Opinion Editorials, December 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
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Mad Cows and “Downer” George
By Mike Whitney
Al-Jazeerah, 12/31/03
The outbreak of Mad Cow Disease on a farm in Washington State poses a challenge to the Bush Administration and the way they typically conduct business. On the one hand they have approached the dilemma in an entirely predictable manner by treating it as though it was strictly a political issue. They seemed to think that it could be handled with the normal litany of fabrications and obfuscations they trot in response to virtually every problem. It hasn’t worked.
Second, they have tried to paper-over the gravity of public health risk by assuring the public that “downer” cows will no longer make their way into the food chain. How they hope to accomplish this on a moments notice is anyone’s guess but, one thing is certain, the Bush credibility gap could prove to be quite costly in the interim. .
Having seen how the administration routinely uses lies and fakery to advance its foreign and domestic policy agendas, who in their right mind is going to believe that they’ll suddenly reverse directions and implement a strict regulatory regimen. It simply won’t happen.
The very notion of regulating big business is anathema to the ideologically driven Bush Administration. As they see it, their primary function is to deliver the nation’s persecuted corporations to the Elysian Fields beyond the grasp of government oversight. It’s doubtful that anyone is foolish enough to suppose that George Bush has suddenly revisited his core beliefs and been transformed into Ralph Nader, “Public Advocate”.
As a result, the American meat industry can expect to take the pummeling it so richly deserves. There will be no real help from Washington. (After all, it is the meat industry that sends its legions of lobbyists to Capitol Hill every year to avoid even the stench of regulation.) This is one time when the administration’s boatload of deceptions will not work in its favor. No public relations campaign will alter world’s aversion to tainted meat.
It should prove interesting, though, to see the Cattleman-in-chief dispatching his salesman-cum-diplomats to the four corners of the earth trying to hawk their rancid animal flesh. How fitting that the same president who was able to con the nation into putting thousands of innocent Iraqis to the sword, would be “hoist by his own petard” by a stumbling bovine in Mabton. Now that’s justice!
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
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