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State of Denial
Robert Koehler 8/28/2008
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Talk about naive. The Union of Concerned Scientists apparently thought the Democratic and Republican national conventions would be appropriate events at which to bring up the awkwardly substantive topic of U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles (6,000 or so) and policy (insane).

So, as part of a larger campaign of informative ads in the two convention cities, Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul, they rented billboard space at the two airports and greeted travelers with ads depicting an aerial view of that city, with one of those ground zero bull's-eyes superimposed on the downtown area, and the words: "When only one nuclear bomb could destroy a city like (Minneapolis, Denver) . . . We don't need 6,000." Below the picture, the party's presidential nominee -- one per city -- was urged, "to get serious about reducing the nuclear threat."

Well, OK. Perhaps you will not be surprised to hear what happened next: In Minneapolis, some people found the ad "scary," which it was supposed to be, and "anti-McCain," which it wasn't, but airports are the sovereign turf of Corporate America, which has quite a few values higher than free speech. Chief among them, I think,
is "happy, happy."

And Northwest Airlines, the official airline of the Republican National Convention, which also controls the advertising space in Concourse G of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, found the ad to be in clear violation of this value. So it requested Clear Channel Outdoor, a branch of the media conglomerate that originally sold the billboard space to Union of Concerned Scientists, to remove the ad.

Clear Channel, best known for homogenizing the nation's airwaves (it owns more than 1,200 radio stations, and pushes a lineup of right-wing talk show hosts), did Northwest one better. It yanked the ad in Minneapolis and then pre-emptively yanked it again in Denver, where no one had complained.

Phew -- threat averted! Let the conventions proceed with all due hoopla and empty intrigue.

"By maintaining thousands of highly accurate nuclear weapons on alert, the United States perpetuates the only threat that could destroy it as a functioning society: a large-scale attack by Russia launched either without authorization, by accident, or by mistake because of a false warning of an incoming U.S. attack."

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COLOR Nuke Rebuke
By Wolverton - Cagle Cartoons * Posted 9/28/2003 12:00:00 AM
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COLOR Nuke Rebuke
© Copyright 2003  Wolverton - All Rights Reserved.

Posted By: geoff  on Friday, August 29, 2008

Well, free speech, sticking your head in the sand (like ignoring global warming, too, for that matter, or the real consequences of that "Drill now!" simplicity, or "Bomb Iran!" or whatever other simple solutions are today on offer), etc., but then there's even the stance that Iran & North Korea started fast-tracking development, seeing as how they had been put on a list of the "Axis of Evil" and seen what happens to other members who don't have WMD. To wit: their best defence seems to be either get 'em, or keep 'em guessing.

Either way: it's a no-win situation.

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