Today's Stories

November 30, 2009

Mike Whitney
Crisis in Dubai

November 27 - 29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Auld Triangle Goes Jingle Jangle

Carl Ginsburg
Planning for Poverty?

Mike Whitney
Blame Larry Summers

Franklin Spinney
Obama as LBJ

Joshua Frank
Coal Kills

Saul Landau
The True Price of Oil

Heather Gray
Overtly Racist Regimes in the 20th Century

John Ross
The Timeline for a New Mexican Revolution Comes Due

David Macaray
Adventures in Polarization

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: 52 Words That Shook Washington

Shamus Cooke
The Devastating Consequences of the Corporate Health Insurance Bill

David Ker Thomson
The Transformers

Martha Rosenberg
Cash for Cheesedogs? The Recession Takes a Bite Out of Meat Consumption

Ramzy Baroud
A Paradigm Shift in Singapore?

Ron Ridenour
Post-War Internment Hell for Tamils

Amanda Mueller
Saving Grace: Negotiating Abortion and the Catholic Faith

James Rothenberg
China Kowtow

Travis Kelly
Mayday, 1960: the U2 Files

Don Monkerud
Big Beer Takes Over

Ron Jacobs
Science Fiction and Politics

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of Chinua Achebe

David Yearsley
What Father Made Us Sing Before the Turkey

Poets' Basement
Catherine Zickgraf and Mickey Z.

Website of the Weekend
Good to Be Alive

November 26, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Mumbai in the Shadow of Kashmir

Greg Moses
We Remember the Popol Vuh

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War on Poverty Instead?

Jeff Cohen
Get Ready for the Obama / GOP Alliance

John Blair
The Gasification of Indiana

Ann Robertson /
Bill Leumer
A Surge in Demands on Goverment for Jobs

Farzana Versey
The American East India Company

Sam Husseini
Moral Relativism at Fort Hood: Guilt, Therapy and the System

Tom Mountain
The Truth Behind the Turkey

Website of the Day
A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs

November 25, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The Bush-Blair Conspiracy on Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
The Case of Lynn Stewart

Belén Fernández
An Interview with Honduran Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez

Ralph Nader
Weak-Kneed in China

Rannie Amiri
The Impending Release of Gilad Shalit: What Palestinians Deserve in Return

Missy Beattie
Finish the Job?

Rob Stone, MD Health Care Delusions: Better Than Nothing?

Norm Kent
In Praise of Adam Lambert

Binoy Kampmark Handing It to France: the Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry

Ron Ridenour
International Support for Sri Lanka

Website of the Day
The Credit Card Game

November 24, 2009

Mary Lynn Cramer
Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors

Dean Baker
Too Big to Kill? The Vampire Banks Rise Again

George Ciccariello-Maher
Occupy Everything! Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police

Eric Walberg
Canada's Guantanamo

Andy Thayer
Lessons From a Lynching: the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado

David Macaray
The Delphi Incident: How the White-Collar Tribe Got Shafted

Laura Carlsen
The Perils of Plan Mexico

Gary Leupp
Obama as Hamlet

Adam Federman
Poisoning Dimock

William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas?

Website of the Day
Geography of the Recession

November 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
A Trial That Will Convict Us All

Jonathan Cook
Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?

Edward S. Herman / David Peterson
Vulliamy's Smears

Bouthaina Shaaban
What's New? It's Always Been Like This

Helen Redmond
Health Care's Historic Flop

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Arabia's Attack on Yemen

Dave Lindorff
Abortion and Health Care

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy

Mike Whitney
Is American Casino the Best Picture of the Year?

Mark Weisbrot
Honduran Dictatorship is a Threat to Democracy in the Hemisphere

David Michael Green
The Placeholder Presidency of Obama

November 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
It's Show Trial Time!

Gareth Porter
New Light on the Qom Facility

Mike Whitney
The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply

Fred Gardner
Mammography
Pushes Back

James J. Brittain
It's Really a War on the Poor
A War on Coca Nobody Believes

Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament'

Alan Farago
Bulletin from the Dark Side: Florida's Republican Ultras

David Macaray
A Hindu Version of the UAW
Labor Strife in India

Binoy Kampmark
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem

Ben Sonnenberg
Ashes and Diamonds
Retirement Norwegian Style

Ron Jacobs
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

David Yearsley
200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song

Brenda Norrell
A Border Runs Through Them:
The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham

Ron Ridenour
The Tamils and Equal Rights of Self Determination

November 19, 2009

Christopher Ketcham
The Dumbest Newspapers at the Center of the World

Shamus Cooke
A Fraudulent Jobs Summit

John V. Walsh
Impotent in China

Saul Landau
Dissidents Make Noise--Oops, News

Ralph Nader
Exiting Afghanistan

Nikolas Kozloff
Blackout in Brazil

Fred Gardner
Reputable MDs Buy NorCal Health Care

Charles R. Larson
Voices of the Silenced

John A. Murphy
Nader v. Dodd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Obama's Gray World

November 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Religious Scoundrel

John Ross
Hot Oil!

Conn Hallinan
Strategic Towns: Why Gen. McChrystal's Plan Will Fail

Mike Whitney
Obama's China Junket

Ray McGovern
The Bogus Success of the Surge

Nelson P. Valdés
Cyber Cuba: Internet, Broadband and Foreign Policy

Ramzy Baroud
Globalization Unchecked

Ron Ridenour
Tamil Eelam: the Historic Right to Nationhood

November 17, 2009

Mike Whitney
Let's Get Fiscal

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Double Crossed: War Vets Deported

Brian M. Downing
Do They Subscribe to GQ at the Pentagon?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Two-Tiered Justice System

Joanne Mariner
A First Look at the Military Commisions Act

Dean Baker
Obama's Nuclear Option on the Yuan

Martha Rosenberg
Pig Hell at Wal-Mart Supplier

Danny Weil
Fear in Nicaragua

David Macaray
Retail Sales as Combat

Laura Flanders
Buried Bonanza for Over-Builders

Walter Brasch
Rush to Judgment on Terror Trials

November 16, 2009

Alan Nasser
Obama's Flawed Case Against Single Payer

Jonathan Cook
Campus Watch Copy Cats

Mark Weisbrot
Obama, China and the Dollar

Carol Miller
We Need Health Care, Not Insurance

Gary Leupp
The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow

Harry Clark
Justice Goldstone at Brandeis

Ray McGovern
Shining a Light on the Roots of Terrorism

Norman Solomon
California Democrats Urge Obama to Leave Afghanistan

Ron Ridenour
Genocide in Sri Lanka

Norm Kent
Doctors Light Up

Brenda Norrell
Torture Resisters Arrested at Fort Huachuca

November 13-15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred

Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys

Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan

Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa

Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?

Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition

Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork

Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health

Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down

Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA

Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target

Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes

David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan

John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find

Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief

Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico

Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right

Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs

Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia

Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job

David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles

Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman

Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox

November 12, 2009

Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation

Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question

Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood

Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future

Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care

Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution

Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day

Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year

November 11, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole

Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?

Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal

James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin

Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands

Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism

Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood

Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "

November 10, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again

Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers

Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35

Alan Farago
The Rising Tide

Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons

November 9, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever

Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010

John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster

John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair

Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu

James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War

Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy

David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike

Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System

Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake

November 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight

Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire

Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords

Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later

James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies

Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!

Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology

Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood

Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood

M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?

Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad

Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess

Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell

David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip

John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth

Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?

John Ross
Legalize It!

David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?

Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco

Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency

Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?

Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India

David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying

Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker

November 5, 2009

Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America

Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic

Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy

Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation

Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine

Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills

Website of the Day
All Folked Up

November 4, 2009

Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas

Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?

Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment

Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers

Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison

Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime

Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen

Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers

November 3, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai

Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away

Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear

Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't

Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet

John Stanton
Social Decay in America

Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament

Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama

November 2, 2009

Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected

Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN

David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union

Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages

David Michael Green
Coming to Get You

David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness

Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out

Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills

James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars

Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care

Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway

October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line

Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium

Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus

Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire

Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll

Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo

Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right

Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down

Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?

Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)

Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs

Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics

Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ

Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream

Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro

Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies

David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half

Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill

Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America

Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music

October 29, 2009

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel: a Wonderful Hiding Place

Mike Whitney
Housing Rebound? Not So Fast

Gary Leupp
Matthew Hoh Speaks Truth to Power

Conn Hallinan
Roman Roads and Modern Emperors

Marshall Auerback
Obama's Bogus Populism: Pay Curbs and Bank Loans

Laura Flanders
Palin's Pet Doug Hoffman Has Taliban Ties

Eamonn McCann
The War Criminal Vote: Blair or Karadzic for EU President?

David Macaray
Strange Invaders: Can Ignorance and Arrogance Win Hearts and Minds?

Mark Weisbrot
When Small Countries Lead the Way

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Complicity in Torture Challenged

Christopher Brauchli
Will the Pope Bring the Taliban Into His Flock?

Website of the Day
The USS Liberty Affair and the Problem of Truth in History

October 28, 2009

Moshe Adler
How to Reduce Unemployment, Rebuild the Middle Class and Free Ourselves From Wall Street

Dave Lindorff
America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

Frank Joseph Smecker
Agaisnt Prometheus: an Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology

Alexandra Early
What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers

M. Shahid Alam
Israeli Exceptionalism

Vijay Prashad
Sahelian Blowback: What's Happening in Mali?

John Ross
Three Years Later, Brad Will is Still Dead

Franklin Lamb
A Rare Victory for Lebanon's Palestinians

Gregory Travis
The Dismal Science: Elinor Ostrom's Nobel

Susan Galleymore
Peace Cycle to Palestine

Website of the Day
Newspaper Decline, a Graphic Display

October 27, 2009

Mike Whitney
Black Tuesday and How We Got Out of It

Patrick Cockburn
Bombs Will Go Off in Baghdad, Whether the US is There or Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Coup Myths Dispelled

Alan Farago
Power Plays in Florida: Rate Increases, Nukes and Deception

Ralph Nader
Obama: Form Letters and Business as Usual

Dave Lindorff
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: DU in America

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel

Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around

Iain Boal
How You Can Save Pacifica

Carl Finamore
Hotel Workers and the Law of Momentum

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Here Comes That Third Party: Palin and the Constitutionalists

Website of the Day
How Bank of America Charges for Perfect Credit

October 26, 2009

Bill Quigley /
Deborah Popowski
When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

Uri Avnery
A Tsunami Called Goldstone

Mike Whitney
Will the Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency in Five Years?

Michael Snedeker
The Execution of Cameron Willingham

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Dirty War on Immigrants

David Michael Green
Paranoia for Breakfast

Martha Rosenberg
Gagging Michael Pollan

Patrick Bond
Gridlock on the Way to Copenhagen

Binoy Kampmark
Heading for the Tiber

Website of the Day
Goldman Sachs Abandons Kittens

November 30, 2009

The Contaminated Kids of Southwestern Indiana

Growing Up Toxic

By STEVEN HIGGS

The Indiana stretch of the Ohio River Valley is one of the most toxic environments on Earth. On Nov. 24, I took a road trip to Evansville and Mount Vernon to interview John Blair, president of the environmental group Valley Watch, and Marcella Piper-Terry, an autism care provider who has collected extensive background data on her clients' environmental exposures. This story is the first in a series on autism and the Southwest Indiana environment. - sh

John Blair readily agrees that Southwest Indiana is the perfect laboratory in which to explore the connection between industrial pollution and the increasing incidence of autism and other developmental disabilities. He has witnessed both sides of the equation in his three decades as president of the environmental group Valley Watch.

"We have distinct problems down here with neurological diseases," he says during an interview in his Evansville office on a cloudy, crisp November day. "... And we are under assault from almost every kind of toxic chemical there is."

The first story Blair relates during an hourlong interview details an "epidemic" of multiple sclerosis (MS) he learned of a year-and-a-half ago in conversations with Perry County physicians and the Tri-State Multiple Sclerosis Association. Situated three counties upriver from Evansville, with a population of less than 20,000, Perry has an incidence rate for multiple sclerosis (MS) that is "off the charts," he says.

"It's not something that's been all along," he says, explaining that MS attacks the central nervous system. "It's something that's come in the past 10 or 12 years."

Identifying specific cause-effect relations between pollution and MS and other neurologic disorders like autism is difficult, perhaps impossible, Blair acknowledges. But documenting the release of toxic pollution, including recognized neurotoxins like mercury, arsenic and lead, is a snap.

The industries that release the most toxins are metals, coal-fired power plants and plastics, he says. And Southwest Indiana has large, barely regulated concentrations of them all.

"We get it from all sides," he says. "It doesn't matter which way the wind blows, it doesn't matter which way the water flows, we're getting it."

***

Against the backdrop of telephone interruptions from reporters and fellow activists seeking background on an upcoming hearing for a proposed "syngas" (synthetic gas) plant in nearby Rockport, Blair produces documents that demonstrate Southwest Indiana is among the nation's hottest "toxic hotspots."

Five Southwest Indiana counties -- Spencer, Posey, Pike, Warrick and Gibson -- released 57.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the Ohio River Valley environment in 2007, Blair says, "and I only counted the ones that were over 100,000 pounds."

His figures are drawn from Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data compiled and published by the U.S. Environmental Protection agency, which also show two industries in Spencer County -- AK Steel and the Rockport Power Plant -- together emit 30 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment every year.

"That is a full third more than all the industries in New York City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Indianapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Diego combined," he says. "All those cities combined, representing 34 million people, put out 20 million pounds of toxic chemicals a year."

AK Steel, which melts and recycles steel, moved to Rockport in 1997. And at the time, officials from the company and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management assured the public that the facility would be state-of-the-art in terms of environmental protection. But almost overnight, AK Steel, became the nation's largest water polluter.

"They put out 24 million pounds of toxic chemicals year," Blair says, slowly, lowering his voice and taking a breath with each word. "A lot of that goes into the water. The bulk of it goes into the wastewater, which goes into the Ohio River, which I drink."

***

In his early 60s, Blair works out of an oblong, one-story building just north of downtown Evansville that serves as a combination Valley Watch office and photography studio. He won a Pulitzer Prize for News Photography in 1979 and freelances today, while teaching journalism at the University of Southern Indiana. He leaves the office lights off as the daylight fades.
No one calls Southwest Indiana "plastics alley" anymore, he says, in part because it's not a moniker to be proud of. But it still fits.

For three decades or so, GE Plastics, one of the nation's worst polluters, was located in Mount Vernon, a hamlet of roughly 7,000 located about 20 miles west of Evansville. Blair and others had documented several cancer clusters in the town, and in 1995 he started a video documentary about GE Plastics' impact on the community.

Walking around the town square one day, he found citizens nervous and reluctant to talk. "I finally found this one barber, and he was scared out of his wits," Blair says. "He said, 'You know, I'm not so scared for myself, ... I'm so afraid for this community because all my customers are dying of cancer.'"

As part of his research, Blair heard a story about GE suddenly shutting down a 13-employee department, "just flat out shut it down and moved all those employees off to other parts of the plant. Within a year after they shut that down, all 13 of those employees were dead, according to this story."

When corrective action was taken in the late '90s, GE Plastics was releasing 10 tons a day of a cancer-causing substance called methylene chloride, Blair says. The operation eventually sold to an outfit called Sabic Innovative Plastics, which is owned by the Houston-based Sabic Americas Inc. Blair says the name means Saudi Basic Industries Corp.

According to the TRI, Sabic Innovative Plastics released 1.5 million pounds of toxics into the environment in 2007. Included in that amount were 243,250 pounds of dichloromethane, also known as methylene chloride.

"They cut them 90 percent," Blair says of the methylene chloride emissions, "but they're still releasing almost a ton a day, of a carcinogen."
Methylene chloride is also a neurotoxin.

***

Mercury is another of the neurotoxins linked to autism and developmental disabilities that find their ways into Southwest Indiana children's bodies on a daily basis.

"We have these mercury issues for sure," Blair says. "You can't live in the largest concentration of coal-fired power plants in the world -- burning mercury-laden coal -- you can't live in an area that has this large concentration and not expect some problems from it."

He cites a video on the University of Calgary Web site titled “How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration” that, for the first time, visually shows low-level mercury exposure doing its damage. "They take this drop of mercury and put it in there where they've been growing these neurons," he says, "and it just destroys the neurons."

Toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic chemicals, they're all produced by coal combustion, Blair says. "Arsenic is big in coal. Coal has it all."
Duke Energy used to allow recreation on a 3,800-acre lake the utility used to cool water from its coal-fired Gibson Generating Station, Blair says. Rather than use cooling towers like most power plants, Gibson, the nation's fourth dirtiest power plant, used this lake.

"It used to be a great fishing lake, used to be a great sailing lake," he says. "Well, they first said people couldn't be on it in sailboats anymore because they'd get splashed. Then they said people couldn't fish in it anymore. Now it's completely sealed off, and they won't allow anyone even near it because of selenium."

Selenium is a neurotoxin.

"Every coal-fired power plant around us puts out a million pounds, minimum, of toxic chemicals a year," Blair says.

***

As the Valley Watch office dims in synch with the early evening light, Blair says the poisons assaulting Southwest Indiana kids aren't limited to the Indiana side of the river. According to TRI data he has compiled, Western Kentucky industries emitted another 20.2 million pounds a year into the Ohio River Valley in 2007.

One bluegrass polluter is a 40-year-old aluminum plant called Southwire in Hawesville, Ky., right across the Ohio River from Perry County.

Fourteen years ago, in May 1994, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a "Preliminary Public Health Assessment on the National Southwire Aluminum Company" The report was prepared by the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

"Based on the information reviewed, ATSDR has concluded that the National Southwire Aluminum Company site poses a public health hazard," the report concludes.

While the primary concern focused on plant workers, "exposures have occurred, are occurring, or are likely to occur in the future" for citizens living near the plant, on both sides of the river as well, the report says. "Nearby residents who live in the vicinity of the site have been exposed and may still be exposed to aluminum, arsenic, cobalt, cyanide, manganese and nickel through skin contact or soil or water ingestion."

Lead was another contaminant released into the environment from the Southwire plant, the report said. "Pregnant women exposed to lead can pass lead to their unborn children," it warned. "Lead is particularly dangerous for the developing fetus. Lead also causes slow growth and learning problems for infants."

Citizens who drank and washed with water from the Hawesville, Tell City, Cannelton, Troy, Lewisport, East Daviess and Evansville water systems "have been exposed and may still be exposed to fluoride, manganese and arsenic through drinking water," the report authors continued.

Still, the CDC assured Perry County citizens 15 years ago that they had little to fear, that they had been exposed to "low levels of contaminants." But a section of the agency's report, titled "Community Health Concerns," summarized several questions raised by the only two citizens who submitted comments. The first one read:

"Are the few cases of autoimmune disease (especially multiple sclerosis and lupus) reported by one resident who also suffers from a mild form of multiple sclerosis caused by site-related chemicals?"

Steven Higgs is editor of The Bloomington Alternative and writes the "Autism and the Indiana Environment Blog." He can be reached at editor@BloomingtonAlternative.com.

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Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

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Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont