Nuclear Weapons and Media Fog


"Even one military move by either of these nuclear-armed neighbors," USA Today's front page reported in big type, "could set off an unstoppable chain reaction that could lead to the holocaust the world has feared since the atomic bomb was developed." The June 10 edition of Newsweek includes a George Will column with a chilling present-day reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis: "The world may be closer to a nuclear war than it was at any time during the Cold War -- even October 1962."

Yet when it comes to nuclear weapons, the mainstream American press has scant emotional range or professional zeal to scrutinize the progression of atomic perils. From the start of the nuclear era, each

Cheney-Halliburton connection

AUSTIN, Texas -- The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating Halliburton -- the company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney -- for accounting irregularities. What took so long?

Dick Cheney's record at Halliburton is one of the most under-covered stories of the past three years. When you consider all the time and ink spent on Whitewater, the neglect of the Cheney-Halliburton story is unfathomable.

The proximate cause of the SEC investigation is an "aggressive accounting practice" at Halliburton approved by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen -- a little matter of counting revenue that had not yet been received, $100 million worth. The New York Times reports two former executives of Dresser Industries, which merged with Halliburton in 1998, say Halliburton used the accounting sham to cover up its losses. Dresser may have thought it got a bad deal in that merger because of that $100 million "anticipation" on the credit line, but the deal turned out to be much more sour for Halliburton.

Cheney bought himself a former Dresser subsidiary facing 292,000

Connect the dots

AUSTIN, Texas -- It's time to connect the dots. If you think the government is having a connection problem on the national security side, you should take a look at the starburst of dots on the economic side for a really stunning scandal. When you start to connect the dots on the business side, you will notice that we're being stolen blind.

One of the best interviews I've read in a long time is in the current issue of The Texas Observer with Bill Black, a name that will bring back fond memories for those who followed the S&L scandals closely.

Black is now an assistant professor of public affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. He is a lawyer, an economist and former litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board -- which is to say, the man who went after the S&L crooks. After he left government, he got a Ph.D. in criminology. His greatest claim to fame is that Charles Keating, that noted thief, once wrote a memo to his top lobbyist that said: "Highest priority -- Get Black. GOOD GRIEF -- If you can't get (Jim) Wright and Congress to get Black -- kill him dead -- you ought to retire."

Greens as "Spoilers," Already

Are the Greens running against Democrats ... and maybe giving Republicans the edge? Anyone who thinks we'll have to wait till the Bush-Gore rematch in 2004 to get into that can of worms had better look at Minnesota this year. Here's Senator Paul Wellstone bidding for a third term, with the tiny Democratic majority in the Senate as the stake. Writing in The Nation, John Nichols sets the bar even higher. "His race," Nichols wrote tremulously this spring, "is being read as a measure of the potency of progressive politics in America."

Wellstone's opponent is Norm Coleman, who is the former mayor of St. Paul, Minn., and enjoying all the endorsements and swag the RNC can throw in his direction. The odds are against Wellstone. Coleman is a lot tougher than the senile Rudy Boschwitz, whom Wellstone beat in 1996, and many Minnesotans aren't enchanted about his breach of a pledge that year to hold himself to two terms. But ignoring Wellstone's dubious future, liberals are now screaming about "the spoiler," who takes the form of Ed McGaa, a Sioux born on the Pine Ridge Reservation, a Marine Corps vet of the wars in

Global Warming

AUSTIN, Texas -- Throwing around words like "fantastic" and "stupefying" is considered bad form outside the tabloid press. But I'm damned if I know what else to say about the news that the Bush administration has decided that global warming is indeed taking place and they are planning to do exactly nothing about it.

Here we are in the middle of wallowing in this, "What didn't they know and why didn't they know it?" debate -- this maddening, haunting and probably useless exercise in "Why didn't somebody do something?" Sept. 11 left quite a bit of spilt milk on the floor, but even that disaster will pale against the consequences of unchecked global warming. Yet here is the Bush government announcing right here and now that it knows this disaster is coming but it will not do anything to stop it. They will not even do anything to slow it down or soften its impact. What can you call that except fantastically irresponsible?

According to The New York Times, the United States has reported to the United Nations that that global warming will substantially alter our

'War on Terrorism' Winking at Nuclear Terror

Two countries -- each with dozens of atomic bombs -- are threatening to make war on each other. Large numbers of troops have mobilized. Deadly cross-border clashes are intense. And people in charge of both governments have become more bellicose by the day.

Maybe you think this situation calls for U.S. officials and American media outlets to focus on ways of preventing the outbreak of a war that could quickly turn into a nuclear conflagration. If so, your mode of thinking is distinctly out of step with the "war on terrorism."

You see, as the summer of 2002 begins, what matters most is the Pentagon's determination to kill as many Al Qaeda fighters as possible. Some of them are located in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and perhaps also Kashmir, the region that's under bitter dispute by India and Pakistan.

Since the leaders in New Delhi and Islamabad have their fingers on nuclear buttons, their escalating threats ought to concentrate our minds on the very real perils of the situation. An attack with a single 10-kiloton atomic warhead could cause immediate deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands. For starters. "American

I told you so

AUSTIN, Texas -- Those of the populist persuasion are struggling against what is perhaps the most irresistible of all temptations -- the urge to say, "I told you so."

It is raining evidence these days. The newspaper business sections are turning into the Daily Fraud Update. Deloitte & Touche is now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its role in the unpleasant doings at Adelphia, energy CEOs keep biting the dust -- first at CMS, then at Dynegy -- the Arthur Andersen trial in Houston gets more depressing by the day, and corporate evildoers are suddenly ubiquitous.

OK, I promise that I'm only going to do this once, but ... we did tell you so. Three years ago, I wrote a column explaining why I thought the high-tech market made Las Vegas casinos look good. One reader was so amused by this ludicrous display of ignorance he sent me an enormous flower arrangement -- the thing had to have cost a couple hundred bucks -- saying I'd given him the best laugh he'd had in years. I bring this up because I think it's important to remember the degree of triumphalism that raged among

Bread, Coffee and Beer

I always try to sell the Left on optimism because of the Left's regrettable tendency to think everything's for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds. We just saw East Timor celebrate independence. As I told a celebration party put on by East Timor Action Network in Seattle, "Who would have bet in 1976, that after ghastly suffering and tremendous heroism, East Timor would, in 2002, be hoisting its flag?"

Let's remember triumphs as well as defeats. I like to remind the younger crowd of some of the less-trumpeted legacies of the Sixties. Better food. Better bread. The visionary radical hippies had a lot to do with that, touting organic food and the grains that now find their way into the health pages of the Sunday papers.

Good coffee was promoted by radicals like my friends and neighbors, the Paffs, who began by roasting beans on their kitchen stove for friends and neighbors and because the local town sold only Folgers. They now run Humboldt's very successful Goldrush Coffee (call 707-629-3460 for mail orders. Right now, Joe says the Dark Sumatra is terrific.)

Removing the sweatshop from the coffee fields: A journey to El Salvador

Todo el tiempo estamos en lucha. -- Mateo Antonio Rendón, manager of FESACORA, the Salvadoran organization of agrarian reform cooperatives

Where does your morning cup of coffee come from? If you can answer that question, you probably already know more about the politics of that beverage than most North Americans who drink it.

El Salvador since the '80s

I traveled to El Salvador in early February with a group of eight other Ohio residents and three Equal Exchange employees to learn how the harvesting and production process worked. Equal Exchange is a 40-employee worker-owned fair trade coffee company in the Boston area that buys directly from democratically-run farmer cooperatives in Latin America and other coffee-producing regions.

Four members of our group were coffee and wine buyers for Heinen's, a family-owned Cleveland supermarket chain with 13 stores; other Cleveland participants were owner Jeff Heinen, two teachers who had won a shoppers' essay contest, and an activist who helped sell Equal Exchange coffee at Heinen's and other local stores. This was the first trip EE had sponsored

Media Strategy Memo to George, Dick and John

To: George, Dick and John

Re: Counteracting the Media Evildoers

Damage control efforts are on track after those rough days in mid-May.

First, let's note a silver lining. John's move to prosecute Arthur Andersen pushed Enron off a lot of front pages, and the recent media commotion about "advance warnings" has helped too. However, complacency would be unwise. For instance, George's mash letters to Ken Lay are posted on Internet sites. Reporters could get tired of the raw meat thrown from the Andersen case. Fortunately, they're more like kitty-cats than lions.

To facilitate the purring, stroke as desired. Do what works. Avoid foot in mouth. Friendly pundits will float trial-balloon excuses. What doesn't get shot down is worth repeating.

Dick, you've been magnificent on the Sunday shows. That grim Edgar Bergen look is a knockout -- just don't tell anyone George is your Charlie McCarthy. (Joke.) The main thing is, stay on message. Change the subject whenever necessary. At this point, do FDR one better: The only thing to fear is not enough fear.

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