This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Sitting On The Rim Of The World- With The Son Of The Neon Wilderness Nelson Algren In Mind-Take Four
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
He, Nelson Algren, the poet-king of the midnight police line-up, night court shuffle, drug-infested jack-roller, dope-peddler, illicit crap game back alleys, Chicago-style, what did Carl Sandburg the old dusty poet call Chi, oh yeah, hog-butcher and steel-driver of the world, wrote of small-voiced people, mostly people who had started out in the world with small voices, small voices which never got louder. (Except that junkie wail when deep in the “cold turkey” fits, except that drunk dark tavern cheap low-shelf rye whiskey shrieking in the early morning high moon, except that stealthy jack-roller cry of delight once his victim wears that spot of blood on the back of his neck like some red badge of sap-dom, except that scream when some he-man decides that for a minute he would gain a big voice and smack his woman a few times to straighten her out, except that holler when some john decided to bust up his paid-up junkie whore just because he could, except, oh, hell, enough of exceptions in the neon-blazing small voice night.)
Yeah, Nelson had it right, had that ear for the low moan, the silence in the face of ugly Division Street tenements not fit for the hogs much less the hog-butchers, had the ear for the dazed guys spilling their pitter-patter to Captain just like back in home sweet Mississippi, Georgia, wherever, had the ear for the, what did Jack Kerouac called them, yes, the fellahin, the lump mass peasants, except now they are hell-bound bunched up together on the urban spit, small voices never heard over the rumble of the subway, working stiffs (stinking hog-butchers, sweated steel-driving men, grease-stained tractor-builders, frayed-collared night clerks in some seedy flop, porters sweeper out Mister’s leaving from his executive bathroom, and their women (cold-water flat housewives, cheap Jimmy Jack’s Diner waitresses pencil in ear and steam-tray sweated too tight faded white uniform hustling for nickels and dimes, beaten down shoe factory workers work men did not do, working donut shops filling donuts to feed the tribe, the younger ones hitting Benny’s Tavern for a few quick ones and maybe a quick roll in the hay if some guy pays the freight, older woman doing tricks for extra no tell husband cash, for a fix if she is on the quiet jones), sometimes their kids (already street-wise watching older brothers working back alley jack-rolls, cons, hanging in front of Harry’s Variety doing, well, just doing until the midnight sifter time rolls around), their kids growing up like weeds, who turned out to be disappointments.
But who could expect more from the progeny of small-voiced people, guys who sat around gin mills all night (maybe all day too I knew a few who inhabited the Dublin Grille in my old hometown of Carver, a smaller version of Chi town, another town filled with small-voice people, just fewer, small tenements, cold-water flats, same seedy places not fit to hang in, genteel people hang in).
Nelson never wrote, or wrote much, about big-voiced people who Greek tragedy stumbled, tumbled down to the sound of rumble subway stops out their doors (that damn elevated shaking the damn apartment day and night, rattling the windows, so close passengers got an eyeful when some floozy readied herself for her night’s work or not bothering with modesty, high as a kite, just letting herself not feel anything). Never spoke of people who fell off the rim of the world from some high place due to their hubris, their addictions, their outrageous wanting habits never sated before the fall (not some Edenic fall, not some “searching for the garden” like some uptown tea-fed hipsters claimed they were seeking just ask them) but a silly little worldly fall that once it happened the world moved on and ignored.
Wrote instead of the desperately lonely, a shabby-clothed wino man talking to himself on some forsaken park bench the only voice, not a big voice but a voice that had to be reckoned with, of the stuffed cop swaggering his billy club menacingly to move him on, or else, a woman, unhappy in love, hell maybe jilted at the altar, sitting alone like some Apple Annie in that one Ladies Invited tavern on the corner, the one just off Division where she had met that man the first time and meets all men now, all men with the price of a drink, maybe two, no more, and that eternal price of a by-the-hour flop over on neon hotel, motel, no tell Mitchell Street.
Yeah, a big old world filled with the lonely hearing only their own heartbeats, heard no other heartbeats as they waited out their days. What did T.S. Eliot, the poet and a guy who if strait-laced and Victorian knew what he was talking about call it, oh yeah, measured out their lives in coffee spoons. Nelson wrote of alienated people too, not the Chicago intellectuals who were forever belly-aching about the de-humanization of man (Studs Terkel could quote chapter and verse on these guys and their eternal studies about the plight of man, and they merely made of the same clay) about how we had built a mechanical world from which we had to run but the common clay, the ones who manned the conveyor belts, ran the damn rumbling subways, shoveled the snow, hell, shoveled shit day and night.
Wrote of the night people, not the all night champagne party set until dawn and sleep the day away but of the ones who would show up after midnight in some police precinct line-up, the winos, the jack-rollers, the drifters, the grifters, the midnight sifters, maybe a hooker who had not paid the paddy and thus was subject to the grill. Wrote of the people who inhabit the Nighthawk Diner (artist Edward Hopper’s all shape angles, all dim lights outside, bright fluorescent no privacy, no hiding lights inside, all the lonely people eating their midnight hamburgers fresh off the greased grill, another grill that forlorn hooker knew well), or Tom Waits’ rummies, bummies, stumblers, street-walkers looking for respect all shadows left behind, take your pick), the restless, the sleepless, the shiftless, those who worked the late shift, those who drew the late shift of life, those who worked better under the cover of night in the dark alleyways and sullen sunken doorways.
He wrote big time, big words, about the small-voiced people, big words for people who spoke in small words, spoke small words about small dreams, or no dreams, spoke only of the moment, the eternal only the moment. The next fix, how to get it, worse, how to get the dough to pay the fixer man, he, sending his woman out on the cold damp streets standing under some streetlight waiting for Johnnie and his two minute pleasures, she if she needs a fix, well, she trading blow jobs for smack, so as not to face that “cold turkey” one more day. The next drink, low boy rotgut wines and cheap whiskies, how to get it, the next bet, how to con the barkeeper to put him on the sheet, the next john, how to take him, the next rent due, how to avoid the dun and who after all had time for anything beyond that one moment.
Waiting eternally waiting to get well, you in such bad shape you can’ t get down the stairs, waiting for the fixer man to walk up the stairs and get you well, well beyond what any medical doctor could prescript, better than any mumbo-jumbo priest could absolve, to get some kicks. (Needle, whiskey, sex although that was far down the list by the time that needle was needed or that shot of low-shelf whiskey drove you to your need, again.) Waiting for the fixer man, waiting for the fixer man to fix what ailed them.
So not for Algren the small voice pleasant Midwestern farmers providing breadbaskets to the world talking to kindred about prices of wheat and corn walking the road to their proper Sunday white-clad church after a chaste Saturday red barn dance over at Fred Brown’s, the prosperous small town drugstore owners filling official drug prescriptions hot off some doctor’s pad and selling the under-aged liquor as medicine without prescription for whatever the traffic would bear, or of Miss Millie’s beauty salon where the blue-haired ladies get ready for battle and gossip about how Mister so and so had an affair with Miss so and so from the office and how will Mildred whom of course they would never tell to keep the mills rolling do when the whole thing goes public.
Nor was he inclined to push the air out of the small town banker seeking a bigger voice (calling in checks at a moment’s notice), the newspaper publisher seeking to control the voices or the alderman or his or her equivalent who had their own apparatuses for getting their small voices heard. One suspects that he could have written that stuff, written and hacked away his talent like those who in the pull and push of the writing profession had (have) forsake their muses for filthy lucre. No, he, Nelson Algren, he, to give him his due took dead aim at the refuge of society, the lumpen as he put it in the title of one short story, those sitting on the rim of the world.
And he did good, did good by his art, did good by his honest snarly look at the underside of society, and, damn, by making us think about that quarter turn of fate that separated the prosperous farmer (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not short-weighting the world), the drugstore owner (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not dispensing his wares, his potent drugs, out the back door to a craving market) , Miss Millie (assuming as we must that she, secretly, was not running a call girl service on the side), the banker (assuming as we must that he, maybe secretly maybe not, was not gouging rack rents and usurious interest), the newspaper editor (assuming as we must that he, very publicly, in fact was printing all the news fit to print), and the politician (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not bought and paid for by all of the above, or others) from the denizens of his mean streets. The mean city streets, mainly of Chicago, but that is just detail, just names of streets and sections of town to balance his work where his characters eked out an existence, well, anyway they could, some to turn up face down in some muddy ravine, under some railroad trestle, in some dime flop house, other to sort of amble along in the urban wilderness purgatory.
Brother Algren gave us characters to chew on, plenty of characters, mostly men, mostly desperate (in the very broadest sense of that word), mostly with some jones to work off, mostly with some fixer man in the background to wreak havoc too. He gave us two classics of the seamy side genre, one, from The Man With The Golden Arm, the misbegotten Frankie Machine, the man with the golden needle arm, the man with the chip on his shoulder, the mid-century(20th century, okay) man ill at ease in his world, ill at ease with the world and looking, looking for some relief, some kicks in that mid-century parlance, and, two, from Walk On The Wild Side, that hungry boy, that denizen of the great white trash night, Dove Linkhorn, who, perhaps more than Frankie spoke to that mid-century angst, spoke to that world gone wrong, for those who had just come up, come up for some place where time stood still to gain succor in the urban swirl, to feast at the table, come up from the back forty lots, the prairie golden harvest wheat fields, the Ozarks, all swamps and ooze, mountain wind hills and hollows, the infested bayous and were ready to howl, howl at the moon to get attention.
I remember reading somewhere, and I have forgotten where now, that someone had noted that Nelson Algren’s writing on Dove Linkhorn’s roots was the most evocative piece on the meaning of the okie–arkie out migration segment of that mid-century America ever written, the tale of the wandering boys, the railroad riders, the jungle camp jumpers, the skid row derelicts. Hell, call it by its right name, the white trash, that lumpen mush. And he or she was right, of course, after I went back and re-read that first section of Walk On The Wild Side where the Linkhorn genealogy back unto the transport ships that brought the first crop of that ilk from thrown out Europe are explored. All the pig thieves, cattle-rustlers, poachers, highwaymen, the -what did some sociologist call them?, oh yeah, “the master-less men,” those who could not or would not be tamed by the on-rushing wheels of free-form capitalism as the system relentlessly picked up steam, the whole damn lot transported. And good riddance.
The population of California after World War II was filled to the brim with such types, the feckless “hot rod” boys, boys mostly too young to have been though the bloodbaths of Europe and Asia building some powerful road machines out of baling wire and not much else, speeding up and down those ocean-flecked highways looking for the heart of Saturday night, looking for kicks just like those Chicago free-flow junkies, those twisted New Orleans whoremasters. Wandering hells angels riding two by two (four by four if they felt like it and who was to stop them) creating havoc for the good citizens of those small towns they descended on, descended on unannounced (and unwelcomed by those same good citizens). In and out of jail, Q, Folsom, not for stealing pigs now, but armed robberies or some egregious felony, but kindred to those lost boys kicked out of Europe long ago. Corner boys, tee-shirted, black leather jacket against cold nights, hanging out with time on their hands and permanent smirks, permanent hurts, permanent hatreds, paid to that Algren observation. All the kindred of the cutthroat world, or better “cut your throat” world, that Dove drifted into was just a microcosm of that small-voiced world.
He spoke of cities, even when his characters came fresh off the farm, abandoned for the bright lights of the city and useless to that short-weighting farmer who now is a prosperous sort, making serious dough as the breadbasket to the world. They, the off-hand hot rod king, the easy hell rider, the shiftless corner boy, had no existence, no outlets for their anger and angst, in small towns and hamlets for their vices, or their virtues, too small, too small for the kicks they were looking for. They needed the anonymous city rooming house, the cold-water flat, the skid- row flop house, the ten- cent beer hall, hell, the railroad jungle, any place where they could just let go with their addictions, their anxieties, and their hunger without having to explain, endlessly explain themselves, always, always a tough task for the small-voiced of this wicked old world. They identified with cities, with city 24/7/365 lights, with Algren’s blessed neon lights, city traffic (of all kinds), squalor, cops on the take, cops not on the take, plebeian entertainments, sweat, a little dried blood, marked veins, reefer madness, swilled drinks, white towers, all night diners (see it always comes back to that lonely, alienated Nighthawk Diner just ask Waits), the early editions (for race results, the number, who got dead that day, the stuff of that world), a true vision of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawk for a candid world.
He spoke of jazz and the blues, as if all the hell in this wicked old world could be held off for a minute while that sound sifted thought the night fog air reaching the rooming house, the flop, the ravine, the beer hall as it drifted out to the river and drowned. Music not upfront but as a backdrop to while the steamy summer nights away, and maybe the frigid lake front winter too. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, he spoke of a small-voiced white world, residents of white slums and pursuers of white- etched dreams and only stick character blacks but his beat, his writing rhythm made no sense without the heat of Trouble In Mind or that cool blast of Charlie Parker, Miles, Dizzie be-bopping, made absolutely no sense, and so it went.
He spoke of love too. Not big flamed love, big heroes taking big falls for some hopeless romance like in olden times but squeezed love, love squeezed out of a spoon, maybe, but love in all its raw places. A guy turning his woman into a whore to feed his endless habit love, and her into a junkie love. A woman taking her man through cold turkey love. A man letting his woman go love, ditto woman her man when the deal went wrong. When the next best thing came by. Not pretty love all wrapped in a bow, but love nevertheless. And sometimes in this perverse old world the love a man has for a woman when, failing cold turkey, he goes to get the fixer man and that fixer man get his woman well, almost saintly and sacramental. Brothers and sisters just read The Last Carousel if you want to know about love. Hard, hard love. Yah, Nelson Algren knew how to give voice, no holds barred, to the small-voiced people.
THERE IS NO WALL IN WASHINGTON-BUT, MAYBE THERE SHOULD BE
This space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. Let me tell the tale.
Recently I returned, while on some unrelated business, to the neighborhood where I grew up. The neighborhood is one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950's, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. While there I happened upon an old neighbor who recognized me despite the fact that I had not seen her for at least thirty years. Since she had grown up and lived there continuously, taking over the family house, I inquired about the fate of various people that I had grown up with. She, as is usually the case in such circumstances, had a wealth of information but one story in particular cut me to the quick. I asked about a boy named Kenny who was a couple of years younger than I was but who I was very close to until my teenage years. Kenny used to tag along with my crowd until, as teenagers will do, we made it clear that he was no longer welcome being ‘too young’ to hang around with us older boys. Sound familiar?
The long and the short of it is that he found other friends of his own age to hang with, one in particular, from down the street named Jimmy. I had only a nodding acquaintance with both thereafter. As happened more often than not during the 1960’s in working class neighborhoods all over the country, especially with kids who were not academically inclined, when Jimmy came of age he faced the draft or the alternative of ‘volunteering’ for military service. He enlisted. Kenny for a number of valid medical reasons was 4-F (unqualified for military service). Of course, you know what is coming. Jimmy was sent to Vietnam where he was killed in 1968 at the age of 20. His name is one of the 58,000 plus that are etched on that Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. His story ends there. Unfortunately, Kenny’s just begins.
Kenny took Jimmy’s death hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I make no pretense of having adequate knowledge about the causes of mental illnesses but someone I trust has told me that such a traumatic event as Jimmy’s death can trigger the condition in young adults. In any case, the institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.
Certainly not a happy story. Perhaps, aside from the specific details, not even an unusual one in modern times. Nevertheless I now count Kenny as one of the uncounted casualties of war. Along with those physically wounded soldiers who can back from Vietnam service unable to cope with their own demons and sought solace in drugs and alcohol. And those who for other reasons could no adjust and found themselves on the streets, in the half way shelters or the V. A. hospitals. And also those grieving parents and other loved ones whose lives were shattered and broken by the loss of their children. There is no wall in Washington for them. But, maybe there should be. As for poor Kenny from the old neighborhood. Rest in Peace.
NASA has released a study
claiming there is a need for continued use of plutonium-energized power systems
for future space flights. It also says the use of actual nuclear reactors in
space “has promise” but “currently” there is no need for them.
The space plutonium systems—called radioisotope thermoelectric generators
(RTGS)—use the heat from the decay of plutonium to generate electricity in
contrast to nuclear reactors, usually using uranium, in which fission or
atom-splitting takes place.
The “Nuclear Power Assessment Study” describes itself as being done as a
“collaboration” involving “NASA centers,” among them Johnson Space Center,
Kennedy Space Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “the Department of
Energy and its laboratories including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Idaho
National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories,” and the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory.
The study, released this month, comes as major breakthroughs have been
happening in the use of solar and other benign sources of power in space. The
situation parallels that on Earth as solar and wind power and other clean, safe
technologies compete with nuclear, oil, coal and other problematic energy
sources and the interests behind them.
Examples of the use of benign power in space include the successful flight in
May of a solar-powered spacecraft named LightSail in a mission funded by members
of the Planetary Society. Astronomer Carl Sagan, a founder of the society, was
among those who have postulating having a spacecraft with a sail propelled
through the vacuum of space by the pressure of photons emitted by the sun.
LightSail demonstrates his vision.
Yet, meanwhile, NASA cancelled its own solar sail mission scheduled for this
year. It was to involve the largest solar sail ever flown. In 2010, the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency made the first solar sail flight with a spacecraft
it named Ikaros. Before the NASA solar flight cancellation, NASA last year declared
on its website: “The concept of a huge, ultra-thin sail unfurling in space,
using the pressure of sunlight to provide propellant-free transport, hovering
and exploration capabilities, may seem like the stuff of science fiction. Now a
NASA team developing the ‘In-Space Demonstration of a Mission-Capable Solar
Sail’—or Solar Sail Demonstrator for short—intend[s] to prove the viability and
value of the technology in the years to come.” NASA said the mission, also
called Sunjammer, was cancelled by NASA because of problems ” with the project’s
contractor, L’Garde of California.
And also, meanwhile, demonstrating that solar power can be harvested far out
in space, the Rosetta space probe of the European Space Agency (ESA), energized
with solar power, successfully rendezvoused last year with a comet 375 million
miles from the sun. ESA at the start of this mission explained that it did not
have the plutonium power systems that NASA had, so instead it developed
high-efficiency solar photovoltaic panels for use in space. And they worked
enabling Rosetta to meet up with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and send a
lander to its surface. Rosetta continues flying alongside the comet.
NASA, too, has a space probe energized with high-efficiency solar
photovoltaic panels it developed now on its way to Jupiter in a mission it has
named Juno. For decades, NASA insisted that solar power could not be harvested
beyond the orbit of Mars and thus plutonium power systems were necessary. This
was NASA’s central argument in federal court in 1989 to rebut opponents of its
plutonium-energized Galileo mission to Jupiter. Now it has shown it was
mistaken. Juno using solar power instead of plutonium RTGs is to reach Jupiter
next year.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut and Marine Corps major
general, remains a big booster of using nuclear-propelled rockets to get to
Mars. Work on such a rocket has been going on at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight
Center. NASA on its website
says that a nuclear-powered rocket “could propel human explorers to Mars more
efficiently than conventional spacecraft.”
Through the years, NASA has worked closely with the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission and after the commission was disbanded its successor, the Department
of Energy, on space nuclear programs. And there’s a program at DOE’s Los Alamos
National Laboratory to develop a “robust fission reactor prototype that could be
used as a power system for space travel,” according to Technews
World.
This is occurring despite Russia now abandoning its development of
nuclear-propelled rockets for missions to Mars, a project it had earlier
much-heralded. Reported TASS
in April:
“Russia’s space agency Roscosmos is planning to shut down works on developing
a megawatt-class nuclear propulsion system for long-range manned
spacecraft.”
But the DOE has resumed production for NASA of the isotope of
plutonium—Plutonium-238—used in RTGs. It is a form of plutonium 280 times more
radioactive than the plutonium used as a fuel in atomic bombs, Plutonium-239.
Reported the journal Nature:
“NASA will be relieved to get this 238 Pu [Plutonium] because it is
increasingly anxious about running out. The isotosope is not found in nature, so
it has to be made in nuclear reactors…NASA now has just 35 kilograms of
plutonium product—a small supply that may not match the demands to send missions
to Mars, the moons of Jupiter and beyond.” The restart of Plutonium-238
production involves the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National
Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. 1
“We’ve known for years that the nuclear industry has taken control of the
seats at the NASA and DOE planning committees that decide whether solar or
nuclear power should be used on space missions,” said Bruce Gagnon, coordinator
of the Global Network Against
Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. “The nuclear industry views space as a
new market for their deadly product. Nuclear generators on space missions,
nuclear powered mining colonies on Mars and other planetary bodies and even
nuclear reactors on rockets to Mars are being sought. Thus there are many
opportunities for things to go wrong.”
“Over the years, inside the DOE labs, hundreds of workers have been
contaminated while fabricating space nuclear devices. It is not just some
theoretical chance of a space launch accident that we are concerned about. We
oppose the entire space nuclear power production process,” he said. “It’s all
dangerous!”
“Just like here on Earth there is a tug-of-war going on between those who
wish to promote life-giving solar power and those who want nukes,” said Gagnon.
“That same battle for nuclear domination is being taken into the heavens by an
industry that wants more profit—no matter the consequences. The Global Network
will continue to organize around the space nuclear power issue by building a
global constituency opposed to the risky and unnecessary nukes in space
program.” The Global Network is based in Maine.
The new “Nuclear Power Assessment Study” opens by stating: “Human missions to
deep-space locations such as extended missions on the lunar and Martian surfaces
have always been recognized as requiring some form of nuclear power.” As of now,
“nuclear power systems are expected to be required well into the 2030s at the
least.”
It says using actual reactors in space “could potentially enable higher
power,” but it suggests they be pursued “only if the future need arises and
sufficient new funds to develop an FPS [fission power system] flight unit are
provided.” It goes on, “Perhaps the largest uncertainty is the cost and schedule
for developing a compact FPS for space flight. Only one U.S. reactor has been
flown—the SNAP-10A reactor” which powered a satellite launched in 1965. That
satellite, with its nuclear reactor onboard, remains1,000 miles overhead in what
the study calls a “‘nuclear-safe’ orbit, although debris-shedding events of some
level may have occurred.”
The study notes that the “United States has spent billions of dollars on
space reactor programs, which have resulted in only one flight” and it says
“examinations” of the many “terminated” space nuclear power “efforts have
revealed that materials issues and technology challenges produced common
pitfalls.”
Still, the study is high in praise of the U.S. space nuclear power program.
“Nuclear systems have enabled tremendous strides in our country’s exploration
and use of space since 1961.” It speaks of nuclear power being used “to support
31 missions that range from navigational, meteorological, communications and
experimental satellites.”
“The launch and use of space nuclear power systems presents unique safety
challenges,” it continues. “These safety challenges, or issues, must be
recognized and addressed in the design of each space nuclear power system,
including consideration of potential accident conditions.”
“Launch and safe flight involve risk of failures or accidents” and “the most
critical periods include launch, ascent, and orbital or trajectory
insertion.”
“Three accidents involving U.S. space nuclear power systems have occurred
[and] all three involved the launch vehicle or transfer stage, and were
unrelated to the power system,” the study says. “In each case, the nuclear
systems responded as designed and there were no hazardous consequences.”
That claim of no hazardous consequences is not true, as the late Dr. John
Gofman, professor at the University of California at Berkeley, long maintained.
Of the three U.S. space nuclear accidents, the most serious was the fall back to
Earth in 1964 of a satellite with a SNAP-9A plutonium system onboard. The
satellite and plutonium system disintegrated in the fall, the plutonium was
dispersed worldwide and caused, in Dr. Gofman’s estimation, an increase in the
global lung cancer rate. Dr. Gofman, an M.D. and Ph.D., co-discoverer of several
radioisotopes, and was a pioneer in the earliest experiments with plutonium.
A 10 percent failure rate in space nuclear power missions has also been the
case for Russia and, before it, the Soviet Union. The worst Soviet space nuclear
accident occurred in the fall in 1978 of Cosmos satellite 954, with an atomic
reactor onboard, which disintegrated as it plummeted to Earth, spreading nuclear
debris for hundreds of miles across the Northwest Territories of Canada.
Despite the study’s rosy history of space nuclear power, it also says “it may
be prudent to build in more time in the development of schedule for the first
launch of a new space reactor. Public interest would likely be large, and it is
possible that opposition could be substantial.”
***
The explosion after launch Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida of
a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a mission to deliver supplies to the International
Space Station was an event again underlining the danger of using nuclear power
on spacecraft.
Officials were warning people that “potentially hazardous debris could wash
ashore.”
Consider if a radioisotope thermoelectric generator was onboard and plutonium
was also dispersed. Consider if there were a nuclear reactor onboard or an
atomic propulsion system and an array of radioactive poisons contained in the
debris.
U.S. Representative Donna Edwards of Maryland, a member of the House Science,
Space & Technology Committee, announced that “the launch failure this
morning shows us once again that space is difficult—it requires near
perfection.”
Inserting nuclear poisons into a danger-prone equation that “requires near
perfectioin”—especially when it is unnecessary—is reckless, the consequences
potentially devastating.
Estimates in NASA’s Final
Environmental Impact Statement, for instance, of the cost of plutonium
decontamination if there were an accident when the Curiosity rover was launched
in 2011 to Mars were put at $267 million for each square mile of farmland, $478
million for each square mile of forests and $1.5 billion for each square mile of
“mixed-use urban areas.” It was powered with a plutonium-energized RTG, although
previously NASA Mars rovers were able to function well with solar power.
When the Cassini space probe was sent off to Saturn in 1997—with three RTGs
containing 72.3 pounds of Plutonium-238, the most plutonium ever used on a
spacecraft—NASA in its Final
Environmental Impact Statement said that if an “inadvertent reentry” of
Cassini occurred causing it to disintegrate and release its plutonium, “5
billion…of the world’s population…could receive 99 percent or more of the
radiation exposure.”
Noting that “technology frequently goes wrong,” Gagnon of the Global Network
Against
Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, says: “When you consider adding nuclear
power into the mix it becomes an explosive combination. We’ve long been sounding
the alarm that nuclear
power in space is not something the public nor the planet can afford to take
a chance on.” ~ Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State
University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The
Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. Grossman is
an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
He is a contributor to Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.
Kill the Messenger
takes place in the mid 1990s, when Gary Webb uncovered the CIA's past role in
importing huge amounts of cocaine into the U.S. that was aggressively sold in
ghettos across the country to raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras rebel army.
Despite enormous pressure not to, Webb chose to pursue the story and went public
with his evidence, publishing his series 'Dark Alliance' in the San Jose Mercury
News in 1996.
As a result Gary experienced a vicious smear campaign
fueled by the CIA. At that point Webb found himself defending his integrity, his
family, and his life.
"...Kudos to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for
their lead article today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of
Afghanistan'™s stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in
the world's major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the CIA
payroll."
"For the whole sordid tale [of the CIA orchestrated hit pieces on Gary
Webb] read Alex Cockburn's and Jeffrey St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs
and the Press."
"...where the US goes, the drug trade soon follows, and the leading
role in developing and nurturing that trade appears to be played by the Central
Intelligence Agency. Your tax dollars at work."
"Americans, who for years have supported a stupid, blundering and
ineffective 'War on Drugs' in this country, and who mindlessly back
'zero-tolerance' policies towards drugs in schools and on the job, should demand
a 'zero-tolerance' policy toward drugs and dealing with drug pushers in
government and foreign policy, including the CIA."
"For years we have been fed the story that the Taliban are being financed
by their taxes on opium farmers. ...recently we've been learning that it'™s not
the real story. Taliban forces in Afghanistan, it turns out, have been heavily
subsidized by protection money paid to them by civilian aid organizations,
including even American government-funded aid programs, and even, reportedly, by
the military forces of some of America'™s NATO allies. ...the opium industry,
far from being controlled by the Taliban, has been, to a great extent,
controlled by the very warlords the US has allied itself, and, as the Times now
reports, by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's own brother."
"President Obama'™s 'œnecessary' war in Afghanistan is nothing but a sick
joke.
"The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war
against Communist China, became the opium barons of The Golden Triangle, the
world's largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the ClA's principal
airline proprietary, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia .... A laboratory
built at CIA headquarters in northern Laos was used to refine heroin."
"The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its
officers were a network of US generals, admirals and CIA men, including former
CIA Director William Colby, also one of its lawyers. Nugan Hand Bank financed
drug trafficking, money laundering and international arms dealings."
When/where doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm 243
Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor, entrance on
Windsor rule19.org/videos
Please join us for a stimulating
night out; bring your friends! free film & free door
prizes[donations are encouraged]feel free to bring
your own snacks and soft drinks - no alcohol allowed
"You can't legislate good will - that comes through education." ~
Malcolm X
Why
should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on Iraq,
Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc etc - for
billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for the loss of
liberty and civil rights... Booklets will be
available of the CIA's "Simple Sabotage Field Manual", and SDS's 1962
publicationThe Port Huron Statement
Where: Center for Marxist Education •
550 Mass. Ave, 2nd floor • Cambridge
Leaning Left: recent policy trends in China sponsored by the China Discussion
Group Chinese policy today is "leaning left."
A center-left government headed by President and General Secretary Xi Jinping
is in power, a change from the reform group dominant during 1980s-90s period.
China is shifting to a new economic model, where growth is driven by domestic
spending rather than low-cost exports. A struggle has unfolded between the
Communist Part of China and Western anti-China forces and Chinese
dissidents.
Paper by Duncan McFarland, China discussion group coordinator,
presented at the Left Forum in New York City, May 2015. Followed by
discussion.
Democracy came into
our language after being invented in Athens 2500 years ago. The Greeks also
gave us “theater,” “politics” and “economics,” – among a great many other words
in the arts, sciences and social studies. The resounding NO vote last
Sunday is a good time to remember that “heroic” is
also from ancient Greek. Now comes the difficult process of negotiating a better
deal with the EU bankers – or a possible exit from the Euro. Breaking news is
that Greek Prime Minister Tsiparas, despite the referendum, has made a proposal that agrees to many of the demands for continued austerity. The very word “Europe” is an ancient
Greek word -- but “capitulation” is from Latin. . .
I
think it surprised everybody, including the government. All the polls before the
vote suggested that it was very close. So, I think that was a great
victory
for democracy in Greece. People were under immense psychological pressure from
the media, that were threatening them with nightmare scenarios; from workplaces,
where many business owners were threatening their workers that if a "no"
prevailed, they would lose their jobs; and from the European partners, who
basically were saying that a "no" vote would mean exit from the eurozone. So,
it’s a very important result. It’s a hopeful development. It will not end the
austerity, even if there is an agreement, but it creates a better environment
for anti-austerity forces to keep fighting. More
Greek
‘No’ Has Its Roots in Heroic Myths and Real Resistance
In
October of 1940, Greece boldly defied an Italian ultimatum, prompting Mussolini to invade from the north. While fighting
gallantly, beating the Italians back into Albania, the Greeks were eventually
undone by the advance of Nazi troops from Bulgaria. By April of 1941, the Axis
occupation was complete… When thousands of Greeks descended on Syntagma Square
to celebrate the vote, many said they were not at all convinced that it would
aid their situation. But it was time to fight back. Most schoolchildren here are
brought up on stories of resistance, some of which were invoked last week in
trying to drum up resistance to European demands, whatever the consequences…
Even in recent times, Greece has nurtured a culture of protests. The generation
governing Greece today was raised on images of angry students barricading
themselves inside the Athens Polytechnic in a bloody demonstration against the
military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. More
(Right:
Greek Poster from 1940 – the newspaper headlines read: “Greeks to Arms!
Hostilities Began Today”)
Greek
society is divided between left and right, between the grandchildren of people
who fought in a civil war here in the late 1940s and indeed the Communist
resistance movement that defeated the Nazis in 1944. So that goes back a long
way… So, don’t think it’s young v. old. Look, it is left v. right. And it is
class… The richest areas voted 80 percent yes, the poorest areas voted 80
percent no. But the Greek elite got a lesson that the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
taught the English elite in the aftermath of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre in the
famous line from his poem: "Ye are many," to the working class—"they are few."
You can’t win a referendum with only rich people. So, that’s the issue
here.More
(Left:
“The Poor Vote NO”)
“Sub-Prime”
Greece (and Puerto Rico)?
The
Financial Attack on Greece: Where Do We Go From Here?
The
private sector has long had laws that prevent money-lenders from lending a
borrower more funds than the debtor can reasonably be expected to pay back in
the normal course of business… This lend-to-foreclose ploy is the very game that
the Troika have played with Greece.
They lent its government money that the IMF economists explained quite clearly
in 2010-11 (and reaffirmed this year just before the Greek referendum) could not
be paid. But the ECB then swooped in and said: Sell off your infrastructure,
sell your ports, your gas rights in the Aegean, and entire islands, to get the
money to pay what the IMF and ECB have paid French, German and other bondholders
on your behalf (while saving U.S. investment banks and hedge funds from losing
their bets that Greek debts would indeed be paid)… More
Germans
Forget Postwar History Lesson on Debt Relief in Greece Crisis
Major
debt overhangs are only solved after deep write-downs of the debt’s face value.
The longer it takes for the debt to be cut, the bigger the necessary write-down
will turn out to be. Nobody should understand this better than the Germans. It’s not just that they benefited
from the deal in 1953, which underpinned Germany’s postwar economic miracle.
Twenty years earlier, Germany defaulted on its debts from World War I, after undergoing a
bout of hyperinflation and economic depression that helped usher Hitler to
power… Germany, in fact, understands moral hazard backward. The standard
definition refers to lenders; covering their losses will encourage them to make
bad loans again. And that is, let us not forget, exactly what Europe’s creditors
have done. Their financial assistance to Greece was deployed to pay back German, French and other foreign banks and investors
that held Greek debt. It did Greece little if any good. More
AUSTERITY
HAS FAILED: Letter From Thomas Piketty and other Economists to Angela
MerkelThe
never-ending austerity that Europe is force-feeding the Greek people is simply
not working. Now Greece has loudly said no more…
Together we urge Chancellor Merkel and the Troika to consider a course
correction, to avoid further disaster and enable Greece to remain in the
eurozone. Right now, the Greek government is being asked to put a gun to its
head and pull the trigger. Sadly, the bullet will not only kill off Greece’s
future in Europe. The collateral damage will kill the Eurozone as a beacon of
hope, democracy and prosperity, and could lead to far-reaching economic
consequences across the world. More
KRUGMAN:
Greece’s Economy Is What Republicans Want for the U.S.
Consider
Greece’s situation at the end of 2009, when its debt crisis burst into the open.
At that point Greek government debt was near 130 percent of gross domestic
product, which is definitely a big number. But it’s by no means unprecedented.
As it happens, Greece’s debt ratio in 2009 was about the same as America’s in
1946, just after the war. And Britain’s debt ratio in 1946 was twice as high.
Today, however, Greek debt is over 170 percent of G.D.P. and still rising. Is
that because Greece just kept on borrowing? Actually, no — Greek debt is up only
6 percent since 2009, although that’s partly because it received some debt
relief in 2012. The main point, however, is that the ratio of debt to G.D.P. is
up because G.D.P. is down by more than 20 percent. And why is GDP down? Largely
because of the austerity measures Greece’s creditors forced it to impose… So who
wants to impose that kind of toxic policy mix on America? The answer is, most of
the Republican Party. More
Maybe not much of a
practical solution, but a showing or moral support. . .
DPPer Rosemary
Keane writes:
Here is info about
the 'Greek Bailout Fund' on Indiegogo- do you think some DPP folks might be
interested in making a donation or just in knowing about it via the update?
Take a moment to check it out on Indiegogo and also share it with your friends.
All the tools are there. Get perks, make a contribution, or simply follow
updates. If enough of us get behind it, we can make 'Greek Bailout Fund' happen!
The form is set up using Euros but it converts to dollars at the end. The
exchange from Euros to dollars means 50 Euros is about $56.00 http://igg.me/p/greek-bailout-fund/emal/800369=
"Wendy's stands alone as the
only major fast food chain refusing to join a program described on the front
page of the New York Times in 2014 as 'the best workplace monitoring program' in
the US"...
From the press release announcing this Sunday's action:
Columbus, OH – On Sunday, July 19 at 6:15 p.m., organizations and members of
the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) from the U.S. and Canada, in
attendance at the Disciples of Christ General Assembly, will join the Coalition
of Immokalee Workers (CIW) — an award-winning organization of Florida
farmworkers — for a Farm Worker Support Vigil at Wendy’s on 2020 N. High Street
in Columbus. Together, they will call on the Dublin based burger giant to join
its fast food competitors in supporting the Fair Food Program (FFP), a
groundbreaking collaboration that has won praise from the White House to the
United Nations for its unique success in addressing decades-old farm labor
abuses at the heart of the nation’s trillion-dollar food industry. [...]
... In 2014, Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins, General Minister and President of
the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the U.S. and Canada was one of
over twenty heads of religious communions to write a letter to Wendy’s CEO Emil
Brolick, which stated in part, “We are perplexed and alarmed at Wendy’s posture
on this issue of basic human rights. The call for society to recognize that our
lives are intertwined, that our decisions and actions impact one another, and
that we have a moral responsibility to ensure human well-being is as ancient as
the command, ‘love thy neighbor.”
If you are in the Columbus, Ohio, area this weekend, here are the details on
the vigil:
What: Farm Worker Support Vigil
at Wendy’s calling on Wendy’s to join the Fair Food Program, a proven solution
to abuse in the fields.
Who: Sponsors include Disciples
Refugee & Immigration Ministries, Disciples Justice Action Network,
Disciples Peace Fellowship, and the InterReligious Task Force on Central America
and Columbia, in partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the
Ohio Fair Food Network.
When: Sunday, July 19 at 6:15
p.m.
Where: Wendy’s, 2020 N. High
Street, Columbus, OH 43201
UFPJ Press Realease: UFPJ Welcomes Iran Deal & Seek to Defend It
United for Peace and Justice welcomes the completion of the historic
international agreement with Iran, which limits its nuclear program in exchange
for the lifting of economic sanctions and the ending of its isolation. After
years of futile, horrific wars, we join with peace-loving people around the
world in embracing this diplomatic achievement. Click here to sign the petition to uphold the Iran
Deal! http://www.stopwarwithiran.com?source=ufpj
The long months of arduous negotiations attests to the diff iculty of
achieving compromise among adversaries. But at the end of this process, nobody
has been killed, no communities have been obliterated, nor have billions of
dollars been squandered on instruments of death. The lesson is clear. When the
political will is there, diplomacy can succeed. United for Peace Justice views this agreement as the beginning, not
the end of a path to peace. Iran’s potential capacity to develop nuclear weapons
in the future has been understandably perceived as threatening. But much more
immediately threatening are the existing arsenals of the nuclear-armed states:
the U.S., Russia, Britain, China, France, Israel, India, Pakistan,and North
Korea. We believe that the survival of humanity require new commitments to
eliminate them all.
For the immediate future, we recognize that irresponsible voices in Congress
will do everything possible to kill the agreement with Iran.United for Peace
and Justice is joining together with other national organizations in
a Stop the Iran War Coalition to build a firewall of support
for this deal. This will be an ongoing effort that will extend over the coming
months. For now you can help by signing and circulating this
petition: http://www.stopwarwithiran.com?source=ufpj
To assist in our ongoing Congressional campaign, please send a quick email
with your name, and Congressional district to Rustiandgael@unitedforpeace.org
Our years of protest have helped to bring this historic deal to completion.
Let’s make sure it passes.
Click here to sign the petition. Click here to sign up for UFPJ Action Alerts.
All we are saying is give peace a chance! If you appreciate receiving timely
action alerts like this, please make a donation to UFPJso that we can
continue to keep our member groups and dedicated activists linked together for
effective action and impact.
Thank you.
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