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October 24, 2001
Lori
Allen
Life
in an Occupied Land
During Wartime
Peter
Swire
New
Anti-Terrorism Bill
Poses Old Risks
Irina
Malenko
A
Non-Western Voice
David
Vest
Welcome
to Web Hell
Patrick Cockburn
Battle
of Mazar Gets Nasty
October 23, 2001
Steve
Perry
Anthrax,
Cipro and the Bailout of Bayer
Carl
Estabrook
Just War
or
The Rule of Lawlessness?
Patrick
Cockburn
Errant
Bombs at Bagram
George
Monbiot
War
and Oil
Robert
Jensen
Crushing
Academic Dissent
October 22, 2001
Hamit
Dardagan
The
New Newspeak
Tom
Turnipseed
War
on the Poor
Patrick Cockburn
Killing
Mullah Omar's Child
David
Vest
The
War on Women
Shepherd
Bliss
Advice
from a Vietnam Vet
Hani
Shukrallah
Capital
Strikes Back
October 21, 2001
Donald
Rumsfeld
The
al-Jazeera Interview
Mark
Scaramella
Nuclear
Anxiety
October 19, 2001
Mohammed
Sid-Ahmed
Bush's
Palestinian State
Michael
Colby
A
Mailroom Manifesto
October 18, 2001
Mahajan
and Jensen
Avoiding
a New Cold War
Patrick
Cockburn
US
Planes Pound Taliban
Jamey Hecht
Gerald Ford
and the CIA
Mokhiber
and Weisman
3
Arguments
Against This War
October 17, 2001
Ballinger
and Marsh
Music
and War Resistance
Steve
Perry
The
Anthrax Chronicles
Chris
Kromm
Operation
Infinite Disaster
Susan
Block
Sex
Not Bombs
David Vest
Osama Speaks
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 3, 2001
8-Page Special
Issue
Aftermath
Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
on
Civil Liberties
Ridge Long Groomed
for
Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids
Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
Vietnam
Same as Kerrey's?
A CounterPunch
Journey
to Ramallah
A Word About
God
Nostrodamus
Jam-maker
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas
Valentine
Al
Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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October 24,
2001
Nuclear War Against
Germs?
Radioactive Mail
By Michael Colby
For fifty years the purveyors of irradiation have
been looking for a purpose. It all began, of course, in the 1950s
under President Eisenhower's Atomic Energy Commission, specifically
its "Atoms for Peace" program. The U.S. was awash in
nuclear waste materials, particularly cesium-137, and it was
quickly becoming the Achilles heel of the burgeoning nuclear
establishment. Eisenhower, therefore, established the Atoms for
Peace program with the specific directive to find peaceful uses
for this nuclear waste material. But more than simply finding
a use for nuclear garbage, the nuclear establishment wanted to
eliminate the cloud of war that surrounded all things nuclear
and, instead, demonstrate to U.S. citizens that there were peaceful
civilian uses for these new "wonder isotopes."
After scrapping ideas such as manufacturing
nuclear replacement hearts for cardiac patients, the Atoms for
Peace program set its long-term sights on exposing the food supply
to radiation. And food irradiation was born.
The reasoning given at the time was "shelf-life."
Remember, fifty years ago E.coli, salmonella, and factory farming
weren't on the nation's agenda. But we were thinking about how
to make food last for long periods of time, especially amidst
the Cold War mentality that, interestingly enough, had people
building nuclear fall-out shelters. And the first thing on people's
minds when they thought of hunkering down in a hole for the duration
of a nuclear winter was usually "what in the hell are we
going to eat?"
Ta-da: nuclear food for nuclear winters.
It was a match made in cesium heaven.
In fact, some of the first scientific
promoters of food irradiation used to love to haul out their
30-plus year old cans of "irradiated chicken meat"
to flaunt their technological prowess. I remember when Dr. Ed
Josephson, a former Army scientist and one of the grandfathers
of irradiation, brought his can of the old meat to a congressional
hearing in the mid-1980s when the Reagan administration was about
to issue its sweeping approvals for food irradiation.
After a mumbling testimony about how
safe it was to expose foods to radiation doses equivalent to
tens of millions of chest x-rays, the crusty and very unhealthy
looking Josephson proudly declared that he'd been "eating
it for years" and he was fine. Even the right-wingers sitting
in the room could barely contain themselves, each seemingly making
a mental note to tell Josephson that there must be a better way
for him to testify.
And Josephson went one step further.
Reaching into his briefcase he pulled out a can of the irradiated
chicken meat, a can opener, a knife, a plate, and a stash of
toothpicks. "This has been on my shelf for over 20 years,"
declared Josephson as he popped the top of the can and began
dicing the pale meat into bite sized squares. "And it's
still very good."
But, other than Josephson and his colleagues
within the irradiation industry, there were no takers. And I
will always remember the look on Representative Henry Waxman's
face as the plate of pasty meat was thrust in front of him. He
wasn't about to partake in this impromptu experiment.
The Reagan administration did eventually
grant the first widespread approvals for food irradiation in
1986, when fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, spices, and flavorings
were approved. And each subsequent administration has done its
share to further the range of approvals, to the point now that
practically everything we consume has been approved to be exposed
to huge doses of radiation including meat, poultry and
seafood.
But there's always been one big problem
with food irradiation: the public doesn't want anything to do
with it. And the irradiation corporations have had to change
their purpose time and time again to try and find a niche for
their unseemly nuclear wares. Gone were the days that irradiation
was promoted as a peaceful use for nuclear waste material, or
that it was a way to keep bad meat edible for decades. Now we
were into the realm of "needing" irradiation to fix
all the problems of a filthy meat industrial complex, particularly
E.coli and salmonella.
The American public, however, seemed
more willing to give up meat than be forced to eat meat that
had been exposed to both fecal matter and 75 million chest x-rays.
Yum, yum.
But as I've learned in more than 15 years
of fighting all forms of irradiation, this industry always seems
to pull yet another trick out of its bag no matter how close
to death it gets.
Enter anthrax. CP
Michael Colby
is the editor of the Food
& Water Journal. His latest story for CounterPunch was
Mailroom Manifesto.
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