The usual bosh is getting into the press about the technological prowess of U.S. weaponry as deployed against Afghanistan. He's been getting some great scoops in his New Yorker dispatches, but in this instance, Seymour Hersh ran some amazing rubbish in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago about the capabilities of the Predator unmanned reconnaissance vehicle. So did Thomas Ricks in the Washington Post in a story titled "U.S. Arms Unmanned Aircraft/Revolution In Sky Above Afghanistan." The Predator is made by General Atomics, a San Diego-based company, and each plane costs $20.5 million, which is a bargain in this day and age, though you don't get much for your money.

Hersh described a Predator operation over Afghanistan wherein the machine was supposedly "capable of beaming high-resolution images ... identified a group of cars and trucks fleeing the capital (Kabul) as a convoy carrying Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader ... The Predator tracked the convoy to a building where Omar, accompanied by a hundred or so guards and soldiers, took cover." At this point, the Predator's controllers could have

The world economy is close to recession and developing nations will suffer the most severe impact, according to yearly prognostications published by the World Bank. The GNP of developing nations will grow by 2.9% this year, but only 1.1% in 2002, according to the report. If China, with annual growth approaching 10%, is removed from the mix, the developing world may be in recession in 2002. The report noted that "what makes this situation particularly risky is that, for the first time since 1982, the US, Europe and Japan are registering deceleration at the same time." The World Bank prescribed the same old medicine - increased "free" trade. The world economy grew by 4.5% in the 1970s, before free trade policies took hold, then grew by 3.5% in the 1980s and 2.5% in the 1990s, after the free trade model was in full bloom. Meanwhile, the Bank of Mexico predicted that steep declines in the industrial and service sectors would result in increased unemployment next year. Bancomer predicted a 3.5% decrease in industrial exports to the US this year. Manufacturing and services account for 90% of the Gross National Product of Mexico.

Episode I.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I don't see how we can call the House "economic stimulus" package anything but war-profiteering. The bill is a disgrace, and the usual suspects from Texas -- Tom Delay and Dick Armey -- hold large responsibility for it.

What happened here, while we were all being exposed to anthrax-scare 24-7, is that corporate hitchhikers, who got left out of the earlier tax-cut package in favor of rich people, moved right in for the kill in the name of patriotism and economic stimulus.

The bill provides big tax cuts for big, profitable corporations -- IBM, General Motors and General Electric get a total of $3.27 billion in immediate tax rebate checks. A total of $25 billion in immediate tax rebates goes to large, profitable corporations, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. That's twice as much instant rebates to profitable corporations as the House, by two votes, decided to give the 37 million low-income families who didn't qualify for the original tax rebate.

Forty-one percent of the new tax cuts go to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers, while the only 7 percent goes to the bottom 60

No sane nation hands to a wartime enemy atomic weapons set to go off within its own homeland, and then lights the fuse.

Yet as the bombs and missiles drop on Afghanistan, the certainty of terror retaliation inside America has turned our 103 nuclear power plants into weapons of apocalyptic destruction, just waiting to be used against us.

One or both planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, could have easily obliterated the two atomic reactors now operating at Indian Point, about 40 miles up the Hudson.

The catastrophic devastation would have been unfathomable. But those and a hundred other American reactors are still running. Security has been heightened. But all are vulnerable to another sophisticated terror attack aimed at perpetrating the unthinkable.

Indian Point Unit One was shut long ago by public outcry. But Units 2 & 3 have operated since the 1970s. Back then there was talk of requiring reactor containment domes to be strong enough to withstand a jetliner crash. But the biggest jets were far smaller than the ones that fly today. Nor did those