02/26/2004

Day In and Day Out

One day last week – Wednesday, February 18 – 60 leading scientists issued a joint statement accusing the Bush administration of repeatedly distorting scientific information and abusing the scientific process to further its political goals.

The next day – Thursday, February 19 – a scientific panel assembled by the Bush administration announced that it is ethically acceptable to deliberately feed poisons to humans with the goal of relaxing federal regulations on chemical manufacturers and giant agribusiness conglomerates.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
02/19/2004

Democracy One-Oh-One

There’s an old saying about paybacks; if you want proof of its veracity, cast a cold eye toward Iraq. Through most of Iraq’s history, the nation was dominated by Sunni Muslim Arabs, to the detriment of Kurds in the north and Shi’ite Arabs in the south. Although Sunnis account for only 20 percent of Iraq’s population, for years they were the dominant 20 percent. Sunni behavior was never pretty, but during the Saddam years came the massacres of Kurds and Shi’ites, men and women, young and old, with bullets and gas.

Now Saddam is gone, the U.S. military is in charge and everyone is talking about the shape of Iraq’s future. For the Bush administration, that project is wrapped in rhetoric about “establishing a model of democracy in the Middle East.” For the Shi’ites and Kurds, it’s about leveling a long-lopsided playing field.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
02/12/2004

The Wrath of Khan

I’ve developed a thick callus over my sense of the absurd through the years, but now and then something cuts right through and exposes the raw skin beneath. My flesh has been laid bare in recent days by the surreal nonchalance attending the revelation that Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist has been out peddling history’s most deadly weapons technology to every whacked-out rogue nation on the globe.

This week, Pakistan’s President-General Pervez Musharraf said he suspected Abdul Qadeer Khan was selling nuclear technology three years ago but didn’t want to do anything about it because Dr. Khan, father of Pakistan’s a-bomb, is considered a national hero.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
02/05/2004

Bush Knew

Abraham Lincoln, whose 195th birthday is coming up, is remembered as a moral force in American history. He was also a shrewd politician. He was in shrewd mode when he said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

The puff pieces written about presidential doppelganger Karl Rove routinely gush over Mr. Rove’s grasp of American political history, but he seems to have forgotten – or perhaps never learned – Mr. Lincoln’s dictum. The time has come when all of the people are not fooled and we are seeing the fabrications of George W. Bush’s White House collapse on all sides.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
01/29/2004

Zero to 9-11 in 30 Seconds

On September 6, 2001, I wrote about the hazards of transporting toxic industrial chemicals on railcars through urban areas. Two months earlier, a fire in a Baltimore rail tunnel burned for five days, sending a toxic cloud over the city. The point of my commentary that week was that we should avoid industrial accidents. On September 6, 2001, life was still so carefree that we could worry about accidents.

Twenty-eight months and several orange alerts later, hazardous cargo is still shipped through rail tunnels in Baltimore. Much of it then passes through Washington, DC. A main freight line lies within four blocks of the U.S. Capitol building and every year, 4,000 rail cars of hazardous material are shipped through the District of Columbia.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
01/22/2004

‘Every Day, in Every Way’

At the turn of the last century, a French psychotherapist named Emile Coue maintained individuals could improve their physical and mental health by frequent repetition of the phrase, “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” Constant reaffirmation can help a person keep his or her chin up, but one needs stronger medicine if she or he has cancer, or has been run over by a truck.

Tuesday evening, George W. Bush stood at the rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives and intoned political Coueisms over the mangled body of a nation that has been run over by a truck, with Mr. Bush himself at the wheel. No amount of election-year oratory can change America’s domestic devastation or failed foreign policies.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
01/15/2004

Something to Save It

On January first, I wrote that 2004 will determine whether American democracy will survive. I got some e-mail on that, people wrote asking if perhaps I was being too extreme, although some admitted they harbor the same concern. In the end, none of us hope it will come to that, but we’re afraid it might.

In the two weeks since, the International Monetary Fund has called the American deficit a threat to global financial security, the British government’s chief scientific adviser said global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism and America has begun closing its borders. Now people arriving in the U.S. from all but 27 (mostly European) nations are fingerprinted and photographed at the border.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)