Room for a View > Briefs
by Todd Paul and Lorna Tychostup

Benediction

Rabbi Bill Strongin holds a graduate degree from Harvard University and was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He has been the spiritual leader of the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz for the past eighteen years, and a member of the SUNY New Paltz faculty for the past fourteen years. Rabbi Bill Strongin holds a graduate degree from Harvard University and was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He has been the spiritual leader of the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz for the past eighteen years, and a member of the SUNY New Paltz faculty for the past fourteen years.

The world is a mess.
Are you ready to fix it?

There is a small piece of real estate bounded by the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River that is currently tearing itself to pieces. This land is sacred to millions upon millions. In this holy land men, women and children kill one another. In the city ironically called the "City of Peace" there is no peace.

To my mind, even more horrible, even more agonizing than the bloodshed is the destruction of the natural kinship of these people of a common God.

A conflict that is essentially a conflict of politics and territory is becoming more and more each day, in the hearts of the combatants and in the eyes of we who witness the carnage, a conflict of religion. And the kinship that ought to exist among these children of a common God is thus poisoned. The vast and profound similarities among these faithful is smothered, to be replaced by a catalogue of differences, more and more microscopic in its perspective as greater and greater separation is desired, and all at the expense of honesty.

Are you the victims of these lies, or can you see beh ind and beneath them? Do you too assume that the wrath and rage and violence that exists is an inevitable outcome of religious difference? Or can you discern between the mood of the day and eternal truth?

For this bloodshed is not the inevitable, it is a hideous aberration from the norm. The norm is fellowship, the norm is celebration of diversity in the midst of fundamental unity.

Can you fix this world? Will you work to restore the norm, to see past the horrors of the day into the beauty of the hope of ages? Will you remember that we are kin or will you too fall into the trap of rhetoric?

Join with the good people who see in our common love of God a common bond and not a claim to exclusivity or chauvinism. Join with the far-sighted who see beyond the present turmoil to the promised land wherein each person shall lie under vine and fig tree and be unafraid.
Become an ally of the Eternal One; use the knowledge and the wisdom that you have gleaned from your studies here to overcome hatred and bigotry. Use the skills that you have developed here to come to conclusions slowly and with deep consideration, and not by rushing and jumping. Grab hold of God's extended arm and wage peace.

May we go forth strong for justice, a friend to hope and an enemy to rhetoric and bias, champions of truth and supporters of God's aim to make all people brothers and sisters.

Digging for Dollars

Last month, the General Mining Law signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant quietly celebrated its 130th birthday. Designed to encourage settlement of the western frontier by pick and shovel prospectors, the 1872 law has never been updated. It allows any person who discovers a "valuable mineral deposit" on public lands to file a mining claim at a cost of $100 per year, and purchase, or "patent", the land at a cost of $5 per acre or less. Thereafter, the miner may extract gold, copper, zinc, lead, silver, and other non-fuel minerals for free. No royalty is charged for the value of the minerals mined, and the prospector has the right to mine the land regardless of its other value.
Critics of the law say it amounts to corporate welfare for mining companies, and has wreaked environmental disaster on millions of acres of public land, in return for which the public receives practically no benefit.

For example, in 1990 the American Barrick Resources' Goldstrike Mine in Nevada produced about 500,000 ounces of gold, with a market value of $174 million, according to the National Resources Defense Council. For its patent on that land, Barrick paid the federal government $9,765. The total value of the gold expected to be produced at the mine is $10 billion. The mine pit is 8,000 feet long, 4,500 feet wide and 1,800 feet deep, and will disturb an estimated 2,189 acres (twice the size of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park). More than 900 million tons of rock and ore will be excavated-a pile more than 100 times the size of the Great Pyramid.

About 432 million acres of federal land is currently subject to the Mining Law of 1872. There are about 350,000 mining claims on US public land, according to the Department of the Interior, of which more than 730 patented claims totaling 21,000 acres are located in national parks.
No environmental standards or reclamation provisions are included in the law. According to the New York Times, "The Mineral Policy Center...calculates the damage from this antiquated law at 500,000 abandoned mine sites (some are big and toxic enough to qualify as federal Superfund sites), 10,000 miles of dead streams, and 50 billion tons of contaminated waste. The cleanup costs are estimated at a minimum of $35 billion."

A bill now in Congress would reform the General Mining Law. It is being sponsored by Representative Nick Rahall II (D) of West Virginia and Christopher Shays (R) of Connecticut. For more information, visit their websites at www.house.gov/rahall/ and www.house.gov/shays. At press time, Shays had a statement on mining law reform on the top page of his site. A full and summary view of the reform bill are also available at Shays' site. —Todd Paul

New Nuke Jitters

In April, 2001, Chronogram published an article on the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester, which was in the process of being bought by Entergy, one of the nation's largest nuclear power producers. At the time, Indian Point 2 had the dubious distinction of being the only reactor in the country ever to earn a red safety rating from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The plant was reeling from a series of accidents and shutdowns, and concerned citizens groups were calling for it to be decommissioned.

Those calls have redoubled in the wake of an upstate New York earthquake (the Indian Point plant sits on the Ramapo fault line) and the September 11 attacks, which demonstrated how vulnerable large buildings are to attack by airplane.

In April of this year, Fox News reporter Douglas Kennedy spent 20 minutes flying over the Indian Point plant in a rented Cessna. He had his pilot make three long passes directly over the reactor domes at 2,000 feet (over which the two hijacked airliners also passed on September 11, on their way to the World Trade Center). No inquiry was made as to why a plane was buzzing a nuke plant located 33 miles north of Times Square.

According to the Washington Post, which is owned by Fox, Steve Floyd, of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, told Kennedy that a small plane couldn't cause significant damage to the plant because it couldn't penetrate the 12 to 15 feet of concrete and steel that protects the radioactive fuel in the reactor.

But a large plane might. According to an NRC report, 50 percent of the commercial airplanes flying today would penetrate five feet of concrete 45 percent of the time.

And anti-nuke activists say a terrorist could target the plant's spent fuel pool instead. A pool fire could be more devastating than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which killed an estimated 8,000 people.
Whether the target of terrorism or simple mismanagement, a leaking plant is lethal. Indian Point is within a 50-mile radius of 8 percent of the population of the US, including much of Ulster and Dutchess counties. And many towns near Indian Point worry that the plant's evacuation plans wouldn't be able to clear the area in time.

That's why many municipalities have passed resolutions requesting that the plant be shut down until a full review of its vulnerability, safety systems, and evacuation measures can be conducted. The list includes Bedford, Croton-on-Hudson, Greenburgh, Hastings-on-Hudson, Irvington, North Castle, North Salem, Pound Ridge, and Putnam County. Many members of Congress have also signed shut-down petitions.
For more information, or to contact your representative. Or take up the matter with your municipal representatives. —Todd Paul

www.closeindianpoint.org

A Funny: Castro Calls for Democracy in US

The following press release appeared on the Illinois Prairie Greens mailing list on Sunday, May 19:

HAVANA (Associated Poets)-Despite the pleadings of Governor Ryan of Illinois and representatives of the huge American agribusiness cartels, Fidel Castro of Cuba refused today to resume trade with the United States unless George Bush releases political prisoners, conducts independently monitored elections, and accepts a list of tough conditions for "new governments in Washington-and Florida-that are fully democratic." He did however agree to offer political asylum to Gov. Ryan.

Castro said the United States' legacy of freedom "has been insulted by a despot who uses police methods to enforce a bankrupt vision, under the name of a 'War on Terrorism.' That legacy has been debased by a relic from another era who, with this secret police chief Ashcroft, has turned their beautiful nation into a prison."

"Without political reform, without economic reform, trade with the US will merely enrich George Bush and his cronies-including his family and the so-called 'Carlyle Group,'" he said Monday. "It will not help the American people."

To win his approval of easing restrictions, Castro said the US must:

· Allow opposition parties, such as the Greens, access to the ballot.

· Allow independent trade unions.

· Free all political prisoners, notably those the US holds in Cuba, at Guantanamo Bay.

· Allow human rights organizations to visit the US to ensure that the conditions for free elections are being created, especially in the upcoming Florida elections.

· Allow outside observers to monitor 2004 elections.

· End discriminatory practices against US workers (recently described in detail by Barbara Ehrenreich in her book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America).

"Full normalization of relations with the US, diplomatic recognition, open trade and a robust aid program will only be possible when the US has a new government that is fully democratic, when the rule of law is respected and when the human rights of all Americans are fully protected," Castro said. He voiced support for a referendum in the US asking voters whether they favor civil liberties, including freedom of speech and assembly, and amnesty for political prisoners.

Conspiracy Theory Department

According to recent articles from sources as diverse as the Memphis Flyer of Tennessee and the Globe and Mail of Canada, a number of the world's top microbiologists died in the months following September 11 under mysterious circumstances. All had been experts on biological warfare and/or were studying means of limiting the damage caused by a biological attack.

On October 4, 2001, a Siberian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, Siberia, was shot down over the Black Sea by an "errant" Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, killing everyone on board. Many in Israel believe the flight carried four or five microbiologists headed to work in one of the 50-plus scientific laboratories in Novosibirsk. Just before the Black Sea crash, Israeli journalists were claiming that two Israeli microbiologists had been murdered by terrorists.

On November 12, Benito Que, 52, an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School, was found unconscious on the street near his laboratory. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten by muggers, though he wasn't bruised. His death was attributed to a heart attack or stroke. On November 16, Dr. Don C. Wiley, a prominent Harvard-based microbiologist rumored to be headed toward a Nobel Prize, disappeared following a banquet he had attended in Memphis. His rented white Mitsubishi Galant was found abandoned with a full tank of gas and the keys in the ignition, pointed west on the Hernando DeSoto bridge into Arkansas. He was an expert in the body's response to infectious diseases and was investigating AIDS, ebola, influenza, and other serious diseases. He had just bought tickets to take his son to Graceland the following day. A month later his body was found snagged on a tree 320 miles downstream in a sidewater of the Mississippi River near Vidalia, Louisiana.

On November 21, world-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian defector Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, fell dead. An autopsy indicated a stroke. Pasechnik, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, had played a huge role in the development of Russian biowarfare, helping to figure out how to modify cruise missiles to deliver the agents of mass biological destruction.

On November 24, a Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashed during its landing approach. Among those killed were the head of the hematology department at Israel's Ichilov Hospital and directors of the Tel Aviv public-health department and the Hebrew University School of Medicine.

On December 10, Robert M. Schwartz, 57, an expert in DNA sequencing and pathogenic micro-organisms, was stabbed to death with a sword in Leesberg, Virginia. Three self-proclaimed pagans have been arrested, his daughter, a high priestess, among them. On December 14, Nguyen Van Set, 44 died in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia. The lab had just been written up in the journal Nature for their work in genetic manipulation and DNA sequencing. Scientists there had created a virulent form of mousepox. "They realized that if similar genetic manipulation was carried out on smallpox, an unstoppable killer could be unleashed," according to Nature.

In January, 2002, Ivan Glebov and Alexi Brushlinski, both members of the Russian Academy of Science, were killed. Pravda reported that Glebov died as the result of a bandit attack and simply reported that Brushlinski was killed in Moscow.

On February 9, Pravda reported the death of Victor Korshunov, head of the microbiology sub-faculty of the Russian State Medical University. Korshunov died of massive head trauma. His body was found at the entrance of his Moscow house. On February 14, Ian Langford, described by The Times of London as one of Europe's leading experts on the links between human health and environmental risk, was found partially naked and wedged under a chair in his blood-spattered and ransacked home in Norwich, England. On February 28, prominent microbiologist Guyang Huang, 38, shot fellow microbiologist Tanya Holzmayer, a Russian who moved to the US in 1989. He shot her seven times and then shot himself. There appeared to be no motive.

On March 24, David Wynn-Williams, 55, an astrobiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer space, was hit by a car while jogging near his home in Cambridge, England. On March 25, Steven Mostow, 63, known as Dr. Flu for his expertise in treating influenza, and a noted expert in bioterrorism, died when the airplane he was piloting crashed near Denver.

Conspiracy? Or coincidence?
Skeptics point out that there must be thousands of researchers around the world working in similar fields, and that a few deaths over a six-month period is statistically insignificant. For example, a search of the world's newspapers might reveal that 15 plumbers died during the same six months, yet no one proposes a conspiracy to kill plumbers.

Meanwhile, back in Memphis, on February 10 the burned corpse of Katherine Smith, a driver's license examiner, was found in her car on US 72 near Fayette County, after she apparently lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a light pole. According to an Associated Press report, Smith was scheduled to testify before a federal magistrate the following day against five Middle Eastern men who allegedly paid her $1,000 each for fraudulently issued Tennessee driver's licenses.

The unusually intense fire inside the car triggered an FBI investigation. Preliminary evidence indicates the fire was set, and a letter apparently written by Smith indicates she may have committed suicide due to her distress over the case.

Strangely, one of the men charged, Sakhera Hammad, had a September 5 visitor's pass for the World Trade Center in his wallet when he was arrested. He told authorities he was a plumber and worked on the center's sprinkler system. He said Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad, another of the group, was a cousin who worked with him, according to the FBI.

A third member and apparent leader of the group, Khaled Odtllah, had driven from Memphis to New York City on September 11.

FBI agent J. Suzanne Nash said there was no reason to believe any of the men was a terrorist, according to an AP report. —Todd Paul