RADIOACTIVE NIAGARA?

Even Low-Level Radioactivity Is Damaging, Scientists Conclude

Science Daily (Nov. 13, 2012) — Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society's journal Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Paris-Sud found that variation in low-level, natural background radiation was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA as well as several measures of health.

The review is a meta-analysis of studies of locations around the globe that have very high natural background radiation as a result of the minerals in the ground there, including Ramsar, Iran, Mombasa, Kenya, Lodeve, France, and Yangjiang, China. These, and a few other geographic locations with natural background radiation that greatly exceeds normal amounts, have long drawn scientists intent on understanding the effects of radiation on life. Individual studies by themselves, however, have often only shown small effects on small populations from which conclusive statistical conclusions were difficult to draw.

"When you're looking at such small effect sizes, the size of the population you need to study is huge," said co-author Timothy Mousseau, a biologist in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina. "Pooling across multiple studies, in multiple areas, and in a rigorous statistical manner provides a tool to really get at these questions about low-level radiation."

Mousseau and co-author Anders Møller of the University of Paris-Sud combed the scientific literature, examining more than 5,000 papers involving natural background radiation that were narrowed to 46 for quantitative comparison. The selected studies all examined both a control group and a more highly irradiated population and quantified the size of the radiation levels for each. Each paper also reported test statistics that allowed direct comparison between the studies.
The organisms studied included plants and animals, but had a large preponderance of human subjects. Each study examined one or more possible effects of radiation, such as DNA damage measured in the lab, prevalence of a disease such as Down's Syndrome, or the sex ratio produced in offspring. For each effect, a statistical algorithm was used to generate a single value, the effect size, which could be compared across all the studies.
The scientists reported significant negative effects in a range of categories, including immunology, physiology, mutation and disease occurrence. The frequency of negative effects was beyond that of random chance.
"There's been a sentiment in the community that because we don't see obvious effects in some of these places, or that what we see tends to be small and localized, that maybe there aren't any negative effects from low levels of radiation," said Mousseau. "But when you do the meta-analysis, you do see significant negative effects."
"It also provides evidence that there is no threshold below which there are no effects of radiation," he added. "A theory that has been batted around a lot over the last couple of decades is the idea that is there a threshold of exposure below which there are no negative consequences. These data provide fairly strong evidence that there is no threshold -- radiation effects are measurable as far down as you can go, given the statistical power you have at hand."
Mousseau hopes their results, which are consistent with the "linear-no-threshold" model for radiation effects, will better inform the debate about exposure risks. "With the levels of contamination that we have seen as a result of nuclear power plants, especially in the past, and even as a result of Chernobyl and Fukushima and related accidents, there's an attempt in the industry to downplay the doses that the populations are getting, because maybe it's only one or two times beyond what is thought to be the natural background level," he said. "But they're assuming the natural background levels are fine."
"And the truth is, if we see effects at these low levels, then we have to be thinking differently about how we develop regulations for exposures, and especially intentional exposures to populations, like the emissions from nuclear power plants, medical procedures, and even some x-ray machines at airports."

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Best regards,

==
lou ricciuti,
http://www.ask.ne.jp/~hankaku/english/niagara_fall.html,
http://www.iicph.org, www.artvoice.com, Union of Concerned Scientists,
** Niagara Falls - Lewiston - Porter, New York, "Los Alamos East,"
* The free world's largest ore-to-metal uranium production center.
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Scroll to reference: "Sites and Contractors - Appendix A,"

** "Electro Metallurgical Company (Niagara Falls, New York), a subsidiary of Union Carbide, was the MED's largest ore-to-metal uranium production plant. From 1942 to 1953, the plant processed uranium tetrafluoride (green salt, UF4) into uranium metal. The plant was also called the Union Carbide and Chemical Electro-Metallurgical Division Works." http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/new/findingaids/epidemiologic/orise/app.html,
United States Department of Energy - Office of Health, Safety and Security,
Office of Human Radiation Experiments, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.
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** In Western New York state more than a dozen commercial production and experimental Manhattan Engineering District (MED) -- Manhattan Project, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), US-ERDA - Energy Research and Development Agency, USDOE - Department Of Energy, and GoCo [government owned, contractor operated] related manufactories, foundries and laboratories.
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Local-to-Soil Burials include: Element 94 - Pu from Human Radiation Experiments (HREX) and related lab equipment, one-third to one-half of the world's mined supply of radium 226 and related uranium residues and processing wastes including Sengier's Congolese -- Afrimet K-65 (60-65% uranium), Apollo Lunar Project moon fuel & mass- perchlorate production, burn-offs and burials, Tom Brokaw's "disposed-of" office, irradiated heavy-equipment Case 450 front-loader buried whole, 38' diameter metallic Hortonsphere (suspected early experimental reactor use), along with burials of graphite, zirconium and other reactive, solid, sintered, powdered metallic, chemical and radiological materials.

From Obstruction to Gridlock

Of course the next post will be "From Gridlock to admitting we live in a rigidly class divided society." But prior to that,let's look into the future. Present "gridlock" is occurring in that nothing is happening politically; no one is thinking; the talking heads are still talking about Romney's funeral, the catch-22 the Republican party(or should I say 'rich class mouthpiece') finds itself caught in, or, even Thanksgiving, or Black Friday. Now the Repub's have found another target, Susan Rice.The Repub's will latch onto anything, even secession from the union movements, to detract from the political matters at hand.  It doesn't seem to matter that a look backward at such obstructionist tactics, if not strategy, show them for what they are.  In fact 'gridlock' is a strategy for the Repub's.  Such resistance and non-cooperation as politics is dangerous yet revealing of the impotence, the effete and enervated character of "republicanism" today.  So while backroom meetings haggle of the so-called 'fiscal cliff'--another scare tactic to allow the parties to get away with doing nothing of ultimate political value or significance--democracy continues to degrade, and de-politicization of the masses becomes more subtle and deepens. So looking into our political future is the same as looking into our past.  Given that facts don't matter in politics these days, an irrationalist nihilism tightens its grip and normality becomes a zombification of the normal in which most agree with Jack Nicholson when he said, "this is as good as it gets."  So money continues to 'matter' more than ever and what really matters doesn't seem to be real. 

OBSTRUCTIONISM BEGINS WITH BENGHAZI

Investigating the Benghazi incident is one thing. Making it a matter of cynical hyperbole for the media machine and red meat for the unrequited right wing is another matter. The Republican lynch mob rhetoric makes anyone aware of the last four years of Republican obstructionism suspicious that we are in for more of the same--more subtle and less blatantly bold but still obstructionist in spirit. The state of the nation-state may actually move them to at least appear as if they are doing something. At least a bone will be thrown to the people. Yet it won't be sufficient to deal with the continuing crisis of an impotent Liberalism hog tied by a capitalism run out of ideas. The only support they have from "the people" to continue such anti-democratic if not unconstitutional behavior is from the likes of the fringe of the fringe Conservative Majority Fund. In other words the Republicans are out on a limb without any net. Furthermore, if Elizabeth Warren manages to push through filibuster reform, the bland Old Party will have one less tool to prevent the system from having some semblance of usefulness in reducing the misery of the 20 million or so out of work and possibly soon out of hope. Stopping progress is easy for the 1%. They can wait indefinitely for the masses to flip flop and return them to power once again. Possibly,, however, the new young Republicans will force the hand of their party's establishment. But what they can imagine themselves to be beyond a front for the rich is yet to be seen. Their talk regarding acknowledging and responding to the "the new demographics" of the country hardly makes space for the re-visioning of conservatism. This would amount to old policies and attitudes with only new strategies and tactics to presumably maneuver the masses into acceptance of an apparent alternative once Obama's efforts prove to be relatively futile and, in effect, more of the same managerial liberalism and obsolete empire building and global policing.

RADIOACTIVE NIAGARA

RE-PRINTED FROM ARTVOICE: On Tuesday afternoon, lawyers for Man O’ Trees, the company that three years ago won the ill-fated contract to reconstruct a deeply contaminated stretch of Lewiston Road in Niagara Falls, filed a lawsuit against the City of Niagara Falls; its mayor, Paul Dyster; the Niagara Falls City Council as a body and its individual members; the city’s engineers and lawyers; and a host of its consultants. The 105-page complaint alleges a multitude of sins, ranging from conspiracy to fraud to breach of contract. The lawsuit’s allegations, in a nutshell: • The above-named defendants were eager both to repair a road that had been deteriorating for decades and to address the radioactive contamination that studies indicated lay beneath the pavement. • Because it would be difficult for the cash-strapped city to win federal or state funds for an expensive environmental remediation project, officials set their eyes instead of plentiful federal stimulus dollars available for road work. • City officials therefore underplayed the environmental remediation aspect of the job, characterizing it as a road reconstruction project. • Thus, the specifications of the job conveyed to bidders were designed to make the bidders think they were engaging a road project. • For example, contractors were told they “may encounter up to 500 cubic yards of radioactive material” and advised to budget $500,000 for its removal and disposal; in fact, by the time Man O’ Trees had completed 30 percent of the job, the contractor had removed nearly 3,000 cubic yards of radioactive material at a cost of $4 million. • The bid documents also failed to indicate that the winning contractor would need to have a Radioactive Material Handling License from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; only after Man O’ Trees had won the bid was the company told that it would need to acquire that license, which delayed the beginning of work on the project for six months. • The defendants misrepresented the variety of and danger posed by the radioactive contaminants, referring to it sweepingly as low-level “radioactive slag”; in fact, Man O’ Trees encountered thorium and uranium isotopes consistent with the region’s industrial history, especially its engagement in early efforts to produce materials for atomic weapons and reactors. • The city’s consultants set a removal threshold for radioactive waste at 9,000 counts per minute, more than twice the “ambient radiation levels in the area.” Even that material was taken to a way-station and “further investigated” by the city’s consulting engineers, from the firm Wendel Duchscherer, to determine whether the waste should be shipped to a disposal facility or returned to the ground. In one case, the lawsuit alleges, Man O’ Trees was instructed to return waste that measured 80,000 counts per minute to the ground, rather than dispose of it. • The lawsuit also alleges that Man O’ Trees was ordered by the city and its consultants to ignore areas where radiation levels measured “in excess of 180,000 [counts per minute] and in one report almost 300,000 [counts per minute].” • The city and its consultants refused requests by Man O’ Trees to establish a written protocol for handling radioactive waste as it was encountered. • A city engineer, Tom Radomski, who lived on Lewiston Road at the time the project started, allegedly ordered his property remediated. then moved his family to Lewiston, and was subsequently fired for failure to meet the city’s residency requirement for some employees. We’ll post the entire lawsuit and its supporting exhibits, along with further analysis, on AV Daily at Artvoice.com. On June 22, the City of Niagara Falls filed a complaint against Man O’ Trees for breach of contract, essentially accusing the company of abandoning the job. That accusation is not without merit: When it became clear that the city was not going to pay Man O’ Trees $2.9 million the company’s owner, David “Bear” Pfeiffer, felt it was owed for removing radioactive waste, and when negotiations to resolve the endless disputes the project engendered came to naught, and when the city and its consultants began to limit his employees’ access to the work site, Pfeiffer told us that he ordered his men off the job. But the equipment and materials remained, because, according to Niagara Falls attorney John Bartolomei, who is representing Man O’ Trees, Pfeiffer hoped eventually to reach a deal that would allow the work to continue. Instead the city sued and prepared new bid materials, hoping to hire a new contractor to finish the job. In those bid documents, Bartolomei says, the city maintains that the contractor may encounter as much as 150 cubic yards of radioactive waste—another lowball figure, according to Bartolomei, which proves the point of the lawsuit: The city does not want this project to be characterized as a cleanup, no matter how much radioactive waste material it uncovers, because it can only fund a road project. The new bid documents also do not require the new contractor to obtain a license to handle radioactive material. In the new bid documents, the city informed bidders that the materials and equipment Man O’ Trees left on site would be available for their use. On Friday and Saturday, Pfeiffer and his employees responded by returning to the site to remove their possessions, including heavy equipment, precipitating a showdown with police and city officials. Police impounded a front-loader, under orders from city officials, who argued that it was in the city’s right-of-way and lacked a license plate. The lawsuit claims that Man O’ Trees is owed $14 million for work performed, and asks for hundreds of millions more in punitive damages, arguing that the city and its consultants have waged a public war on the company, denigrating the quality of its work in the media. “They’re trying to destroy my company because I’m speaking out about what’s going on up there,” Pfeiffer told Artvoice earlier this summer, in one of several long conversations in which he described how the project went south, and how he became concerned, as both a matter of ethics and liability, for the health of his workers and people living nearby the project, whose own properties were contaminated with radioactive waste. “But I won’t let them ruin me,” he said, “and I won’t be quiet.” Reader Comments

MYOPIC ECONOMICS: Policy for the Rich, Politics as Usual for the People

POSTED AT AlterNet January 22, 2012
The Economic Idiocy of Economists
By Mark Weisbrot, Comment Is Free


The American Economic Association's annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on "the economics of regime change", when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about "the political economy of the US debt and deficits".

The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States' rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn't do something about it. Yawn.

But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the US national debt as generally ranging from "ludicrous to horrific". True, that. He asked and answered four questions.

First, is there any urgency (to reduce the deficit or debt)? No. The government can borrow short term at negative real interest rates, and long-term at about zero. The world is paying us to hold their money. That is anything but a debt crisis. The Fed is out of bullets, he said – referring to the fact that the US Federal Reserve had lowered short-term rates to zero and had used quantitative easing to help keep long-term rates low. So we need more fiscal stimulus, preferably spending that focuses on actually creating jobs. Amen.

Second, should we focus on the next decade? No, he said, and noted that the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) budget deficit projections over the next decade are about 3.6% of GDP, which is not much to get agitated about. Also true.

Third, is government spending the problem? No, he said, it's healthcare costs, and mainly the rising price of healthcare (that is, not the ageing of the population). Most important truth yet! (More on this below.)

Fourth, is the public really up in arms about the deficit? No, actually, theycare more about the economy and jobs. As they should.

Blinder concluded that since this is an election year, we can forget about having any fact-based discussion of these issues in 2012. Happy New Year, he said, and the audience laughed. Well, that was refreshing, I thought – an economist telling the unvarnished truth to hundreds of his people at the annual meetings.

But a rapid descent into hell was imminent. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin was next, talking about the need to "repair" social security and Medicare. The United States has all the characteristics of countries that run into trouble, he said. Then he warned that the US is going to end up like Greece. This is one of the dumbest things that anyone with an economics degree can say.

Hello, Mr Holtz-Eakin! Have you ever heard of the US dollar, the world's key reserve currency?

The United States is not going to end up like Greece, any sooner than it will end up like Haiti or Burkina Faso. A country that can pay its foreign public debt in its own currency and runs its own central bank does not end up like Greece.

In fact, even Japan is not going to end up like Greece, and Japan has a gross public debt of about 220% of its GDP, more than twice the size of ours and vastly larger – again, relative to its economy – than that of Greece. And the yen is nowhere near the dollar in its importance as an international reserve currency. But the Japanese government is still borrowing at just 1% interest rates for its ten-year bonds.

At this point, it was clear that this panel, other than Blinder, was living in a dystopian fantasy world. Next up was Rudy Penner of the Urban Institute, another former CBO director. His perspective was not much different from that of Auerbach or Holtz-Eakin. He complained about the polarisation of the political process, which prevents the two major parties from reaching an agreement. It's not partisanship, he said: House speaker Tip O'Neill and President Ronald Reagan knew how to be partisan, but they were able to reach agreement on the 1983 social security package and the 1986 tax reforms. And yada yada.

He might have added that we have had 25 years of lying about social security since then, and even Reagan didn't dare try to privatise social security. And, of course, social security can currently pay all promised benefits for the next 24 years without any changes.

These arguments about polarisation really pose the key issue: from the viewpoint of the 99%, it's not polarisation, but weakness in defending our interests that is the problem. President Obama compromised much more than he should have last year, offering cuts to social security and Medicare, in exchange for a long-term budget deal. The 99% are just lucky that the Republicans were too extremist to make this kind of a "grand bargain" with Obama.

The last panelist was Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, another former CBO budget director and Fed vice-chair, as well as a member of the president's (2010) National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. She agreed with Blinder that we need more stimulus. But we can only get this if we agree to long-run spending cuts – including social security, of course. Yuck. This is a political strategy that is sure to end in disaster, given the prevailing state of misinformation and disinformation.

During the discussion, Blinder – who identified himself as a Democrat – expressed his frustration in not being able to convince fellow Democrats to cut social security. Double yuck. The average social security check is about $1,177 a month, and a majority of senior citizens are getting most of their meager income from social security. Why these people insist on creating more poverty among the elderly, especially when the program is solvent for decades to come, is beyond me.

I got to ask the first question for the panel. I called attention to Blinder's presentation of the long-term budget problem as almost completely a problem of the rising price of healthcare. I pointed out that you could take any country with a life expectancy greater than ours – including the other high-income countries – and put their per capita healthcare costs into our budget, and the long-term budget deficit would turn into a surplus.

My question was simple: are Americans so inherently different from other nationalities that we can't have similar healthcare costs? And if not, then why are we talking about long-term budget problems – instead of how to fix our healthcare system?

None of the panelists offered a serious answer to this question. Auerbach, the moderator, said that other countries have rising healthcare costs, too. And some of the others said or implied that healthcare costs were rising at an unsustainable pace worldwide.

But this is nonsense. The United States pays about twice as much per person for healthcare as other high-income countries – and still leaves 50 million people uninsured. This is a result of a dysfunctional healthcare system that has had healthcare prices rising much faster than those of other high-income countries for decades.

What the budget hawks are basically telling us is that we must assume that insurance and pharmaceutical companies will have a veto over the provisions of healthcare reform for decades to come. And that, therefore, we must find other ways to make up for these excessive costs, including cutting social security and other government spending, and pushing us into higher rates of poverty and inequality than we already have.

And even worse in the short run, all this crap about the deficit and the debt will be used to block the necessary stimulus measures – "stimulus" has already become a dirty word that Democratic politicians are afraid to utter. This means high unemployment and a lot of unnecessary misery in the world's richest country for the foreseeable future.

A dismal performance for the dismal science, on some of the most important issues of the day. Of course, there are other economists, including Nobel Prize winners such as Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz and Robert Solow (full disclosure: the latter two are members of CEPR's advisory board), who would offer more sensible views. But this panel was, sadly, representative of economists with the most influence on public policy.

With a brain trust like this, a lost decade for America looks likely – unless the citizenry can steer a different course.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.
© 2012 Comment Is Free All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/153848/

The People's Taxes Subsidize the Rich

FROM: ALTERNET.COM:

The Real Reason Big Macs Are Cheaper Than More Nutritious Alternatives
By David Sirota, Salon
Posted on July 15, 2011, Printed on July 16, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151660

This story first appeared on Salon.com.

The easiest way to explain Gallup's discovery that millions of Americans are eating fewer fruits and vegetables than they ate last year is to simply crack a snarky joke about Whole Foods really being "Whole Paycheck." Rooted in the old limousine liberal iconography, the quip conjures the notion that only Birkenstock-wearing trust-funders can afford to eat right in tough times.

It seems a tidy explanation for a disturbing trend, implying that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for wealthy Endive Elitists when the economy falters. But if the talking point's carefully crafted mix of faux populism and oversimplification seems a bit facile -- if the glib explanation seems almost too perfectly sculpted for your local right-wing radio blowhard -- that's because it dishonestly omits the most important part of the story. The part about how healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own.

As with most issues in this new Gilded Age, the tale of the American diet is a story of the worst form of corporatism -- the kind whereby the government uses public monies to protect private profit.

In this chapter of that larger tragicomedy, lawmakers whose campaigns are underwritten by agribusinesses have used billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize those agribusinesses' specific commodities (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) that are the key ingredients of unhealthy food. Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to "choose" the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support.

Corn -- which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat -- exemplifies the scheme.

"Over the past decade, the federal government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop ... artificially low," reports Time magazine. "That's why McDonald's can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 -- a bargain."

Yes, it is a bargain, but one created by deliberate government policy that serves the corn industry titans, not by any genetic advantage that makes corn derivatives automatically more affordable for the budget-strapped commoner.

The aggregate effect of such market manipulation across the agriculture industry, notes Time, is "that a dollar [can] buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit."

So while it may be amusing to use Americans' worsening recession-era diet as another excuse to promote cultural stereotypes, the nutrition crisis costing us billions in unnecessary healthcare costs is more about public policy and powerful special interests than it is about epicurean snobs and affluent tastes. Indeed, this is a problem not of individual proclivities or of agricultural biology that supposedly makes nutrition naturally unaffordable -- it is a problem of rigged economics and corrupt policymaking.

Solving the crisis, then, requires everything from recalibrating our subsidies to halting the low-income school lunch program's support for the pizza and French fry lobby (yes, they have a powerful lobby). It requires, in other words, a new level of maturity, a better appreciation for the nuanced politics of food and a commitment to changing those politics for the future.

Impossible? Hardly. A country that can engineer the seemingly unattainable economics of a $5 McDonald's feast certainly has the capacity to produce a healthy meal for the same price. It's just a matter of will -- or won't.

© 2011 Salon.com
David Sirota is a best-selling author whose new book "Back to Our Future" is now available. He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and is a contributing writer at Salon.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.


© 2011 Salon All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151660/
[w1]

Toxic Parents and the Neglected Child

If you are having a hard time conceptualizing the irrelevance of the conventional political parties, Democrats and Republicans, to the well-being of the people in this age of the new class war, imagine that they are like toxic parents. That is, the political parties are like those parents who are always narcissisticly arguing with one another. Their venom leaks out all over the neglected children who can't figure out really why the parents are arguing. The parents are not about to let the children know.

Eventually the children will come to believe they are to blame for the dissension; the parents will eventually come to blame the kids. The dysfunctionality will continue into the next generation, unless of course the children realize they have to take their lives into their own hands and stop believing the parents will ever make matters right or explain why it all happened in the first place.

So, like the neglected children the people will some day have to realize they must take their well-being into their own hands and say good bye to conventional venomous politics as usual.

Niagara Times Finally Publishes Useful Information

THIS IS AN ARTICLE POSTED BY "HOBBES" AT NIAGARA TIMES. MAYBE NIAGARA COUNTIANS WILL BEGIN TO WAKE UP TO THE RADIOACTIVE AND TOXIC SHIT HOLE THEY LIVE IN:

March 1, 2011
Welcome to Chernobyl at Niagara Falls

What does the Ukraine have in common with Niagara County, New York? We hear that Pripyat is wonderful this time of the year.

There are more than 100 spots (not counting landfills of more than one-trillion pounds and other radioactive burials at Niagara County) with similar activities spread around Niagara Falls streets, industrial sectors and private properties. For comparison please see:

The reconstruction of Lewiston Road in Niagara Falls is $1.4 million over budget and months behind schedule, according to a Niagara Gazette report earlier this month, and city officials are trying to shed the West Seneca contractor they hired last year to do the work.

The trouble is that the radioactive material that everyone knew was in the roadbed has proved to be more widespread and difficult to handle than city and state officials were willing to acknowledge.

We’ve been warning for three years that the current reconstruction of Lewiston Road and the upcoming reconstruction of Buffalo Avenue pose significant risks to human health and home values. For three years we’ve been warning that studies conducted by the federal government in the 1970s and 1980s suggest that the fill used the last time these roads were rebuilt contained significant levels of dangerous, exotic radiological wastes, which should not simply be shrugged off as “slag” left over from some benign industrial process.

The pre-project environmental surveys performed by defense-contracting giant Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) seemed to confirm our claims: SAIC reported some pockets of contamination along Lewiston Road that registered 100,000 counts per minute on a Geiger counter survey meter, or 4,000 times a reasonable definition of background level radiation. A spokeswoman for DEC recently acknowledged that levels as high as 140,000 counts per minute were discovered in the course of excavating the roadway.

Our opinion of the way the project was undertaken darkened when we learned that the city engineer who signed off on the project parameters, Ali Marzban, turned out not to be an engineer at all. (He has since left the city’s employ.) Our fears were exacerbated when the city handed the work to Man O’ Trees, a construction firm with no experience handling radiological waste. (Indeed, we received reports that Man O’ Trees was falling behind schedule almost from day one of the project, because the volume and activity level of the radioactive materials was much higher than city officials claimed to anticipate.)

The US military and government regulators have stringent rules about the cleanup and handling of radioactive materials such as those found in these Niagara Falls roadways. Why was the city not following those rules, at a bare minimum?

The initial answer to that question is simple: It’s because they would not acknowledge the nature and the volume of the material involved.

With the Lewiston Road project in apparent disarray, it’s tempting to write an I-told-you-so piece. After all, we’ve been doing what we can to chronicle Niagara County’s atomic legacy for 11 years, and warning about these road projects for three. But we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and an even hotter road to fry it on: Buffalo Avenue. SAIC’s study of Buffalo Avenue, where construction is slated to begin this spring, indicates radiation levels as high as 1,000,000 counts per minute. That’s 10 times as hot as Lewiston Road.

Discussions about levels of radiation and the dangers it poses quickly devolve into debates about systems of measurement, what is “natural” and what is “background,” what constitutes exposure, etc. It might therefore be useful to find a simpler context in which to judge the seriousness of the situation in Niagara Falls. The map on the right measures exposure rates to radiation in the Ukraine as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The areas in red measure up to 20 microroentgens per hour (20 mR/h). These are the exclusion zones, where people are not supposed to live or travel. The lower range, in blue, is seven micro- roentgens per hour mR/h.

In the mid-1970s, the federal government commissioned a company called Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc., (EG&G) to perform an aerial radiation survey conducted 300 feet above the roadways of Niagara County. The survey identified dozens of hotspots near the Whirlpool, around the golf course, along Lewiston Road and Buffalo Avenue, and elsewhere around the city. Some of these peaked at 86 microroentgens per hour (with other, higher rates expected on the Buffalo Avenue project). That level of contamination would seem consistent with that detected in subsequent surveys performed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratories and the recent surveys performed by SAIC.

We can all agree that Chernobyl is bad news. When will we take the contamination in Niagara County as seriously?
Submitted by Geoff Kelly, Louis Ricciuti & Stephanie Berberick

February 28, 2011

GOV. WALKER: ASSAULT ON LAW AND DEMOCRACY

REPRINTED FROM "THE BUFFALO BEAST: THIS IS AN ACCOUNT OF A PRANK CALL MADE BY THE EDITOR OF THE BUFFALO BEAST. EDITOR MURPHY CALLS GOV. WALKER OF WISCONSIN, PRETENDING TO BE DAVID KOCH, HIS BILLIONAIRE FINANCIAL BACKER. WALKER FALLS FOR THE RUSE AND DISCLOSES WHO HE REALLY IS, A WHORE OF BILLIONAIRES AND THE DESIRE TO CONTROL GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS IN WISCONSIN:

Koch Whore
Posted by Murphy On February - 23 - 2011
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker answers his master’s call

“David Koch”: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that—because we thought about that…

***

whores

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO WITNESS IS REAL. NO NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT. THERE ARE NO INNOCENT.
-MURPHY

***

“He’s just hard-lined—will not talk, will not communicate, will not return phone calls.”
-Wisconsin state Sen. Tim Carpenter (D) on Gov. Walker (source)

Carpenter’s quote made me wonder: who could get through to Gov. Walker? Well, what do we know about Walker and his proposed union-busting, no-bid budget? The obvious candidate was David Koch.

I first called at 11:30 am CST, and eventually got through to a young, male receptionist who, upon hearing the magic name Koch, immediately transferred me to Executive Assistant Governor Dorothy Moore.

“We’ve met before, Dorothy,” I nudged. “I really need to talk to Scott—Governor Walker.” She said that, yes, she thought she had met Koch, and that the name was “familiar.” But she insisted that Walker was detained in a meeting and couldn’t get away. She asked about the nature of my call. I balked, “I just needed to speak with the Governor. He knows what this is about,” I said. She told me to call back at noon, and she’d have a better idea of when he would be free.

I called at noon and was quickly transferred to Moore, who then transferred me to Walker’s Chief of Staff Keith Gilkes. He was “expecting my call.”

“David!” he said with an audible smile.

I politely said hello, not knowing how friendly Gilkes and Koch may be. He was eager to help. “I was really hoping to talk directly to Scott,” I said. He said that could be arranged and that I should just leave my number. I explained to Gilkes, “My goddamn maid, Maria, put my phone in the washer. I’d have her deported, but she works for next to nothing.” Gilkes found this amusing. “I’m calling from the VOID—with the VOID, or whatever it’s called. You know, the Snype!”

“Gotcha,” Gilkes said. “Let me check the schedule here…OK, there’s an opening at 2 o’clock Central Standard Time. Just call this same number and we’ll put you through.”

Could it really be that easy? Yes. What follows is a rushed, abridged transcript of my—I mean, David Koch’s conversation with Gov. Walker. Listen to the whole call here:



***

Walker: Hi; this is Scott Walker.

Koch: Scott! David Koch. How are you?

Walker: Hey, David! I’m good. And yourself?

Koch: I’m very well. I’m a little disheartened by the situation there, but, uh, what’s the latest?

Walker: Well, we’re actually hanging pretty tough. I mean—you know, amazingly there’s a much smaller group of protesters—almost all of whom are in from other states today. The State Assembly is taking the bill up—getting it all the way to the last point it can be at where it’s unamendable. But they’re waiting to pass it until the Senate’s—the Senate Democrats, excuse me, the assembly Democrats have about a hundred amendments they’re going through. The state Senate still has the 14 members missing but what they’re doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things members in the Democratic side care about. And each day we’re going to ratchet it up a little bit…. The Senate majority leader had a great plan he told about this morning—he told the Senate Democrats about and he’s going to announce it later today, and that is: The Senate organization committee is going to meet and pass a rule that says if you don’t show up for two consecutive days on a session day—in the state Senate, the Senate chief clerk—it’s a little procedural thing here, but—can actually have your payroll stopped from being automatically deducted—

Koch: Beautiful.

Walker: —into your checking account and instead—you still get a check, but the check has to be personally picked up and he’s instructing them—which we just loved—to lock them in their desk on the floor of the state Senate.

Koch: Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?

Walker: Ah, I—there’s one guy that’s actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he’s worked with us on other things, to tell him I wasn’t going to budge.

Koch: Goddamn right!

Walker: …his name is Tim Cullen—

Koch: All right, I’ll have to give that man a call.

Walker: Well, actually, in his case I wouldn’t call him and I’ll tell you why: he’s pretty reasonable but he’s not one of us…

Koch: Now who can we get to budge on this collective bargaining?

Walker: …I think the paycheck will have an impact…secondly, one of the things we’re looking at next…we’re still waiting on an opinion to see if the unions have been paying to put these guys up out of state. We think there’s at minimum an ethics violation if not an outright felony.

Koch: Well, they’re probably putting hobos in suits.

Walker: Yeah.

Koch: That’s what we do. Sometimes.

Walker: I mean paying for the senators to be put up. I know they’re paying for these guy—I mean, people can pay for protesters to come in and that’s not an ethics code, but, I mean, literally if the unions are paying the 14 senators—their food, their lodging, anything like that…[*** Important regarding his later acceptance of a Koch offer to “show him a good time.” ***]

[I was stunned. I am stunned. In the interest of expediting the release of this story, here are the juiciest bits:]

Walker: …I’ve got layoff notices ready…

Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. Gotta crush that union.

Walker: [bragging about how he doesn't budge]…I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly…legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum…so we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of them…

Koch: Bring a baseball bat. That’s what I’d do.

Walker: I have one in my office; you’d be happy with that. I have a slugger with my name on it.

Koch: Beautiful.

Walker: [union-bashing...]

Koch: Beautiful.

Walker: So this is ground zero, there’s no doubt about it. [Talks about a “great” NYT piece of “objective journalism.” Talks about how most private blue-collar workers have turned against public, unionized workers.]…So I went through and called a handful, a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about each day and said, “Everyone, we should get that story printed out and send it to anyone giving you grief.”

Koch: Goddamn right! We, uh, we sent, uh, Andrew Breitbart down there.

Walker:Yeah.

Koch: Yeah.

Walker: Good stuff.

Koch: He’s our man, you know.

Walker: [blah about his press conferences, attacking Obama, and all the great press he's getting.] Brian [Sadoval], the new Governor of Nevada, called me the last night he said—he was out in the Lincoln Day Circuit in the last two weekends and he was kidding me, he said, “Scott, don’t come to Nevada because I’d be afraid you beat me running for governor.” That’s all they want to talk about is what are you doing to help the governor of Wisconsin. I talk to Kasich every day—John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio. I think we could do the same thing with Vic Scott in Florida. I think, uh, Snyder—if he got a little more support—probably could do that in Michigan. You start going down the list there’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big.

Koch: You’re the first domino.

Walker: Yep. This is our moment.

Koch: Now what else could we do for you down there?

Walker: Well the biggest thing would be—and your guy on the ground [Americans For Prosperity president Tim Phillips] is probably seeing this [stuff about all the people protesting, and some of them flip him off].

[Abrupt end of first recording, and start of second.]

Walker: [Bullshit about doing the right thing and getting flipped off by “union bulls,” and the decreasing number of protesters. Or some such.]

Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.

Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this…[explains that planting troublemakers may not work.] My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that maybe the governor has to settle to solve all these problems…[something about '60s liberals.]…Let ‘em protest all they want…Sooner or later the media stops finding it interesting.

Koch: Well, not the liberal bastards on MSNBC.

Walker: Oh yeah, but who watches that? I went on “Morning Joe” this morning. I like it because I just like being combative with those guys, but, uh. You know they’re off the deep end.

Koch: Joe—Joe’s a good guy. He’s one of us.

Walker: Yeah, he’s all right. He was fair to me…[bashes NY Senator Chuck Schumer, who was also on the program.]

Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. You gotta love that Mika Brzezinski; she’s a real piece of ass.

Walker: Oh yeah. [story about when he hung out with human pig Jim Sensenbrenner at some D.C. function and he was sitting next to Brzezinski and her father, and their guest was David Axelrod. He introduced himself.]

Koch: That son of a bitch!

Walker: Yeah no kidding huh?…

Koch: Well, good; good. Good catching up with ya’.

Walker: This is an exciting time [blah, blah, blah, Super Bowl reference followed by an odd story of pulling out a picture of Ronald Reagan and explaining to his staff the plan to crush the union the same way Reagan fired the air traffic controllers]…that was the first crack in the Berlin Wall because the Communists then knew Reagan wasn’t a pushover. [Blah, blah, blah. He's exactly like Reagan. Won't shut up about how awesome he is.]

Koch: [Laughs] Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.

Walker: All right, that would be outstanding. [*** Ethical violation much? ***] Thanks for all the support…it’s all about getting our freedoms back…

Koch: Absolutely. And, you know, we have a little bit of a vested interest as well. [Laughs]

Walker: [Blah] Thanks a million!

Koch: Bye-bye!

Walker: Bye.

***

So there you have it, kids. Government isn’t for the people. It’s for the people with money. You want to be heard? Too fucking bad. You want to collectively bargain? You can’t afford a seat at the table. You may have built that table. But it’s not yours. It belongs to the Kochs and the oligarch class. It’s guarded by Republicans like Walker, and his Democratic counterparts across that ever-narrowing aisle that is corporate rule, so that the ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots can swallow all the power in the world. These are known knowns, and now we just know them a little more.

But money isn’t always power. The protesters in Cairo and Madison have taught us this—reminded us of this. They can’t buy a muzzle big enough to silence us all. Share the news. Do not retreat; ReTweet.

The revolution keeps spinning. Try not to get too dizzy.

***

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Diagnosing Division in America

I reprint an article by Bob Confer published in the Lockport paper. I could not respond to it on his website because my post was too long. So I re-post Bob's article here and respond to it.

Divided by design
From the 17 January 2011 Greater Niagara Newspapers

DIVIDED BY DESIGN
By Bob Confer

America has been split in twain by the Tucson shooting. Those who align with the Democrats insist on painting those who lean Republican as enemies of our nation, breeders of hate so pervasive that they are more responsible for the murder of 6 innocents – and the attempted assassination of Congresswomen Giffords – than its conspirator Jared Loughner ever could be. It has been a sickening roller coaster ride that showed the left displaying the vitriol that it claims to be against.

Lost in the ensuing back-and-forth was what mattered most, the lives taken and lives affected by the gunman. Political gamesmanship dominated what should have been a period of time that highlighted a nation in mourning yet one so proud of itself that it would not waver in its principles of being a government by, for, and accessible to the people.

It was grossly un-American.

Or was it?

This division is nothing new. This post-shooting hysteria is a perfect snapshot of what American politics has been and will ever be. We are a nation divided by the contrasts of 2 parties, the Republicans and Democrats.

That conflict, though, is only a mask. The parties, especially within the inner-workings of our outsized federal system, are more intertwined than we’ll ever know. Think of how easily war was "declared" by President Bush at the behest of Congress or how the Patriot Act passed with limited fireworks or how Congress so tamely allowed trillions in economic rescue during the recession or how body scanners magically appeared within days of the attempted Christmas underwear bombing.

We, as a people, were made to be divided on those and similar issues, yet the dominoes had already been set into play beforehand by the powers-that-be on both sides of the supposed aisle. Big stuff like that slips by hurriedly under the public fray. Instead, it's the minor issues or those that are long-term in transformation (hot button issues like public assistance, corporate welfare, abortion and guns) where the party leaders play the political football that keeps us captivated while making us oblivious to matters affecting our everyday lives.

To make things like that happen requires a careful manipulation of the masses, brainwashing if you will, through the modern press and our educational system. The shooting fall-out has shown that Americans who were taught so very little about government and civics in our schools are ill-equipped to discern right from wrong, good from bad, truth from fiction in the amalgamation of so-called news and commentary spewed from television sets, the radio and the internet. Case in point, last week, like lemmings millions – yes, millions - of Americans followed lock-step the utterly stupid belief that right-wingers were responsible for the mass murder, even though it was apparent Loughner is anything but a Conservative.

The political leaders have created a perfect subterfuge. As we bicker over who made who kill who, think of the absurd legislation that's been mothballed for years by the Republican and Democrat powerbrokers that's just been begging for an incident like this: Are they devising means to limit public access to Congress and the entire federal system? Are they looking for ways to regulate the way you are allowed to speak – and even think -- about elected officials and bureaucrats? Are they developing methods of controlling peaceable assembly? Are they conspiring over ways to spy on our internet activities?

The answer is “yes” to all of those questions because once Tucson’s dust has settled and we’re all licking our wounds from the ongoing hate game, Americans will be more than willing to abandon some of their rights and privileges to “make things better”.

That’s how the game works: Drain our emotions and energy by forcing us to expend them on one another and then we’ll lack the vitality to fight the system. Our voices are and will be lost in the din of a divide manufactured by a big government intent on advancing its own interests. We’re being played.
......................................

MY RESPONSE TO BOB'S ARTICLE:

Dear Roberto, this is what I’ve been trying to argue for 15 years or more. Thank you for this piece. Absolutely wonderfully to the point! As I put it: America is divided not along Democrat/Republican lines but along the lines of, on the one hand, a New Class, i.e., the Washington elite of power and money brokers who are a new social and political class and, on the other hand, the amorphous, homogenized mass of people, i.e., their “clients,” dubbed the Client Class. But as you say so well, they, the New Class, hide their unity behind division, crisis and fabricated foreign enemies. We are divided by wealth, education, values and ideology. They pretend that we are a unified mass democracy, which by the way is a contradiction in terms. We can never be “unified” at a mass level on the terms of and in terms of the present pseudo-federalist, corporate and centralist organization of America. The revolution consists of a renewal of authentic federalism, a return to community as the source and locus of all politics, not these so-called political parties. Party politics is dead, except as subterfuge and control of the political behavior and discourse of the masses. And of course a new American “Individual” must emerge in this return to Federalism, community and a reconfiguration of the people in terms of a new “social individual.” This a political cultural revolution we are seeing if we let go of the “old skins” and prepare for the new wine. What we are seeing is a re-politicization of America. It is unfortunate but possibly inevitable that the wake-up call must be announced by a deeply disturbed individual, namely, Jared Lee Loughner. But I contend he is a congealed, symptomatic reflection of what we are as a whole. We are sick in our political hearts, desperate and in need of radically new direction. This is what all this gun toting is about: symbolism of a “radical” violent break with the past. But it need not be done with guns and more killing. It is done simply by returning to community, come home from the wars and military bases in foreign lands, around 800 of them, and build your life in community. Ye who are weary come home, come home. Withdraw the “blood supply” from Washington and watch it wither like the big, malignant cancerous tumor that it is.

In Defense of Democracy Against Bloomberg's Apologetics

Let’s face it. Most of the Islamic world is not interested in democracy. The Muslims interested in colonizing Ground Zero with an extravagant mosque are apparently interested in the kind of “useful” democracy that gets them what they think their money can buy.

At least they are not interested in the kind of democracy I and Jefferson are interested in.

To follow up on the Bloombergian assault on authentic, organic, peoples’ democracy, we must respond to this billionaire plutocrats’ recent ass-kissing event at the annual Ramadan Iftar dinner at the Gracie Mansion residence.

Bloomberg pontificated, as reported by Huffington Post:
“But if we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.

We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam.

Islam did not attack the World Trade Center -- Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American. Today we are not at war with Islam -- we are at war with Al-Qaeda and other extremists who hate freedom.”

Bloomberg is so out of touch with reality he seems to have forgotten that our knee-jerk response was not to “fight terror with freedom” but with the US Marines invading Iraq. Oddly, now it seems all those soldiers who died in Iraq were fighting for religious freedom. It’s not now convenient to continue to claim they died fighting for democracy.

Now Bloomberg directly attacks his “countrymen.” Bloomberg ‘worries’ about whether terrorists think America is at war with Islam. He ought to be worrying how the American political class is at war with America. The billionaire crowd doesn’t have to worry about terrorists. They have to worry about both the middle class and the growing class of unemployed, demoralized and disenfranchised Americans.

Bloomberg and his ilk would worry about the the ‘third-worldization’ of America except that they really don’t care. Their interest is in destroying the working class, unions and any semblance of a people’s democracy. They want cheap labor, obsessive consumers and easily accessible cannon fodder for their wars of empire. Otherwise they just want you and me to shut up and get in line at the unemployment office. Or, see your local recruiter. I’m sure we will need more cannon fodder soon in Afghanistan.

Bloomberg fails to see that terrorists already do believe America is at war with Islam. We could turn the Whitehouse over to the Cordoba crowd and the terrorists would still believe we are at war with Islam.

The soldiers fallen in Iraq and now Afghanistan presumably were there primarily fighting for democracy. They weren’t fighting for religious freedom in those countries. As far as the Iraqi and Afghani peoples were concerned they had religious freedom. In fact they, for the most part, believe our kind of “democracy,” Liberal Democratic empire building “democracy,” is a threat to their religious-cultural practices. Except for the wealthy Muslims in America who are a part of the international New Political Class, American culture in general is considered a threat to Islamic culture.

Bloomberg seems to be accusing his fellow countrymen of hating freedom. He forgets that the democracy that these anti-Mosque protesters are practicing and defending is the basis for religious freedom.

Bloomberg continues:
"I know that many in this room are disturbed and dispirited by the debate. But it is worth keeping some perspective on the matter. The first colonial settlers came to these shores seeking religious liberty and the founding fathers wrote a constitution that guaranteed it. They made sure that in this country the government would not be permitted to choose between religions or favor one over another."

Why, pray tell,should the people “in this room [be] disturbed and dispirited by the debate.” I’ll tell you why? Because they, including Bloomberg, don’t get and don’t respect the virtual sacredness of democracy. That’s why democratic debate disturbs and dispirits them.

And by the way, the settlers that Bloomberg refers to ran from monarchy first of all. If they had had a democracy they could have practiced their religion. The founding fathers in a democratic process wrote the Constitution that “guarantees” religious freedom. But religious freedom doesn’t mean legal and political license to do whatever the hell you want to do and you think your wealth gives you the right to do.

I wonder if it’s true that as wealth and power increase, IQ and human empathy, not to mention compassion, decrease. Bloomberg is evidence for the thesis.

A MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO: Abstract universal rights and tolerance vs the core American value of a Community’s Right to Democratic Self-determination

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have finally spoken a few words of wisdom. She asserted that “any controversy surrounding the proposed mosque at Ground Zero should be regarded as a local issue.”

If you follow my writings, it will be no surprise that I concur wholeheartedly.

This is not to deny that there are national feelings regarding the issue. Obviously, there are. These should be taken into serious consideration. But given that the usual suspects are espousing the primacy of “universal human rights,” religious rights and pure tolerance over and above the primacy of community, local autonomy and the right to democratic self-determination, I must agree with Pelosi. The decision is to do “what is right” with the interests of the community as primary. The integrity of community is the root and core of American spiritual identity.

For me, solving this issue is not simply a way to defuse the matter and prevent a national religious conflict as it is undoubtedly for Obama & Co. It is a way to assert the primacy of democracy. The present dilemma points to the impotence of big, centralized government and professional politicians in solving most of the nation’s ills. The country is too big and too diverse for the managerial Liberals to administer one-dimensional bureaucratic-legalistic solutions to issues of communal, ethical and political import.

The Liberal apologists for the mass nation-state, both Republican and Democrat needless to say, want to preserve the “unity” which is really based on a national somnambulism and false value system by asserting not only “rights” but also Law and the US Constitution as the criterion for a solution. Bloomberg and Obama “have both expressed support for the right of developers to construct the religious center near where the World Trade Center stood.” Note they said “developers” and not the putative Muslim religious “community.”

Obama said explicitly, "As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country."... "That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances…..This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable." Obama continued, as reported in the Huffington Post, that although Ground Zero is “hallowed ground” the “proper way to honor it was to apply American values and our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect towards those who are different from us – and that way of life, that quintessentially American creed, stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.”

Obama, however, diminishes the value of this "hallowed ground" by failing to see that Ground Zero is a sacred site, for Americans in general and New Yorkers in particular, whose spiritual value is at least as great as the Muslim interest in their Mosque. A looming Muslim mosque throws a shadow on that hallowed ground. If it were possible to always separate the authentic Muslims from the terrorists it might be different. If it were possible to take all people at their word, it might be different. But that is not the case in an age of absolute warfare in the form of terrorism.

Again according to Huffington Post reporting, and along lines similar to that taken by Obama, “NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent who has been a strong supporter of the mosque, welcomed Obama’s words as a “clarion defense of the freedom of religion.” Bloomberg had the temerity to reduce the outcry of the people to mere "popular sentiment." Such popular sentiment he forgets is the lifeblood of democracy. Sentiment is not mere 'sentimentality.' It is felt value of that which is sacred, constitutive of identity and worth dying for.

Entering the highly charged election-year debate, Obama surely knew that his words would not only make headlines but be heard by Muslims worldwide. The president has made it a point to reach out to the global Muslim community and ambassadors and officials from numerous Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.“ It seems Obama, coloring this controversy as an indisputable and incontrovertible 'religious freedom' issue, has failed to take into account the value of the democracy for which thousands of American soldiers are dying.

The gist of this pro-Mosque rhetoric is summed up by Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee when said that even if the mosque is built America will not come to an end. Dean called for a compromise without really being remotely clear what that looked like. Yet the clue to his real interest is in this “so what” attitude. Dean like Obama and the big business barons are interested only in “American unity” meaning American quietism, passive acceptance of centralist rule from Washington, the belief in the big stick of “universal human rights” and the resolutional power of “pure tolerance.” For what purpose: stable business conditions for globalist development.

The fact is, however, America is not unified, should not be unified and has not entered into a golden era of harmonious post-partisanism, any more than its revolutionary history has come to an end despite the ideological writings of such as Francis Fukuyama. The centralist Liberals(neo-Liberals,managerial Liberals) are interested in one thing primarily: American unity. But what this means is not any real diversified unity based especially in vibrant robust organic communities where true social individuality may be spawned. Obama’s abstract, lock-step “unity” is the homogenized unity of the mass nation-state where citizens are self-alienated individuals being stripped of cultural and political substance of their own making. They are being denied educationally the intellectual substance and voice which would render their opinions as important and incisive as those of Obama, Bloomberg , Dean and the rest of the super-community of New Class political professionals.

Washington's Liberal Democratic “freedom” is the kind that imposes any and every condition that furthers the economic and political interests of big money, governmental power and corporatism while strangling the freedom of democratic choice. Obama's freedom excludes the concrete freedom of cultural self-determination and democratic choice, that is, the political freedom which is the real “American Creed” and “core value” that make America what it is historically and in principal--not to mention theoretically from the standpoint of the “neo-populist Federalism” which I have been advocating in this blog journal.

Obama’s “unity” imposes an abstract equality upon our citizens and peoples in the interest of leveling out the real, concrete differences that are the source and cause of the populist politics that are surfacing as we speak and may yet help save our democracy, community and authentic federalism in America. Liberal Democratic equality really means that no one has the right to determine values that are primary, exclusive and self-determinative. Liberal equality legally forces the tolerance of any value or way of life no matter how much it compromises our way of life and no matter whether we democratically reject that way of life and other values.

Let the people of New York City decide this issue. And this does not mean, as Bloomberg pontificates, “the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.” Bloomberg accentuates his position finally with: “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.” However, if such religious freedom displaces and devalues democracy, then we are setting are self up for a kind of superiority of religious relativism which law and the military will not in the end be able to control.

Yes, so when, the ideology of constitutional or universal human “rights” and “freedom” doesn’t work, clobber the people with “laws” of private property, suspect ‘local laws and ordinances’ and bring in the bureaucrats, lawyers and local sell-outs who want to profit from the “Muslim community” trucking in millions of dollars to NYC.

No, there must be a referendum on this issue and let the people speak. Yes, let’s debate the issue and let’s let democracy prevail. But let the people’s democracy decide, not the bought-and-paid-for institutionalized government that serves the interests of big business. Let the people work out this dangerously sticky issue of cultural, religious and political conflict as truly American political practice would have it. If not, what’s next, sending it to the Supreme Court? That would be the most ridiculous of political fiascos, not to mention power plays that the bureaucratic centralist elitists might pull off since sending the Florida results of the Bush-Gore election to the Supreme Court for final “decision.”

No let’s not let the people speak. Let us unequivocally demand that the people speak, debate, think, criticize and act according to their popular will and purpose. Yes, the people could be wrong. But why should we think the professional politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats and technocrats cannot be wrong. This issue is not a matter of scientific, legal or managerial specialization that the “experts” can objectively resolve. This matter is precisely a question of values, feelings, purposes of community sanctity and real political/democratic choice. This matter is preeminently about the “sentiments” that Bloomberg derides and ridicules in his dry, smug dismissal of the voice and community integrity of the people.

Nationally, let us let all communities independently decide how they wish to live their lives, what values are paramount within different communities and who stands authentically for the future of the American polity. Let us not be trumped by legalist trickery, the power of globalist interests and manipulations of mass communications attempting to shape a “unified” consciousness of a slavishly “useful America,” an America whose citizens impotently succumb to group-think and are willing to accept the selling out of America, the fighting of meaningless wars and the demagoguery of a self-serving political class whose “values” are tucked away in secret Swiss bank accounts alongside their Muslim New Class compatriots.

FOUR VIGNETTES: Cultural Psychology at Work

• It’s not news that the corporate leviathan now has its sights firmly fixed on consciousness itself. It’s your consciousness that the monster is selling you. It “helps” direct and fix it firmly, usually with considerable emotion, to the commodity of your choice. Or should I say the ‘fantasy’ of your choice. Your attention becomes convincingly fixed on the thing that gives your mind an imagined context within which to continue to feel comfortable, entertained and, of course, wholly oblivious. Witness the house around the corner from mine: a shrine to the Buffalo Sabres. Flags, posters, signs, altars with figurines, logos, hockey sticks. And it’s all outside in the yard and on the porch. They want everyone to see it, feel it, know it and hopefully join in the fun, the passion… the oblivion. ………………….

• Mayor Bloomberg of NYC would have your “opinion” reduced to “popular sentiment.” In the recent melee over whether a Muslim mosque should be permitted to be built within spitting distance of “ground zero” Bloomberg handily dismissed the public outcry as “popular sentiment.” So in one fell swoop Bloomberg would denigrate the very foundation of democracy and dismiss it as emotionality, affected impulse or the thoughtless, biased ranting of “the people.” Although the “public sphere and space” continues to be retaken by the people over and over again throughout the country and world, plutocrats such as Bloomberg will use their ubiquity in the media to disparage and denigrate the roots and lifeblood of democracy—the people expressing their opinions and discussing the merits thereof. But for the likes of Bloomberg, the peoples’ opinions have no merit. They are mere sentiment. The people are sentimental, too emotional and not to be taken seriously. Yes, they may be humored, fooled, manipulated and used. But having no substance, no meaningful nor valuable force other than the irrational explosiveness which must be contained, sublimated and/or re-interpreted such that their historical roots and political power may be diffused if not annihilated. …………………

• Why is it that Bruce Fisher, in his otherwise excellent cover story for ARTVOICE[July 29-Aug. 4] entitled “Fishing for Salvation,” gives Ralph Wilson a pass on receiving public funds for a private enterprise. Fisher claims the Bills are a “unique public enterprise”! Does that go for the equally large number of taxpayers who could find no way to care less about the Bills, football, crazed fans and a brutal sporting event. And will it still remain so unique when the Bills inevitably leave town for more profitable parts? And did the people ever get any part of those profits in this unique public enterprise. It’s quite fascinating how objective judgment and an interest in law and justice quickly fade into shoddy thinking and effectively ideological rationalization, when our addictive dependence upon “the corporation” for our culture and “entertainment is faced with the prospect of going it alone without Big Daddy to provide us with spectacle and the monster athletes to give us an identity and sense of belonging if not purposefulness. What, pray tell, ever happened to the love of the game as the game? Why do we need professional, over grown specialists in athletic mayhem to allow us to enjoy ourselves? Wouldn’t local clubs of authentic sport enthusiasts be as interesting as multi-million dollar adolescents squeezing out every buck they can from this unnecessary business? Go Bills! Go somewhere else and let us return to genuine community! …………………….

• The proliferation of stand-up comedy over the last few decades in America—not to mention the plethora of not-funny Hollywood movies—testifies to our need for comic relief. At its best such stand-up is high art and a truth-teller of great proportions. But the misuse of laughter is another matter. I recently heard a retired woman on NPR telling her story of living on an unlivable Social Security Income. Her sad if not pathetic saga was frequently punctuated with “pleasant” laughter, accepting if not resigned laughter. It wasn’t forced and yet it wasn’t genuinely spontaneous, from the gut. It was the effete, exhausted, demoralized affective punctuations of a defeated being. Along a similar vein on “60 Minutes” I saw a story about a squad of Marines given the hopeless and thankless task of establishing an outpost in one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan. The soldiers filmed their project. The post was to be near a small village where the young men were suspected of being at least Taliban sympathizers. The Taliban militias had a documented, established presence in the area. On the video the soldiers “joked” about having to build a post—not only with insufficient materials and supplies—but in hostile territory surrounded by mountains, the high ground of which was every insurgents wet dream. The soldiers were clearly scared but “joking” about how as they spoke there were hostiles watching them waiting for their moment to strike—and it would be soon. All of the soldiers’ commentary were expressed as if there situation were “funny.” It wasn’t. Within hours of the filming the Taliban attacked and wiped out most of the squad. Not so funny. The father of one of the dead soldiers had received messages from his son regarding their “suicide mission.” He wasn’t laughing. The point of this is that the soldiers who were in a hopelessly dehumanized situation, which of course they kept themselves in, discussed it in the mode of supposed humor. They joked, laughed, found it strangely, darkly funny. What else could they do? And what else could the woman on social security do besides laugh. Her situation was as lethal as the soldiers. But all they could do was laugh and joke. There was no truth in this humor—unless of course we see it for what it is: a desperate plea for help to do it differently, to find a way to take control of our lives—in short to find a way to again be political beings. As every good comedian knows not everything is funny, not everything should be laughed off.

The Pseudo-politics of Character Assassination and Disinformation Drones On at Niagara Times

Today over at Niagara Times blog, good ol’ Hobbes, blog administrator and editorialist extraordinaire, paid me the dubious honor of being the exclusive subject of his day’s labor. He begins by rationalizing why he censored me from his web site. Poor ol’ Hobbes, whomever he/she/it/that may be, seems a tad bit defensive. Hobbes’ claim that I was never able “to articulate [my] thoughts into a clear, concise manner” really means I refused to think in the very small box within which his mind moves. My words were “white noise” to him because he wasn’t capable of thinking through a single new political idea. He Hobbes detests authentic democratic discourse. It’s not good for business.

Then the most gross distortions, misrepresentations and misreadings begin. Well, actually they begin in the title of his post, “Castellani Compares Hobbes to Hitler, Christ.” I did no such thing. What I did do was draw two analogies. The first compared the NCCC Administration’s attempts to destroy the Faculty Association while dragging the integrity of the college down with it, to Hitler’s attempt to destroy the Jews despite its ill effects on his beloved Fatherland. The second suggested that Hobbes moralistic, pseudo-political diatribes present himself as the sinless savior of Niagara County while he portrays almost everyone else as traitors to the cause. He is light years from Jesus and obviously closer to Judas if not Hitler in his betrayal of public democratic dialogue not to mention the pursuit of truth.
If you are curious why Hobbes lists a slew of my sentences in his blog, wonder no further. It’s to make sure that you don’t read my piece entitled, “Niagara Times Politico and County Bureaucrats Assault Education at NCCC”[Thursday, July 15, 2010]. He loves to take arguments out of context and put them to his own use as they do on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and that ilk.

If Hobbes were serious about “reigning in exorbitant, taxpayer- subsidized salaries” he would spend a little time criticizing the exorbitant salaries of the Administrators at NCCC starting with Dr. Klyczek. He would also criticize the use of millions in tax monies to subsidize business in Niagara County. But for Hobbes it’s socialism for the capitalists and capitalism for the poor.

Hobbes doesn’t criticize those who support the politics of his social class. He only criticizes those who wish to restore equity to a Liberal Democracy in severe political, economic, social and ecological crisis. He criticizes anyone whose political ideas go beyond trying to win tax breaks for business and eliminate any regulation of the same.

What becomes clear to me now, however, is that Hobbes probably censored me for one of two reasons. Firstly, it could be that he just can’t stand critical, creative political thought or, secondly, he just can’t read. He misunderstood two of my analogies and totally distorted the context of my argument and the issues at hand. But maybe he doesn’t do that intentionally or self-consciously. Maybe he just doesn’t read well. And if he doesn’t read well, just what kind of thinking could one expect from the ol’ Republican hit man.

Whichever it is, it doesn’t bode well for Hobbes. He’s either an elitist, authoritarian party-politics power mongerer or he’s kind of illiterate.
So please read Hobbes’ character assassination piece on me but then, please, also read my article. Then let’s collect some tuition money and send Hobbes back to school.

If democracy stands any chance to establish an authentic discourse of the people in a legitimate public sphere, the demagogic witch hunting of the likes of Hobbes, the lunatic fringe right wing in this country and the Neo-conservative and even moderate Republican elitists can’t be permitted to go unchallenged.

Lastly, we need to note one tactic that the rich and powerful use repeatedly against the poor, public servants and unions. The tactic is to manipulate anyone who believes they deserve better than the capitalist types are willing to let them have, or have the opportunity to achieve, into comparing themselves with the poorest. The psychological intent is to make you feel guilty and ashamed that you believe you deserve better. It’s pseudo-Christian elevation of the humble and self-sacrificing to which he tries to get you to emulate and thus accept whatever the “bosses” want to give you, usually the crumbs off their table.

Such moralism doesn’t work, at least not with me. Hobbes’ type of demagoguery wants to dumb you down, humiliate you and impoverish the will to self-determination. Hobbes is a Stalinist at heart. He’s dangerous and a light should be kept on his efforts to turn the public sphere into a realm of political violence, obstruction and obscuration.

Niagara Times Politico and County Bureaucrats Assault Education at NCCC

The demagogic pseudo-political hitman over at the Niagara Times blogspot who calls himself “Hobbes,” is once again finding an excuse to assault the integrity of the NCCC Faculty Association. The issue is a shortfall in operational funds due to NYS cutbacks. The issue is not the pending contract for the faculty. The Faculty Association is not holding up funding by the county. The Association is not the problem in the negotiations with the college Administration. The problem is an administration that continues to insult and assault the faculty and the community by breaking the Taylor Law, lying about negotiations and doing its best to divide and conquer the faculty in order to destroy the Association, if not the very right to "associate." The truth of the matter is that the Administration does not really even believe in the right to associate and legally defend one’s own interests. While the Administration and its Board of Trustees supporters attack the faculty endlessly and mercilessly, they fail to see they are destroying the atmosphere of healthy learning at the college and the morale of all who work at the college.

The faculty has bent over backwards to accommodate the Administration but the Administration doesn’t really wish to settle. They aim to take over control of educational functions from the faculty in the name of saving money. The administration does not care about the quality of education let alone conditions for quality education. If the Board of Trustees was not behind the “union-busting” tactics of Klyczek and Co., they would have intervened four years ago and settled.

It is the Administration and the Board of Trustees who waste the County’s money paying expensive lawyers to stonewall every attempt by the faculty association to reach reasonable agreement. It is a hapless legislature that continually acts to throw the baby out with the bathwater and otherwise is usually penny wise and pound foolish. NCCC is the best economic asset in Niagara County. It’s the best available first two years of college education in Western NY.

When these ignoramuses will ever learn to stop playing self-destructive politics, it is hard to tell. Probably never. Hobbes continues his rabid, toxic and violent disinformation by, for example, making it appear that the only issue separating the Association and the Administration is the faculty’s wish to hang onto “cosmetic plastic surgery.” This is so ludicrous it's almost embarrassing. Most if not all of the faculty have no problem dropping this “benefit.” Hobbes, however, wants to make it look like the faculty has the top of the line health care package. We don’t even have dental care. The Faculty Association agreed to a health package over a year ago that would have saved the County over a million dollars and the Administration refused. They must think if they reduce the Faculty to a minimal wage and an inadequate health care package that they will save the County more in the long run. What else can explain their deceptive practices and otherwise irrational negotiation tactics. They have an ulterior motive and they aim to carry it out even if the County goes bankrupt doing it. This is kind of like Hitler wanting to kill the Jews and extend his war to the entire world even though he would inevitably destroy Germany while trying to do it.

Hobbes seems to be insulted by the faculty Newsletter. Yes, free speech does insult Hobbes. That’s why he denied me free speech on his blog. He’s afraid of honest, open, public dialogue in which everyone declares who they are and we all know who’s talking. We don’t know who Hobbes is but we know who he speaks for. And it’s not for the people. Justice doesn’t seen to apply to the faculty, only to Hobbes' business and political friends. Hobbes belittles the faculty’s attempt to fight for what is just for itself. He says we are “insulting to every group in history who has actually had to fight injustice.” For his information we fight for justice and against injustice everyday in the classroom while he's at home making up lies in order to win more political power for Niagara County Republicans and the rich business crowd.

Hobbes wants you to think we are taking food out of the mouths of the poor. How about those tax breaks for all your business friends like the illegal multi- million dollar give away to the coal burning plant. Hobbes is paid by the Republican Party in Niagara County not only to gain political and economic control for his big business friends but also to suppress every possibility of true democracy and meaningful quality education. Hobbes has already written about what he thinks the community college is good for: job training to supply ready-made laborers for all his business buddies. As far as critical literacy and political knowledge for these same people, he could care less. The more ignorant the people are the more his type can control them and pay them slave wages.

Everyone wants a good education and good teachers. But they don’t want to pay for it. I was working my way through graduate school to earn a Ph.D. for many years making nothing except survival stipends. I deserve everything I make and more. Hobbes and his ilk could care less about the people unless his big business friends can use them to make more money.

Klyczek and Co.. ought to spend more time working on quality education at NCCC rather than wasting untold hours trying to build more buildings and figure out ways to divide and pit the faculty against themselves in hopes of destroying our right to associate. Such elitist administrative bureaucrats and their henchman such as Hobbes, who fears to show his face in public, are the death knell for Niagara County, the community college and the public sphere. We need to start worrying about something more than "money" if we are going to put Niagara County and WNY back on a strong political and economic footing. The basis of such power is an educated and autonomous public. Hobbes would take that away from us.

The only “greed” in Niagara County is the greed on the part of the likes of Hobbes and selfish business people who are greedy for power, the control of knowledge and information. They are greedy to continue to carry out their plan to reduce democratic practices to the blathering of professional politicians who could care less about “the people.” They are greedy to obey only those laws that benefit their elitist social class and the administrative bureaucrats who carry out their dirty work in stopping what really benefits the people.

Yes, let’s make what’s really happening at NCCC public. Not Hobbes' vicious distortion of facts and truth, nor his selective dissemination of slanted “facts” that make him and his buddies look like Jesus Christ while making everyone else look like Judas. These tactics should be transparent to anyone with any brains whatsoever. Let’s make public how the administration get’s egregiously large pay increases and the faculty is denigrated and maligned for wanting a 3% increase. How about the 30% increase of Klyczek who is pushing his way toward the $200,000 a year club. The rest of the administration whose size, by the way, continues to grow disproportionate to their usefulness and our need for them, are also receiving excessive pay increases. Why favor the administration? Because then there are more bureaucrats to try to control the freedom and will of the faculty to truly educate and do what’s right for the students.

Niagara County is on the brink of losing more than a few dollars to pay the faculty a fair wage. It is on the brink of succumbing to the authoritarian anti-democratic elitists who are turning education and the public sphere into the private property of the rich and powerful and their bureaucratic hitmen, deceitful lawyers and professional politicans who have no respect for the law.

Pay those people who still care about truth and justice in Niagara County a fair wage and stop playing venomous "politics" with the future of education in Niagara County.