The 5.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked the East Coast Tuesday and sent two nuclear reactors in Virginia offline has refocused concerns about the safety of nuclear plants in the U.S. and prompted reviews of plants in at least six states.
Interestingly, the federal government has run exercises of how a doomsday earthquake-nuclear disaster would play out, as Noah Shachtman at Wired notes. Are we prepared for the worst? Experts around the web are highlighting the strengths and vulnerabilities of America's nuclear plants.
Special Interest Glance
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 turned them into widows and the four Jersey Girls, as they became known, turned themselves into activists.
The sole purpose of COINTELPRO was to destroy individuals and groups perceived as threats to the status quo in the United States. COINTELPRO was “officially” ended in 1971—although it never really ended. After the 911 attacks, the government went at it again, but this time with a scared and more dumbed-down complicit public. Exactly forty-six days after the towers came crumbing down Bush signed the USA Patriot Act. This virtually eliminated restrictions on law enforcement agencies' ability to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records. What we used to consider illegal eavesdropping is now reclassified as something else -- an emergency. According to an official DOJ report, the use of “emergency”, warrantless requests to ISPs for customer communications content has skyrocketed over 400% in a single year. No outrage, no accountability. The majority of people are now more concerned about how to feed their families; civil liberties will just have to take a back seat until things improve.
From a transport ship floating in Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, CIA operative Grayston Lynch knew the U.S. mission to overthrow Fidel Castro was faltering. The Cuban exiles he had brought with him had abandoned their posts, so he grabbed the boat’s recoilless rifles and machine guns and began firing at the aircraft overhead.





























