Don't read this unless your intention is to act on one or more of these. We don't need spectators, we need activists!
There comes a time when you've made your choice, you've made your decision... you don't have the patience to suffer fools lightly anymore, the time spent on trying to educate, debate, is simply wasted, pearls before swine.
You don't want to discuss the pros and cons, which is just another excuse for the pro-nuclear campers to perpetuate the agony, drag on their rhetoric to keep their plants running. You simply want to create strong coalitions, safety in numbers, blocks of power and influence which are going to tip the scales of what's left of our democratic process to force elected officials to put so much undo pressure on the mechanism of the nuclear power organized thug machinery to pack up, leave, stop spreading their radiation and waste and lies.
It becomes about strategy, logistic, it's like warfare... negotiations have broken down, there can't be compromise between an on or off decision, it's either one or the other, like you can't be a little pregnant!
In the New York area because so many in Manhattan control media, fashion, the arts, entertainment, they also have the final say on what goes in and around city limits, in its affluent suburbs, in its semi-secret institutions, in its schools and universities. Once they've made up their minds that they can no longer justify the kind of risk a nuclear power plant looms over them, the only viable solution is for all of them to band together in such a way, during an event, to demonstrate their displeasure at a company like Entergy for perpetuating a situation no longer acceptable to the elite majority ruling.
This is what is happening, now, as we speak, but it still needs the momentum of the grassroots to cement and yield all of its available force. Because of the crushing class structure distancing have and have nots, it's become increasingly difficult to approach and enlist support of populist movements to the final decisions made by the ruling autocracy of the New York social scene. To achieve this desired result it was necessary to pit everyone into situations where these differences wouldn't matter to the outcome.
In a sense that was the aim of Occupy Wall Street, if only symbolically, to break down barriers between student activists, homelessness, left leaning liberal elites, in an accusatory fashion pointing at the greed and abuses of mindless capitalist exploitators who never understood what the 7th generation means. Nuclear power is the quintessential example of the concentration of power into the hands of a few, made possible only by the corruption of union bosses.
So this is where we are on the banks of the Hudson... if everything hangs tight, without a restored water permit from the DEC, the NRC cannot legally award Entergy a renewed operating license for Indian Point, and so, reactor 2 will have to start decommissioning in 2013, and reactor 3 in 2015. Decommissioning will in fact start providing twice the number of unionized jobs than are currently employed by the plant, for at least the next ten years, as the reactors cool, and the waste needs to be safely stored, safe distance from any potential terrorist attempt at abusing the circumstances.
The Hudson Valley will breathe easier, and tourism will be restored to the Peekskill area, exploding opportunities for an economic boom, freeing the now isolated and terrified to speak out immigrant population which has used Peekskill as a cheap place to settle, a place made cheap by the existence of the perpetual risk of Indian Point.
We've all been much too complacent, allowing Entergy and the NRC to string us along for years, and years, and years, while we keep ducking bullets! Until Fukushima, the progressive community in Manhattan was not committing enough time and resources to getting the job done. Those in high positions of media influence in a City that never sleeps have started to put their foot down with elected representatives to yank the plug on that relic from the spooky 50s.
We should be going up and down Madison avenue kicking people up the ass until they finally come to realize they have to use the tools of their trade to remove this incessant threat to the greening of our lives. If we can transform something like the High Line into a phenomenal park, what's keeping New Yorkers from putting the kibosh on IP? Nothing really.
Nuclear accidents have spurred a massive global experiment in another round of survival of the fittest evolutionary spectacle. Humans can be resilient, but only certain metabolisms, born through years of selective breeding. So as a huge portion of our species will probably succumb to genome deterioration caused by ionizing radiation, a small segment of individuals, who have generated the necessary biomorphic forcefields to shield themselves from the toxicity, the same way certain genealogical lines are less susceptible to hereditary cancers, will learn to strive in this heightened energetic environment.
It's going to be just like the X-Men, giving a whole new meaning to the have and the have nots, and to class structures. Welcome to the world of Grant Morrisson.
When Indian Point saw its first reactor it was fueled by thorium, which was quickly replaced by enriched uranium because they couldn't generate enough power. The thorium gang today is trying to revive the idea that thorium fission could be a lot safer, and they are right, but that's like saying jumping off a third story window is safer than jumping off the roof.
In Japan they are flying kites during anti-nuclear demonstrations, I like that idea. Anti-nuclear activist from Ohio, Michael Leonardi, suggested a super-sized Blinky, the three-eyed fish from the Simpsons, be made into a Macy's day parade inflatable float. Who makes these things and who can afford to make us one?
Rolf Maurer wants insurance companies to cover homeowner's coverage in the event of a nuclear disaster, as a gesture of good faith that such plants are safe, as policies have an exemption clause for such events. That's a good idea. We need to draft a uniform document we could provide homeowners to send their insurance companies, also walk into real estate agencies and suggest realtors take an active role in this approach.
Eileen Mahood-Jose reminds us that on January 5, 1954, the Buchanan Village Board held a 10-minute public hearing on rezoning the area known as Indian Point, formerly a popular park with beaches, trails, swimming pools and two piers receiving thousands of people by boat out for a day of fun. The plan was passed without opposition. According to terms of the deal, Con Edison was to pay 70 percent of the Hendrick-Hudson school district’s taxes, install a village-wide sewer system, pave streets and provide mercury streetlights.
Cathy Iwane wants to get a group to dress in Hazmat suits carrying Geiger counters measuring the children.
"Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" Ralph Nader. If you want to see great movies about "revolution" I recommend "Duck You Sucker" with James Coburn and Rod Steiger, also "Vera Cruz" with Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. A revolution won't shut down Indian Point. Only the Super-Rich can. In Germany, the Super-Rich are anti-nuclear, and besides it's not a done deal yet. It's also because in Germany, the Green Party has a lot of power, because in Germany, green corporations were not kept out of the party, and it was able to gain serious political influence.
Start with David Rockefeller Jr. who wants Indian Point shut down but won't go against his father. David Rockefeller Sr. owns the Stone Barns agricultural center, a 100 acres organic farm 10 miles south of Indian Point. The same is true for many of the Hearst children, who belong to Riverkeeper. They all need to speak out in a single voice, which is what Robert Kennedy Jr. does for them.
If someone like Faith Kates who is both president of the Next modeling agency and the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund came out against Indian Point, would join ABC Home, Donna Karan and Kenneth Cole, it would go a long way. Faith Kates hosts one of the most lavish celebrity laced fundraiser in the Hamptons every year for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. That's political influence! Imagine hundreds of anti-nuclear fashion models, that would attract the attention of the Boilermakers union.
Andrea Kalkstein Lieberman wants to create a traffic jam surrounding the plant simulating a failed evacuation plan... Andrea is right, discussing the evacuation plan is a non-starter, it doesn't lead anywhere except a cul de sac of frustration.
We are looking for positive action, which builds new coalitions, outside of the usual inner circle. We are looking for new allies in professional associations, who can apply extraordinary pressure on their representatives. Occupy the NRC? Sure, but that's another distraction requiring trips to DC. Occupy the plant itself? If you knew the geography, you would know how unlikely that is, other than on the river with a flotilla, was already done years ago, see picture on the Rock The Reactors website.
The entrance to Indian Point is located on a long narrow road, with a high fence and barbwire all around, only one sliding gate, no room to park or even stand around. There's been a few actions at the plant over the years, they generally don't garner much attention past a small mention in local newspapers. Indian Point hasn't been shut down by conventional actions. It needs the voice of large institutions, schools, hospitals, Masonic organizations, organic farming associations. Once these large groups, with political, social and economic clout, real influence on the community start to voice out their opinion, it offers leverage.
The company which owns IP, Entergy, has been doing this for years, to their own advantage, so I can't understand why anti-nuclear groups have not tried to do the same, in an organized, orchestrated fashion. And again to remind everyone, LEDs alone can and are replacing all the electricity IP produces. No need for hydro, or anything else. We are doing much more with a lot less. That's the beauty of increased energy efficiency. It makes old plants like Indian Point obsolete.
Organizing a traffic jam is a beautiful idea, problem is execution. Where are you going to find enough people to drive to Buchanan and stage something like this? You wouldn't need many cars, but what traffic would it actually block? There's hardly any traffic on that road in the first place, practically deserted... the only reason to drive on it is to go to and fro the plant. It's a good visual, but impractical, and also you simply get the town's people upset with something like this, I don't think it would achieve anything.
Rather, there are dozens of companies with factories, assembly facilities, etc... along the way, they live and work in the shadow of Indian Point every day. Has anyone asked the people who work there how they feel about working in such close proximity to the plant? That would make for a poignant documentary, if only to see people after people chasing cameras away... Next time Indian Point sets off the sirens for a test, simply organize it so the local anti-nuclear population acts as if it was an actual alert, get in their cars and flood the roads... simulate breaking down in the middle of Route 9, clog... We can also bring out the zombies, like a scene out of the Walking Dead.
October 1954: Consolidated Edison buys Indian Point Park and an adjacent tract, totaling 350 acres on the banks of the Hudson River at Indian Point, which is a popular park with beaches, trails, swimming pools and two piers. The plants are sited on the Hudson River, the Ramapo earthquake fault line, and 24 miles from the New York City line.
The pier where Clearwater actually docks its sloop is owned by Entergy, on Indian Point property, it's only a short distance from the plant. Now, isn't that ironic? In other words, ConEd bought 350 acres of prime riverfront park land with beaches, trails, swimming pools and two piers, and turned it into a war zone! Look at Peekskill today, a bombed out shell, half the buildings empty, store fronts boarded up, the city split in half between old timers hanging on, and barely legal immigrants who have settled there because it was the cheapest place around nobody else wanted.
As a community they are terrified to speak out against Indian Point because it could mean immigration coming down on them. Entergy foments this state of perpetual paranoia by funding the downtown free clinic. Certainly, sending a few Spanish and Portuguese speaking organizers into the community would go a long way in mobilizing the local population into building a sentiment of opposition against Indian Point, something which has never been done. Latin immigrants make up for half the residents of the community, and yet I have never seen a single Hispanic at any of the IP relicensing meetings.
We've been trying to get a top fashion magazine to shoot a spread on board the Clearwater with Indian Point in the background, but people just don't understand the importance of doing things like this and we've so far been unsuccessful. Why hasn't Elle or Vogue ever shot a fashion layout on board the Clearwater sloop, and why hasn't Clearwater ever really tried to make it happen? In New York fashion trumps politics. One picture of the Clearwater in front of Indian Point in a mainstream fashion magazine would do ten times more than a mention in Time or Newsweek. The anti-nuclear community is not using the opportunity Manhattan lends them!
Joost van Steenis writes: "The nuclear plant is like the heart of a human. Many veins connect the center with the rest of the body. When you stop the supplying of foodstuffs to the heart the heart will stop working. And what does a nuclear plant needs to continue working? All kinds of materials (including water) to keep the plant running. Food for the people who work there, materials to repair the plant, office articles to let the office run. The suppliers can be put under pressure. They come from outside. The stuff has to be transported to plant. There are also many organizations and private persons who own shares in the plant. They can be put under pressure. The plant is everywhere and where it is you can apply pressure. Be a little bit creative and maybe some suppliers will stop supplying because trade with the plant is only a fraction of their business and they do not want to be disturbed in their business. And maybe even other clients will withdraw their orders. And then I do not even talk about the people who work there and could work also elsewhere instead of helping to produce dangerous energy. Be creative and do not concentrate on the plant but on the supply lines of the plant through which the blood streams that keeps the plant alive. Pressure the suppliers."
On many occasions I have told folks at Entergy when they give away t-shirts promoting themselves as clean and green, it doesn't help their cause that their t-shirts are not printed on organic cotton. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Buchanan and Peekskill has been repressed. I've spoken to many people there who if they had a choice, would pick closing the plant, but are not comfortable voicing their opinion. The community needs organizers, and it doesn't have any. Nobody from Clearwater, IPSEC, Riverkeeper has actually gone inside the community to organize. Couple of years ago, we tried to get everyone behind opening a shut down IP office in Peekskill, where the rents are dirt cheap, but nobody wanted to make the effort.
Peekskill has a town square... This is the public gazebo located in the heart of downtown Peekskill. I would think this could be a perfect location for a Occupy Peekskill/Shut Down Indian Point rally. Just a few yards away, there is a toy store with a giant Lionel train set. Neil Young owns Lionel now. Neil has a melted down nuclear power plant in his son's train set! Doesn't take a marketing PR genius to understand the possibilities!!!
If you look carefully at the recent evolution of humanity, the population explosion, the growing gap between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, it's become insurmountable. The haves are huddling to save what they have and the have nots are repressed by non-lethal weapons in developed nations, and outright military oppression everywhere else.
Once upon a time you could walk off the street into a university library and teach yourself a few things... grow in stature and intellect... now you can't get past the front gate, and even if you could, only tuition paid students have access to the information since it's all gone Wi-Fi digital. The stacks are empty of printed journals.
Without the cultural input of self-thought inventors and thinkers, mankind will slowly degenerate into a mindless insect like society incapable of enlightenment. Cancer is just the result of our molecular and electromagnetic disintegration. Cancer is a disease of the emotions, caused by reversed polarizations of the cells. Radiation and other environmental exposures are just triggers, which is how the weak and sensitive are much more susceptible.
We're constantly downgrading our genome, which brings us to precarious territory. Nature is violent in the way it deals with ecological balance. The choice between empathy and ruthlessness depends on available resources. There's no solution other than order out of chaos, when in doubt just reshuffle the cards and start again, which is what nature on this planet has done over and over again over the millennia.
My concern is the creation of pockets of survival, where fauna is sufficiently plentiful to support communities, which is why the New York area is ideal, and why so much attention has been paid to redress the relationship between the city and its immediate suburban surroundings, nurturing access to fresh water. The only thing that keeps the tri-state region from being secure for immediate future generations, is the existence of old and dangerous nuclear power plants, which need to be shut down and decommissioned at our earliest convenience, otherwise all the green things we do won't amount to a hill of beans, our future no brighter than the people of Fukushima.
On the more practical side, that's why it's so important to bring organizations such as the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund into the fight against nuclear power. This can't be done without actively soliciting the participation of its members.
We have entered an era when the super wealthy want to protect themselves, and their immediate environment, which you see unfold in rich neighborhoods where eco-luxury has taken hold, with gourmet health food stores, hybrid cars, organic spas and farmers markets. This extends to a police force using the latest non-lethal weapon technology to control the rising tide of discontent coming from surrounding communities living in poverty.
The way to deal with this situation is to use drugs as a pretext to incarcerate as many high testosterone individuals as possible in defacto work camps, defusing the pool of potential leadership organizing the lower classes. This would have been a recipe for disaster a century ago, but today, with flat screen TV, and active denial microwave systems, it's a cinch to protect the status quo. Which means the only way to save the planet is to work through the system and become best bud with the military-industrial complex, in the hope they will allow us to build civilian UFOs, which is really just a metaphor for clean and limitless energy systems.
Stefanie Iris Weiss feels that if we follow the model of Gene Sharp's How to Start a Revolution, we will get somewhere. With SOPA and the NDAA and the new weapons that can be used against civilians, our only option is MILLIONS of us in the streets. So she still feels that OWS can shift the downward spiral. Our world does not have to be the world of 1984. She thinks it will seem dark over the coming months, but hope will return in the spring. They can't arrest/pepper spray/fire bomb an idea. It's out there, and it's not getting put back in the box.
I would like to believe OWS will have the effect aspired to, and it surely is a part of the change taking place. But again, this goes much deeper, and until the leadership, and there is a leadership, incorporates the discoveries of the conspiracy culture, to fine tune the message into a populist pill, it won't reach these millions we hope will rise in opposition to the global corporate state.
Take Fairfield County, Westchester, the Hamptons for example... these communities are made up of millions of individuals, families, who feed at the troff of internationalism, who give billions to charities, who live a green life style at the expense of dollar a day wages. They go to yoga to seek peace of mind. How do you connect all the dots so they start to genuinely empathize with the needs of the rest of their fellow men? It's been the question of the ages, except now you have 7 billion people on this planet, dwindling resources, no more fish in the sea, food prices doubling in a year, and a military-industrial complex holding on to the secret of unlimited clean energy as an ace in the hole for fear it would destabilize the world economy.
All this has to be assembled into a package that makes sense to the masses, and so the guy they're grooming to do that is Ron Paul evidently, because I don't see anyone else in sight. They're going to use him to cover the bases. The left is preoccupying itself with radical feminist issues, when it's the truck drivers, bikers and rockers we need to appeal to if we're really going to get this show on the road. The anger is there, it's just not directed at anything political, because the political institutions intentionally do not reflect the fashion of the culture.
It will change once candidates stop wearing red ties and blue polyester suits to conform to this red, white and blue ideal of what a political candidate needs to look like. We need guys like Nikki Sixx to run for office. That's how we shake things up! Tattoos are like war paint, they're not just ornamental, they reflect an inner state of mind that needs to rise to the surface.
With the National Defense Authorization Act in place, I don't know that we have another four years. As conspiracy culture rises to the surface, "The Truth Is Out There" rumble of urban legends that fuel our psyche. The same polarized debate of lesser of two evil has permeated the presidential election for decades. The liberal elite is subservient to the Skull & Bones graduates who meet at the Bohemian Grove every year, 2000 of them. They want a system in place that preserves their right to own a yacht and keeps the seas relatively clean.
The fly in the ointment here is that the seas are going fast, which is how we now have David Rockefeller Jr., David de Rothschild and other "cool rich kids" from the Federal dynasties trying to do two things, preserve their fortune while at the same time save the planet. The only logical outcome is some form of benevolent fascist ecological dictatorship, and Ron Paul strikes right at the heart of this social evolution. Ron Paul wants to do away with the Federal Bank Reserve, a direct assault at the wealth and power of these families. You groom someone like that long enough, so they appear to challenge the authority of the status quo, and then once in power, they are impotent to do anything other than go along with the Bilderberg plan, just like Carter, Clinton or Obama, lap dogs and front men to fait accompli.
Be clear that my priority in this mess is the survival of the planet. I support the superwealthy making it a priority, finding ways to curtail fossil fuel industrialism in favor of a new urbanism direction, as expressed by experiments like the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Call it billionaire survivalism. Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose. The problem is that there is another layer of power above this group, which prevents disclosure of more evolved energy technologies, preventing the application of necessary tools of restoration. It's not rich against poor, it's rich and poor against another level of suppression the masses are only becoming aware of, which for centuries they simply dismissed as religious. To quote Porno For Pyros, "we make great pets"! Reagan hit the nail on the head when he warned us that only an alien invasion would unite the people of Earth.
If you don't pull out the root of the dandelion, it grows right back. This is the generation which finally comes out and addresses the root of the problem, it's very close to the end of the road here for this species on this planet unless it wakes up. All the cards are on the table, all the conspiracies coming to light. It's all about perceptions, and not taking these communities in consideration, which are vast and influence the direction of the situation, is a grave mistake in my opinion.
That's how you get blindsided by shifts in popular opinion. Concerns about Ron Paul are overshadowed by what he brings to the picture. The secret societies and the decisions they make guide countries and governments... everything happening now was predicted and managed by policy set in place years ago. The point I am trying to make here, is that it is spinning out of control, that nobody, no institution, no cabal a la Eyes Wide Shut can guess what happens next. All they can do is as they always do, organize the opposition.
Whatever happens that will be a game changer, has to come out of left field and take everyone by surprise because they weren't paying attention. The situation is very much like IBM passing up the Apple because it didn't see the Internet coming! Don't make that mistake, don't take my word for it, widen your political science field of vision... you can't fit everything nice into a box, and hope all the pieces are going to fit together, they're not. At least not on this plane of existence.
Imagine you've been playing two dimensional chess, and suddenly the board has become three dimensional, that's what is happening to politics, or rather to human dynamics, right now. At no time in history have the secrets of the universe been at everyone's reach, the amount of knowledge in those who seek has been boosted exponentially. We know the truth, we know how the truth works, we have the science.
The trick is how do we trickle it down in such a way that is humane, just, and doesn't sweep away most living things, something which is already happening. You can't stop what you can't see, so if you don't understand the DNA rooted in what was already expressed in what gave birth to the Nazi Party in Germany, and its remnants in today's intelligence community, you're not giving people a chance. The blinders are already off, we simply need to open our eyes and let the light in. We're not alone.
We're stuck in a two party system, and the perceived polarity is getting even worse. People are fed up, and the Feds are quickly becoming the boogeymen, which they are, ever since they took power in 1913, and probably did away with Kennedy because he threatened to create a new currency. We have to look behind the curtain, and drag out whoever is pulling the strings, unveil the puppet masters, otherwise we will forever remain stuck on the merry go round!
We had to create hundreds of independent environmental organizations just to undo and fight the harm caused by EPA policies funded by the Federal government protecting the right of big business to pollute everything. The EPA was a sham from the start. Nixon was forced to create it after 30 million people walked in the streets on Earth Day 1970. A paper tiger. Did you ever set foot in the EPA building in the 80s or even the 90s? An empty shell, a joke, a facade... corridors after corridors of offices that looked as if nothing was going on there... a chill went down my spine when I realized the whole thing was just a sham. And then we learned the building itself was suffering from the worse possible case of sick building syndrome... The EPA isn't going to save the planet. Sorry.
We desperately need a parliamentary system in this country, so third parties like the Green Party, or at least a new version of the Green Party which isn't anti-green business, to have a voice in a Congress that's made up of more than just Republican and Democrat lackeys to the Federal dynasties. As in Chinese medicine, make the pain worse to isolate its source! You might not agree, but I would love nothing better than a Ron Paul/Obama showdown, if that's our only option at this junction. It would make things a heck of a lot more interesting.
I don't think we've evolved beyond the need for iconic figures, our entire culture is based on the cult of personality. I just want to see people step up to the plate who deserve the adoration of the public for more than just having hissy fits on reality television.
Indian Point, as well as the entire anti-nuclear movement, still needs to discover its new generation of stars. It's a faceless, windowless movement right now, led by old timers who have never given up, who keep hoping for fresh new faces to take up the mantle. Leaders who can bring everyone back together thinking, acting and speaking in a singular voice of opposition against the relicensing of a plant that like an old dog, has had its day.
Here at Rock The Reactors, we're still waiting, selling organic t-shirts with Gaia standing in front of Indian Point on them, and always open to suggestions.
American Beauty is Claiborne Swanson Frank's portraits of friends. She worked under Anna Wintour at Vogue for a couple years. Her family owns Swanson Vineyards in the Napa Valley, a cru frequently served at Martha Stewart parties. And yet there's an air of genuine hippie chic prevailing throughout the book, an attempt to make amends, don't hate us cause we're beautiful, easing the polarity. America doesn't want another French revolution. American Beauty is the 1%, building a bridge with the rest of us. It's Town & Country with grace and a slight hint of apology.
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