crisis

The news today from Japan is that the leak at the Fukushima Daichii nuclear power plant has been stopped but the crisis is far from over. Radiation levels remain high even outside the evacuation zone, contaminated fish are turning up, and the government seems to be insisting on business as usual, according to Aileen Mioko Smith. Aileen is executive director of Green Action Japan, and spent time studying the impact of the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, and she joins us via Skype to give us the latest on Japan's crisis. "Paul Ryan's roadmap, which I call the roadmap to ruin, is really an astonishing document that really doubles down on pretty much every single one of the negative economic decisions of the past thirty years that have gotten us into the mess we're in today," says Heather McGhee, Washington bureau director of Demos. Laura caught up with Heather at Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West's Fight Back Teach-In on April 5 to talk budget concerns. Keep an eye out for our in-depth interview with Frances and Cornel later this week! "We intend in this moment when diversity is increasing and prosperity is decreasing, to ensure that our country makes the right choice. There are indeed two choices. One choice is that you attack diversity and you distract people from the economy. Some folks have made that choice. The other is that you embrace diversity and you attack poverty," says Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP. Laura spoke with Ben at the We Are One rally in Newark, New Jersey and discussed the way conservative attacks on women, unions, immigrants, and more are all part of the same strategy, as well as the settlement of a lawsuit the NAACP filed against Wells Fargo. Distributed by Tubemogul.

What does Invasion of the Body Snatchers have to do with the Cold War? Why do so many people know about Ayn Rand? These are just a few of the questions that Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman takes on in his new book, An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War. Hoberman sat down with Laura for a look at some of those 1950s movies--and some more recent ones--and to discuss the hidden ideology behind monster movies and the not-so-hidden ideology of Ayn Rand movies. They came to work, they didn't come to die. But 100 years ago this week, that's exactly what happened to 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women trapped in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Filmmaker and GRITtv contributor Harry Hanbury checked in on the status of workers safety today and found "Triangle's Echoes: An Unfinished Struggle for Worker Protection, Safety & Health." And Danny Schechter, News Dissector, has some thoughts on the continuing economic crisis, and why we won't see a real solution from centrist politicians. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"Even knowing what's happening in Japan, we have Republicans saying we have to cut regulatory spending on places like nuclear energy," says Mike Papantonio, who notes the similarities between the refusal to learn from BP and the refusal to learn, now, from a deepening disaster in Japan. From the shift of the risk of dangerous fuels onto the taxpayers to the glib "every energy type has its dangers" dismissals, Mike breaks down the problems with the ways we talk about disasters, energy policy, and why we don't seem to want to invest in clean, safe fuels like solar and wind. "There's going to have to be a new kind of union movement. It's got to be one that is much more rank and file, much more bottom up, the organization has to be in the workplace, and in order to go beyond legalistically bargaining wages, people have to take action in the place that they work," says David Newby of the AFL-CIO. Laura caught up with David this past weekend in Madison at the largest protests yet, afte Scott Walker forced through the bill to bust public employee unions. He talks about the prospects for a new kind of union movement, different from the one of the past 40 or 50 years. Communities of color, Monica Adams notes, "were already organizing, we already knew about the wrath of Walker, we knew how he was over Milwaukee, we knew that he'd have targeted attacks." It was only natural, then, for Monica and her colleague at Freedom Inc., Kabzuag Vaj, to be at the center of the organizing against Scott Walker's cuts. Monica and Kabzuag discuss the issues beyond just attacks on unions, Walker's SB 1070 clone bill that attacks immigrants, and much more. "We have to be thinking about the people who don't get mentioned by name, because those are going to be the ones who get impacted the most," Monica notes. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"People who want to see the budget cut are people who are advocating throwing people out of work, it's that simple," says Dean Baker of the pressure from conservatives on Obama's budget--pressure, it appears, that Obama is conceding to as he brags that discretionary spending will be the lowest since Eisenhower's administration.So Obama's budget includes cuts to infrastructure, education, and more, and for Republicans, that's still not enough. Dean joins us from D.C. via Skype to talk about what the president should be arguing as the budget fight heats up.They're calling him the Mubarak of the Midwest: Wisconsin governor Scott Walker might have gone too far threatening to call the National Guard on union workers who might fight back against his draconian bill to strip their collective bargaining rights. Walker's union-busting has brought out thousands of protesters, who packed the capitol building and even drew support from the Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packers. The protests continued today with a "sick-out" from Madison schools, and support just might be eroding for Walker's policies..."It's a reimagining of the middle east, what is possible," says poet Remi Kanazi of the revolution in Egypt, and Laila El-Haddad notes the direct impact that the Mubarak regime had on Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza, which shares a border with Egypt. ; Laila and members of her family--including her small children--had been detained by the Mubarak regime.What does regime change mean for the Palestinian people? And what effect will the wave of civil rights protests and activism across Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Iran and Libya have? Laila and Remi join us to discuss.Finally, Laura has a few thoughts about Obama's budget--and all the things we shouldn't forget.