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in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Recent
Stories
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
August
11, 2003
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland Security for Whom?
Mickey
Z.
Bush's Progress
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Meet the New Bitch, Same
as the Old
Elaine
Cassel
Indicting DNA
Dr. Mohammad
Omar Farooq
Civil Liberties and Uncivil Super-Patriotism
Uri
Avnery
Who Will Save Abu Mazen?
Website
of the Day
RIAA Subpoena Clearinghouse
August
9 / 10, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
California's Glorious Recall!
Saul
Landau
Bush and King Henry
Gary
Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism"
and the Censored 9/11 Report
Paul de
Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
Kuttab
Life as an ID Card
Philip
Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man
Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
and the Rigtheous Right
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi
Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean
Elaine
Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?
Sean Carter
Total Recall
Poets'
Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert
August
8, 2003
John
Chuckman
What the US Says Goes
Roberto
Barreto
Defend the Vieques 12!
Bruce Gagnon
Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space Plans
Elaine
Cassel
The Reign of John Ashcroft
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
Website
of the Day
Zero Boy
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
Republic
Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
Hanan
Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?
Elaine
Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
August 6, 2003
Steve
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not
Easy Confronting King Coal
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
19, 2003
A Shock to the System
Blackouts
Happen
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
"The Dark Ages: They haven't ended
yet."
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The most shocking thing about the reaction to
the power outage that darkened the Northeast last week (aside
from the spasm of self-congratulatory mewling of New Yorkers
for surviving a whole 16 hours without electricity, as Baghdad
enters its powerless fifth month) is that people were shocked
that the lights went out.
Let's face it, blackouts happen. There's
nothing new about that. Even New York City, whose citizens seem
to view ever unsettling intrusion of reality as a test of their
moral fibre as a community, goes dark with the regularity of
the arrival of locusts. That's the nature of our gridded power
system.
Of course, some things have changed.
The intervals between system crashes are getting more frequent
and the outages themselves more prolonged. And the explanations
are becoming more convoluted. When they bother to explain at
all.
We are days after the latest big event
and no one really knows what happened. That's because no one's
actually in charge of the chaotic system that shuttles power
to half of the nation. Welcome to the world of laissez-faire
electricity. Follow the blinking hand.
Here's all we really need to know: Something
tripped. The current in the Erie Loop jolted backwards, feeding
on itself in an act of electric cannibalism. It's an apt metaphor
for the nation's electric system. So get used to it. Oh, yeah,
and open your checkbook.
Some of us have been down this road before.
Much of the West went dark in August
of 1996-though New Yorkers may have missed the great event. There
seems to have been a news blackout on that power outage, which
presaged the great California outages of 2002. It's too bad the
press didn't look more closely at the causes of the 1996  blackout, which hit more than 2 million
homes, because that meltdown in the power grid revealed the profound
defects lurking in the system and how those inherent problems
were exacerbated by the deregulatory frenzy of the 1990s.
You can see why the press bypassed the
issue. Stories on utilities are about as exciting as a root canal.
They are difficult to write and even more demanding on the readers,
who are more inclined to wade through a story on genocide in
Eritrea than to try to make sense of the political economy of
the US electric power system. All in all, it's easier to keep
people in the dark about such matters.
Plus, in the go-go 1990s electricity
deregulation seemed to be the great bi-partisan project, promising
consumer choice, lower rates and the opportunity to plug in to
greener energy. Even environmental groups, such as EDF and NRDC,
went along for the ride hawking the virtues of freewheeling companies
such as Enron over the public utilities, which were portrayed
as palsied dinosaurs in an era of brawny dot.coms.
On the national political scene, Ralph
Nader stood nearly alone in warning about the impending tragedy
of jettisoning the system of regulatory mechanisms that had held
the power companies in check for the past half-century in favor
of a scheme that resembled a Vegas casino game. But with Clinton
and NRDC backing the deregulatory mania, Nader was easily dismissed
as a grumpy doomsayer.
Of course, in hindsight handing over
the electrical power system to companies that have the moral
sensibility of telemarketers and derivatives traders and then
freeing them from most government oversight doesn't seem like
the brightest idea.
When George Bush finally interrupted
his swing of California fundraisers to enlighten us on the crisis,
he described the Northeast blackouts as a "wake up call."
For once he's right. But he was somewhat less forthcoming on
precisely what are we waking up to. Namely, an ever dimmer future
of blackouts, brownouts and rising electric rates. It's a scenario
that Bush and his cronies helped broker. Pay more, get less.
That's the cruel equation of deregulation.
Ironically, Bush has been helped somewhat
by the skidding economy. With many factories idled, the demand
for power has been relatively low since 2002. If the economy
ever rouses itself from the doldrums, the nation's frail power
system will be taxed even more and rolling blackouts may become
a regular feature of American life, like those taunting tapes
from Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
But at root this isn't a problem of demand.
In fact, there's an overcapacity of electricity. When the lights
went back on in the Northeast, they did so without one kilowatt
coming from a nuclear power plant. All 9 reactors had been shut
down. Let's keep them that way.
No, it's not an energy crisis we face,
but a crisis of accountability. Regulated monopolies were overthrown
in the 1990s and replaced by unregulated monopolies who would
much rather stuff their profits into dividends and gaudy executive
bonuses rather than sink them into long term investments in an
aging transmission grid.
In his blissfully brief speech, Bush,
who mistakenly referred to the Northeast event as a "rolling
blackout" (ie., a planned shut off), also pointed to the
anachronistic grid as a problem. "We'll have time to look
at it and determine whether or not our grid needs to be modernized,"
mumbled Bush. "I happen to think it does, and have said
so all along."
Hold on, Mr. President.
Far from always saying the electric grid
needs to be modernized, in June of 2001 our amnesiac leader threatened
to veto a bill in congress that would have appropriated $350
million to upgrade the transmission grid. However, Bush didn't
have to resort to the veto. The Republican controlled House of
Representatives voted the measure down twice, largely along party
lines.
Bush delicately avoided any mention of
the probable culprit in the grid crash: FirstEnergy, the Ohio-based
utility. Bush's discretion is understandable. After all, on June
30 FirstEnergy's CEO, H. Peter Burg, hosted a fundraiser for
Bush that netted his campaign more than $600,000. The featured
speaker at the event was none other than Dick Cheney. The company's
chief operating officer, Anthony J. Alexander, is also an old
pal. Indeed, he was one of Bush's famous "Pioneers."
He contributed $100,000 of his own to the 2000 Bush campaign
and raised at least another $100,000. Other executives at FirstEnergy
have contributed more than $50,000 to the Bush reelection bid.
That kind of money may not talk, but it sure buys silence.
So now we know. The system has shorted
out and there's no simple fix. Indeed, there may be no fix at
all. And, more intriguingly, there's no political mechanism to
demand or oversee an upgrade of a system that nearly everyone
agrees is broken. That's because the electric power safety net,
erected after the power company scandals of the 1920s, was giddily
cut loose during Clintontime. Like welfare, once the regulatory
framework is dismantled it's gone for good. Score another one
for Bill.
Today, there are scarcely any rules to
follow and compliance with the few guidelines that remain is
merely voluntary. There are no penalties levied when things go
terribly awry. There's not even anyone to levy the fines. In
many cities, public utility commissions, which once acted to
restrain the baser instincts of electric utilities, have been
abolished or simply stripped of all authority. Many of the power
companies are now located far out of state. In Montana, electric
power is delivered by a company headquartered in Philadelphia.
Here in Portland, Oregon, power was provided by a bankrupt company
from Houston, Texas, lately looted by its own executives: Enron.
And on and on it goes.
The electrical system of post-regulatory
America is a Hobbesian morass of open markets, emasculated regulators
and predatory corporations who are supposed to be providing a
basic human service but act as if they only owe allegiance to
the bottom line.
Across much of America (though, perhaps,
not midtown Manhattan), blackouts are a regular pre-planned event,
courtesy of the electric companies. In the deregulated environment,
low-income families have little recourse when the bills pile
up and you have to choose between paying the water bill, the
doctor bill or the power bill. A 2002 report by poverty researcher
Dr. Meg Powers estimates that more than 27 million low-income
families in America face electricity shut-offs every year. Imagine
being laid off in Bush's wrecked economy and having to place
your family at the beneficence of Enron, ConEd or Duke Power.
Instead of punishing the private power
generators and utilities, Spencer Abraham, Bush's goofy secretary
of energy, wants to penalize the customers who were hurt most
by the blackout and the failed promises of cheaper rates made
by the zealots of deregulation. "The grid's got to be upgraded
and the consumers are going to have to be willing to pay for
it," warned Abraham.
When it comes to energy policy, compassionate
conservatism means keeping the public in the dark until they
pony up the money to put the power companies in the black.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
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