intervention in the Middle East over the past century to secure access to the region’s oil reserves established a perfect environment in which Islamic fundamentalists could exploit growing anti-Western sentiment throughout the Islamic world, with some establishing violent extremist groups. The most recent consequence of this process is the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, which emerged out of the chaos caused by the US invasion of Iraq.
In order to understand the rise of the Islamic State we must first briefly review the history of Western intervention in not only the Middle East but throughout the world to reveal that Islamic extremism in not a unique phenomenon. For the past 500 years, peoples throughout the world have resorted to acts of violence that today would be classified as terrorism in efforts to resist Western imperialism. Indigenous peoples in the Americas often used violent tactics to defend themselves against the brutal European colonizers. There were also many violent slave revolts by Blacks who had been shipped from Africa to the Americas in the service of Western imperialism.
‘Bathroom Bills’ Are Attacks on the Humanity of Transgender People
Right-wing extremists have a new way to foist their repulsive beliefs on us. After suffering a humiliating defeat in the Supreme Court in their battle against same-sex marriage, they have hit upon a formula designed to lure gullible Americans into believing that transgender people are sexual predators lurking in restrooms, eager to prey on the opposite sex. They have declared their first victory in North Carolina, where a wide-ranging so-called bathroom bill, HB2, was passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature during a special session and speedily signed into law by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.
The innocuously named Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act blatantly overrides protections against transgender discrimination (and other forms) in cities and municipalities in North Carolina—specifically, the protections offered by a newly passed ordinance in the city of Charlotte that was to take effect Friday. The state bill is primarily designed to force transgender people to use public restrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates rather than their gender identity.
Ellen Cantarow and Alison Rose Levy: Fukushima on the Hudson? The Growing Dangers of Indian Point
It was a beautiful spring day and, in the control room of the nuclear reactor, the workers decided to deactivate the security system for a systems test. As they started to do so, however, the floor of the reactor began to tremble. Suddenly, its 1,200-ton cover blasted flames into the air. Tons of radioactive radium and graphite shot 1,000 meters into the sky and began drifting to the ground for miles around the nuclear plant. The first firemen to the rescue brought tons of water that would prove useless when it came to dousing the fires. The workers wore no protective clothing and eight of them would die that night—dozens more in the months to follow.
It was April 26, 1986, and this was just the start of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident of its kind in history. Chernobyl is ranked as a “level 7 event,” the maximum danger classification on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. It would spew out more radioactivity than 100 Hiroshima bombs. Of the 350,000 workers involved in cleanup operations, according to the World Health Organization, 240,000 would be exposed to the highest levels of radiation in a 30-mile zone around the plant. It is uncertain exactly how many cancer deaths have resulted since. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s estimate of the expected death toll from Chernobyl was 4,000. A 2006 Greenpeace report challenged that figure, suggesting that 16,000 people had already died due to the accident and predicting another 140,000 deaths in Ukraine and Belarus still to come. A significant increase in thyroid cancers in children, a very rare disease for them, has been charted in the region—nearly 7,000 cases by 2005 in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.
Eugene Robinson: Bernie Sanders Flipping Presidential Script, Turning Democratic Race Into Epic Contest
If not for a certain Manhattan billionaire, Bernie Sanders’ surprising strength and Hillary Clinton’s relative weakness would be the big political story of the year.
Democrats are fortunate that bloody insurrection is roiling the Republican Party. Clinton—the likely Democratic nominee—will almost surely face either Donald Trump, who is toxic to most of the electorate, or an alternative chosen at the GOP convention and seen by Trumpistas as a usurper.
Clinton would be favored to beat either Trump or his closest challenger, Ted Cruz, whose ultraconservative views would be expected to repel independent voters. But Democrats should be thankful that John Kasich, who could have broad appeal, is almost surely too moderate to win the nomination of a Republican Party dragged to the far-right fringe by its angry base.
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