Today's
Stories
November 24, 2010
Jeffrey St. Clair
BP's Inside Game
November 23, 2010
Pam Martens
Ten Ideas to Starve the Wall Street Beast
Patrick Cockburn
The Dangers of Embedded Journalism
Ben Rosenfeld /
Lauren Regan
When the Constitution is No Obastacle for the FBI:
Legal Lessons From the Green Scare
Franklin C. Spinney
Another Free Ride for the Pentagon?
Dean Baker
Sinking Ireland
Ralph Nader
Obamabush: Semper Fi, Barack
Ray McGovern
Bush the Warmonger in His Own Words
George Wuerthner
Livestock and Predators: How to Stop the Killing
Don Monkerud
America's New Entertainment
Clare Bayard
Healing From Empire
Website of the Day
The American Galapagos
November 22, 2010
Michael Hudson
Why Paul Krugman Waves the Flag for Uncle Sam
James Abourezk
Honoring Helen Thomas
Paul Craig Roberts
Insouciant Americans
Sasan Fayazmanesh
When Sanctions Are Not Enough
Richard Forno
TSA and the New "Americanism"
Gary Leupp
Ignorance There ... and Here
Martha Rosenberg
Seven Ways Medical Conflicts of Interest are Disguised
Lawrence Davidson
Obama Plays the Fox
Patrick Bond
"Leave the Oil in the Soil!"
Michael Dickinson
Kiss My Ring: the Vatican Versus Jesus
Website of the Day
Globeistan
November 19 - 21, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
Time for a Real Mutiny
Jeffrey St. Clair
Let Them Eat Oil
Mike Whitney
Tying Bernanke's Hands
Joanne Mariner
The Banalization of Torture
Gareth Porter
The Fatal Flaw in the Iran Missile Docs
Karen Greenberg
Guilty Until Proven Guilty
Thomas Christie, Pierre Sprey, Franklin Spinney et al.
How to Cut the Defense Budget
Rannie Amiri
Way Beyond Chutzpah: Cantor Crosses the Line
Dr. Jim Morgan Haiti's New Normal: Dispatch from Cite Soleil
Lawrence Swaim
Israel's War Against the Dead
Ramzy Baroud
Education at Gunpoint
Ron Jacobs
No Alternative in Afghanistan?
Robert Alvarez
Shelving START
Russell Mokhiber
War is a Drug
P. Sainath
India's Great Drain Robbery
David Macaray
194 Years of Scabs
Carl Finamore
Hyatt's Dirty Safety Record
Brian Tierney
Hotel Workers Rising
Franklin Lamb
How the US and Israel Hope to Destroy Hezbollah
Gerald E. Scorse
The Truth About Capital Gains
Joshua Brollier
Natives Without a Nation
Missy Beattie
So Many Messages
Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Supporters Win Big Victory in California
Brenda Norrell
On the Border: Where Skin Color is the Dividing Line
Christopher Brauchli
Pot and the Deficit: the Hidden Cost of Prohibition
Carol Polsgrove
The Governor and the Power Plant
David Ker Thomson
Against Jane Jacobs
Dave Lindorff
No News is Not Good News
Jeff Deasy
Here Come the FrankenSalmon
Bill Manson
The Politics of Nice
Clifton Ross
Dancing With Dangl
Charles R. Larson Twain: the Last Word, One Hundred Years Later
Richard Estes
"Carlos:"
An Orientalist Masterpiece
David Yearsley
Schumann and the Warm Bath of Memory
Poets' Basement
Springate, Orloski and Cirino
Website of the Weekend
Buy Nothing
November 18, 2010
Diana Johnstone
NATO's True Role in US Grand Strategy
Mike Whitney
Ireland's Suicide Pact with the EU
Behzad Yaghmaian
Facing a Leaderless Globalization
Kenneth E. Hartman
Are They Really Opposed to the Death Penalty?
Norman Solomon
Wooing the Economic Royalists
Michael Winship
Don't Ask, Don't Care
Patrick Bond
Will Zimbabwe Regress Again?
Joel S. Hirschhorn
The Anti-Incumbent Movement Failed
Website of the Day
Free Speech on Trial
November 17, 2010
Vicente Navarro
The Hypocrisies of Mario Vargas Llosa
James Bovard
The Political Slaughterhouse
Jonathan Cook
Obama's Bribe
Dean Baker
Seoul Searching on Trade and Currency
Ralph Nader
Bush at Large
Nick Turse
Off-Base America
Sherry Wolf Alienation 101: the Online Learning Rip Off
Judith Scherr
Why Aristide's Party Won't Vote
Peter Certo
Defense Cuts Go Mainstream
Website of the Day
The Last Outsider Director: an Interview with Jean-Luc Godard
November 16, 2010
Pam Martens
How the Fed and the Treasury Stonewalled Mark Pittman to His Dying Breath
Richard Forno
TSA and America's Zero Risk Culture
Gareth Porter
The Unending Occupation of Iraq
Harry Browne
Bruce Springsteen's "Promise" and the Price You Pay
Peter Lee
QE2 as Self-Inflicted Wound
Alan Farago
How Much Gold Does George Bush Own?
Franklin Lamb
Is the American Public About to Toss Israel?
Frank Green
Conspiracy in Theory: Truthers Slog On
Sheldon Richman
Blood on His Hands
Thomas H. Naylor
Shattering the Myth of Vermont
Website of the Day
Peaceful Uprising
November 15, 2010
Michael Hudson
Obama's Greatest Betrayal
Steve Hendricks
More Torture, Please?
Paul Craig Roberts
Eyes Only on Burma
Harvey Wasserman
Accidents in Progress:
America's Eggshell Nukes
Lawrence Davidson
Palestine and the Fate of the UN
Clancy Sigal
The Long Disease of War
David Macaray
The War Over Food Stamps
Tom Engelhardt
The Stimulus Package in Kabul
Steven Fake
Liberating Thought
Website of the Day
Whatever ...
November 12 - 14, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
A Very Bitter Woman
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Stalemate Ends
Mike Whitney
Erin Go Broke
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Militarization of the World: the Case of Iran
Dean Baker
The Perverse Priorities and Fatal Flaws of the Deficit Commission Report
Gareth Porter
Intel Failure in Yemen
William E. Alberts
Why Are the Feds Targeting Black Officials?
Bill Hatch
Jerry Brown's Parable of the Rocking Boat
Jonathan Cook
Re-Unifying the Palestinian Nation
Patrick Madden Mystifying the Crisis: Deadlock at the G20
Ramzy Baroud
Another Baghdad Massacre
Rannie Amiri
The Quest for Power in Iraq
James Zogby
Whither Obama's Middle East Agenda?
Ron Jacobs
Palestine, a Family's Story
Mark Weisbrot
Why It Could Get Even Worse for the Democrats
Tanya Golash-Boza
Targeting Jamaicans
Paul Wright
The Case Against Stacia A. Hylton
Steve Early
TDU in Chicago: Still Punching
Martha Rosenberg
Vioxx All Over Again?
Celia McAteer
London Calling: Student Militancy a Welcome Surprise
Larry Portis
Imperialist Architecture in Egypt
Michael Winship
Riding the Rails, Looking for Work
Brian McKenna
Anorexia and Capitalism
Gerald E. Scorse
Channeling Reagan on Tax Reform
Christopher Brauchli
Making Oklahoma Safe From Sharia Law
Roberto Rodriguez
Arizona: Where Fear is the Predicate
Dr. Susan Block
My Porn Star Girlfriend
J. T. Cassidy
Unlocking Imagination in Japan
Linh Dinh
Revolution Number 10
Farzana Versey
The Misinterpreters of Kashmir's Maladies
David Ker Thomson
The Elizabethan Era: Life in the Ice Age
Phil Rockstroh
Public Like a Frog
Charles R. Larson
Abused Women ... Still a Growth Industry
David Swanson
Tall Tillman Tales
Saul Landau
"Stone:" Walking Invisibly in the American Crowd
Kim Nicolini
An Intimate Look at How Things are Made in China
David Yearsley
The Esserzici Work-Out Book
Poets' Basement
Three by Lee Stern
Website of the Day
Bombs Away!
November 11, 2010
Peter Linebaugh
Laying Down of Arms
Paul Craig Roberts Licensed to Kill
Bill Quigley
Bush Pens True Crime Book
David Macaray Dissing the Boss: the NLRB Files a Landmark Complaint on Free Expression in the Workplace
Liaquat Ali Khan / Jasmine Abou-Kassem
Why the Oklahoma Shariah Law is Unconstitutional
Dedrick Muhammad
Race and Economics
Robert Bryce
Cars for the Elite: Obama's Electric Vehicle Fetish
Alan Farago
What, No Phone Books?
Website of the Day
London Calling
November 10, 2010
Allan Nairn
US-Backed Death Squad Files Surface in Indonesia
Dean Baker
Wall Street's TARP Gang Rides Again: Now They're Coming After Your Social Security!
Nicola Nasser
Waiting for Godot in Palestine
Missy Beattie
Running Scared:
My Colonoscopy Saga
Sergio Ferrari
Worrying Signs From Venezuela to Ecuador
Patrick Cockburn
Can Iraq's Leaders Do a Deal?
Dave Lindorff Mumia: New Lawyer, New Round
Sherwood Ross
How Affirmative Action Brought Willie Mays to the Giants
Joshua Frank
Sinking the Breakwater
Website of the Day
Stiglitz: "Throw the Bankers in Jail to Save the Economy"
November 9, 2010
Uri Avnery
Obama's Defeat
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Dollar Policy
Jordan Flaherty
The Incarceration Capital of the US: the Crisis Inside New Orleans' Jails
Afshin Rattansi
Red Poppies
Annie Gell
Haiti's Unnatural Disasters
Dean Baker
The Fed's Second Shot
Dave Lindorff
BS From the BLS: Things are Much Worse Than They are Telling Us
Stewart J. Lawrence
The Nancy Monster That Refuses to Die
Walter Brasch
Love and Loss Among the Wild Horses
Website of the Day
Cut This: an Open Letter to the Tea Party
November 8, 2010
Paul Craig Roberts
Phantom Jobs
Thomas Healy
An Interview with Wendell Berry
David Swanson
A CIA Kidnapping in Milan
David Smith-Ferri
What Laila Sees
Ralph Nader
When Betrayed Voters Go to the Polls
Ray McGovern Torture Sans Regrets: Bush's Confessions
John Feffer
The Lies of Islamophobia
Christopher Ketcham
TV Toxicosis: What the Stewart / Colbert News Clowns Are Really Up To
Website of the Day
Sam Husseini Interrogates Rand Paul and Mike Pence
November 5 - 7, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
Now for the Good News
Vijay Prashad
Obama in India: a Tide of Turbans
Patrick Cockburn
If al-Qa'ida Really Want to Hit the West, They Can
Darwin Bond-Graham
Guess Who's Not Coming to Tea?
Mike Whitney
Dollar in the Dustbin
Linn Washington, Jr.
An Epidemic of Brutality: Oakland Filmmaker Feels Police Wrath
Rannie Amiri
STL = Sandbag the Lebanese
Ramzy Baroud
The Middle East's Stagnant "Change"
Larry Portis
Chou Sar? What Happened in Lebanon?
Gary Leupp
The Yemeni Toner Cartridge Bomb Story
William Loren Katz
Are Cruel Years Coming to a Neighborhood Near You?
Brian Cloughley
Spheres of Influence
Mark Weisbrot
The Fatal Mistake
Rubén M. Lo Vuolo, Daniel Raventós / Pablo Yanes
Basic Income in Times of Economic Crisis
Joseph Nevins
Ecological Privilege and the Frequent Flyer Activist
Neve Gordon
Thought Crimes
Alan Farago
The Bhopal Economy
Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Policy After the Midterm Elections
James R. King
The Other Side of Yemen
Ron Jacobs
How Ken Kesey Turned On America
Franklin Lamb
Israel Claims Victory in US Midterm Elections
James McEnteer
Beyond the Rational:
the Alamo Election
Richard Phelps
Guy Fawkes and the Pressure of a Terrorism Spotlight
Saul Landau
Where's the Sanity Clause?
David Ker Thomson The Long Argument
Evelyn Pringle
The Vaccination Profiteers
Joseph G. Ramsey Until Pigs Fly: the Morning After With Michael Moore
Stanley Heller
Up Yours, John Stewart
Missy Beattie
The Big Universe
Harvey Wasserman
Vermont's Great Green Election Day Victory
Billy Wharton
Where Did Everybody Go?
Shamus Cooke
Democrats Run to the Right
Linh Dinh
War Games: Guns and Balls
Windy Cooler
Rallying Through This
Charles R. Larson
Witnesses of Haiti's History: Edwidge Danticat's "Create Dangerously"
Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards' Demon Life
David Yearsley
Bach and the Music of Time
Website of the Weekend
Smearing Jean-Luc Godard as an "Anti-Semite"
November 4, 2010
Doug Peacock
Desert Solitaire, Revisited
Andrew Cockburn
Why Summers Goes and Geithner Stays
Iain Boal
Crisis at Pacifica: the Two-Percent Putsch
Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotence of Elections
Chase Madar
Guantánamo: Exception or Rule?
Dave Lindorff
Take That You Smug Bastards!
Russell Mokhiber
Bought and Paid For
Laura Flanders
Lessons From Elizabeth Warren
Website of the Day
Moyers: the Howard Zinn Lecture
November 3, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
America the Clueless
Franklin C. Spinney
Democratic Debacle
Chris Floyd Dissatisfied Mind: Flickers of Hope in a Deadly Political Cycle
William Blum
Jon Stewart and the Left
Sheldon Richman
Provoking Yemeni Terrorism
Stephen Soldz
Fleecing Members, Colluding in Torture
Mark Weisbrot
Dilma's Victory in Brazil
Stewart J. Lawrence
Court Sends Mixed Signals on Arizona Immigration Law
Manuel Garcia, Jr. Election Night in Oakland
Norman Solomon
Now What?
Website of the Day
Save Our Social Security
November 2, 2010
Vincent Navarro
What's Happening in Europe?
Ishmael Reed
Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, T-Shirts
Uri Avnery
The Occupation and Political Corruption in Israel
Mark Driscoll
When the Pentagon "Kill Machines" Came to an Okinawan Paradise
Mike Whitney
Midterm Day of Reckoning: "Let the Landslide Begin"
Linh Dinh
Prone Pioneers: Punishing the Desperate for Being Desperate
David Macaray
Bring Back the Fifties! America's Most Misunderstood Decade
Randall Amster Wikilessons: War is a Joke, But It Isn't Funny
Betsy Ross
How the Banks Trumped Keynes
Yves Engler
A Sad Spectacle:
Canada and the Jewish National Fund
Website of the Day
Gulf Oil Toxic to Humans
November 1, 2010
Ted Honderich
The Farce of Fairness
Steven Higgs
Don't Act Don't Sell: Why Liberals Will Get What They Deserve on Election Day
John Ross
A Ding-Dong Year for Death in Mexico
Dean Baker
A Darkening Future: Why Growth Still Feels Like a Recession
Ralph Nader
When Corporations are the Government
Justin E. H. Smith
The People Without History
Marjorie Cohn
Hyping Fear
Scott Boehm
Juan Williams and Katrina
Brian Tierney
The Struggle of DC's Nurses
Trish Kahle
Jon Stewart, Are You Really That Sane?
Martha Rosenberg Bathrobe Erectus: Feting Hugh Hefner
Website of the Day
Scary New Wage Data
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November 24, 2010
Is TSA Spreading Cancer?
Invasion of the Body Scanners
By JAMES RIDGEWAY
On the eve of some of the busiest travel days of the year, airport scanners are causing hysteria–and with good reason. Never mind the puerile TSA screeners giggling at your naked body. It turns out that the things may pose serious health concerns. In a letter to John Pistole, administrator of TSA, New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt, a scientist and the Chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, raised the possibility that the machines might be carcinogenic.
In March, the Congressional Biomedical Caucus (of which I am a co-chair) hosted a presentation on this technology by TSA, as well as a briefing by Dr. David Brenner of Columbia University on the potential health effects of “back scatter” x-ray devices. As Dr. Brenner noted in his presentation and in subsequent media interviews, the devices currently in use and proposed for wider deployment this year currently deliver to the scalp “20 times the average dose that is typically quoted by TSA and throughout the industry.”
Dr. Brenner has pointed out that the majority of the radiation from X-ray backscatter machines strikes the top of the head, which is where 85 percent of the 800,000 cases of basal cell carcinoma diagnosed in the United States each year develop. According to Dr. Brenner, excessive x-ray exposure can act as a cancer rate multiplier, which is why our government should investigate thoroughly the potential health risks associated with this technology.
Various experts have questioned whether older people and children ought to be subjected to scanners, and whether people susceptible to or having melanoma and cataracts should undergo the scan.
Holt also questioned the efficacy of the body scanners, which would come as no surprise to critics who’ve been lambasting them for years. Last January, when the government’s appetite for body scanners got a big boost from the underwear bomber, there was skepticism about their ability to detect the types of explosives favored by would-be airline bombers. As I wrote at the time:
Known by their opponents as “digital strip search” machines, the full-body scanners use one of two technologies—millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays—to see through clothing, producing ghostly images of naked passengers. Yet critics say that these, too, are highly fallible, and are incapable of revealing explosives hidden in body cavities—an age-old method for smuggling contraband. If that’s the case, a terrorist could hide the entire bomb works within his or her body, and breeze through the virtual strip search undetected. Yesterday, the London Independent reported on “authoritative claims that officials at the [UK] Department for Transport and the Home Office have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation.” A British defense-research firm reportedly found the machines unreliable in detecting “low-density” materials like plastics, chemicals, and liquids—precisely what the underwear bomber had stuffed in his briefs.
Just to be sure I am not going off the deep end on this subject, I emailed Steve Elson, the intrepid former Navy Seal who worked on the federal government’s Red Team, which was deployed in the years before 9/11 to test airport security by infiltrating through check points. This they did with ease; but no one ever paid any attention to their reports. Since 9/11 Elson has worked on and off with television crews, continuing to penetrate airport security carrying with him all manner of guns and IEDs, and for the most part avoiding detection. In a CBC program last year at this time, the Canadians reviewed the air security situation and found it to be wanting. The reporters also got hold of a redacted report from the Canadian transport people which raised questions about the effectiveness of full body scanners, especially when they are used in combination with metal detectors: A person passing through one machine after another would have to place their arms in different positions and the Canadians found the body scanners would fail to detect objects like rings or bracelets on extended arms because the mechanism could not reach high enough to take them in.
This morning’s Washington Post carried a list of people exempt from body scanning, including cops and military in uniform. I asked Elson about this, and he replied:
When I was traveling through Chicago last January on my way to Toronto to do an interview, I had some time between planes. Got a sandwich. No place to sit down so I literally walked into the back of a checkpoint that was enclosed by glass so everyone could see what was going on, sat down on a bench and ate my sandwich, and watched. Noone touched the pilots. Ergo, all I needed was a pilot’s uniform, bought or stolen, and a photoshop badge. Put explosives on my body, no metal, walk through, pick up my stuff and off to the plane. Likewise, I could do something similar on the ramp. Best time is in cold weather and snow storms. Do it as night approaches. People don’t care about security, just getting the job done and getting out of the weather. Steal a bag tag, make an unauthorized entry (no problem), walk up to a plane and throw it in with 50 lbs explosive.
Elson has always contended that the body scanner couldn’t detect explosives in body cavities. In his email he added this: “
The machine can see through a thin layer of clothing and probably detect explosives strapped to the body.” But he pointed out that Leslie Stahl on “60 Minutes” worried about exposing private parts, but noted she could see a woman’s bra. “If she could see the bra, that means she could not see through the bra. A bra bomb or explosives molded to the breast wouldn’t be seen,” he continues. “And a woman, because of her anatomical construction, could easily… bring a several pound IED fully assembled with timer, detonator, power sources right through the checkpoint. If scanned or patted down it would make no difference. Once on the plane she has the option to leave it in the plane…and get off.” Ellison warns that a well planned Al Qaeda operation, ”if they did it right, could knock down 50 planes in 30 minutes. Think about what that would do to US air operations.”
In my opinion, the best answer to airport security is the mass deployment of dogs. Give me a friendly German Shepherd, and I’ll gladly submit to being sniffed, rather than patted, wanded, or scanned. But unlike the scanner companies, dogs have no powerful lobbyists, like former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, to advocate on their behalf.
James Ridgeway edits the Unsilent Generation.
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Pam Martens on the rise of the Tea Party’s Rand Paul. What was wrong with Prop 19? Fred Gardner on California’s failed bid to legalize pot. John Sugg on the rise and fall of Steve Emerson, “terror expert.” Daniel Wolff on the framing of Ernest Withers” – was he an FBI informant?
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