Anthrax Lies and Press/Government Complicity

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential

For full article and commentary, please go to this URL: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html My own comments on the article: Very intriguing article. There was a report on television's CNN that the government was postulating that Ivins may have released anthrax in order to test his own vaccine development against anthrax. The whole story is so bizarre that it takes on a kind of "conspiracy theory" mythic "smell." It is certainly time for public disclosure of ALL FACTS related to this story by all parties involved - including McCain! If I were part of the Democratic campaign, I'd start digging for the dirt now and spill everything found to be factual. Is Ivins another possible scapegoat as was said of Lee Harvey Oswald after the Kennedy assassination? Was he a lose canon? Was he merely a guy doing what he was told to do by his supervisors? We do know that many media outlets have (and still do) accepted government press releases as fact without doing any investigative journalism during the last eight years. We know there are members of the Bush "team" even now accused of lying to Congress and the press. We have ample reason to be suspicious. If Americans are ever going to regain faith in their government, the truth must come out ASAP. What can you do? Write to every newspaper you normally read, write to your senators and repesentatives, let others know about this article. Use the power of the Internet to get the word out that America must be protected from its own government excesses!

In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts

The following article appears on the on-line version of The New York Times. Nuclear Energy is one of the most wasteful and dangerous forms of energy production on the planet. We saw how many nuclear power plants had to be "contained" following China's earthquake this year and how many others are affected in other countries as well. We see that the USA government has actually sent fissionable nuclear materials via ordinary truck and rail carriers through some of the most populous regions of the country. We know about Chernobyl and Three-Mile-Island. We know that producing electricity via nuclear fission is like trying to shoot a mosquito with an elephant gun. We also know that metal fatigue from exposure to radiation is much greater than originally anticipated and that the dangers are far greater than the governments and utilities industries want us to know. Add to that the costs (government subsidies to outweigh the high cost of production) and the problem STILL UNSOLVED of what to do with all that radioactive waste!

McCain Sets Goal of 45 New Nuclear Reactors by 2030

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: June 19, 2008

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Senator John McCain said Wednesday that he wanted 45 new nuclear reactors built in the United States by 2030, a course he called "as difficult as it is necessary."

In his third straight day of campaign speechmaking about energy and $4-a-gallon gasoline, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, told the crowd at a town-hall-style meeting at Missouri State University that he saw nuclear power as a clean, safe alternative to traditional sources of energy that emit greenhouse gases. He said his ultimate goal was 100 new nuclear plants.

Mr. McCain has long promoted nuclear reactors, but Wednesday was the first time that he specified the number of plants he envisioned.

Currently there are 104 reactors in the country supplying some 20 percent of electricity consumed. No new nuclear power plant has been built in the United States since the 1970s.

"China, Russia and India are all planning to build more than a hundred new power plants among them in the coming decades," Mr. McCain said in this pocket of Missouri that is reliably Republican. "Across Europe there are 197 reactors in operation, and nations including France and Belgium derive more than half their electricity from nuclear power. And if all of these nations can find a way to carry out great goals in energy policy, then I assure you that the United States is more than equal to the challenge."

Although there has been a shift of opinion in the industry and among some environmentalists toward more nuclear power — it is clean and far safer than at the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 — most environmentalists are skeptical of the latest claims by its advocates. They also say that no utility will put its own financing into building a plant unless the federal government lavishly subsidizes it.

"Wall Street won't invest in these plants because they are too expensive and unreliable, so Senator McCain wants to shower the nuclear industry with billions of dollars of taxpayer handouts," said Daniel J. Weiss, who heads the global warming program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal research group.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mr. McCain's chief domestic policy adviser, said Mr. McCain had arrived at the goal of 45 as consistent with his desire to expand nuclear power, "but not so large as to be infeasible given permitting and construction times."