The MSO began rehearsing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 this evening. It is as inspiring but demanding work to perform.

I know of no other work of music that creates its own universe and then draws the listener (or performer) deep into it. The universe created by the symphony is to be found in our own souls, and Beethoven, perhaps more than any other composer, found a way to explore this inner dimension through music.

I often recommend it to persons who would like to be introduced to classical music.

This coming Saturday the MSO will be playing “The Lark Ascending” by Ralph Vaughn Williams (Marta Szlubowska, Violin Soloist), “Night on Bald Mountain” by Mussorgsky, Ballet Music from the Opera “MacBeth” by Verdi and The Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. The concert starts at 7:30 at Thalia Mara Hall.

Update: I am offering 2 comps to the MS Symphony Orchestra concert Saturday night. First to claim gets them. The MSO requests that we not leave comps at the box office, so we will have to arrange a hand-off elsewhere.

Email me at editor(at)jacksonprogressive(dot)com

Tags: beethoven, Mississippi Symphony Orchestra

Provocative movie about the death on October 25, 2002, of Senator Paul Wellstone, just 11 days before the senatorial election in which he was expected to beat Republican Norm Coleman. The death of Wellstone, his wife and his daughter in a small airplane came at a critical time in the Bush Administration, because Wellstone, an extremely popular liberal senator, was beginning to look as though he was about to sway national support against the invasion of Iraq. His death came at a particularly convenient time, as the election of Norm Coleman gave the Republicans a majority of one in the U. S. Senate.

Mississippi has had its share of politicians dying in mysterious ways. Former lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate Charlie Sullivan, an experienced pilot and Air National Guard general, died in a plane crash in 1979. Doxey Fisher, gubernatorial candidate in the ’60s, was another. Doubtless there are others.

The crash that killed Wellstone looked suspicious to me from the beginning. Watch the movie on YouTube and see what you think.

Paul Wellstone: They Killed Him

Tags: Wellstone, Charles L. Sullivan, Doxey Fisher

Via Truthout, reporter Greg Palast paints a grim picture of the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan and states that the company that built those plants is now under contract to build two reactors on the Texas Gulf Coast. Palast was involved with opposition to the Shoreham plant in New York, which led to its dismantling:

Here are the facts about Tokyo Electric and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from Al Qaeda.

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from 'failed' to 'passed.'

The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction which will work with Tokyo Electric to build the Texas plant, Lord help us.

Scary, huh? Now I am beginning to appreciate Black Swan Theory. Meltdowns are one of the things that simply can’t happen. The finest engineers in the world, it is said, have prepared for every contingency, even on the earthquake-prone rim of the Pacific Ocean, so there is no danger of a reactor going out of control and spewing radioactive isotopes all over the world. This must be true, because the giant corporations that build these monstrosities and the equally giant power companies that operate them have told us that they are safe.

So much for trusting large corporation when big money is at stake. Palast:

TEPCO and Toshiba don't know what my son learned in 8th grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So these companies are real stupid, eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn't have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.

Back in the day, when we checked the emergency back-up diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuke, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They'd been tested. The tests were faked, the diesels run for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, "Snap, Crackle and Pop."

(Note: Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.)

In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells Tokyo Electric to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn't want to do.

I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders. One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and Tokyo Electric to lure them to America. The US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.

In Japan, it's simply not done. The culture does not allow the salary-men, who work all their their lives for one company, to drop the dime.

Comforting isn’t it? Read the entire article.

Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants: The no-BS info on Japan's disastrous nuclear operators

What’s worse is that the Obama administration asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for the Texas reactors.

Tags: Palast, TEPCO, Obama, Stone & Webster, Shorham, SQ, Seismic Qualification, Meltdown

Given the publicity surrounding the current hearings of the Homeland Security Committee, here’s a short quiz, courtesy of Juan Cole, on Saudi Arabia. Unless you have kept up with current affairs and Middle East history far more than the average American, you will be surprised at what you read and I hope far less trustful of what you hear in the mainstream media.

NPR Story on hearings

The Guardian: Peter King’s subversive fantasy

Tags: Saudi Arabia

My wife and I went for lunch today to Spice Avenue, an Indian Restaurant on the west frontage road of I-55 near Northside Drive. Highly recommended.

Tags: indian restaurants

No nation with its own currency will ever go broke. The whole idea is preposterous. Any politician that tells you that the United States is going broke is either a fool or a liar. I prefer the latter; liars tend to be more attuned to reality than fools.

The reason is simple: a sovereign government can create money. As long as inflation stays low, there is no reason why a government cannot pay its bills and stimulate its economy by increasing the supply of money by printing more of it. At the moment, the danger is deflation, not inflation, and the former is far more devastating that the latter, that is, unless you happen to hold a lot of money, in which case deflation will increase your wealth. If you owe money, however, the size of your debt will actually increase, since you must repay it in currency that has increased in value.

Michael Moore has his own take on the current crisis in Wisconsin, but one thing that he said really hit me hard: “I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate.” Today, few high schools even offer economics, much less require it. When I attended Murrah High in Jackson in the early ‘60s, the school ostensibly offered a semester of economics paired with a semester of commercial law, but I never knew anyone who actually took the courses or whether they were even taught. How different our politics would be if a substantial portion of our citizens knew a little about macroeconomics. It’s very difficult to argue or even converse with someone who has no idea of what the Federal Reserve does, or how consumption and government spending are related. From what I read in the papers, it is clear that our congressional delegation (and most of Congress) is clueless as to the way the economy works. And as Paul Krugman writes of the Tea-Partyers in Congress, they seem to be on a rampage to repeal the laws of arithmetic. Krugman’s column calls out for a quote, but I am resisting the impulse. You must read it all to understand what is happening in the Congress on the economics front.

Tags: money, Sovereign nation, Wisconsin

Rain, besides its usual contributions to the environment and the survival of all life, bestows an additional benefit on a rainy Saturday: the sound of the leaf-blower is not heard in our land. What a joy to hear only the light patter of rain! I would rather hear jets overhead than the continuous whine of a weed-blower two houses away.

Readers of the JP will know that I oppose the death penalty, no matter the crime. But I’m tempted to make an exception for the guy that invented the leaf-blower. :-)

Tom Lowe

Tags: Leaf blowers