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May 28, 2002
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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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
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
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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This Explosive
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Reviews of Gore:
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May
28, 2002
Atomic Terror
Alert
If the White House Knew Something About Future Attacks, the
Time
to Act is Now
by Harvey Wasserman
So if Bush knew something at some time about the
possibility of terrorists using jets to crash into government
buildings, why didn't he do something about it before September
11? And far more important: If he knows something about the possibility
of terrorists attacking atomic power plants and causing a radioactive
apocalypse, why doesn't he act right now, before we find ourselves
in post-tragedy hearings about why he didn't?
And just for the heck of it, let's ask
another related question: What do you do with a gigantic, highly
radioactive piece of metal that weighs 120 tons, has a six-inch
hole in its head and is currently "ship-in-a-bottle"
locked inside a massive concrete and steel containment dome that's
many feet thick, latticed with powerful rebar steel, allegedly
designed to withstand the radioactive fires and pressures of
a controlled nuclear explosion?
The rap that U.S. intelligence should
have anticipated the possibility of a horrific hijacking like
September 11 is not a partisan bauble. The threats were always
credible, and there was a way to deal with them_pay for decent
airport security.
Paul Krugman of the New York Times placed
the blame precisely where it belonged immediately after the disaster:
airline deregulation. Terrorists don't walk onto commercial aircraft
with box cutters unless screening is really lax, which it certainly
was prior to September 11. Why? Because the airline industry,
with its well-heeled lobbyists working Congress and the White
House, didn't want to pay for real precautions. Locks on cockpit
doors, armed marshals riding shotgun, trained screening personnel_it
wasn't really rocket science. It could have prevented September
11.
But the White House, Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle (whose wife lobbies for the airlines) and
an army of bought pols simply said: "Don't bother."
Well, now there are prices to be paid.
Bush's poll ratings won't shield him from having exploited a
horrible human tragedy for which his own corrupt neglect was
partly responsible.
But there's another nightmare in the
wings, and the response has been as lax and complacent as what
led to September 11. But this time the consequences could be
infinitely worse.
The major media is now carrying reports
of terrorist threats against commercial atomic power plants to
happen on or around July 4. Nuke sabotage has long been considered
a credible threat. Bush cited reactor plans found at Al Quaeda
hideouts and the Ayotallah Khomeini among others has talked about
hitting "nuclear targets."
In short, if warnings of hijacked planes
crashing into government buildings prior to September 11 were
vague and isolated, warnings of attacks on nuclear plants are
clear and abundant.
So has the government reacted? Not hardly.
There's been some heightened ground security and talk of posting
snipers. The Nuclear Control Institute has suggested installing
anti-aircraft emplacements. But atomic reactors are infinitely
complex and vulnerable. There are literally thousands of ways
to attack one. The only real security measure is to shut them
all down.
Which is doable. The U.S. electric grid
is awash in capacity. The alleged "shortages" driving
prices through the California roof were fake. Every reactor in
the country could disappear tomorrow and there might be some
temporary shortages in some isolated areas, but virtually no
impact on the national supply.
Where there would be an impact is if
one of these threats comes true, a la September 11. A U.S. reactor
catastrophe, terrorist or otherwise, could kill hundreds of thousands
of people, poison millions, cause trillions of dollars in damage,
permanently devastate thousands of square miles and irrevocably
cripple the entire U.S. economy. The threats to make all that
happen are far clearer and more tangible than what preceded September
11. The administration's insane response has been to push to
build more reactors.
So do we wait for disaster to strike
and then hold hearings to determine what the administration knew
and when? Or do we find a way to shut these things down before
the unthinkable occurs?
We may not have to wait for the terrorists
anyway. A six-inch hole burned by boric acid into the head of
the Davis-Besse reactor near Toledo recently brought the Great
Lakes within three-eighths of an inch of extinction. A tiny,
remnant sliver of warped metal may be all that saved millions
of people from lethal fallout.
The plant owners want to replace the
head. But how do you get it out? Where do you put it once you
do? And who's going to volunteer to be exposed to the incredibly
intense levels of radiation involved with this horrendous task?
Every week new horrors emerge, from a
full-scale fire in California's San Onofre plant during the dereg
crisis to an endless litany of human errors and mechanical fiascos
that bring us ever-closer to atomic catastrophe.
The first jet that flew into the World
Trade Center on September 11 flew directly over the Indian Point
nuclear reactors, 40 miles north of New York. Had it dived down
a minute earlier, all of New York would now be a radioactive
wasteland.
It didn't then, but it could be happening
now. George W. Bush may duck what he knew and didn't know on
September 11. But we all know plenty about 103 sitting duck commercial
nuclear reactors in the U.S., and the 430-plus worldwide.
Credible threats have been made. The
reactors are vulnerable. Their power is not needed. What are
we waiting for?
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