tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80920160470446397792024-03-08T15:42:33.579-08:00Karl GrossmanKarl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-40876202824226062032015-11-29T11:14:00.000-08:002015-11-29T11:14:06.535-08:00I've switched from this site to my website -- www.karlgrossman.com -- for my blog.I've consolidated my blog with my website so I won't be using this site any longer. So please go to my website, <a href="http://www.karlgrossman.com/">www.karlgrossman.com</a>, to follow my blogging. Thanks! KarlKarl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-42111841118147741082015-07-01T12:42:00.001-07:002015-07-01T12:51:19.499-07:00The End of Police Raids -- at Long Last -- on Gays of Fire Island(This is my column in the <em>Fire Island News</em> running this week.)<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
gift of freedom for gay men on Fire Island came in 1968—47 years ago—with the
end, at long last, of police raids on gays of Fire Island. It took gay men
taking their chances with juries of Suffolk County residents—as proposed by a
prominent, feisty, rough-and-tumble Suffolk County attorney, Benedict P.
Vuturo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The
juries, one after another, found the gay men rounded up in the 1968 police Fire
Island dragnet innocent. And that did it: the cops finally stopped their raids. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With
the just-decided landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling establishing </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">same-sex
marriage a constitutional right</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> in all 50 states and gay
pride parades and a revolution in how gay people are perceived and their rights
accepted and expanded—perhaps the biggest contemporary revolution in the U.S.
and many other nations (consider Ireland)—what happened for many years to gays
on Fire Island seems like a nightmare of another time. And it was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> These
raids every summer were a perverse tradition of the Brookhaven Town Police
Department and, with its absorption into the Suffolk County Police Department
in 1960, they were continued by the new county police force.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> I
first became aware of the raids when hired in 1964 by the daily <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Island Press</i> as a police-and-courts
reporter covering Suffolk County. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
was like pulling teeth sometimes to get information from the Suffolk cops. But
after their annual raid on Fire Island, the cops wanted the media to know all
about it—pitching to us not only the names and addresses of those arrested but their
occupations and where they worked. The police effort was clearly meant to
damage those arrested, to perhaps get them fired for being gay and being
arrested in a raid on Fire Island.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The assaults on Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines were
made by boatloads of cops storming the beach. Prisoners were dragged off in
handcuffs and brought to the mainland. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Year after year, the 25 to 40
or so defendants, most of them from New York City and frightened about casting
their lot with Long Island locals, would plead guilty to various “morals” charges.
Then one judge began sentencing some arrestees to jail, getting himself plenty
of publicity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Fire Island gay community had had it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then the colorful Vuturo, former president of the Suffolk
Criminal Bar Association, was retained by the Mattachine Society of New York to
represent the arrestees in the next raid. That raid happened on August 24,
1968. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Mattachine Society prepared the Fire Island gay
communities for the legal fights ahead by distributing a pamphlet in 1967 advising
against "shortsighted" pleas of guilty and declaring:
"Intolerable police state tactics continue because of our
cooperation." The pamphlet further said if one was arrested not to provide
any more than name and address. “Never carry identification that contains the
name of your employer,” it counseled. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Vuturo demanded jury trials for each of the 27 arrested
in the 1968 raid. He told me he believed a jury of adults would never convict. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He was correct. He won every trial. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I covered the situation. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I reported in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long
Island Press</i>—I’m looking now at a yellowed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Island Press </i>clipping of a story I wrote about the defendants <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>being arraigned in Suffolk County District
Court: “’Outrageous’ was the word Benedict P. Vuturo used…These men will be
cleared of these notorious allegations.’ Vuturo said the men didn’t represent a
public nuisance, weren’t annoying anyone and police had to search through beach
scrub to find them. ‘The police actually sought these men out.’”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The trials were some scenes! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Vuturo toughly cross-examined arresting officers
demanding they tell in detail what they saw and what they did. The cops were
embarrassed. And Vuturo in his summations spoke dramatically about murders,
rapes and other major crimes occurring in Suffolk County and how, he declared,
the Suffolk County Police Department was wasting its resources storming Fire
Island to round up gays.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“To be on Fire Island—in Cherry Grove or Fire Island
Pines—when the cops are there for a raid is to put your life in your hands,” he
would intone. “The cops go and beat the bush. They grab you and handcuff you to
whoever…Was a breach of the peace committed? Who saw it but the cops who went
looking? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For Vuturo it was a case of "civil liberties are
civil liberties."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Suffolk County District Court was busy for months in
Fall 1968 with the “Fire Island trials” as they were referred to in court
corridors. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Vuturo hoped to lose one case so he could get to the New
York State Court of Appeals or U.S. Supreme Court to try to have the laws under
which the arrests were made ruled unconstitutional. But he never lost. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He said his victories proved "people—given all the
facts—are fair. People aren't stupid. That's what the jury system is all
about."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dick Leitsch, president of the Mattachine Society of New
York, had told me that the gay rights group had first considered hiring New
York City lawyers, specialists in civil liberties work, to defend the arrestees
in the next police raid on Fire Island. “But we figured the courts out there
might view them as outside agitators,” he explained. So the society, he said,
spoke to some members of the Suffolk County chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union and the flamboyant Central Islip-based attorney Vuturo was
recommended. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Vuturo later went on to become a Suffolk County District
Court judge. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He died in 1991. In the obituary for him in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday, </i>Kenneth Rohl of Babylon, also a
Suffolk County criminal lawyer who became a judge, said of Vuturo: “He was a
very unorthodox person who saw right to the heart of whatever was involved. You
never doubted where he stood. He hated hypocrites." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 15pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Brooklyn-born Vuturo, a father
of five, was key to ending a Long Island witch hunt. And so were the Suffolk
County jurors who showed that the jury system works and, as Vuturo said, “people—given
all the facts—are fair.” And deserving huge credit are those gay men of Fire
Island who stood up to prejudice and hate in a dark time. Together, they caused
the annual police raid on the gay communities of Fire Island to, most
thankfully, be no more. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-15767143618830256492015-06-21T08:45:00.000-07:002015-06-21T08:45:30.507-07:00"Fire Island Was Paradise,Truly Paradise" <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> (This article ran in the Fire Island News last week.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Fire
Island was paradise, truly paradise,” Phyllis Italiano was saying. “The life we
had there for that period of years—for 35 years—was idyllic. “<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Phyllis
was blissfully reminiscing the other day about the decades she spent on Fire Island
with a couple whose celebrated marriage was charmed and happy—her older sister,
actress Anne Bancroft and comic genius Mel Brooks. Often, her second sister,
Joanne, joined them. “For us, it’s always been about family,” she noted. The
three daughters’ parents were Millie (nee DiNapoli) and Michael Italiano, born
in New York City of Italian immigrants. The three girls and their folks lived
in The Bronx.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Phyllis
said the link between her family and Fire Island was sparked by Anne in 1960
staying for a weekend at the Fair Harbor home of fellow actress Enid Markey.
“Anne absolutely fell in love with Fire Island,” recalled Phyllis.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> “She said,
‘Look, I would like to rent there next year. If I rent it would you and Joanne
run it while I’m working on Broadway?’ I said, ‘Sure, why not?’” said Phyllis. “My
kid [the first of her four children] was one year old. I loved the beach.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> So, in 1961, she
and Anne rented actor Martin Balsam’s house in Fair Harbor—“he had headed out
to Hollywood to make movies.” She was immediately impressed finding that first
Memorial Day weekend that “this is a family place.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
next year, 1962, Anne and Mel had gotten together and all were back at Fair
Harbor. In 1963 Anne bought a house in Lonelyville. “It was a big rectangle,
way up on stilts, overlooking the ocean. Anne bought that house for $28,000.”
Designed by Richard Meier, it was on No Name Walk.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> In 1964, Anne
and Mel were married. And the following year they purchased a house behind that
rectangular one—“we called it the second house”—and that’s where Phyllis and
Joanne and kids (Joanne, too, is a mother of four) lived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“The
ocean was the king of our lives,” said Phyllis. “We had breakfast together and
we started every day the same way. Anne and I would go for long swims.” They
would swim in the bay and the ocean, although sometimes ocean-swimming was tricky.
She spoke of one day Anne swimming in a sea that was roiling, and how Anne glanced
at her with a “look on her face: ‘Give my love to Mamma.’ I had to get the
lifeguard to get her out.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We
had just unbelievable times. We would walk to Ocean Beach to go out to dinner.
We loved reading,” she said. “We played games at night.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mel’s
comedy-writing for Sid Ceasar’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Show of
Shows </i>“had ended,” he had started his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
2000 Year Old Man</i> routine with Carl Reiner which skyrocketed in popularity
on records and TV. He was working on other projects. “I remember on Fire
Island,” said Phyllis, “reading the script of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blazing Saddles </i>and thought, ‘My God, this is going to be terrific!’
I read the script there of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Producers,
</i>the first film in his film career.”</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Anne
had, meanwhile, become a star in films and on stage. She won an Oscar for her acting
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Miracle Worker </i>and became a world-renowned
sex symbol as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Graduate. </i>She wrote, directed and acted in the hilarious movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fatso. </i>She won Tonys for her performance
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Two for the Seesaw </i>and also the Broadway
production of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Miracle Worker. </i>She
might have to travel—but she made sure she got back to Fire Island. .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It
was so safe for children, so secure,” noted Phyllis, her former married name
Wetzel. Phyllis is now retired after 27 years as a teacher and also was an
assistant principal in the Yonkers public school system. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> The absence of
cars on Fire Island, Phyllis said, and the warm community life made Fire Island
“a safe, wonderful place” for youngsters. “The kids bonded together. They’d go
out in the morning and you’d see them at dinner.” As the years went by, son
Michael Wetzel worked at Kismet Inn and daughter Paula Wetzel at Maguire’s
restaurant.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> “All the girls
in the family did baby-sitting during their early teens. Once my daughter,
Joanne, my oldest, had a job at about age 13 raking the bay beach in Fair
Harbor of seaweed. She would be out at 8 in the morning cleaning the beach
before breakfast. That was how Fire Island was—a real community—everyone helped
everyone else.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Meanwhile,
“every day Mel would wash the front windows of the house,” she said. “And he
would go down to the ocean and surf-cast and catch fish.” Mel also thoroughly
enjoyed “sitting on the back deck in a great chair Anne had bought. And he’d
fall asleep.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They
liked going for shellfish. Then there was the time, Phyllis recalled, when “we
went out with flashlights at 1 a.m. in the morning crabbing and caught a load
of crabs. I said to Mel, ‘We don’t want to kill them by putting them in the
refrigerator,’” Better, she thought, would be putting the crabs in the kitchen
sink until it was time to cook them. “But they crawled out of the sink—16 or 17
crabs—and they were all over the place and we had to scurry around at 3 a.m. to
catch them. And, you know, crabs bite.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> A son, Max, was
born to Anne and Mel in 1972. He would go on to be a writer for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saturday Night Live </i>and author. His
initial book: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Zombie Survival Guide.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> In 1996,
Phyllis, Anne and Mel left Fire Island for the Hamptons. Anne thought they
could “buy a very big house for all the family.” </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Anne and Mel initially
rented in Westhampton and then settled in Water Mill. Phyllis purchased a house
in The Springs, a hamlet north of East Hampton.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“The
Hamptons are lovely. I’m not going to say I don’t love the Hamptons,” said
Phyllis, who is deeply involved in East Hampton Town Democratic affairs, has a
program on the Wainscott-based TV operation LTV, and is active in civic and
educational affairs. “But being on Fire Island, it was the happiest time of our
lives.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
has just returned to Fire Island once since 1996 only “because I’ve been so
busy.” But she intends to “go back to Fire Island this year. I’d love to see it
again.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Anne,
married to Mel for four decades, died 10 years ago this month, Phyllis noted sadly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span>Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-47054923275594892952015-06-01T16:01:00.000-07:002015-06-01T16:01:45.035-07:00My First Big Story<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> (This column ran in the <em>Fire Island News </em>last week.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
year-long 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary celebration—extending through this
summer—is underway to commemorate a great event: the creation of the Fire
Island National Seashore. In a David-versus-Goliath saga, a most extraordinary
place—Fire Island—was saved. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It was my first
big story as a reporter on Long Island. It was 1962 and I had just started at the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Babylon Town Leader, </i>a newspaper which
for decades had criticized projects of New York State public works czar Robert
Moses, a Babylon resident. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moses had
just announced his plan to build a four-lane highway on Fire Island. It would,
claimed Moses, “anchor” Fire Island and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>project it from storms.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was assigned to go to Fire Island to do an article about
the impacts of the highway on the island’s nature and communities. I was a 20-year-old
from New York City but I knew something about nature having been an Eagle Scout
and coming from a family that went camping every summer. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A walk in exquisite Sunken Forest made the environmental
significance of Fire Island clear to me immediately on the visit, arranged with
the help of George Biderman of the Fire Island Association. I lucked out in learning
about its magical communities by connecting with articulate Fire Islanders such
as TV journalist Charles Collingwood and writer Reginald Rose who, with others,
explained how these communities — and the island’s nature — would be largely
paved over by the Moses road. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wrote a story, the first of many. Two other weekly newspapers
joined with us in the journalistic crusade including running our articles: the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Suffolk County News</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Island Commercial Review.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What an uphill battle. Hardly any elected officials would
say or do anything in opposition to Moses. He also seemed to have some big
daily newspapers in his pocket. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
York Times </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday </i>pushed
hard for the road.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But we kept pushing, too. We found, for example, how the
four-lane highway Moses built to the west, along Jones Beach, rather than being
an “anchor” needed to be regularly bolstered with sand pushed along its edges
by bulldozers working at night.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The first call I received the morning my first story ran was
from Murray Barbash, an environmentally attuned builder from Brightwaters. Murray
(who passed away in 2013) and his brother-in-law, Babylon attorney Irving Like
(thankfully, very much with us and still a Long Island environmental champion) organized
a Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore. The view was that
Moses could not be stopped on the state level because of the enormous power he
wielded in New York. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Fire Island were
to be saved, it would have to be through the federal government. Also, the
Seashore initiative offered a positive goal.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A national seashore was then a relatively new idea. The
first, Cape Hatteras, was created nine years earlier, in 1953. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall paid
a visit and embraced the Fire Island National Seashore vision. Also,
conservation-oriented Laurance Rockefeller, the brother of then-Governor Nelson
Rockefeller, became chairman of the state Council of Parks in 1963 and liked
the Fire Island National Seashore concept, too.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moses was furious at what was happening. He confronted
Nelson Rockefeller. Moses had run for governor himself, in 1934, and suffered a
then record two-to-one defeat, so he amassed power by running state commissions
and authorities instead.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">According to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leader’s
</i>source—a person at Moses’ Long Island State Park Commission—at the climactic
meeting with Rockefeller, Moses insisted the highway would happen and that the
governor put a lid on his brother. If Rockefeller wouldn’t, Moses threatened he
would resign from his many commission and authority posts. He seemingly thought
the state would fall apart without him. In the collision, Nelson wouldn’t be
steamrolled.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moses quit his government posts. And the bill establishing a
Fire Island National Seashore was passed by Congress and signed by President
Lyndon Johnson on September 11, 1964, the date now the kickoff for the all-year
50<sup>th</sup> anniversary celebration.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Murray and Irv,
it should be noted, went on to flip the Fire Island strategy a few years later
when Long Island was faced with the Long Island Lighting Company’s plan to
build seven to 11 nuclear power plants—the first at S<span class="googqs-tidbit1">horeham. They understood that there would be no way at the
federal level to stop this. The U.S. nuclear agencies—the Atomic Energy
Commission and its successor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—never denied a
construction or operating license for any nuclear power plant anywhere, anytime
(to this date).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span class="googqs-tidbit1"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So
here the strategy was to utilize state power. Citizens to Replace LILCO,
created by Murray and Irv, pressed for passage of the Long Island Power Act and
use of the state’s power of eminent domain to eliminate LILCO if it persisted
with its nuclear scheme. This was the key that caused the closure of a
completed Shoreham plant and no other nuclear plants being built on Long
Island.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span class="googqs-tidbit1"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Babylon Town Leader </i>was sold in 1964. At the newspaper I also covered
the early civil rights struggle on Long Island. And </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I went to the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair opening day to
report on activists from Long Island protesting racism in hiring by the World’s
Fair. Moses had held on to b</span><span class="googqs-tidbit1"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">eing in charge
of the World’s Fair.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The chain that bought the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leader </i>ran my article as a front-page story with the headline: “Jail
Pavilion for Suffolk CORE.” But no longer was I protected by Moses-critical
management.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was called in to see the associate publisher, Wilson Stringer,
who declared: “Mr. Moses called and is very upset with you. You’re fired.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I would end up at the daily <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Island Press</i> and after its closure in 1977, writing books—I’ve
authored six—and anchoring the nightly news on Long Island TV station WSNL. For
the past nearly 25 years, I’ve hosted the nationally-aired TV program <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enviro Close-Up. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m chief investigative reporter at Long
Island TV station WVVH.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And I’m a full professor of journalism at SUNY/College at
Old Westbury. I teach Investigative Reporting and Environmental Journalism—and
continue to practice both. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So I’ve done fine, despite Moses. As has Fire Island. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Whenever I head out to Fire Island and see it come into
view, a good feeling comes over me about my part in helping save this national
treasure.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-60392937391921402112015-05-12T04:37:00.000-07:002015-05-12T04:37:12.050-07:00Disaster Waiting to Happen at Indian Point
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
1976, Robert Pollard, a rarity among U.S. government nuclear officials—honest
and safety-committed—said of the Indian Point nuclear power station that it was
“an accident waiting to happen.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Pollard had been
project manager at Indian Point for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) from which he resigned at that time charging the NRC “suppresses the
existence of unresolved safety questions and fails to resolve these problems.”
He joined the Union of Concerned Scientists.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">An explosion and
fire at a transformer at Indian Point 3 on Saturday is but one of the many
accidents that have occurred at the Indian Point facility through the
years—none catastrophic as have been the disasters at the Three Mile Island,
Chernobyl and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> But Indian Point
2 has been in operation for 41 years, although when nuclear power was first advanced
in the United States, plants were never seen as running for more than 40 years
because of radioactivity embrittling metal parts and otherwise causing safety
problems. So licenses were limited to 40 years.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Indian Point 2 is
thus now running without an operating license while the NRC considers an
application before it from the plant’s owner, Entergy, to allow it to run another
20 years—for 60 years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> Indian Point 3,
where the transformer explosion and fire occurred, has been operational for 39
years and its license expires this year. (Indian Point l was shut down early
because of mechanical deficiencies.) Entergy also is seeking to have Indian
Point 3’s operating license extended to 60 years.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">These old, long
problem-plagued nuclear plants, 26 miles up the Hudson River from New York City,
are now disasters waiting to happen in a very heavily populated area. Some 22
million people live within 50 miles of the Indian Point site. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> “</span></b><em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><strong>This plant</strong></span></em><span class="st1"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span></b></span><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">is the nuclear </span></span><em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><strong>plant</strong></span></em><span class="st1"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span></b></span><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">that is </span></span><em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><strong>closest to the most densely
populated area on the globe</strong></span></em><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">,”</span></span><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span></span><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">decl</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">ared New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo at the Indian Point site on Sunday. Cuomo, who has been
pushing to have the Indian Point nuclear plants closed, noted that this was
“not the first transformer fire” at them. And the concern is that “one
situation is going to trigger another.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Entergy PR
people in recent days have stressed that the transformer explosion and fire
occurred in the “non-nuclear part” of Indian Point 3. However, as Pollard noted
in a television documentary, “Three Mile Island Revisited,” that I wrote and
narrated on that accident, “there is no non-nuclear part of a nuclear plant.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> What could be
the extent of a major accident at Indian Point?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission in 1982 issued a report titled “Calculation of Reactor
Accident Consequences” or CRAC-2. The research for the report was done at the
U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>CRAC-2—you can read the full report online at </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.ccnr.org/crac.html">http://www.ccnr.org/crac.html</a>-- </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">—projects that in the event of a
loss-of-coolant accident with breach of containment at Indian Point 2, there
could be 46,000 “peak early fatalities,” 141,000 “peak early injuries,” 13,000
“cancer deaths” and a cost in property damages (in 1980 dollars) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of $274 billion (which in today’s dollars would
be $1 trillion) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For
an accident at Indian Point 3 in which the transformer explosion and fire
happened, because it is a somewhat bigger reactor (generating 1,025 megawatts
compared to Indian Point 2’s 1,020) the impacts would be greater, said CRAC-2<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">For Indian Point
3, in the event of a meltdown with breach of containment, CRAC-2 estimates
50,000 “peak early fatalities,” 167,000<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“peak early injuries,” 14,000 “cancer deaths” and a cost in property
damage at $314 billion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> Compounding the
problem of the Indian Point plants being old—consider driving a 60 year-old car
on a high-speed Interstate—they are at the intersection of the Ramapo and Stamford
earthquake faults. As a 2008 study by seismologists at Columbia University’s
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found: “Indian Point is situated at the
intersection of the two most striking linear features marking the seismicity
and also in the midst of a large population that is at risk in case of an
accident. This is clearly one of the least favorable sites in our study area
from an earthquake hazard and risk perspective.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“This aging
dilapidated facility has endless problems leaking radioactive chemicals, oil
and PCB’s into the Hudson River. It’s unconscionable to permit the continued
operation of Indian Point,” said Susan Hito-Shapiro, an environmental attorney
and member of the leadership council of the Indian point Safe Energy Coalition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> Further, she
pointed out this week, Indian Point has been described as “the most attractive
terrorist target” in the U.S. because of its proximity to New York City and it
also being seven miles from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Indeed,
there was consideration by the 9/11 terrorists of crashing into Indian Point. Both
captured jets flew over the Indian Point nuclear station before striking the
World Trade Center minutes later.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And she
described it as “outrageous” that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has
approved an evacuation plan for Indian Point “although it would never work” in
the event of an major accident at the plants considering the millions of people
who stand to be affected. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> The key to New
York State’s strategy to shut down Indian Point is the denial by the state’s
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to give Entergy a “water use
permit” to let it continue to send many hundreds of millions of gallons of
water a day from the nuclear plants into the Hudson River. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“We need to make
sure DEC stays strong,” says Hito-Shapiro.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> In light of the
historic, reckless, scandalous weakness of the federal government when it comes
to Indian Point—and the nuclear power plants of other utilities—strong state
action is most necessary.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<o:p> </o:p></span>Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-71537827946261152932014-09-06T20:10:00.003-07:002014-09-06T20:12:12.099-07:00Zephyr Teachout -- The Most Refreshing Candidate for New York Governor in Decades
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
most refreshing candidate for New York governor in decades—and I’ve interviewed
several—was on Long Island last week. Zephyr Teachout is challenging incumbent Andrew
Cuomo in a primary this coming Tuesday to decide who will be the Democratic nominee
for governor.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">She is an expert
on governmental corruption. Indeed, her book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Corruption in America </i>is soon to be published by Harvard University
Press. And Ms. Teachout’s emphasis on investigating and exposing corruption
isn’t simply academic. Previously she was national director of Washington, D.C.-based
Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan organization working for “transparency and
accountability” in federal, state and local governments with a focus on
documenting how money is perverting democracy. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There can be no more
important time—in this state and nation—for a specialist in corruption,</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Ms. Teachout (an
unusual name going back 350 years to her Dutch roots, she explained) is a
professor of constitutional law at Fordham Law School. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">She was in Sag
Harbor last Sunday at a “meet-and-greet” at </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the
Sag Harbor studio of artist Julie Keyes. It attracted people from all over Long
Island. Steve McCormack, a teacher, came 50 miles from Miller Place and
explained that he is “active in Democratic affairs” but has become disgusted with
“walking door-to-door for candidates who are in cahoots with big business.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ms. Teachout sat down for a 20-minute interview with me in
which she blasted Mr. Cuomo for his abrupt shutdown of a Moreland commission the
governor formed to investigate corruption in state government. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Last month, in a Page One story,
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times </i>detailed how Mr.
Cuomo dissolved the commission after it began investigating entities close to
him. And this despite Mr. Cuomo’s claim when he formed the commission that it
would be “totally independent...Anything they want to look at they can look
at—me, the lieutenant governor... any senator, any assemblyman.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">“It’s an outstanding display
of hubris to create a commission to investigate corruption and shut it down
after it did exactly that,” said Ms. Teachout. ” The “rule of law” was twisted
“to not apply to Cuomo’s business associates.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">She was equally critical of Mr.
Cuomo’s “interference” with another Moreland commission he set up to
investigate the Long Island Power Authority. The governor “imposed a foregone
conclusion” on this panel “pressuring it” to decimate LIPA and have a New
Jersey-based utility, PSEG, become the main electric utility on Long Island.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Ms. Teachout said “Long
Island should have been put first” by “the fixing of what was wrong” with
state-created LIPA and “not privatize” the utility system. Lost now is
“accountability” and “the long-term costs of this privatization are not known.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Moreover, she said she has a
“very different energy vision” than does Mr. Cuomo. She seeks to have the state
get all of its power from renewable energy sources. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">She declared that she is a
strong opponent of nuclear power and the Indian Point nuclear plants just north
of New York City “have to be closed. Nuclear power is unsafe.” (Mr. Cuomo is
also for the closure of Indian Point. However, the Republican nominee for
governor, Rob Astorino, is for keeping Indian Point open and for building new
nuclear power plants in New York State.)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Ms. Teachout is against
fracking—the drilling into shale for gas—which she called “a threat to the
water supply.” She faulted Mr. Cuomo for not making a decision on whether
fracking should be allowed in New York State while also, she said, “taking $1 million
in political contributions from pro-fracking interests.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">She said she and her running
mate, Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and a leader in challenging
monopolization of media, are “old-fashioned trust-busters.” There is “too much
power concentrated in the hands of a few and it’s bad for the economy and bad
for democracy.” Former New York Governors Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt were
trust-busters, she noted. “It’s a long American tradition.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Their campaign, she said, was
“gaining momentum every day.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Among others at the event for
Ms. Teachout was Julie Penny of Noyac who commented, “I’ve been massively
disappointed in Cuomo. We need someone who will work for us.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She added, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“It’s
too bad Cuomo refuses to debate Teachout on the issues that matter to us and
have such repercussions over our lives. “ </span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-36668268491573911132014-08-30T13:57:00.000-07:002014-08-30T13:58:08.622-07:00Science May Be Objective But That Doesn't Mean That All Scientists Are Because of Their Drive to Push Their Institutions and Projects<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Earlier this summer, a group of
Congressional representatives—led by Tim Bishop of Long Island—hosted a
reception in East Hampton for a fellow congressman, Bill Foster of Illinois.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> An emphasis was on how Foster is one of only three scientists in the
House of Representatives. His invitation to the fundraiser was headed with,
“Why Don’t Americans Elect Scientists?” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Foster stated: “The complex economic and
technological issues our nation faces today will require leaders who think
through the critical issues of the day, using logic and facts rather than
resorting to mindless party-line talking points...Part of that solution has to
be to elect more scientists and engineers to Congress.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A biography of Foster accompanying the invitation noted that for 22
years he worked at Fermilab and “participated in leading-edge scientific
research, designed and built state-of-the-art physics experiments.” Fermilab in
Illinois, with 1,750 employees, is operated by the U.S. Department of Energy. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Considering especially the debate among Congressional representatives
on climate change, science is indeed important. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Foster is a Democrat, like Bishop of
Southampton, and the other representatives who hosted him on June 28<sup>th</sup>,
Steve Israel of Huntington on Long Island and Carolyn Maloney of Manhattan. Democrats in
Congress, and Democratic President Barack Obama, have been blasting Republicans
in Congress who deny climate change and global warming are happening. The
science on climate change and global warming is clear, they emphasize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They charge the GOPers have a politicized
“anti-science” agenda.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Bishop’s Republican opponent this year, State Senator Lee Zeldin of
Shirley, Long Island is holding his own fundraiser on September 8<sup>th</sup> with as his
main guest former Representative Allen West of Florida, typical of those GOPers.
“When asked if he felt that climate change was causing the Earth to become
warmer, West responded with a firm ‘No,’” according to published reports. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>West is a hero of the Tea Party in which
climate change denial is strong.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes, utilizing science rather than a dubious political line when it
comes to climate change and global warming is a good thing. But, on the other
hand, scientists often also have their own political agendas rooted in
promoting scientific institutions and their projects. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Science
might be objective—but that doesn’t mean all scientists are.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Many of us are familiar with President Eisenhower’s warning in his
farewell address to the nation in 1961 about the rise of a “military-industrial
complex.” Not widely known is that the original draft of that speech warned not
just of a “military-industrial complex” but of a
“military-industrial-scientific complex.” The president’s science advisor,
James Killian, later president of MIT, pleaded that the word “scientific” be
eliminated, and it was. Nevertheless, President Eisenhower went on warning, “Today,
the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task
forces of scientists and laboratories.” He declared that “in holding scientific
research and discovery in respect…we must also be alert to the equal and
opposing danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a
scientific technological elite.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">David E. Lilienthal, first chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC), used similar words in his 1963 book <em>Change, Hope, and the
Bomb. </em><em><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">He
wrote how now “s</span></em>cientists are ranked in platoons” and ” the
independent and humble search for new truths about nature has become confused
with the bureaucratic impulse to justify expenses and see that next year’s
budget is bigger than last’s.” He spoke about the “elaborate and even luxurious
[national] laboratories that have grown up at Oak Ridge, Argonne, Brookhaven.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In that line he was referring to Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) set
up by AEC on a former Army base in Upton on Long Island and now operated by the
U.S. Department of Energy. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">One need only examine what happened to Bishop’s predecessor in the lst
Congressional District, three-term Representative Michael Forbes of Quogue, Long Island in
1999 after he challenged BNL, to see the concerns of President Eisenhower and
Mr. Lilienthal playing out. Mr. Forbes was concerned about radioactive leaks
from nuclear reactors at BNL and spoke out forcefully. He was opposed in a
primary for the Democratic nomination by Regina Seltzer of Bellport, Long Island whose
husband had been a BNL scientist. BNL personnel manned phone banks for Seltzer.
She took the nomination from Forbes by 45 votes, but lost the general election.
Meanwhile, a highly capable representative was driven out of Congress.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">There have been many studies into scientists being influenced by ties
to government and corporations and perverting their analyses. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Being anti-science, as such, is wrong. But so is having an uncritical
belief in scientists </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-28121680026859378302014-08-29T04:21:00.000-07:002014-08-29T04:22:07.164-07:00Secret Diablo Canyon Report Revealed<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> As
aftershocks of the 6.0 Napa earthquake that occurred Sunday in California
continued, the Associated Press this week revealed a secret government report pointing
to major earthquake vulnerabilities at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plants which
are a little more than 200 miles away and sitting amid a webwork of earthquake
faults. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span><br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s
apparent to any visitor to the stretch of California where the two Diablo
Canyon plants are sited that it is geologically hot. A major tourist feature of
the area: hot spas. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Welcome to the
Avila Hot Springs,” declares the website of one, noting how “historic Avila Hot
Springs” was “discovered in 1907 by at the time unlucky oil drillers and
established” as a “popular visitor-serving natural artesian mineral hot
springs.” </span><a href="http://www.avilahotsprings.com/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: blue;">www.avilahotsprings.com</span></span></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nevertheless,
Pacific Gas & Electric had no problem in 1965 picking the area along the
California coast, north of Avila Beach, as a location for two nuclear plants.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
was known that the San Andreas Fault was inland 45 miles away. Then, in 1971,
with construction underway, oil company geologists discovered another
earthquake fault, the Hosgri Fault, just three miles out in the Pacific from
the plant site and linked to the San Andreas Fault.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
2008 yet another fault was discovered, the Shoreline Fault—but 650 yards from
the Diablo Canyon plants. </span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Shoreline Fault, and concerns about the vulnerability of nuclear plants to
earthquakes in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, are integral to
a 42-page report written by Dr. Michael Peck, for five years the lead inspector
on-site for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at Diablo Canyon.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peck’s
report was obtained by the Associated Press, which has done excellent journalism
in recent years investigating the dangers of nuclear power, and the AP issued a
story Monday on the report. </span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the report </span><a href="http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/5a/8/4821/Diablo_Canyon_Seismic_DPO.pdf"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: blue;">http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/5a/8/4821/Diablo_Canyon_Seismic_DPO.pdf</span></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peck writes: “The new seismic
information resulted in a condition outside of the bounds of the existing Diablo
Canyon design basis and safety analysis. Continued reactor operation outside
the bounds of the NRC approved safety analyses challenges the presumption of
nuclear safety.”</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He
also states: “The Shoreline [Fault] Scenario results in SSC [acronym in the
nuclear field for Structures, Systems and Components] seismic stress beyond the
plant SSE [Safe Shutdown Earthquake] qualification basis. Exposure to higher
levels of stress results in an increase[d] likelihood of a malfunction of SSCs.
The change also increases the likelihood of a malfunction of SSCs important to
safety...”</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peck
notes that the “prevailing” NRC “staff view” is that “potential ground motions
from the Shoreline fault are at or below those levels for which the plant was
previously evaluated and demonstrated to have a ‘reasonable assurance of
safety.’” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He
disagrees and says that the NRC staff “also failed to address the Los Osos and
San Luis Bay faults,” faults that the Shoreline Fault are seen as potentially
interacting with, and that “new seismic information” concludes that “these
faults were also capable of producing ground motions”</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also,
he says: “The prevailing staff view that ‘operability’ may be demonstrated
independent of existing facility design basis and safety analyses requirements
establishes a new industry precedent. Power reactor licensees may apply this
precedent to other nonconforming and unanalyzed conditions.”</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“What’s
striking about Peck’s analysis,” says the AP story,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NUCLEAR_REACTOR_EARTHQUAKES?SITE=MOCAP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT"><span style="color: blue;">http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NUCLEAR_REACTOR_EARTHQUAKES?SITE=MOCAP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT</span></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“is that it comes from within the NRC itself,
and gives a rare look at a dispute within the agency. At issue are whether the
plant’s mechanical guts could survive a big jolt, and what yardsticks should be
used to measure the ability of the equipment to withstand the potentially
strong vibrations that could result.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/ap-exclusive-expert-calls-diablo-canyon-shutdown/ng8Tj/</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
AP story also says, “Environmentalists have long depicted Diablo Canyon—the
state’s last nuclear plant after the 2013 closure of the San Onofre reactors in
Southern California—as a nuclear catastrophe in waiting. In many ways, the
history of the plant, located halfway between Los Angeles and San
Francisco...and within 50 miles of 500,000 people, has been a costly fight
against nature, involving questions and repairs connected to its design and
structural strength.”</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Calling
the Peck report “explosive,” the environmental group Friends of the Earth this
week described it as having been “kept secret for a year.” </span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Said
Damon Moglen, senior strategy advisor at Friends of the Earth, </span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2014-07-diablo-canyon-secret-document-details-federal-safety-alarm"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2014-07-diablo-canyon-secret-document-details-federal-safety-alarm</span></a></span></div>
"<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Inspector Peck is the canary in the coal mine, warning us of a possible
catastrophe at Diablo Canyon before it’s too late. We agree with him that
Diablo Canyon is vulnerable to earthquakes and must be shut down immediately.”</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moglen
said: “Given the overwhelming risk of earthquakes, federal and state
authorities would never allow nuclear reactors on this site now. Are PG&E
and the NRC putting the industry’s profits before the health and safety of
millions of Californians.”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Rather
than the NRC keeping this a secret,” Moglen went on, “there must be a thorough
investigation with public hearings to determine whether these reactors can
operate safely.”</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peck
is still with the NRC, a trainer at its Technical Training Center in Chattanooga,
Tennessee.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Michael
Mariotte, president of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, commented
Monday<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="http://safeenergy.org/2014/08/25/former-top-nrc-inspector-says-shut-diablo-canyon/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: blue;">http://safeenergy.org/2014/08/25/former-top-nrc-inspector-says-shut-diablo-canyon/</span></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">that in “plain English” what Peck’s
report acknowledges is: “The NRC does not know whether Diablo Canyon could
survive an earthquake, within the realm of the possible, at any of the faults
around Diablo Canyon. And the reactors should shut down until the NRC does know
one way or the other. Of course, if the reactors cannot survive a postulated
earthquake, the obvious conclusion is that they must close permanently. The
question is whether the NRC will ever act on Peck’s recommendation or whether
the agency will continue to sit on it until after the next earthquake.”</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mariotte
also says: “The irony is that this should have been the big news a year ago;
Peck wrote his recommendation—in the form of a formal Differing Professional
Opionion—in July 2013. And the NRC still hasn’t taken action or even responded
to it.”</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
his report Peck also states that the NRC is supposed to be committed to a
“standard of safety” and “safety means avoiding undue risk or providing
reasonable assurance of adequate protection for the public.”</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Meanwhile,
PG&E has not only been insisting that its Diablo Canyon plants are safe, despite
the earthquake threat, but has filed with the NRC to extend the 40 year
licenses given for their operations<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>another 20 years—to 2044 for Diablo Canyon 1 and to 2045 for Diablo
Canyon 2.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An
analysis<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.ccnr.org/crac.html"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.ccnr.org/crac.html</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>done in 1982 by
Sandia National Laboratories for the NRC, titled “Calculations for Reactor
Accident Consequences 2,” evaluated the impacts of a meltdown with “breach of
containment” at every nuclear plant in the U.S.—what happened at the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear plants as a result of an earthquake. For the Diablo Canyon nuclear
plants, it projected 10,000 “peak early fatalities” for each of the plants and
$155 billion in property damages for Diablo Canyon 1 and $158 billion for
Diablo Canyon 2—in 1980 dollars.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-46893575127808422972014-08-03T13:55:00.002-07:002014-08-03T13:56:43.402-07:00Solar Power as an Alternative to Dangerous Nuclear Power in Space
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
demonstration that in space as on Earth solar power is an alternative to
dangerous nuclear power is to come this week when a solar-powered spacecraft called
Rosetta will rendezvous with a comet at 375 million miles from the Sun.</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Rosetta space probe, energized with solar power, is to meet up Wednesday with Comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will begin making observations, relaying back to
Earth high-resolution images and information from its sensors, of the two-and-a-half
mile wide comet Rosetta will subsequently send a lander down to the comet that will
drill into it and perform a variety of experiments. For a year, Rosetta will
fly alongside the comet, named after the two Ukranian astronomers who
discovered it in 1969.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For
decades, the United States and the Soviet Union, and now Russia, stressed the
use of atomic energy as a source of power in space—and there have been
accidents as a result. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The most serious
were the falls back to Earth of a U.S. satellite with a SNAP-9A plutonium-238
radioisotope thermal generator on board in 1964, disintegrating as it fell, dispersing
plutonium worldwide, and of the Soviet Cosmos Satellite 954 in 1978, with an
atomic reactor on board, also breaking up, and spreading nuclear debris for
hundreds of miles across the Northwest Territories of Canada.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The late Dr.
John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at
Berkeley, long connected the SNAP-9A accident and its dispersal of plutonium
with a global increase in lung cancer. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Canada demanded compensation for the
Cosmos-954 accident which the Soviet Union eventually paid, in part. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Now all
satellites are solar-powered as is the International Space Station. But there
has been a push to continue to use nuclear power on space probes with NASA and formerly
Soviet and now Russian space authorities insisting that solar power cannot be
harvested far from the Sun.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">However, the
European Space Agency declares on its website—</span><a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Frequently_asked_questions"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Frequently_asked_questions</span></span></a> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">—“The solar cells in Rosetta’s
solar panels are based on a completely new technology, so-called Low-intensity
Low Temperature Cells. Thanks to them, Rosetta is the first space mission to
journey beyond the main asteroid belt relying solely on solar cells for power
generation. Previous deep-space missions used nuclear RTGs, radioisotope
thermal generators. The new solar cells allow Rosetta to operate over 800
million kilometres from the Sun, where levels of sunlight are only 4% those on
Earth. The technology will be available for future deep-space, such as ESA’s
upcoming Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>ESA
notes: “ESA has not developed RTG i.e. nuclear technology, so the agency
decided to develop solar cells that could fill the same function.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Rosetta,
launched in 2004, “relies entirely on the energy provided by its innovative
solar panels for all onboard instruments and subsystems,” says ESA.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">NASA has begun
to follow ESA’s lead. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It went with solar
power for its Juno mission to Jupiter that is now underway. Launched in 2011,
energized by solar power, the Juno space probe is to arrive at Jupiter in 2016.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At the distance
at which Rosetta will encounter Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko or at which
Juno will be doing experiments involving Jupiter or ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons
Explorer will work, energy from the Sun is but a small fraction of what it is
on Earth. Still, it can be effectively utilized. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(NASA’s last space probe mission to Jupiter,
Galileo, launched in 1989, was plutonium-powered and NASA officials insisted,
including in sworn testimony countering a challenge to Galileo in federal
court, that this was the only energy choice. There were numerous protests
against Galileo and have been to subsequent nuclear space shots led by the
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (</span><a href="http://www.space4peace.org/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">www.space4peace.org</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">).</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Rosetta is named
after the Rosetta Stone, a slab of basalt found in Egypt in 1799 with
inscriptions carved on it that enabled the deciphering of hieroglyphics, the
ancient language of Egypt. “As a result of this breakthrough, scholars were
able to piece together the history of a lost culture,” notes ESA.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Likewise,
“Rosetta’s prime objective is to help understand the origin and evolution of
the Solar System,” says ESA. “The comet’s composition reflects the composition
of the pre-solar nebula out of which the Sun and the planets of the Solar
System formed, more than 4.6 billion years ago. Therefore, an in-depth analysis
of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by Rosetta and its lander will provide
essential information to understand how the Solar System formed.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">ESA adds, “There
is convincing evidence that comets played a key role in the evolution of the
planets, because cometary impacts are known to have been much more common in
the early Solar System than today. Comets, for example, probably brought much
of the water in today’s ocean. They could even have provided the complex
organic molecules that may have played a crucial role in the evolution of life
on Earth.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Rosetta “will be
undertaking several ‘firsts’ in space exploration,” says ESA. “It will be the
first mission to orbit and land on a comet.” And, Rosetta will be “the first
spacecraft to witness, at close proximity” the changes in a comet as it
approaches the Sun. Rosetta’s lander “will obtain the first images from a
comet’s surface and make the first in-situ subsurface analysis of its
composition.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The R</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">osetta
lander, given the name Philea, is to touch down on the comet’s surface in
November and “remain operational through the end of 2015....A drilling system
will obtain samples down to 23 cm below the surface and will feed these to the
spectrometers for analysis, such as to determine the chemical composition.
Other instruments will measure properties such as near-surface strength,
density, texture, porosity, ice phases and thermal properties...In addition,
instruments on the lander will study how the comet changes during the day-night
cycle, and while it approaches the Sun.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The lander is
being called Philea for Philea Island in the Nile where an obelisk was found
that supplemented the use of the Rosetta Stone in the deciphering of
hieroglyphics.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The cost of the mission
is 1.3 billion Euros ($1.75 billion at current exchange rates) and ESA asks the
question: “Why spend such a huge amount of public money on studying remote
stones in space?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ESA responds: “ESA’s task is to explore the
unknown. In the case of Rosetta, scientists will be learning about comets,
objects that have fascinated mankind for millennia” and “are thought to be the
most primitive objects in the Solar System, the building blocks from which the planets
were made. So Rosetta will provide exciting new insights into how the planets,
including Earth, were born and how life began.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There can be
things that can still go wrong on the mission. Gases from the comet could
affect Rosetta flying with it. Philae could fail to get hooked to the comet,
although a “harpoon” system has been devised for it to anchor itself to the comet’s
surface.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">But if the
Rosetta mission is a success it will be a superb example of a space mission
that represents no nuclear threat to life on Earth and of a quest with the highest
of purposes—exploring the mysteries of the Solar System and the origins of life.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-78916313511654850362014-05-27T16:59:00.001-07:002014-05-27T17:00:09.589-07:00The Lyme Disease Epidemic
The tick season has
arrived on Long Island, where I live, and the rest of the New York area, indeed
through much of the United States. A deer tick just bit me. When I was a kid
growing up in Queens in New York City my family went camping every summer out
on Long Island, at Wildwood State Park in Wading River, and deer ticks were
unknown. <br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
As a Boy Scout doing
intensive hiking and camping all over this region (I was an Eagle Scout) neither
I nor anyone I knew was ever bitten by a deer tick,</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
But now deer ticks and
other ticks, and Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases, are a huge problem
for all of us. Long Island was a hotspot for Lyme when it first emerged in the
1970s and still is, but it’s now just one of many hotspots in the area and
across the U.S., indeed Lyme disease has spread around the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
We’ve been hit by an
epidemic.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The Empire State Lyme
Disease Association, headquartered in Manorville on Long Island, is a leading organization
in the U.S. in the fight against Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Eva Haughie, the
association’s president, has counted getting 51 tick bites since 1999 and as a
result her contracting Lyme disease nine times. “Ticks love me,” Ms. Haughie
was saying last week. The first time she ended up “like an Alzheimer’s patient”
and “couldn’t walk.” Long-term treatment with antibiotics has been critical for
Haughie.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The association focuses
on prevention and Haughie lives that personally. When she goes outdoors, she uses
tick repellents including Avon Products’ “Skin So Soft” and lavender and
rosemary oil.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The association runs support groups, organizes
conferences, disseminates educational information and engages with government
officials.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
And it has been dealing
with a key treatment problem: the insistence of health insurance
companies—following the guidelines of the Infectious Diseases Society of
America—that extended care of Lyme disease victims isn’t necessary. The claim
is that a few weeks of treatment with antibiotics is all that’s needed. That is
mostly true if Lyme disease is detected early, but detection is problematic.
Only about half of the people bitten by a tick carrying Lyme develop the
tell-tale bull’s-eye rash at the site of the bite. And tests for the disease have
often been unreliable. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Long-term care is
vital—indeed produces miraculous results—for persistent cases.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
That was the message of
the documentary “Under Our Skin,” the winner of a host of film festival awards.
“Eye-opening...frightening...powerful,” said the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los Angeles Times. The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
York Times </i>called the documentary “heart rending” and noted how it “takes
aim at the medical establishment.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It tells of how members of the panel
of the Infectious Diseases Society of America that issued a key report calling
for no long-term antibiotic therapy for Lyme had financial connections to
health insurance companies and other conflicts of interest. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It shows how health insurers don’t want to pay
for long-term care of Lyme sufferers—so the medical system has been twisted to
maintain such care isn’t needed. It exposes how dedicated doctors who’ve
provided needed long-term care have ended up severely punished by the medical
establishment. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
producer and director of “Under Our Skin,” Andy Abrahams Wilson, has been
making “an update on the original.” It will be out in July and is titled:
“Under Our Skin 2: Emergence.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
“What is emerging besides
the major epidemic—are truth and hope,” Wilson told me in an interview from
Sausalito, California, where his production company is based.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The update follows the
Lyme victims featured in the original “Under Our Skin” who were saved by
long-term treatment and it finds all of them doing fine. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
“We’ve gotten deeper into
the conflict of interest issues. We’re continuing to look at the—let’s call
them—chronic Lyme denialists,” said Wilson. Among what’s examined is how Connecticut
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (now a U.S. senator) “forced” the
Infectious Diseases Society of America to “reassess” its guidelines on treating
Lyme, but after all, the guidelines were not changed. “It is shocking,” Wilson commented.
It sure is. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
For information about “Under
Our Skin 2: Emergence,” visit <a href="http://www.underourskin.org/"><span style="color: blue;">www.underourskin.org</span></a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Last year, he U.S. government’s
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the number of
Americans newly infected by Lyme disease each year is 300,000, ten times higher
than has been officially reported. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This said
a CDC official “confirms Lyme disease is a tremendous public health problem.”
Likewise, the effort to discourage long-term treatment for persistent Lyme
victims is a tremendous public health scandal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
What is the origin of the
Lyme disease epidemic?</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another huge scandal is quite likely here.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Michael Christopher Carroll in his best-selling book<u>, </u><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the
Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory, </i>links Lyme disease to Plum
Island—an 840-acre island a mile and a half off the North Fork of Long Island
on which the U.S. government’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center is located.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Carroll notes that Lyme disease “suddenly surfaced” 10 miles
north of Plum Island “in Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1975.” Indeed, that’s how the
malady got its name, from the 1975 outbreak in the adults and children in Old
Lyme. It was diagnosed by Dr. Wally Burgdorfer, a researcher at the National
Institutes of Health. Thus the spirochete in a deer tick that transmits Lyme
was named <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Borrelia burgdorferi. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Carroll in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lab 257 </i>cites
years of experimentation with ticks on Plum Island and the possibility of an
accidental or purposeful release.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lab 257 </span></i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">documents a Nazi connection
to the original establishment of a U.S. Army laboratory on Plum Island.
According to the book, Erich Traub, a scientist who worked for the Third Reich
doing biological warfare, was the force behind its founding.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">During World War II, “as lab chief of Insel Riems—a secret
Nazi biological warfare laboratory on a crescent-shaped island in the Baltic
Sea—Traub worked directly for Adolph Hitler’s second-in-charge, SS
Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, on live germ trials,” states <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lab 257</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The mission was to develop biological warfare to be directed against
animals in the Soviet Union. This included infecting cattle and reindeer with
foot-and-mouth disease. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This became the mission, in a Cold War setting, at Plum
Island. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And, states <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lab 257</i>,
published in 2004:“The tick is the perfect germ vector which is why it has long
been fancied as a germ weapon by early biowarriors from Nazi Germany and the
Empire of Japan to the Soviet Union and the United States.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“A source who worked on Plum Island in the 1950s,” the book
states, “recalls that animal handlers and a scientist released ticks outdoors
on the island. ‘They called him the Nazi scientist, when they came in, in
1951—they were inoculating these ticks.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lab
257</i> goes on: “Dr. Traub’s World War II handiwork consisted of aerial virus
sprays developed on Insel Riems and tested over occupied Russia, and of field
work for Heinrich Himmler in Turkey. Indeed, his colleagues conducted bug
trials by dropping live beetles from planes. An outdoor tick trial would have
been de rigueur for Erich Traub.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Traub was brought to the U.S. with the end of the war under
Project Paperclip, a program under which Nazi scientists, such as Wernher von
Braun, came to America.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Traub’s detailed explanation of the secret operation on
Insel Riems” given to officials at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the Army’s
biological warfare headquarters, and to the CIA, “laid the groundwater for Fort
Detrick’s offshore germ warfare animal disease lab on Plum Island. Traub was a
founding father,” says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lab 257.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And Plum Island’s purpose, says the book, became what Insel
Riems had been: to develop biological warfare to be directed against animals in
the Soviet Union, with the Cold War conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet
Union having begun.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Traub also developed relationships in
the U.S. before the war. He “spent the prewar period of his scientific career
on a fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton, New Jersey,
perfecting his skills in viruses and bacteria under the tutelage of American
experts before returning to Nazi Germany on the eve of war,” says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lab 257. </i>While in the U.S. in the 1930s,
too, relates Carroll, an attorney originally from Long Island, Traub was a
member of the Amerika-Deutscher Volksbund which was involved in pro-Nazi
rallies held weekly in Yaphank on Long Island. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lab 257 </span></i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">tells of why suddenly the
Army transferred Plum Island to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1954: the
Pentagon became concerned about having to feed millions of people in the Soviet
Union if its food animals were destroyed. The Joint Chiefs of Staff “found that
a war with the U.S.S.R. would best be fought with conventional and nuclear
means, and biological warfare against humans, not against food animals,” says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lab 257.</i> “Destroying the food supply
meant having to feed millions of starving Russians after winning a war.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also making a link between Plum Island and Lyme disease is
in an earlier book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Belarus Secret:
The Nazi Connection in America</i></span>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
First p<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ublished in 1982, it was
written by John Loftus, an attorney, too. Loftus was formerly with the Office
of Special Investigations of the U.S. Department of Justice set up to expose
Nazi war crimes and unearth Nazis hiding in the United States.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Given top-secret clearance to review sealed files, Loftus
found a trove of information on America’s postwar recruiting of Nazis. He also
exposed the Nazi past of former Austrian president and U.N. Secretary General Kurt
Waldheim and his involvement as an officer in a German Army unit that committed
atrocities during the war. Waldheim subsequently faded from the international
scene.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Belarus Secret </i>Loftus
tells of “the records of the Nazi germ warfare scientists who came to America.
They experimented with poison ticks dropped from planes to spread rare
diseases. I have received some information suggesting that the U.S. tested some
of these poison ticks on the Plum Island artillery range off the coast of
Connecticut during the early 1950's. . . Most of the germ warfare records have
been shredded, but there is a top secret U.S. document confirming that
'clandestine attacks on crops and animals' took place at this time.” </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He points to “the hypothesis that the poison ticks are the
source of the Lyme disease spirochete, and that migrating waterfowl were the
vectors that carried the ticks from Plum Island all up and down the Eastern
Seaboard.” Loftus adds: “Sooner or later the whole truth will come out, but
probably not in my lifetime.”</span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-24713148790139602852014-05-17T09:41:00.001-07:002014-05-17T09:42:30.690-07:00Folly Beach<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Folly
Beach. Yes, there really is such a place. It’s a poster child for the folly of
dumping sand on the shoreline in the expensive and fruitless attempt to try to
hold back the ocean and protect beach houses.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In the Long
Island village of Quogue, New York, Concerned Citizens of Quogue have included
a current article about this beach in South Carolina in their current online
newsletter (</span><a href="http://ccquogue.org/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">http://ccquogue.org/</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">) and the group
asks the question: “Quogue’s Own ‘Folly’ Beach?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Happening
in Quogue is a conflict emblematic of the struggle involving the coast that’s
been going on for decades on Long Island, heightened by the impacts of
Superstorm Sandy. There’s a proposal for $14 million in taxpayer-funded sand
dumping along the Quogue shoreline.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Meanwhile,
down south comes this news on the Concerned Citizens website.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Folly
Beach—Huge waves kicked up by Friday’s storm scoured and swept away newly
poured sands on the east end of this island,” begins the article from <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Post
and Courier </i>of South Carolina published last month. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And it wasn’t an
encore of Sandy that did it, just another blow. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The cost to
Folly Beach: some $30 million in dumped sand—gone with the sea.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“In little more
than a month,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Post and Courier</i>
says, Folly Beach homeowners “have lost much of the sand” dumped just a month
earlier on the shore fronting their places.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> Some $30 million in sand placed
on the Folly Beach shoreline. A month later, it’s all gone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> The newspaper
quoted the manager of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Folly Beach project as
saying that placing sand on the shore “doesn’t stop erosion. It protects
properties. We put the required amount of sand out there. The sand didn’t hold
up.”</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And this was not
the first time in recent years that loads of sand have been dumped on Folly
Beach. It has been done again and again, at huge taxpayer cost. “The last time
the work was done, in 2005, the cost was $12 million,” about “a third of the
current cost,” notes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Post and
Courier.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> This rise in
price for coastal sand-dumping is “mirroring the soaring cost of beach
nourishment across the country,” comments Concerns Citizens of Quogue.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The organization
in its current newsletter also brings attention to a letter from the New York
State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) that summarizes comments it
has received on the $14 million plan to dump 1.1 million cubic yards of sand on
the Quogue oceanfront.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The comments are
right on the mark and include:</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 49.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The relatively few homeowners affected by
beach erosion in Quogue should consider relocating their homes landward.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 49.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 49.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“All
village taxpayers should not have to pay for a project which will directly
benefit a relative few.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 49.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Since
the longevity of large scale beach nourishment projects nationwide is variable
at best and poor at worst, all concerned need to understand that the long term
efficacy of the proposed project is not guaranteed. Funds expended to carry out
the project could be wasted and there could be the expectation of the
expenditure of additional funds to re-nourish the beach after the material from
the first nourishment erodes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt 49.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Oceanfront
property owners must know that they are taking on considerable risk when they
purchase or otherwise acquire their properties. These property owners, not the
municipality, should be responsible for maintaining them.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 1em 13.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there is my favorite statement: “The
current development pattern on the barrier island in Quogue is unwise and
unsustainable. The very large, very expensive, permanent homes which now exist
on the oceanfront engender in the owners the understandable desire to protect
them, at almost any cost, against the forces of nature, to the detriment of the
beach and dunes. In the not so distant past, many people contented themselves
with much smaller, less permanent, less valuable beach cottages, structures
which they could afford to lose and/or replace if they were damaged by erosion
or storms.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 1em 13.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The DEC called on Quogue village’s “agent” on the sand-dumping project, First
Coastal Corporation, to “review this letter” and comments “with the mayor and
other village officials” and provide “responses to the issues raised.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 1em 13.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Quogue proposal is overshadowed by the plan of the Army Corps of
Engineers to dump sand from Fire Island to Montauk Point, first advanced nearly
60 years ago but failing to occur because of the folly it has always
represented. Post-Sandy, however, beachfront homeowners and some politicians
are pushing for it anew. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A recent cost
estimate for the sand-dumping along this 83-mile stretch of Long Island’s south
shore: $700 million in taxpayer dollars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-65023151636437290692014-04-30T03:39:00.005-07:002014-04-30T03:40:36.557-07:00Moms Are Making an Impact!
(On CounterPunch -- <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/">www.counterpunch.org</a>-- today.)<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
mothers are making an impact!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
phenomenon in environmental activism in recent years has been the emergence of
grassroots organizations “powered by the voices of mothers, dedicated to
protecting children in global communities,” as one group, The Mothers Project,
describes itself. </span><a href="http://www.mothersforsustainableenergy.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">http://www.mothersforsustainableenergy.com/</span></a> </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Mothers Project, founded and headed by Angela Monti Fox, is based in New York City
and global in scope. Fox is the mother of Josh Fox, the filmmaker who exposed
the dangers of fracking in his award-winning documentaries Gasland and Gasland
2. Indeed, taking on fracking is a major focus of The Mothers Project.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
week, the anti-environmental, arch-conservative entity named The Independent
Women's Forum is staging a panel discussion in Manhattan to try to counter the
mothers’ movement. It is titled “From Helicopter to Hazmat: How the Culture of
Alarmism is Turning Parenting into a Dangerous Job.” The group, which gets its
funding from right-wing foundations and other conservative interests including
the Koch Brothers, got its start in 1992 as Women for Judge Thomas defending
the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. It fights feminist
groups, promotes access to guns and has taken to denying global warming.
<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/independent-womens-forum">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/independent-womens-forum</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Also
involved in the event Thursday is the American Council on Science and Health, financed
by polluting industries and long described as an industry front group. Its
specialty has been issuing reports denying health damage caused by
environmental pollutants, notably pesticides and other toxic chemicals.
<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/american-council-science-health-leaked-documents-fundraising">http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/american-council-science-health-leaked-documents-fundraising</a> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Proclaims an
announcement: "’Parents are bombarded with alarmist messages on a daily
basis about how the food they eat, the habits they practice and the household
products they use threaten their health and the health of their children,’ says
Julie Gunlock, event moderator and director of Independent Women Forum’s
Culture of Alarmism project. Rather than make women feel more informed, the
onslaught of alarmist information makes moms (and dads) feel guilty, confused,
even angry.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.iwf.org/">http://www.iwf.org/</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Comments Angela
Fox Monti about the event: “I think this is serious proof tha<b>t </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">we are making an impact.</span> I have
no doubt that they know about The Mothers Project, ClimateMama, Toxic Baby, Moms
Clean Air Force, etc., etc.” Organized moms, she declares, are seen as “a threat
because they know politicians tend to cower when mothers show up!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Monti points to
the increase in major diseases “in both children and adults—now being seen by
the scientific community as a result of environmental impacts. No longer can we
look at simply defective genes for the rise in all cancers, new cancers,
autism, ADHD, childhood diabetes and obesity. New research points to
environmental impact on embryonic development that will span several
generations and can be considered a pandemic when 25 percent of the global
population born today will be affected by deleterious environmental impacts.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Anna Grossman, founder and director of HRP Mamas/The Hudson River Park
Mothers Group (</span><a href="http://hrpmamas.clubexpress.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">http://hrpmamas.clubexpress.com</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><u>/</u></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">) says: </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"In the absence of adequate
legislation, and as a mother of two young children, I look to reputable medical
organizations and research institutes such as the Mount Sinai Children's
Environmental Health Center for guidance on keeping my children safe from
unregulated chemicals. I wouldn't get medical and safety information from a
chemical industry front group or from authors who appear to disregard plain
science.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I find nothing alarmist in being empowered with the
knowledge that EPA is simply unable to protect us from thousands of chemicals,”
she says. “The EPA has acknowledged this and it's a known fact. No one is
panicking. We are calling for action. Those are two distinctly different
things. Trying to paint mothers like me as hysterical is an old and tired
stereotype. Parents are agents for change and a tremendous market force. It
would seem the chemical industry, as the tobacco industry before it, is
terrified of the power of parents to educate their children about companies
that don't value their future health or that of their planet. Europe has
enacted REACH [Regulation on Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and
Restriction of Chemicals] legislation. Why should the USA be left behind?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Says Bobbi Chase
Wilding, deputy director of Clean and Healthy New York (</span><a href="http://www.cleanhealthyny.org/"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">http://www.cleanhealthyny.org/</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">) : "This
is clearly a response from an industry feeling the pressure from parents. They
want us to go back to sleep. We’re outraged when we learn there’s no law
against putting toxic chemicals in baby products. It happens all the time, and
they don’t have to be listed on the label.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“That’s what’s
making us impotent: lack of information, lousy laws, and actions by chemical
industry front groups like the American Council on Science and Health,” says
the mother of two. “While it's their message that health advocates are making
people feel impotent, it's exactly presentations like this that are designed to
disempower people. There is so much parents can do. There’s a lot of good
information that empowers parents to make safer, smart choices. Our message is:
don't panic, take action</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A “featured
panelist” at the event will be Josh Bloom of the American Council on Science
and Health, its activities well-detailed in the book by Sheldon Rampton and John
Stauber, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">T<span class="a-size-large1"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">rust
Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your
Future</span></span>. </i><span class="a-size-medium3"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>http://www.prwatch.org/books/experts.html<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-44434836132698779272014-04-23T05:18:00.000-07:002014-04-23T05:32:23.432-07:00World's Fair Opens 50 Years Ago -- And I Get Fired for Story About It<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Fifty years ago this week, the New York World’s Fair opened—and
by the end of the week I was fired for writing about demonstrations on its
opening day protesting racism.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Mr. Moses called and is very upset with you,” Wilson Stringer, vice
president of the Sunrise Press newspapers, told me. “You’re fired.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robert Moses had been the
public works czar of the New York area for decades. He ran to be <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the state’s governor in 1934, and suffered a
then record two-to-one defeat. So he amassed power instead by creating state
commissions and authorities which he ran.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He pushed the building of parks, a good thing, but also the
unbridled construction of bridges, tunnels and highways—highways that shattered
traditional neighborhoods and tied up the New York area with loops of roads
like the Long Island Expressway, often dubbed the world’s longest parking lot, at
the cost of a balanced system of mass transportation. Moses loved the
automobile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was a road project that Moses announced in 1962 that first
caused me to tangle with him. He unveiled a scheme to build a four-lane highway
on Fire Island which would have paved over much of the nature and communities
on the narrow 32-mile-long ribbon of sand east of New York City. He claimed the
highway would “anchor” Fire Island and protect it from storms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was my first week on my first job as a reporter for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Babylon Town Leader, </i>a newspaper in the village
where Moses lived. He had just announced the Fire Island project. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leader </i>for decades
had challenged Moses and his projects—quite unlike most of the daily papers in
New York City which Moses, as notes the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on
him,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Power Broker </i>by Robert Caro, long had in his pocket.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I began writing story after story in the <em>Leader</em> about the impacts of the
proposed Moses highway on Fire Island. We pointed out, too, how the highway
Moses built to the west, along Jones Beach, rather than anchoring the beach
needed to be regularly bolstered with sand pushed along its edges by bulldozers
working at night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moses had so much power in New York State he seemed unstoppable.
So those endeavoring to save Fire Island turned to the federal government—a Citizens
Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore was started. U.S. Interior
Secretary Stewart Udall visited Fire Island and embraced the seashore idea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also,
conservation-oriented Laurance Rockefeller, brother of New York Governor Nelson
Rockefeller, became chairman of the state Council of Parks in 1963 and liked
the seashore concept. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moses was furious. He confronted the governor insisting that the
Fire Island highway must happen and that Rockefeller put a lid on his brother—or
he would resign his commission and authority posts. Seemingly he thought New
York State would fall apart without him. In this collision, Moses quit his
various public positions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Fire Island National Seashore, happily, was established in
1964.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Moses, meanwhile, remained in charge
of the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In 1964, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Babylon Town
Leader</i> was bought by the Sunrise Press newspaper chain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leader </i>I also
covered the civil rights struggle then happening on Long Island. I went to the
World’s Fair opening day to report on protests led by the then leading activist
civil rights organization in the region, the Congress of Racial Equality, protesting
racism in hiring by the Fair and racism in general in the New York area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">All the Sunrise Press newspapers ran as a front-page piece the
article I wrote about the demonstrators and their being bludgeoned by the Fair’s
Pinkerton officers. My photos on this accompanied the piece.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But no longer did I have the protection when it came to Moses
which I had with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leader </i>under its
former management. Moses complained and I was promptly fired.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I placed ads beginning: “Reporter fired because of Robert
Moses.” I got another job, at the daily <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long
Island Press</i>. Moses’ power over much of the area’s press was reconfirmed on
my first day there. An editor told me: “Now you understand you’re never to
write a story about Moses or any agency he headed.” I was hired to cover police
and courts and asked what was to be done if there is a fatal auto accident on
one of the highways managed by one of Moses’ former agencies. “Have another
reporter write it,” he advised.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moses is dead. Fire Island has been preserved. The New York
World’s Fair is a memory—most of it quickly bulldozed down after it closed. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-7982512799187807272014-04-02T06:28:00.000-07:002014-04-02T06:28:09.111-07:00"G.M. Flaw" and the Deeply Flawed Regulatory System<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“U.S.
Agency Knew About G.M. Flaw But Did Not Act,” was the front-page headline of
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times </i>this week. The
article told of a memo released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that
related how scandalously, shamefully the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration “ignored or dismissed warnings for more than a decade about a
faulty ignition switch” in General Motors cars. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/business/us-regulators-declined-full-inquiry-into-gm-ignition-flaws-memo-shows.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/business/us-regulators-declined-full-inquiry-into-gm-ignition-flaws-memo-shows.html</a></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Federal
regulators decided not to open an inquiry on the ignitions of Chevrolet Cobalts
and other cars even after their own investigators reported in 2007” knowing
about fatal crashes, complaints and reports of a defect in the autos, said the article.
It continued that in 2010 the agency “came to the same decision”—not to do
anything—“after receiving more reports” about the fatal problem. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A separate
article on the front-page of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Times’ </i>business
section, “Carmakers’ Close Ties to Regulator Scrutinized,” reported on “former
top N.H.T.S.A. officials who now represent companies they were once responsible
for regulating, part of a well-established migration from regulator to the
regulated in Washington.” The “revolving door between the agency and the
automotive industry is once again coming under scrutiny as lawmakers
investigate the decade-long failure by General Motors and safety regulators to
act more aggressively.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/business/carmakers-close-ties-to-regulator-scrutinized.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/business/carmakers-close-ties-to-regulator-scrutinized.html</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In fact, the
words “G.M. Flaw” could be substituted for by “G.E. Flaw” in its nuclear
plants—like the G.E. plants at Fukushima and the dozens of the same fault-plagued
model that are still operating in the U.S., or the words could be replaced by
“Pollution Caused by Fracking” or “Poisons in Food.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">From national
administration to administration, corporations have run roughshod and those who
are supposed to protect us from the danger and death these industries cause
have regularly not done their jobs. Sometimes the situation is more pronounced
as during the Reagan administration—a thoroughly obvious time of foxes guarding
henhouses.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I wrote a book
about this extreme situation. The book jacket highlighted some of the Reagan
foxes: Rita LaValle, a PR person for Aerojet General Corp. involved in
hazardous waste-dumping and water pollution, who became director of the
“Superfund” program; John Todhunter, an opponent of restrictions on pesticides
with the chemical industry-financed American Council on Science and Health, who
became assistant administrator for pesticides and toxic substances at EPA;
Kathleen Bennett, who as a lobbyist for the paper industry fought the Clean Air
Act, named assistant EPA administrator for air pollution control programs and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>supervisor of the Clean Air Act; and on and
on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This sort of
thing has an early history. In a chapter titled “Why the Supposed Protectors
Don’t Protect,” I related the story of Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a physician
who came to Washington in 1882 to become chief chemist for the Department of
Agriculture. The U.S. was undergoing a transition from a rural country to an
increasingly industrial society with industries arising that processed
food—food commonly doused with dangerous chemicals. Wiley endeavored to do
something about this. He was a leader in working for pure food legislation and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>between his efforts and those of Progressive
Era reformers and the publication of Upton Sinclair’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jungle </i>came passage of the landmark Pure Food and Drug Act of
1906.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The act, signed
into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, defined as adulterated foods those
containing “any added poisonous or other added deleterious ingredient which may
render such article injurious to health.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wiley, who the U.S. government honored in 1956 with a postage stamp
picturing him and has described as the “father of food and drug regulation,”
tried to enforce the law as head of the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department
of Agriculture, predecessor agency to the Food and Drug Administration, but
found that all but impossible.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As a matter of
conscience, Wiley resigned from the U.S. government in 1912 and wrote a book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The History of a Crime Against the Food
Law.” </i>The law intended to protect the health of people was “perverted to
protect adulteration of food,” he wrote.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“There is a
distinct tendency to put regulations and rules for the enforcement of the law
into the hands of industries engaged in food and drug activities,” declared
Wiley. “I consider this one of the most pernicious threats to pure food and
drugs. Business is making rapid strides in the control of all our affairs. When
we permit business in general to regulate the quality and character of our food
and drug supplies, we are treading upon very dangerous ground. It is always
advisable to consult businessmen and take such advice as they give that is
unbiased, because of the intimate knowledge they have of the processes
involved. It is never advisable to surrender entirely food and drug control to
business interests.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Throughout the
many decades since, government control, regulation, has been surrendered, in
part and sometimes entirely, to business interests. This includes not only the
food and drug industries but the auto industry, the nuclear industry, now the
gas industry for the toxic process called hydraulic fracturing or fracking, and
on and on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I titled my 1983
book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Poison Conspiracy </i>and began
it by writing about how “the world is being poisoned,” lives are being lost and
protection “by government is a sham.” Those in government who are “supposed to
protect us...do not because of the power of the industries” they are supposed
to regulate. “These corporations have been able to warp, distort and neutralize
those social mechanisms of protection.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">For example, regarding
nuclear power and Fukushima, Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission when the catastrophe began in 2011, was forced out in
2012 because of nuclear industry pressure after calling for the NRC to apply the
“lessons learned” from the disaster. “I cannot support issuing this license as
if Fukushima had never happened.” Jaczko stated as the other four NRC
commissioners rubber-stamped the construction in Georgia in 2012 of two new
nuclear plants. Jaczko, said U.S. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, “led”
a “fight” against those in the nuclear industry opposed to “strong, lasting
safety regulations.” And he paid the price.</span><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0521/NRC-chairman-resigns-amid-battle-over-lessons-from-Fukushima"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0521/NRC-chairman-resigns-amid-battle-over-lessons-from-Fukushima</span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
so do we—whether we drive a G.M. Cobalt car or are impacted by the permitted
radioactive emissions or accidental discharges from nuclear power plants or
water contaminated by the fracking process or food loaded with genetically
modified organisms, GMOs, and chemical poisons.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What’s
to be done? Our elected representatives aren’t innocent in this. There are a
few good ones, like Senator Markey, but overall those who on the elective level
are supposed to watchdog the lame would-be regulators of the bureaucracies have
in large measure been captured themselves by the monied corporate interests.
“There is a deeply entrenched network” and the challenge to it “will not be
easy,” I conclude in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Poison
Conspiracy. </i>Most importantly, there needs to be intense grassroots activism
to deal with, to remake, a system of government regulation long broken that
needs to be, at long last, truly and fundamentally reformed.</span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-76241977371986863532014-03-02T09:11:00.002-08:002014-03-04T04:15:49.839-08:00On the Third Anniversary of the Start of the Fukushima Catastrophe With the third anniversary of the
start of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe coming next week, the
attempted Giant Lie about the disaster continues—a suppression of information,
an effort at dishonesty of historical dimensions.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
It involves international entities,
especially the International Atomic Energy Agency, national governmental
bodies—led in Japan by its current prime minister, the powerful nuclear
industry and a “nuclear establishment” of scientists and others with a vested
interest in atomic energy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Deception
was integral to the push for nuclear power from its start. Indeed, I opened my
first book on nuclear technology, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cover
Up: What You </i>Are Not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Supposed to Know
About Nuclear Power, </i>with:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You have
not been informed about nuclear power. You have not been told. And that has
been done on purpose. Keeping the public in the dark was deemed necessary by
the promoters of nuclear power if it was to succeed. Those in government,
science and private industry who have been pushing nuclear power realized that
if people were given the facts, if they knew the consequences of nuclear power,
they would not stand for it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Published
in 1980, the book led to my giving many presentations on nuclear power at which
I’ve often heard the comment that only when catastrophic nuclear accidents
happened would people fully realize the deadliness of atomic energy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Well, massive nuclear accidents
have occurred—the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the Fukushima catastrophe that
began on March 11, 2011 and is ongoing with large discharges of radioactive
poisons continuing to spew out into the environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Meanwhile, the posture of the
nuclear promoters is denial—insisting the impacts of the Fukushima catastrophe
are essentially non-existent. A massive nuclear accident has occurred and they
would make believe it hasn’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
“Fukushima is an eerie replay of
the denial and controversy that began with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki,” wrote Yale University Professor Emeritus Charles Perrow in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists </i>last
year. “This is the same nuclear denial that also greeted nuclear bomb tests,
plutonium plant disasters at Windscale in northern England and Chelyabinsk in
the Ural Mountains, and the nuclear power plant accidents at Three Mile Island
in the United States and Chernobyl in what is now Ukraine.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The difference with Fukushima is
the scale of disaster. With Fukushima were multiple meltdowns at the
six-nuclear plant site. There’s been continuing pollution of a major part of
Japan, with radioactivity going into the air, carried by the winds to fall out
around the world, and gigantic amounts of radioactivity going into the Pacific
Ocean moving with the currents and carried by marine life that ingests the
nuclear toxins.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Leading the Fukushima cover-up
globally is the International Atomic Energy Agency, formed by the United
Nations in 1957 with the mission to “<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace,
health and prosperity throughout the world.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Of the consequences of the
Fukushima disaster, “To date no health effects have been reported in any person
as a result of radiation exposure from the accident,” declared the IAEA in
2011, a claim it holds to today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Working
with the IAEA is the World Health Organization. WHO was captured on issues of
radioactivity and nuclear power early on by IAEA. In 1959, the IAEA and WHO,
also established by the UN, entered into an agreement—that continues to this
day—providing that IAEA and WHO “act<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
in clo</span>se co-operation with each other” and “<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">whenever either organization proposes to initiate a program
or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a
substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to
adjusting </span>the matter by mutual agreement.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
IAEA-WHO deal has meant that “WHO cannot undertake any research, cannot
disseminate any information, cannot come to the assistance of any population
without the prior approval of the IAEA...WHO, in practice, in reality, is subservient
to the IAEA within the United Nations family,” explained Alison Katz who for 18
years worked for WHO, on Libbe HaLevy’s “Nuclear Hotseat” podcast last year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
On nuclear issues “there has been a
very high level, institutional and international cover-up which includes
governments, national authorities, but also, regrettably the World Health
Organization,” said Katz on the program titled, “The WHO/IAEA—Unholy Alliance
and Its Lies About Int’l Nuclear Health Stats.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Katz is now
with an organization called IndependentWHO which works for “the complete
independence of the WHO from the nuclear lobby and in particular from its
mouthpiece which is the International Atomic Energy Agency. We are demanding
that independence,” she said, “so that the WHO may fulfill its constitutional
mandate in the area of radiation and health.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We are
absolutely convinced,” said Katz on “Nuclear Hotseat,” “that if the health and
environmental consequences of all nuclear activities were known to the public,
the debate about nuclear power would end tomorrow. In fact, the public would
probably exclude it immediately as an energy option.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>WHO last
year issued a report on the impacts of the Fukushima disaster claiming that
“for the general population inside and outside of Japan, the predicted risks
are low and no observable increases in cancer rates above baseline rates are
anticipated.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then there
is the new prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, who last year insisted before </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
the International Olympic Committee as he successfully
pushed to have the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo (180 miles from Fukushima):
“There are no health-related problems until now, nor will there be in the
future, I make the statement to you in the most emphatic and unequivocal way.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abe has been driving hard for a restart of
Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants, all shut down in the wake of the Fukushima
catastrophe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>His is a
totally different view than that of his predecessor, Naoto Kan, prime minister
when the disaster began. Kan told a conference in New York City last year of <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">how he had been a supporter of nuclear power but after the Fukushima
accident "I changed my thinking 180-degrees, completely.” He declared that
at one point it looked like an "area that included Tokyo" and
populated by 50 million people might have to be evacuated. "We do have
accidents such as an airplane crash and so on," Kan said, "but no
other accident or disaster" other than a nuclear plant disaster can
"affect 50 million people... no other accident could cause such a
tragedy." Moreover, said Kan, “without nuclear power plants we can
absolutely provide the energy to meet our demands." Japan since the
accident began has tripled its use of solar energy, he said, and pointed to
Germany as a model with its post-Fukushima commitment to shutting down all its
nuclear power plants and having "all its power supplied by renewable
power" by 2050. The entire world could do this, said Kan. "If
humanity really would work together... we could generate all our energy through
renewable energy."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A major
factor in Abe’s stance is Japan</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span>having become a global player in the nuclear industry. General
Electric (the manufacturer of the Fukushima plants) and Westinghouse have been
the Coke and Pepsi of nuclear power plants worldwide, historically building or
designing 80 percent of them. In 2006, Toshiba bought Westinghouse's nuclear
division and Hitachi entered into a partnership with GE in its nuclear
division. Thus the two major nuclear power plant manufacturers worldwide are
now Japanese brands. Abe has been busy traveling the world seeking to peddle
Toshiba-Westinghouse and Hitachi-GE nuclear plants to try to lift Japan’s
depressed economy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As for the
nuclear industry, the “Fukushima accident has caused no deaths,” declares the
World Nuclear Association in its statement “Safety of Nuclear Power
Reactors...Updated October 2013.” The group, “representing the people and
organizations of the global nuclear profession,” adds: “The Fukushima accident
resulted in some radiation exposure of workers at the plant, but not such as to
threaten their health.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What will
the consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster be?<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is
impossible to know exactly now. But considering the gargantuan amount of
radioactive poisons that have been discharged and what will continue to be
released, the impacts will inevitably be great. The claim of there being no
consequences to life and the prediction that there won’t be in the future from
the Fukushima catastrophe is an outrageous falsehood.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
That’s because it is now widely understood
that there is no “safe” level of radioactivity. Any amount can kill. The more
radioactivity, the greater the impacts. As the National Council on Radiation
Protection has declared: “Every increment of radiation exposure produces an
incremental increase in the risk of cancer.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
There was once the notion of there
being a "threshold dose" of radioactivity below which there would be
no harm. That’s because when nuclear technology began and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>people were exposed to radioactivity, they didn’t
promptly fall down dead. But as the years went by, it was realized that lower
levels of radioactivity take time to result in cancer and other illnesses—that
there is a five-to-40-year "incubation" period<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Projecting a death toll of more
than a million from the radioactivity released from Fukushima is Dr. Chris
Busby, scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk who has
been a professor at a number of universities. . “Fukushima is still boiling
radionuclides all over Japan,” he said. “Chernobyl went up in one go. So
Fukushima is worse.” <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/why-the-fukushima-disaster-is-worse-than-chernobyl-2345542.html"></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Indeed, a report by the Institute
for Science in Society, based in the U.K., has concluded: “State-of-the-art
analysis based on the most inclusive datasets available reveals that
radioactive fallout from the Fukushima meltdown is at least as big as Chernobyl
and more global in reach.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
A death toll of up to 600,000 is
estimated in a study conducted for the Nordic Probabilistic Safety Assessment
Group which is run by the nuclear utilities of Finland and Sweden. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Dr. Helen Caldicott, a founder of
Physicians for Social Responsibility, told a symposium on “The Medical
Implications of Fukushima” held last year in Japan: “The accident is enormous
in its medical implications. It will induce an epidemic of cancer as people
inhale the radioactive elements, eat radioactive vegetables, rice and meat, and
drink radioactive milk and teas. As radiation from ocean contamination
bio-accumulates up the food chain...radioactive fish will be caught thousands
of miles from Japanese shores. As they are consumed, they will continue the the
cycle of contamination, proving that no matter where you are, all major nuclear
accidents become local.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Dr. Caldicott, whose books on
nuclear power include <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nuclear Madness, </i>also
stated:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The Fukushima disaster is not
over and will never end. The radioactive fallout which remains toxic for
hundreds to thousands of years covers large swaths of Japan will never be
‘cleaned up’ and will contaminate food, humans and animals virtually forever.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear
industry senior vice president, has said: “The health impacts to the Japanese
will begin to be felt in several years and out to 30 or 40 years from cancers.
And I believe we’re going to see as many as a million cancers over the next 30
years because of the Fukushima incident in Japan.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At
Fukushima, “We have opened a d<span style="color: black;">oor to hell that cannot
be easily closed—if ever,” said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight
Project at the U.S.-based group Beyond Nuclear last year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Already an excessive number of
cases of thyroid cancers have appeared in Japan, an early sign of the impacts
of radioactivity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A study last year by
Joseph Mangano and Dr. Janette Sherman of the Radiation and Public Health
Project, and Dr. Chris Busby, determined that radioactive iodine fall-out from
Fukushima damaged the thyroid glands of children in California. And the biggest
wave of radioactivity in the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima is slated to hit the
west coast of North America in the next several months. Meanwhile, every
bluefin tuna caught in the waters off California in a Stanford University study
was found to be contaminated with cesium-137, a radioactive poison emitted on a
large scale by Fukushima. The tuna migrate from off Japan to California waters.
Daniel Madigan, who led the study, commented: “The tuna packaged it up [the
radiation] and brought it across the world’s largest ocean. We were definitely
surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we
measured.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There is,
of course, the enormous damage to property. The Environmental Health Policy
Institute of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in its summary of the
“Costs and Consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster” cites estimates of
economic loss of between $250 billion and $500 billion. Some 800 square
kilometers are “exclusion” zones of “abandoned cities, towns, agricultural
land, homes and properties” and from which 159,128 people have been “evicted,”
relates PSR senior scientist Steven Starr. Further, “about a month after the
disaster, on April 19, 2011, Japan chose to dramatically increase its official
‘safe’ radiation exposure levels from 1 mSv [<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">millisievert, a measure of radiation dose]</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> t</span>o 20 mSv
per year—20 times higher than the U.S. exposure limit. This allowed the
Japanese government to downplay the dangers of the fallout and avoid evacuation
of many badly contaminated areas.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And last
year the Japanese government enacted a new State Secrets Act which can
restrict—with a penalty of 10 years in jail—reporting on Fukushima. “”It’s the
cancerous mark of a nuclear regime bound to control all knowledge of a lethal
global catastrophe now ceaselessly escalating,” wrote Harvey Wasserman,
co-author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Killing Our Own, </i>in a
piece aptly titled “Japan’s New ‘Fukushima Fascism’.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Meanwhile,
back in the U.S., the nation’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission has over the past
three years consistently refused to apply “lessons learned” from Fukushima. Its
chairman, Dr. Gregory Jaczko, was forced out after an assault led by the
nuclear industry after trying to press this issue and opposing an NRC licensing
of two new nuclear plants in Georgia “as if Fukushima had never happened.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Rosalie Bertell, a Catholic nun, in
her book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No Immediate Danger, </i>wrote
about the decades of suppression of the impacts of nuclear power and the reason
behind it: “Should the public discover the true health cost of nuclear pollution,
a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to
cooperative passively with their own death.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Thus the
desperate drive—in which a largely compliant mainstream media have been
complicit—to deny the Fukushima catastrophe, a disaster deeply affecting life
on Earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-64360481579914438592014-02-23T18:25:00.000-08:002014-03-04T04:15:49.822-08:00De Blasio and the Press<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>New
York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had better get used to the media heat—or he will
undermine the ambitious—and important—things he is trying to do.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Storming
out of a press conference last week when pressed on his caravan going through stop
signs and speeding, documented by a TV crew, was not smart. After de Blasio
refused to answer reporters’ questions and rushed for the door, journalists called
out challenges about the new mayor’s promised “transparency.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Thus the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daily News </i>story
began: “</span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mayor
de Blasio blew off tough questions Friday about as fast as he blew past the
speed limit.” The caption on the accompanying photo: “Mayor de Blasio didn’t
answer questions at a press conference regarding speeding revelations.” </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A week before, de Blasio was
refusing to talk about a call he made to a high-ranking New York Police
Department official after a political ally was arrested on outstanding warrants
after an alleged traffic infraction. “Mayor Won’t Discuss Call,” was the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday’s</i> headline.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">De Blasio has
called himself </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">a “very progressive guy with very progressive
goals;” indeed commentators have been comparing him to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: black;">The central theme of the de Blasio campaign was the “tale
of two cities”—how New York City has increasingly become a town where only the
wealthy can afford to live. He has committed to change that. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">As a result, like the reform-minded LaGuardia, he will be
condemned by conservative forces, including those in the press. That has already
begun. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Economist </i>magazine last
week attacked how “New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, a union-backed
Democrat, wants to hobble charters,” referring to charter schools. A caption on
a photo accompanying this story: “Down with good schools, says New York’s
mayor.” The article’s headline: “Killing the golden goose.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>De Blasio’s
planned efforts to build back public education in New York City, greatly expand
affordable housing and similar initiatives will meet resistance—and press
criticism. (LaGuardia ran into a lot of this.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">How should de Blasio best handle this?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The best model would be another former New
York City Mayor, Ed Koch. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">”He was the most open-to-the-press mayor that
New York City has ever had,” Arthur Browne, a reporter for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Daily News </i>stated on the death
of Koch at 88 last year. Browne recalled how Koch conducted no-holds-barred
question and answer sessions with the press daily. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And Koch could
be feisty—in fact most of the time he was, to great advantage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I recall when Koch
was running for New York State governor in 1982. I was co-anchoring the nightly
news on WSNL-TV on Long Island and he came to be interviewed. I pressed him on
his being on what was then largely Republican turf seeking votes. “I’m here to
rescue you!” he shot back instantly, with a big smile.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Whether about
traffic or police matters or substantive political issues involving his visions
for changing the city, that’s how de Blasio needs to deal with the press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He should engage with the media constantly,
answering every question thrown at him, coming back with honesty, strength and,
when the occasion provides, humor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Being
thin-skinned, a progressive press-hostile Nixonian, will not help de Blasio’s
cause.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">De Blasio knows
how to shovel snow from in front of his house in Brooklyn and making it into a
media event. That’s easy. Keeping his cool, using humor, keeping his eyes on
the prize of a better city when caught in inevitable conflicts with media,
that’s harder—and most necessary if the new mayor is to succeed.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-29402878595470708622014-02-05T15:57:00.001-08:002014-03-04T04:15:49.746-08:00"Fukushima: Lessons for the World"<br /><br />With the third anniversary of the start of the continuing Fukushima
nuclear catastrophe soon here, Part 1 of "Fukushima: Lessons for the World" is
now up at <a href="http://blip.tv/envirovideo/fukushima-lessons-for-the-world-pt-1-of-5-6722405">http://blip.tv/envirovideo/fukushima-lessons-for-the-world-pt-1-of-5-6722405</a> <br />
<br />An EnviroVIdeo Special, it is the first of five EnviroVideo programs on the
important conference held last year on the disaster. Hudson Riverkeeper Paul
Gallay moderates, and Part 1 includes a special message from Jean-Michel
Cousteau, president of Ocean Futures Society, and then former Japanese Prime
Minister Naoto Kan speaks -- explaining how he has turned "180-degrees" away
from a technology he once
supported.<br /><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-12971583881665342512014-02-02T09:57:00.000-08:002014-03-04T04:15:49.725-08:00Chris Christie: The Decline and fall of "Corporate America's Candidate" for President<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
have wondered why much of the U.S. mainstream media had been promoting Chris
Christie. Television stresses “likability” in on-air personalities and guests,
a high “Q-score.” But there was the governor of our neighboring state of New Jersey—mean-spirited,
given to vicious attacks on people—a fixture as a guest on TV, especially on
NBC’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Today </i>show<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> Why were big corporate media boosting, cheerleading for this neo-Nixon?</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The U.S.
business press can be revealing sometimes and the current issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fortune </i>is about Christie with an
article headed: “Chris Christie: Can Corporate America’s Candidate Get Out of
This Jam?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The “Chamber of Commerce wing
of the GOP had singled out Christie—a pro-business, pro-Wall Street,
tough-on-unions blue-stater—as its best hope for a friend in the White House
after eight years in the wilderness,” reports the piece written by Tory Newmyer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Until this
crucible” known as “Bridgegate,” Christie “had been the beneficiary of a
national press corps that celebrated his straight talk shtick...That treatment
helped inflate his profile well beyond his home state...”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Will the scandal
sink Christie’s pursuit of becoming president of the U.S.? Not for one Christie
backer cited in the piece, Dan Lufkin, “co-founder of storied Wall Street firm Donaldson,
Lufkin & Jenrette,” who praises “Christie’s response to the bridge mess.”
Lufkin is quoted as saying: “He took quick drastic action...It’s another
demonstration of his straightforwardness.” The piece also acknowledges: “When
the fuller story of the traffic troubles is revealed, however, that Christie
image could wobble badly enough to collapse; his advantage is that he may have
time to repair the damage. If he can’t, conversations with party wise men and
Wall Street donors suggest a troubling fact for the Garden Stater:
Establishment esteem for him runs wide but not particularly deep.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Christie explosion
isn’t unexpected. “He was a ticking time bomb as a politician. It was only a
matter of time before he blew up,” wrote Michael Cohen in the British newspaper
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian </i>after Bridgegate began
unfolding. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In 2012 Mitt
Romney realized the deep downsides of Christie when he searched for a vice
presidential running mate and found Christie lacking, according to the book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Double Down. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among negative things found by the Romney camp
in vetting Christie, says the book, were his free-spending habits as a U.S.
attorney, problematic clients when he was a lobbyist and a lawsuit for
defamation he settled with an apology. These and other matters constituted “a
host of potential red flags pertaining to his record,” reported <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Washington Post </i>in an article in November
headlined: “What Mitt Romney learned about Chris Christie in 2012 and why it
matters for 2016.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 13.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Of Bridgegate, “W</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">hat’s so damaging to Christie about these revelations is
that they expose him and his brain trust as breathtakingly venal and
vindictive,” stated Joshua Green on Bloomberg Businessweek. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 13.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">New Jersey native, writer and humorist
Marvin Kitman, in his <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>online “The
Christie Chronicles,” has been writing about “The Decline and Fall of the
Christie Empire.” </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In the
installment “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Christie?” Kitman tells how his
“progressive friends” have been watching excerpts from the marathon 108-minute Christie
press conference “expecting that every time the governor denied knowing
anything about the GWB [George Washington Bridge] lane closures, his nose would
grow longer, th</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">e so-called
Pinocchio Effect in jurisprudence.” </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>T<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">hose claims of no knowledge are now unraveling. Kitman
predicts that: “Is the governor guilty will be a regular feature on TV news,
like the weather and sports, until 2016.” Earlier, in 2011, the sage Kitman
declared: “I want Governor Chris Christie to run for president. It’s the best
way to get him out of the state.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 13.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Chris Christie will hopefully go
down as a hot-tempered, hyper-ambitious politician inflated in importance by a
good chunk of U.S. media delighted to promote “Corporate America’s Candidate”
for president.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hopefully, the nasty, ethically-challenged
Christie will fade—before doing some huge national, indeed international, damage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-10419349107917997842014-01-31T06:42:00.001-08:002014-03-04T04:15:49.714-08:00Otis Pike -- and U.S. Intelligence Abuses<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>These
days it’s the scandal involving widespread surveillance by the National
Security Agency. Four decades ago it was the investigation of U.S.
intelligence agency abuses by a committee chaired by Congressman Otis G. Pike.
The panel’s report, revealing a pattern similar in matters of arrogance and
deception to the disclosures in recent times, was suppressed—scandalously—by
the full House of Representatives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pike,
who died last week at 92, was the greatest member of Congress from Long Island I
have known in 52 years as a journalist based on the island. He was simply extraordinary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He
was able to win, over and over again as a Democrat in a district far more
Republican than it is now. His communications to constituents were a wonder—a
constant flow of personal letters. As a speaker he was magnificent—eloquent and
what a sense of humor! Indeed, each campaign he would write and sing a funny song,
accompanying himself on a ukulele or banjo, about his opponent. He worked
tirelessly and creatively for his eastern Long Island district. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With
his top political lieutenants, attorney Aaron Donner and educator Joseph Quinn, and
his dynamic wife Doris, and his many supporters—including those in Republicans
for Pike—he was a trusted, unique governmental institution on Long Island.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
he was a man of complete integrity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That,
indeed, was why, after 18 years, Pike decided to close his career in the House
of Representatives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
1975, as issues about global U.S. intelligence activities began to surface, Pike
became chair of the House Special Select Committee on Intelligence. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A U.S. Marine dive bomber and night fighter
pilot in the Pacific during World War II, who with the war’s end went to
Princeton and became a lawyer, he embarked with his committee, Donner its chief
counsel, into an investigation of the assassinations and coups in which the Central
Intelligence Agency was involved. His panel found systematic, unchecked and
huge financial pay-offs by the CIA to figures around the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, yes, it found illegal surveillance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On
the Central Intelligence Agency’s website today (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter98_99/art07.html</span><a href="http://www.cia.gov/"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">www.cia.gov</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">is an essay by a CIA historian,
Gerald K. Haines, which at its top asserts how “the Pike Committee set about
examining the CIA’s effectiveness and costs to taxpayers. Unfortunately, Pike,
the committee, and its staff never developed a cooperative working relationship
with the Agency...”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A “cooperative working relationship” with the CIA?
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pike’s committee was engaged in a hard-hitting
investigation, a probe by the legislative branch of government, into wrongdoing
by the executive branch. It was not, in examining the activities of the CIA and
the rest of what historian Haines terms the “Intelligence Community,”
interested in allying with and being bamboozled by them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To
make matters worse, leading components of the media turned away from what the
Pike Committee was doing. Pike told me how James “Scotty” Reston, the powerful
columnist and former executive editor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
New York Times, </i>telephoned him to complain: “What are you guys doing down there!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Times </i>and other major media began focusing on the counterpart and less
aggressive Senate committee on intelligence chaired by Senator Frank Church of
Idaho. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then,
in 1976, even though a majority of representatives on the Pike Committee voted
to release its report, the full House balloted 246-to-124 not to release it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What
an attempted cover-up! Fortunately, the report was leaked to CBS reporter
Daniel Schorr who provided it to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Village Voice </i>which ran it in full.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
still vividly recall sitting with Pike and talking, over drinks in a tavern in
his hometown of Riverhead, about the situation. He had done what needed to be
done—and then came the suppression. He thought, considering what he
experienced, that he might be more effective as a journalist rather than a
congressman in getting truth out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
knew Otis as a reporter and columnist for the daily <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Island Press. </i>Dave Starr, the editor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Press </i>and national editor of the Newhouse newspaper chain,
always thought the world of Pike. Starr and Pike made an arrangement under
which Pike would write a column distributed by the Newhouse News Service. Pike didn’t
run for re-election for the House of Representatives—and starting in 1979, for
the next 20 years, he was a nationally syndicated columnist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">His
columns were as brilliant as the speeches he gave as a congressman. They were full
of honesty, humor and wisdom—as was the man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Starr,
still with Newhouse Newspapers, commented last week on Pike’s death: “The
country has lost </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">a
great thinker, a mover and shaker, and a patriot.” Yes.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-13686568900375852852014-01-30T12:20:00.000-08:002014-03-04T04:15:49.731-08:00Seedtime -- and the Danger of GMO Seeds<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> J</span>ust
out is a brilliant book, highly important and beautifully written, by Scott
Chaskey, a Long Island, N.Y. farmer (for 25 years he has run the Peconic Land
Trust’s Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett), poet and crusader for local, organic,
sustainable agriculture. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seedtime: On the History, Husbandry,
Politics, and Promise of Seeds </i></span><a href="http://www.rodaleinc.com/products/books/seedtime-history-husbandry-politics-and-promise-seeds"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">http://www.rodaleinc.com/products/books/seedtime-history-husbandry-politics-and-promise-seeds</span></span></i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">is about something humanity has
been deeply involved in and dependent upon throughout our time on earth: seeds.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Chaskey, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seedtime, </i>begins<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>by telling of entering as a farmer into “the realm of seeds...to
witness a kind of magical reality.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">But that
“magical reality” is under threat, he declares. “As we face the challenges of
climate change and the loss of prime agricultural soils, we need a diverse seed
supply to counter the unpredictable and the unknown. Instead, we continue to
lose plant species—and the seeds of the future—at an alarming rate.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“A seed,” he
explains, “contains an embryo, a miniature plant awaiting the moment of
transition. Seed leaves store food within the endosperm—the seed coat—that will
nourish the seedling plant when it emerges.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“A plant’s coming
into being, or maturation is such a quiet progression that we tend to focus on
the fruit, the colorful prize of production and the vessel of taste.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Our entire food supply is a gift,” a result
of the emergence of flowering plants 140 million years ago, he says, and “our
health and food futures are entwined with the way we choose to nurture or
manipulate the seeds of that natural revolution.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“The value of
conserving biodiversity cannot be overstated,” he relates. “Biodiversity is the
source of our food....Our increasing tendency to homogenize all aspects of our
ecosystems limits our ability to adapt.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today the food supply for humanity is
endangered—notably by genetic engineering or modification, Chaskey writes. “The
altered organism, a GMO [genetically modified organism], is the result of a
laboratory process by which a gene (or genes) of one species is inserted into
another species. This process is fundamentally different from traditional
breeding.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In genetic modification,
genes of animals, plants, fish, insects, among other life forms, are
combined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A giant in this is Monsanto which
synchronizes its production of GMO seeds with the production of pesticides it
manufactures.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Also, there is a
push to “limit diversity” of seeds which links to, among other things, “consolidation
in the seed industry” and “mass marketing considerations.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Monsanto,
further, has been a leader in patenting GMO seeds.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Chaskey provides
a detailed history of Monsanto, founded in 1901 by a “self-taught chemist” who
named it for his wife whose maiden name was Monsanto, and how it became the
leading producer of cancer-causing PCBs and 2,4,5-T, “the basis for Agent
Orange,” the poison used as a defoliant in the Vietnam War, as well as DDT. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Is it at all
wise or beneficial for a corporation with a scarred legacy...to control almost
one-third of the global seed trade?” asks Chaskey.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And he tells of
how the Monsanto GMO seeds have been “developed to perform in tandem with heavy
inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.” Indeed, an early GMO seed was
“Monsanto’s first ‘Roundup Ready’ soybean, genetically modified to resist the
application of Monsanto’s foundational herbicide product, Roundup.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There is a global
challenge to GMOs, notes Chaskey. “The planting of GMO crops is largely banned
in the 28-nation European Union,” he relates. In California, individual
counties have banned GMO crops and “GMO-Free activists are aggressively campaigning
throughout this country and worldwide.” There are now, however, hundreds of
millions of acres, “concentrated in the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Brazil and
China, planted with GMO crops.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“The health of
our fields, the health of our plant communities, and the future of our food
supply will depend on whether, as a global culture, we can learn to respect the
whole of the biological community, and to accept our role as citizens of it (and
to honor those who still retain the connection),” writes Chaskey.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“May we continue
to cultivate our fields with the imperishable mystery in mind and to playfully,
carefully follow these seeds and nurture them,” he says.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Seedtime </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">is published by Rodale Books, the press
that has been central for decades to the organic food movement. Quail Hill Farm
in 1988 became the first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm in New York
State. Chaskey and the other farmers at Quail Hill are aided by apprentices and
volunteers in growing locally organic food—with good seeds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-25461090304063309652013-12-09T14:16:00.000-08:002014-03-04T04:15:49.742-08:00Please Support EnviroVideo. Your Help Would Be So Appreciated! Please consider supporting EnviroVideo, the non-profit through which I host Enviro Close-Up on Free Speech TV. Go to <a href="http://www.envirovideo.com/">www.envirovideo.com</a> to make a tax-deductible contribution. We provide critical information found nowhere else on TV. Enviro Close-Up is aired on 177 cable systems in 40 states and the DISH and DIRECTV satellite networks, and is broadcast globally online. EnviroVideo also produces news shows, specials and documentaries which I host. Our motto is: “Too Hot For TV!” Thanks!Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-29525611263326845432013-10-31T06:22:00.005-07:002014-03-04T04:15:49.751-08:00The Political TV Commercial as a Pivotal Component in American Presidential Politics and National Leadership by Q Score<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ever since Madison Avenue
advertising man Rosser Reeves convinced Dwight Eisenhower to use him and TV
commercials to run for the presidency in 1952, the political TV commercial has
become a pivotal component in American presidential politics.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Four years earlier Reeves tried to
interest the then Republican candidate, Thomas Dewey, in the approach. But
Dewey “did not buy the idea of lowering himself to the commercial environment
of a toothpaste ad,” related Robert Spero in his 1980 book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Duping of the American Voter, Dishonesty & Deception in
Presidential Television Advertising.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px 1em 0.5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Eisenhower
commercials were coordinated with the campaign’s slogan—“I Like </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Ike.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px 1em 0.5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Indeed, one spot featured a song especially
written by Irving Berlin titled “I Like Ike.”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There was an early understanding by
Reeves that television best communicates feeling and emotion, not information. TV,
as media theorists later described it, is a “non-cognitive medium.” Thus the
Eisenhower ads—stressing Eisenhower’s likeability – involved feeling and emotion,
making the strongest use of the TV medium. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I recall, as a kid, seeing the TV
image of Eisenhower back then, grinning.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The intellectual Democrat
candidate, Adlai Stevenson, tried to counter the blitz of 15-second Eisenhower
spots. Stevenson embarked on a series of half-hour TV presentations, reiterating
and expanding on themes he struck in his convention acceptance speech. These
lectures, essentially, didn’t work. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">With television, as Joe McGinniss
wrote in his seminal 1969 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Selling of
the President,</i> “it matters less” that a politician “does not have ideas.
His personality is what the viewers want to share. The TV candidate...is
measured...not against a standard of performance established by two centuries
of democracy—but against Mike Douglas. How well does he handle himself? Does he
mumble, does he twitch, does he make me laugh? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do I feel warm inside? Style becomes
substance. The medium is the massage and the masseur gets the votes.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>TV talk show personality Mike Douglas
is dead. But the dynamic McGinniss described continues—indeed has expanded
politically. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As observed Richard Reeves in a
1980 television report, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“ABC News Closeup:
Lights, Cameras...Politics,” realizing TV “transmits feelings and emotion
better than it transmits information...media consultants tried to motivate
Americans to vote the same way that they were motivated to buy toothpaste: with
little entertainments.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">He cited as an early example of
this the infamous spot put together in 1964 by Tony Schwartz for Lyndon
Johnson. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A little girl plucks petals
from a daisy, counting up to nine and then a man’s voice counts down from ten
to zero—and suddenly the TV screen fills with the super-scary footage of a
hydrogen bomb, and Johnson’s voice states: “The stakes are too high...We must
either love each other or we must die.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Schwartz later wrote in his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Responsive Chord: </i>“The task of a
media specialist is not to reveal a candidate’s stand on issues, so much as to
help communicate those personal qualities of a candidate that are likely to win
votes.” This spot and the strong emotion it was designed to impart were aimed
at leaving the viewer feeling that Lyndon Johnson was a person of
responsibility, and his opponent, Barry Goldwater, something else.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Further, with this spot, the TV
political attack ad, the emotionally-laden negative political TV commercial,
had arrived—to become a mainstay of election advertising. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the 1980s, Ronald Reagan had become a model
for TV-based presidential TV commercials—and politics. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many voters might have disliked his policies,
but a substantial number “liked” Reagan—based on the image he projected through
television. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">With the ability to performing on
television having become a necessary attribute of a presidential candidate, the
Republican Party had chosen an actor to run for president. Reagan had been
governor of California but, importantly, Reagan for eight years before that was
a TV performer, host of General Electric Theatre, after his Hollywood career
hit the skids.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It had come to a point at which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday </i>columnist Robert Weimer declared
in 1980: “Why bother with the arduous, uncertain and expensive process of
casting ballots at all? Why not simply put presidential candidates into a
head-to-head, prime-time competition on election night and let the ratings
decide the contest....It’s not hard to understand why the candidates have
settled on television as their main mode of communication. It reaches the most
people with the most impact, even if it does tend to sell only gross
attributes. Audience perception of a smile, for example, can determine the
outcome of a presidential race...Television is essentially a medium that
appeals more to spinal than cerebral receptors. The message that gets through
is spare: Ronald Reagan is affable.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">We can now analyze presidential
candidate after candidate through the prism of political TV commercials and
television performance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It can be very unsettling.
Consider what was widely described as a great problem for Al Gore when he ran
against George W. Bush in 2000: most folks would rather, it was said, go out
for a beer with Bush than Gore. Gore’s persona as transmitted through TV was
said to be wooden, lacking charisma, Bush somehow connected better. And we got
Bush.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Our current president, Barack
Obama, is a master of performing on television. As Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen
complained on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Politico </i>this past
February, “The president has shut down interviews with many of the White House
reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions. Instead, he spends
way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media
personalities. Why bother with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New
York Times </i>beat reporter when Obama can go on ‘The View.’”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And today, television—and particularly
political TV commercials—are vital to the rise and continuance<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in office of candidates for, not just for
president, but for the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives,
governorships, mayoral positions, and seats in state legislatures and on city
councils.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A political era of dueling
political TV commercials is firmly here.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Meanwhile, the notion of the “Q Score”
or “Q rating” has arrived. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The term “Q Score” was coined in
1963 by Jack Landis who founded a company Marketing Evaluations, Inc. in
Roslyn, N.Y. which continues to use the concept as the central measure in its
opinion polling and market research work. “Q rating”—defined by Merriam-Webster
as a “scale measuring the popularity of a person or thing”—is said by those
dictionary people as having its “first known use” in 1977. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">They mean roughly the same: they’re
measures of likeability. They are the standard for how TV reporters keep their
jobs these days, why TV programs are renewed, how products are promoted as well
as how would-be holders of the presidency and other offices in the U.S.—and
increasingly leaders in nations around the world—are selected.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The basis for “I Like Ike” is now
widely applied. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And we are left to wonder what
kind of “Q Score” or “Q rating” Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson might have
had?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What have we lost—and what have we
gained?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 1em 0px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-46610854960841928242013-10-25T04:54:00.001-07:002014-03-04T04:15:49.781-08:00Island of Secrets<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Michael Carroll,
author of the best-selling book, “Lab 257: Th<span class="googqs-tidbit">e
Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory,” was
back on the East Coast, vacationing with his family, and amazed over recent
developments concerning Plum Island.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span class="googqs-tidbit"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Carroll,
an attorney from Long Island who worked seven years on “Lab 257” which became a
best-seller after its 2004 publication, has since moved to California where he
and his wife, a California native, established a law practice. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span class="googqs-tidbit"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Back
on Long Island, where he is a native, Carroll finds as astonishing Representative
Tim Bishop’s fight against the plan of the federal government to shut down its
Plum Island Animal Disease Center and shift its operations to a new </span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility it would build in Manhattan
Kansas. Bishop, of Southampton, is mainly concerned about the loss of 200 federal
jobs at the center which is in his eastern Long Island Congressional district.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“It is utter foolishness to try to save 200 jobs at the
price of protecting the entire region from this island and the threat it
represents,” said Carroll in a recent interview. An outbreak of disease agents
worked with on Plum Island—notably those affecting both animals and people—in
the heavily populated area off which the island sits could be “devastating.” Plum
Island is just off and midway between the New York-Boston megalopolis and its
millions of people, Carroll pointed out. The 843-acre island is a mile-and-a-half
off Orient Point in Southold Town on the North Fork of Long Island. Connecticut
is less than 10 miles to the north.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">A spokesperson for Bishop, Oliver Longwell, responded
that Bishop’s “position on the island is indistinguishable from every other
elected official who represents Southold Town at all levels of government.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">As to the call by a grouping of Long Island
environmentalists for preservation of the island as opposed to the federal
government’s consideration of having housing developed on it, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Carroll said that making the island a preserve
is all that could be done with Plum Island—but, he emphasized, it will need to
be a preserve closed to people. “You can’t let anybody on it,” he said. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“The island is an environmental disaster,” said Carroll.
“Every </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">effort
to decontaminate Lab 257, the1950s-era germ warfare building on it, has
failed,” said Carroll. “They can’t get that building clean.” (Subsequently, a
new laboratory building was constructed after the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Department took control of the island from the U.S. Army,)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“There is contamination all over the island,” said
Carroll. He noted that up until recent years, nothing was ever removed from the
island—everything was disposed on it, much of it buried. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC) have brought charges through the years in connection with
the Plum Island waste, cases cited in his book, he went on. “If this was a
private business, it immediately would have been shut down,” said Carroll. But
only “nominal” fines were meted out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">As to a shift of Plum Island operations to Kansas, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">that’s “going
out of the frying pan into the fire,” said Carroll. “Is there is no better
place to study foreign animal diseases than in the middle of America’s farm
belt?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“What research
that needs to be conducted should be done nowhere near a human population
center or a food production center,” said Carroll.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As for Plum
Island, “There’s no way that island can be made fit for human habitation,”
declared Carroll.” The island needs to be “forsaken. It’s very sad.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The federal government,
however, believes Plum Island can be habitable as evidenced by it contemplating
housing on it with the center’s closing. And real estate mogul Donald Trump has
jumped into the situation by saying he would like to buy the island and, he
said last month, develop a “really beautiful, world-class golf course” on it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Meanwhile, New
York Governor Andrew Cuomo has written to the General Services Administration,
which would manage the planned sale, and the Department of Homeland Security,
which after the 9/11 attack took over the island from the Department of
Agriculture, calling for a “comprehensive investigation” of Plum Island by the
state DEC, and a clean-up plan. This would include “the need to properly close
Building 257.” Discussing his letter at a recent appearance at Orient Beach
State Park, Cuomo called Plum Island “the island of secrets.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Cuomo family
is very familiar with Plum Island. Andrew’s father, former New York Governor
Mario Cuomo, with whom Carroll worked as a lawyer in New York City, is quoted
on the jacket of “Lab 257” as calling the book a “carefully researched,
chilling expose of a potential catastrophe.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Carroll’s “Lab
257” also documents a Nazi connection to the original establishment of a U.S.
laboratory on Plum Island. According to the book, Erich Traub, a scientist who
worked for the Third Reich doing biological warfare, was the force behind its
founding.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">During World War
II,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“as lab chief of Insel Riems—a
secret Nazi biological warfare laboratory on a crescent-shaped island in the
Baltic Sea—Traub worked for Adolph Hitler’s second-in-charge, SS Reichsfuhrer
Heinrich Himmler, on live germ trials,” states “Lab 257." </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The mission was to develop
biological warfare to be directed against animals in the Soviet Union. This
included infecting cattle and reindeer with foot-and-mouth disease.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Ironically,
Traub spent the prewar period of his scientific career on a fellowship at the
Rockefeller Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, perfecting his skills in
viruses and bacteria under the tutelage of American experts before returning to
Nazi Germany on the eve of war,” says “Lab 257.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While in the U.S. in the 1930s, too, relates
the book, Traub was a member of the Amerika-Deutscher Volksbund which was
involved in pro-Nazi rallies held weekly in Yaphank on Long Island.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">With the end of
the war, Traub came back to the United States under Project Paperclip, a U.S.
program under which Nazi scientists, such as Wernher von Braun, were brought to
America.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Traub’s
detailed explanation of the secret operation on Insel Riems” given to officials
at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the Army’s biological warfare headquarters, and to
the CIA, “laid the groundwater for Fort Detrick’s offshore germ warfare animal
disease lab on Plum Island,” says “Lab 257.” “Traub was a founding father.” And
Plum Island’s purpose, says the book, became what Insel Riems had been: to
develop biological warfare to be directed against animals in the Soviet Union—now
that the Cold War and conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had begun.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Long Island
daily newspaper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday </i>earlier
documented this biological warfare mission of Plum Island. In a lead story on
November 21, 1993, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday </i>investigative
reporter John McDonald wrote: “A 1950s military plan to cripple the Soviet
economy by killing horses, cattle and swine called for making biological
warfare weapons out of exotic animal diseases at a Plum Island laboratory,
now-declassified Army records reveal.” A facsimile of one of the records, dated
1951, covered the front page of that issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The article went
on: “Documents and interviews disclose for the first time what officials have
denied for years: that the mysterious and closely guarded animal lab off the
East End of Long Island was originally designed to conduct top-secret research
into replicating dangerous viruses that could be used to destroy enemy
livestock.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Lab 257” has
many pages about this based on documents including many that Carroll found in
the National Archives. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The book also tells
of why suddenly the Army transferred Plum Island to the Department of
Agriculture in 1954—the U.S. military became concerned about having to feed
millions of people in the Soviet Union if it destroyed their food animals.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Joint Chiefs
of Staff “found that a war with the U.S.S.R. would best be fought with
conventional and nuclear means, and biological warfare against humans—not
against food animals,” says “Lab 257.” “Destroying the food supply meant having
to feed millions of starving Russians after winning a war” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Still, “Lab 257”
questions whether there ever was a clean break. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Officials at the
<span class="googqs-tidbit">Plum Island Animal Disease Center</span> have,
however, insisted over the years that the center’s function is to conduct research
into foreign animal diseases not found in the U.S.—especially foot-and-mouth
disease—and the only biological warfare research done is of a “defensive” kind.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Lab 257” also maintains
that there is a link between the Plum Island center and the emergence of Lyme
disease. It “suddenly surfaced” 10 miles from Plum Island “in Old Lyme,
Connecticut in 1975.” Carroll cites years of experimentation with ticks on Plum
Island and the possibility of an accidental or purposeful release. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“The tick is the
perfect germ vector,” says “Lab 257,” “which is why it has long been fancied as
a germ weapon by early biowarriors from Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan to
the Soviet Union and the United States."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“A source who
worked on Plum Island in the 1950s,” the book states, “recalls that animal
handlers and a scientist released ticks outdoors on the island. ‘They called
him the Nazi scientist, when they came in, in 1951—they were inoculating these
ticks.” “Lab 257” goes on: “Dr. Traub’s World War II handiwork consisted of
aerial virus sprays developed on Insel Riems and tested over occupied Russia,
and of field work for Heinrich Himmler in Turkey. Indeed, his colleagues
conducted bug trials by dropping live beetles from planes. An outdoor tick
trial would have been de riguer for Erich Traub.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-53818996153591078192013-10-09T19:29:00.000-07:002014-03-04T04:15:49.805-08:00Nuclear Power Through the Fukushima Perspective
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It started this June
in California. Speaking about the problems at the troubled San Onofre nuclear
plants through the perspective of the Fukushima nuclear complex catastrophe was
a panel of Naoto Kan, prime minister of Japan when the disaster began; Gregory
Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at the time; Peter
Bradford, an NRC member when the Three Mile Island accident happened; and nuclear
engineer and former nuclear industry executive Arnie Gundersen.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This week the
same panel of experts on nuclear technology—joined by long-time nuclear
opponent Ralph Nader—was on the East Coast, in New York City and Boston,
speaking about problems at the problem-riddled Indian Point nuclear plants near
New York and the troubled Pilgrim plant near Boston, through the perspective on
the Fukushima catastrophe.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Their
presentations were powerful. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Kan, at the
event Tuesday in Manhattan, told of how he had been a supporter of nuclear
power, but after the Fukushima accident, which began on March 11, 2011, “I
changed my thinking 180-degrees, completely.” He said that in the first days of
the accident it looked like an “area that included Tokyo” and populated by 50
million people might have to be evacuated. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“We
do have accidents such as an airplane crash and so on,” said Kan, “but no other
accident or disaster” other than a nuclear plant disaster can “affect 50
million people...no other accident could cause such a tragedy.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">All 54 nuclear
plants in Japan have now been closed, Kan said. And “without nuclear power
plants we can absolutely provide the energy to meet our demands.” Meanwhile, in
the two-plus years since the disaster began, Japan has tripled its use of solar
energy—a jump in solar power production that is the equivalent of the
electricity that would be produced by three nuclear plants, he said. He pointed
to Germany as a model in its commitment to shutting down all its nuclear power
plants and having “all its power supplied by renewable power” by 2050. The
entire world, said Kan, could do this. “If humanity really would work
together...we could generate all our energy through renewable energy.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Jaczko said that
the Fukushima disaster exploded several myths about nuclear power including
those involving the purported prowess of U.S. nuclear technology. The General
Electric technology of the Fukushima nuclear plants “came from the U.S.,” he
noted. And, it exploded the myth that “severe accidents wouldn’t happen.” Said
the former top nuclear official in the United States: “Severe accidents can and
will happen.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And what the
Fukushima accident “is telling us is society does not accept the consequences
of these accidents,” said Jaczko, who was pressured out of his position on the
NRC after charging that the agency was not considering the “lessons” of the
Fukushima disaster. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In monetary cost
alone, Jaczko said, the cost of the Fukushima accident is estimated at $500
billion by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Nuclear engineer
Gundersen, formerly a nuclear industry senior vice president, noted that the NRC
“says the chance of a nuclear accident is one in a million,” that an accident
would happen “every 2,500 years.” This is predicated, he said, on what the NRC
terms a probabilistic <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>risk assessment or
PRA. “I’d like to refer to it as PRAY.” The lesson of “real life,” said
Gundersen, is that there have been five nuclear plant meltdowns in the past 35
years—Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986 and the three at Fukushima
Daiichi complex. That breaks down to an accident “every seven years.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“This is a
technology that can have 40 good years that can be wiped out in one bad day,”
said Gundersen. He drew a parallel between Fukushima Daiichi “120 miles from
Tokyo” and the Indian Point nuclear plant complex “26 miles from New York
City.” He said that “in many ways Indian Point is worse than Fukushima was
before the accident.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One element: the
Fukushima accident resulted from an earthquake followed by a tsunami. The two
operating plants at Indian Point are also adjacent to an earthquake fault, said
Gundersen. New York City “faces one bad day like Japan, one sad day.” He also
spoke of the “arrogance and hubris” of the nuclear industry and how the NRC has
consistently complied with the desires of the industry. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Bradford said
that that the “the bubble” that the nuclear industry once termed “the nuclear renaissance”
has burst. As to a main nuclear industry claim in this promotion to revive
nuclear power—that atomic energy is necessary in “mitigating climate change”—this
has been shown to be false. It would take tripling of the 440 total of nuclear
plants now in the world to reduce greenhouse gasses by but 10 percent. Other
sources of power are here as well as energy efficiency that could combat
climate change. Meanwhile, the price of electricity from any new nuclear plants
built has gone to a non-competitive 12 to 20 cents per kilowatt hour while “renewables
are falling in price.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Bradford also
sharply criticized the agency of which he was once a member, the NRC, charging among
other things that it has in recent years discouraged citizen participation.
Also, as to Fukushima, the “accident really isn’t over,” said Bradford who, in
addition to his role at the NRC has chaired the utility commissions of Maine
and New York State.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Nader said that with
nuclear power and the radioactivity it produces “we are dealing with a silent
cumulative form of violence.” He said nuclear power is “unnecessary, unsafe,
and uninsurable...undemocratic.” And constructing new words that begin with
“un,” it is also “unevacuatable, unfinanceable, unregulatable.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Nader said
nuclear power is unnecessary because there are many energy alternatives—led by
solar and wind. It is unsafe because catastrophic accidents can and will happen.
He noted how the former U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in a 1960s report
projected that a major nuclear accident could irradiate an area “the size of Pennsylvania.”
He asked: “Is this the kind of gamble we want to take to boil water?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Nuclear power is
extremely expensive and thus uneconomic, he went on. It is uninsurable with the
original scheme for nuclear power in the U.S. based on the federal
Price-Anderson Act which limits a utility’s liability to a “fraction” of the
cost of damages from an accident. That law remains, extended by Congress “every
ten years or so.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As for being “unevacuable,”
NRC evacuation plans are “fantasy” documents,” said Nader. The U.S. advised
Americans within 50 miles of Fukushima to evacuate. Some 20 million people live
within 50 miles of the Indian Point plants and New Yorkers “can hardly get out”
of the city during a normal rush hour.” Nuclear power is “unfinancable,” he
said, depending on government fiscal support through tax dollars. And it is
“unregulatable” with the NRC taking a “promotional attitude.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, “above all it is undemocratic,” said
Nader, “a technology born in secrecy” which continues. Meanwhile, said Nader,
“as the orders dry up in developed nations” for nuclear plants, the nuclear
industry is pushing to build new plants in the developing world.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Also at the
event in New York City, moderated by Riverkeeper President Paul Gallay and held
at the 92<sup>nd</sup> Street Y, a segment of a new video documentary on
nuclear power by Adam Salkin was screened. It showed Salkin in a boat going
right in front of the Indian Point plants and it taking nearly five hours for a
“security” boat from the plant to respond, and Salkin, the next day, in an
airplane flying as low as 500 feet above the plants. The segment demonstrated that
the nuclear plants on the Hudson are an easy target for terrorists and, it
noted, what it showed was what “terrorists already know.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The San Onofre nuclear
power plants were closed permanently three weeks after the June panel event—and
after many years of intensive actions by nuclear opponents in California to
shut down the plants, situated between San Diego and Los Angeles. The panel’s
appearances this week in New York City Tuesday and Boston Wednesday, titled
“Fukushima—Ongoing Lessons for New York and Boston,” are aimed at the same
outcome occurring on the East Coast.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The forums are
online. For links go to </span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/FukushimaLessons"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">www.Facebook.com/FukushimaLessons</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8092016047044639779.post-50564238139517272232013-09-29T07:37:00.000-07:002014-03-04T04:15:49.800-08:00Video Slot Machines on Long Island and LIPA -- the Quid Pro Quo <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some
Long Island officials are betting that gambling will provide a big financial
boost for the fiscally-pressed county governments of Nassau and Suffolk. Are
they right or making a bad bet?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">
<br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">In June, in a
surprise move, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo—after months of saying
no—suddenly agreed to the call from officials of Nassau and Suffolk to allow
the two counties to set up facilities for video slot machines. Each could have
a facility with 1,000 video slot machines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">
<br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">The Cuomo turn-around,
according to well-informed sources, was linked to getting the Long Island
delegation in the New York State Legislature to support his plan to turn the Long Island
Power Authority into a shell and have a private New Jersey utility, Public
Service Electric and Gas, be THE utility on Long Island.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Then votes on a
bill expanding gambling in the state that included the video slot plan for Long
Island and votes on a bill to drastically alter the utility structure on Long
Island were taken in the State Assembly and State Senate—and both passed. “The
governor horse-traded his support for the slots for votes to pass his LIPA
bill,” said one source.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Long Island had
not been included in Cuomo’s original gambling expansion bill. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right up through early June, it would have
authorized three gambling casinos and video slot machines but only upstate. “LI
NOT IN GAMBLING PLAN,” was the headline of a June 6<sup>th</sup> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday </i>article.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>It quoted Assemblyman Phil Boyle of Bay Shore saying “he’s
‘disappointed but not deterred’ by the island’s omission in Cuomo’s plan.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
A week earlier,
Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano and Suffolk County Executive Steve
Bellone, with the presidents of the two counties’ Off-Track Betting
Corporations, had gone to Albany, meeting with state legislators and “doubling
down,” said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsday,</i> in seeking <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“potentially lucrative video gaming” on Long
Island. But Cuomo still felt this would take away from his desire to assist
upstate through gambling. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Then, a week later,
his gambling bill was expanded to allow video slot machines on Long Island and
was voted upon simultaneous with Cuomo’s bill to drastically change the Long
Island utility structure—which had faced stiff resistance from the Long Island
delegation. The “opposition to the bill on LIPA fell apart with the addition of
Long Island to the gambling plan,” said another source. “The two were linked.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Is gambling the
fiscal rescue some Long Island officials would believe? Consider the Page 1
story in the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> New York Times </i>last
month headlined: “Crowds Return to Las Vegas, but Gamble Less.” It told of a drop
in gambling revenue with a “new influx of tourists, younger and less devoted to
gambling.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Or consider a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Times </i>piece a month earlier about
gambling in decline in Atlantic City. “Revenues have fallen 40 percent since
their peak in 2006 as new casinos in neighboring states have taken away
gamblers,” it noted.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The video slot
terminals in Nassau and Suffolk would be operated by the Nassau and Suffolk OTB
Corporations—huge troughs for political patronage in both counties. And they
have been in trouble. Suffolk OTB moved to declare bankruptcy last year (New
York City OTB filed for bankruptcy in 2009).<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The office of New
York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a 2010 report titled “Financial
Condition of New York State Regional Off-Track Betting Corporations” spoke of
the “financial condition of the state’s five regional OTB Corporations” having
“substantially deteriorated.” It said “various factors account for the
significant and continuing downturn in handle including a diminished interest
in horseracing” and “competition from unregulated internet gambling sites.”
This “general decline” in horseracing is “demonstrated by decreased attendance
at most state racetracks.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are not
only now many casinos all over the United States diluting the gambling
industry, but “government-sponsored lotteries,” too, noted the report.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The lure of
winning hundreds of millions of dollars in the Powerball lottery, owned and
operated by 33 state lotteries, towers over winning the tiniest fraction of
that on a video slot machine.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Meanwhile, Congressman
Peter King of Seaford, whose district includes parts of both Nassau and
Suffolk, introduced a bill in June that would license online gambling at the
federal level, further spreading gambling choices.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Is the pot of
government gold from video slot machines a mirage? I bet it is.</div>
</span><br />Karl Grossmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740689300440735323noreply@blogger.com0