CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

From Custer to Radioactive Death

The Battle of the Little Bighorn came as a complete shock to white America. Today we must worry about an even greater shock with an essentially infinite radioactive death toll.

The stunning defeat of General George Armstrong Custer and the U.S. 7th Cavalry came on the Great Plains at the hands of the Lakota warrior-chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse on June 25, 1876, 150 years ago this week.

The U.S. was in the throes of celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Its centerpiece was a huge global exposition in Philadelphia, which bragged to the world about America’s technological innovations.

The military defeat came as an astonishing, very public gut punch to American arrogance and pride. It was epitomized by Custer, the celebrated son of Monroe, Michigan, where his statue still stands in the town square, a short distance from the Fermi Atomic Power Plant.

Fermi Unit One nearly blew up on October 5, 1966. Unit Two has recently been threatened by fire, an “incident” potentially capable of irradiating much of the Great Lakes and continental U.S.

Today the nuclear power industry is pushing, Custer-like, for still more reactors that could do inconceivable harm to all of us.

To say Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were endowed with unique genius is to vastly understate their legacy. They were both truly great political leaders and military strategists. (A........

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