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Today's
Stories
March 26, 2008
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
March 1 / 2,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Race Card
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Political Trial of Don Siegelman
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba After Fidel
Christopher Brauchli
Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick
Ron Jacobs
Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge
John Ross
The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico
Robert Fantina
Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins
Robert Weissman
Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy
Mohammed Omer
Fear in Gaza
Remi Kanazi
Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia
Bob Jackson
Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd?
Richard Rhames
Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole
Rannie Amiri
Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon
David Michael
Green
The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam
Conn Hallinan
Notes from the Southern Cone
Faheem Hussain
Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!
February 29,
2008
Matt Gonzalez
The
Obama Craze
Jonathan Cook
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Joshua Frank
Obama and Israel
Anthony DiMaggio
The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback
of American Law
Linn Washington, Jr.
Cop Abuse in America
Binoy Kampmark
Hubris and Nemesis
Robert Bryce
Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy
Use
Sonja Karkar
Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel
Dave Lindorff
A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush?
Website of
the Day
Olduvai George
February 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
"Iraq"
Falls Apart
Fred Gardner
The Birth of NAFTA
Michael Levitin
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
William S.
Lind
The Fake State of Kosovo
David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor
Stephen Fleischman
Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod?
George Wuerthner
The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron
Laura Carlsen
The North American Union Farce
Carl Finamore
Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off
Michael Dickinson
The Day I Bombed the House of Commons
Website of the Day
Plane Stupid
February 27,
2008
David Rosen
Playing
the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political
Dirty Tricks
Vijay Prashad
Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War
Harvey Wasserman
Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns,
Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's
Military Economy
Peter Morici
The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal
Stephen Philion
Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement
Michael Donnelly
Obama by Unanimous Decision
Erica Rosenberg /
Janine Blaeloch
After the Land Deals: Will There
be Any Wilderness Left to Protect?
Website of
the Day
Dress Blues
February 26,
2008
Debbie Nathan
Confessions
of a Gitmo Guard
Alan Dershowitz
v. Frank Menetrez
On Finkelstein
Harvey Wasserman
How Ohio Got Nuked
Michael Colby
Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals
Gary Leupp
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
David Orchard
The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan
Martha Rosenberg
The Big HRT
Fran Shor
The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow
Serge Halimi
The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan
for the French Left
Global Balkans
Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans:
an Interview with Tariq Ali
Website of
the Day
Texistentialism
February 25,
2008
Roger Morris
A
Death in Damascus
Anthony DiMaggio
Military
Bases, the Media and the Democrats
Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils
Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies
Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms
Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That
Minot Nuke Incident
Saul Landau
/
Farrah Hassen
Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film
Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend
Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture
John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down
Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!
February 23 / 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain
Paul Craig
Roberts
Obama
and Global Trade
Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon
on the 9/11 Commission
Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA
Jürgen
Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"
Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana
Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
David Macaray
Unions Under Assault
Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster
Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future
Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies
Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down
Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain
Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement
Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel
Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels
Christopher
Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread
Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Obama
Mariachi
February 22,
2008
Mike Whitney
The
Bonfire of Capital
Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet
Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf
Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child
Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for
Her!
Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion
Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?
Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women
Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot
Website of
the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia
February 21,
2008
Saul Landau
Fidel
Steps Aside
Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed
Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right
Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia
Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma
Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle
Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela
Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto
Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music
CounterPunch
News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs
Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport
|
March
26, 2008
Bidding War for
Biowarfare Labs
The
Germs Next Door
By STAN COX
What would it take to convince you that
your town should play host to the world's most feared human and
animal pathogens? Believe it or not, five states are locked
in fierce competition over a proposed bioterror lab that would
have them doing just that.
In 2002, the newly created
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was given control of Plum
Island Animal Disease Center in New York. Now DHS is seeking
a home in the heartland for a National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility
(NBAF) that would take over Plum Island's work, along with its
potent microbial cultures. The fact that many diseases are now
known to jump between humans and animals, combined with this
decade's terror-fixation, has led the federal government to convert
the agricultural problem of sick livestock into the national-security
problem of bioterrorism.
Do I hear
a bid?
Lying off the east end of New
York's Long Island, Plum Island (which was under the Department
of Agriculture until 2002) is the only place in the nation where
scientists have previously been allowed to handle the pathogens
that cause foot-and-mouth disease, rinderpest, Rift Valley fever,
African swine fever, and other horrific maladies that, if let
loose on the mainland, could cause billions in agricultural losses
and even threaten human populations.
NBAF will be a "biosafety
level 4" (BL-4) facility, providing the highest degree of
isolation for the world's most dangerous organisms (Plum Island
was one notch down, at BL-3, because it was isolated by water).
Locations being eyed as possible sites include the University
of Georgia campus in Athens; the campus of Kansas State University
in Manhattan; Flora, Mississippi, near the capital city of Jackson;
a research farm 17 miles northeast of Duke University in North
Carolina; and a former ranch near San Antonio, Texas.
There is cutthroat competition
for the lab, with DHS being courted with the kinds of incentives
that go to all big potential employers. The University of Georgia
has offered 66 acres of prime real estate worth $15 million and
$4.5 million in road and utility improvements. The Kansas Senate
approved the issue of $164 million in bonds to pay for land,
roads, and security for NBAF. Now, DHS is reportedly demanding
that the lab, wherever it is sited, have its own energy source,
a natural gas-fired power plant. Governor Kathleen Sebelius
immediately agreed to throw that into the Kansas bid.
A big bio-gamble
Every potential location for
the bioterror facility lies close to large human and animal populations.
In Manhattan, Kansas, for example, the lab would be located
not only in an agricultural region, and not only in the nation's
second most tornado-prone state, but also within hailing distance
of a senior-citizen home, a student housing area, an affordable-housing
complex, a student recreation facility, a football stadium, and
a basketball arena.
Kansas State University biology
professor Walter Dodd will be have the new bioterror lab a mile
north of his workplace if his state wins the sweepstakes. He
says that in the struggle over the lab, it's impossible to compare
risks. "There  has been no formal risk assessment
of the BSL-4 facility that is available to the public. Likewise,
knowing the risk from terrorists introducing new pathogens is
difficult." Although, he says, "We need to do this
type of research because we must control diseases if possible,"
he worries about the proposed locations: "Putting the facility
near a city or agricultural production strips one level of protection
away." Dodd has recommended putting the lab in a desert
or back on Plum Island.
Last year, DHS held a series
of public meetings at the five candidate sites for the lab, soliciting
comment on environmental, health, safety, and socioeconomic issues.
The Department compiled almost 4000 such comments, the majority
of them apparently negative. Residents raised a host of alarms
about accidents, sabotage, natural disasters, ecosystem damage,
water contamination, human or animal epidemics, use of the lab
for secret, sinister research, and the general ineptitude of
DHS. The Department is working on its responses.
When the bioterror lab is awarded
to one of the five contenders this fall, residents of the "winning"
location will be asked to accept such vaguely defined risks in
good patriotic spirit, to protect the nation's cities, towns,
pastures, and feedlots from a hypothetical terrorist attack.
But the facility will be run by administrators drawn from the
same pool as those who responded to the only actual bioterror
attack in this country to date -- the anthrax mailings of October,
2001 -- and who have made virtually no progress in solving them.
Furthermore, as I argued on
the CounterPunch site in 2004, any agroterrorists who might want
to see their mission accomplished in rural America need only
sit back and watch. Agrocapitalism is already doing their work
for them: poisoning water supplies, releasing antibiotic-resistant,
highly pathogenic bacteria into streams and dust clouds, and
contaminating our food supply.
Even bioterror alarmists admit
that the increasing concentration of US agriculture, and its
increasingly industrial infrastructure, are precisely what make
it more vulnerable. The US Government's General Accounting Office
acknowledged in a 2005 report that
the highly concentrated breeding
and rearing practices of our livestock industry make it a vulnerable
target for terrorists because diseases could spread rapidly and
be very difficult to contain. For example, between 80 and 90
percent of grain-fed beef cattle production is concentrated in
less than 5 percent of the nation's feedlots. Therefore, the
deliberate introduction of a highly contagious animal disease
in a single feedlot could have serious economic consequences.
The GAO didn't go on to discuss
the damage that can be done by such a highly concentrated farming
system even if terrorists never cast their shadow onto the churned
soil of the American Plains. And now the federal government
plans to take a laboratory that harbors some of the planet's
most menacing animal and human germs and place it closer than
ever to the cattle feedlots and slaughterhouses of Kansas or
Texas, the hog-confinement facilities of North Carolina, or the
vast poultry operations of the Deep South.
Critics charge that bioterror-lab boosters at the universities
contending for NBAF have nothing but visions of fat grants dancing
in their heads. Vigorous opposition in Columbia, Missouri and
Madison, Wisconsin got those cities taken off the list of potential
sites. Last spring, when Columbia was still in contention for
the lab, Eddie Adelstein, an associate professor of pathology
at the University of Missouri and the county's Interim Medical
Examiner, wrote that his university was
developing a corporate structure
to allow us to furnish our own income, ignore the needs of the
state and pay our top-level executives CEO wages... To achieve
... financial independence, members of the local welcoming committee
for the proposed research center are willing to risk the life
of every man, women, child, dog, cat, horse, cow and chicken
in our homeland... Yielding to their self-imposed pressure to
become fiscally independent, these leaders in business and education
have and are attempting to lure to Columbia a high-tech government
facility that belongs in a safer place. The desires of economic
growth have overridden all aspects of science and common sense.
They would place this facility near homes, schools and nursing
facilities... When accidents occur, we would provide interesting
but frightful data as these organisms have a predilection for
children, older adults or just young people.
Dismal
track records
BSL-4 laboratory capacity in
the US, its growth once tightly restricted, is now slated to
increase tenfold in coming years. BSL-3 labs, already numbering
more than 600, will also proliferate. With a new lab in operating
in Boston and the proposed NBAF together employing 900 people,
and with hundreds more scientists and staff needed at other new
facilities, shortages of employees highly trained in biosafety
will become critical. A group of 19 experts convened in 2006
as a High Containment Biodefense Research Forum concluded that
the influx of new bioterror research workers "will strain
the current national capacity for biosafety training", that
"many researchers will be working on potentially lethal
organisms for the first time," and they "will not be
accustomed to the risks of infection..."
Past infectious-agent mishaps
have often been the result of human error rather than equipment
or facility breakdown. In the Forum, there was great concern
that excessive trust in technology would lead to accidents in
the new labs. One participant said, "I fear that some of
our researchers believe that the engineering controls will provide
their safety. And yet . . . it's the procedural controls and
the practices of biosafety within the laboratory that are most
critical in maintaining good safety."
Government-run biodefense labs
do not have a good record of keeping germs contained. The Animal
Disease Center on Plum Island, separated from the mainland by
several miles of water, was considered for many years to be a
safe place to handle exotic pathogens. But as Michael Christopher
Carroll related in his 2004 book Lab
257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Germ Laboratory,
Plum Island suffered a long string of potentially disastrous
accidents, including the escape of the foot-and-mouth pathogen
from containment areas in 1978.
That fiasco led to the slaughter
of all livestock on the island. Carroll's stomach-churning account
of the killing, dismemberment, and incineration of hundreds of
goats, sheep, horses, and pigs -- nonstop through an entire bloody
weekend -- provides a preview of what might be necessary if pathogens
escape from a heartland NBAF. (And with an urban lab, human
quarantine could well follow.) Carroll added the astonishing
revelation that researchers took the risk of saving 60 sheep
from the slaughter during the "kill weekend", so that
they could be inoculated in the open air with the Rift Valley
fever virus -- a germ far more dangerous to humans than is foot-and-mouth.
Carroll relates how that incident
was only one of many low points in Plum Island's dirty history.
He even provides good circumstantial evidence, short of proof,
that the pathogens causing Lyme disease and West Nile virus leaked
out of Plum Island to become endemic on the US mainland.
In 2006, the Frederick, Maryland
News-Post revealed that the US Army's top biodefense lab
at nearby Fort Detrick had been plagued with germ escapes since
2001, when an Army technician was exposed to anthrax spores that
had somehow reached her outside the containment area. That prompted
a search, and the highly pathogenic Ames strain of anthrax was
found around an ultraviolet sterilization box, an office, and
an employee changing room.
It's not hard to see how contamination
might have occurred. An Army safety specialist testified that
in one instance, "I went into a virology suite one day.
He (no name specified) went through the hot change room stark
naked carrying two library books and a bottle of Pepsi. I went
in through the change room and found him sitting in the office
drinking the Pepsi and wearing scrubs. I informed the individual
that the Pepsi and the books from Frederick County Library should
not have come in through the hot area..."
More anthrax spores turned
up on the base in 2005, in an elevator and hallway and on a telephone.
The News-Post found that the lab filed 161 biological-defense
mishap reports just between 2002 and 2005. Accidents involved
anthrax and SARS, and lab personnel have been infected with some
pretty exotic germs: glanders, Q fever, vaccinia, Venezuelan
equine encephalitis, and chikungunya. As an Army safety officer
told the paper, "People can get complacent. Familiarity
breeds complacency." In the words of another spokesperson,
"People are people and there will be some degree of human
error no matter where you work."
Texas A&M University lost
its chance to host NBAF when it was hit with a Centers for Disease
Control reprimand for unreported lab-safety foulups. The letter
cited missing vials of infectious diseases and lab-worker exposure
to the pathogens that cause brucellosis and Q-fever.
Finally, according to the Biodefense
Research Forum, many past mistakes and mishaps in biosafety labs
have never been reported, because those involved had their funding
and reputations to protect.
Playing
both defense and offense
The Agriculture Department,
the US Army, and a university were running the labs that committed
the blunders described above. If states competing to host the
NBAF expect better performance from the Department of Homeland
Security -- the outfit that covered itself in shame with its
handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster -- they are probably
asking too much.
All of the nation's bioweapons
work is by definition "defensive", but in the national-security
realm, the mechanics of defensive and offensive research are
often indistinguishable. Under both the Clinton and Bush administrations,
the US has resisted any upgrading of the 1972 Biological Weapons
Convention by which 158 nations, including the US, agreed not
to develop offensive capacity. Since 2001, US officials have
moved forcefully to block any moves toward effective inspection
protocols. A 2003 analysis by Nicole Deller and John Burroughs
in World Policy Journal reported that "critics of
the administration's policy speculate that the main reason for
the opposition to the protocol may be that the United States
is reluctant to open its biodefense program-which includes activities
kept secret for years-to public scrutiny."
It's no secret why the government
doesn't want public scrutiny: Its "biodefense" labs
have stretched the definition of "defense" to include
just about anything. In 2001, exactly one week before the attacks
of 9/11, the New York Times' Judith Miller and two colleagues
revealed that Pentagon researchers had developed plans to breed
an extra-virulent strain of the anthrax bacterium; had built
and tested a "germ bomb"; and had built a bioweapons
lab in the Nevada desert out of materials bought on the open
market. (Unlike Miller's erroneous reports on nonconventional
weapons in Iraq, this report was not debunked.) As one senior
official told the reporters, the Pentagon "was pressing
how far you go before you do something illegal or immoral.''
Given the thick curtain of
secrecy that DHS will be allowed to draw around the proposed
NBAF's laboratories, its research could well be pushed far beyond
those legal and moral boundaries, and no one would be the wiser
-- especially not the people who work or live in that unlucky
neighborhood that finally wins the germ jackpot.
Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina,
Kansas. His book Sick
Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine will be published by
Pluto Press in April. They can be reached at: t.stan@cox.net.
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