I’ve been spending time in airports and on airplanes recently; I’ve accommodated myself to the security drills, sequestering all metal objects into my briefcase before I pass through security, getting my shoes off and on again quickly, practicing compliance when I’m selected for “additional screening.”
Burlington is a non-hub airport, so most of the flights I take are on small airplanes. From an aisle seat, one gets a good view of the cockpit door with its bolts and rivets and peephole. It reminds me a of door in a cheap apartment house in a bad part of town, circa 1977.
We’re careful with our airliners, because some people decided to turn some airliners into weapons four years ago. The Bush administration had been warned – specifically – that this would happen, but George Bush decided to go on vacation rather than do anything about it. We all pay the price of airport annoyance; some paid more.
A few days after the London Underground was bombed in July, British police shot Jean Charles de Menezes in the head seven times. At first they said he was wearing a bulky jacket, jumped a turnstile, ran from police. Turned out he did not wear a bulky jacket, jump a turnstile or run from police. A police officer was holding Mr. de Menezes when his colleague blew Mr. de Menezes’s head off.
Osama bin Laden, wherever he is, must be laughing. His people attack airliners and we clamp down on the airliners; his people attack subways and police start randomly killing people in the subways. What we don’t do is shore up security around other targets that terrorists can use, even if we have been warned. We can’t even prepare for a hurricane even when we’re told when, where and at what strength it will come ashore. There’s a chilling story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune describing the damage to the city from a category five hurricane. It’s even more chilling when you realize the story was written in 2002 about what might happen. (http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf?/washingaway/thebigone_1.html)
Richard Falkenrath, former deputy homeland security advisor to the White House said, “Of all the various remaining civilian vulnerabilities in America today, one stands alone as uniquely deadly, pervasive, and susceptible to terrorist attack: toxic-inhalation-hazard industrial chemicals.”
There are over 100 chemical facilities in America where an accident or attack could release chemicals capable of killing one million people. Most of the people who live these facilities, like the victims of Hurricane Katrina, are poor and black.
This vulnerability to hazardous chemicals is, however, not limited to industrial areas. Train cars full of these chemicals pass through congested urban areas every day. An accident or attack involving a 90-ton rail car of chlorine would release poison that would – by estimate of U.S. Navy researchers – kill 100 people per second. In Washington, rail cars of chlorine and other hazardous chemicals pass within four blocks of the Capitol.
The DC City Council passed a resolution banning rail transport of hazardous material through the district; rail carrier CSX sued DC city government, the Bush administration, although it will launch senseless wars in the name of “homeland security,” sided with CSX. The DC statute was overturned, the case is on appeal.
On Tuesday, Greenpeace drove a mock rail car through the city and parked it on the national mall less than three blocks from the Capitol, where it began spewing a plume of steam, to represent leaking chlorine. None of the 35 police agencies operating in the District of Columbia managed to figure out what was going on until it was too late, although they later arrived and raised a fuss. If it had been an actual rail car breach, the police – and everyone else in the area – would have been dead. (see: http://usaphoto.greenpeace.org/chemicalsecurity/)
Greenpeace had three points – 1- Phase out hazardous materials in our industrial feedstocks. We don’t need them and the pollution they cause kills people as surely as terrorist attacks and accidents, again, mostly poor black people. 2 – While we’re phasing out the use of these chemicals, let’s keep them out of congested urban areas. 3 – If we want real homeland security, we have to put citizens, not corporations, first.
Unready for Anything
I’ve been spending time in airports and on airplanes recently; I’ve accommodated myself to the security drills, sequestering all metal objects into my briefcase before I pass through security, getting my shoes off and on again quickly, practicing compliance when I’m selected for “additional screening.”
Burlington is a non-hub airport, so most of the flights I take are on small airplanes. From an aisle seat, one gets a good view of the cockpit door with its bolts and rivets and peephole. It reminds me a of door in a cheap apartment house in a bad part of town, circa 1977.
We’re careful with our airliners, because some people decided to turn some airliners into weapons four years ago. The Bush administration had been warned – specifically – that this would happen, but George Bush decided to go on vacation rather than do anything about it. We all pay the price of airport annoyance; some paid more.
A few days after the London Underground was bombed in July, British police shot Jean Charles de Menezes in the head seven times. At first they said he was wearing a bulky jacket, jumped a turnstile, ran from police. Turned out he did not wear a bulky jacket, jump a turnstile or run from police. A police officer was holding Mr. de Menezes when his colleague blew Mr. de Menezes’s head off.
Osama bin Laden, wherever he is, must be laughing. His people attack airliners and we clamp down on the airliners; his people attack subways and police start randomly killing people in the subways. What we don’t do is shore up security around other targets that terrorists can use, even if we have been warned. We can’t even prepare for a hurricane even when we’re told when, where and at what strength it will come ashore. There’s a chilling story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune describing the damage to the city from a category five hurricane. It’s even more chilling when you realize the story was written in 2002 about what might happen. (http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf?/washingaway/thebigone_1.html)
Richard Falkenrath, former deputy homeland security advisor to the White House said, “Of all the various remaining civilian vulnerabilities in America today, one stands alone as uniquely deadly, pervasive, and susceptible to terrorist attack: toxic-inhalation-hazard industrial chemicals.”
There are over 100 chemical facilities in America where an accident or attack could release chemicals capable of killing one million people. Most of the people who live these facilities, like the victims of Hurricane Katrina, are poor and black.
This vulnerability to hazardous chemicals is, however, not limited to industrial areas. Train cars full of these chemicals pass through congested urban areas every day. An accident or attack involving a 90-ton rail car of chlorine would release poison that would – by estimate of U.S. Navy researchers – kill 100 people per second. In Washington, rail cars of chlorine and other hazardous chemicals pass within four blocks of the Capitol.
The DC City Council passed a resolution banning rail transport of hazardous material through the district; rail carrier CSX sued DC city government, the Bush administration, although it will launch senseless wars in the name of “homeland security,” sided with CSX. The DC statute was overturned, the case is on appeal.
On Tuesday, Greenpeace drove a mock rail car through the city and parked it on the national mall less than three blocks from the Capitol, where it began spewing a plume of steam, to represent leaking chlorine. None of the 35 police agencies operating in the District of Columbia managed to figure out what was going on until it was too late, although they later arrived and raised a fuss. If it had been an actual rail car breach, the police – and everyone else in the area – would have been dead. (see: http://usaphoto.greenpeace.org/chemicalsecurity/)
Greenpeace had three points – 1- Phase out hazardous materials in our industrial feedstocks. We don’t need them and the pollution they cause kills people as surely as terrorist attacks and accidents, again, mostly poor black people. 2 – While we’re phasing out the use of these chemicals, let’s keep them out of congested urban areas. 3 – If we want real homeland security, we have to put citizens, not corporations, first.
We’ve been warned.
© Mark Floegel, 2005