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Quite the World, Isn't It?

On nuclear energy, human folly, and human error

March 14, 2011
Tags: current events, history
There are many churning emotions involved in watching from afar the events unfolding in Japan. The earthquake and tsunami, coming just a few years after similar events obliterated hundreds of thousands of lives in Indonesia and around the Indian Ocean, defy words. And a volcano in southern Japan has suddenly roared back to life.

The natural disasters are bad enough. Now we watch nervously as Japanese power workers struggle to keep the cores in nuclear power plants from melting down and adding yet another layer of catastrophe to the natural disasters. At this moment, they seem to be failing - the workers were evacuated as another explosion rocked the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

The most chilling part of all of this comes in the news that today's catastrophe was due to human error. From the Los Angeles Times:
Engineers had begun using fire hoses to pump seawater into the reactor — the third reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 complex to receive the last-ditch treatment — after the plant's emergency cooling system failed. Company officials said workers were not paying sufficient attention to the process, however, and let the pump run out of fuel, allowing the fuel rods to become partially exposed to the air.

Once the pump was restarted and water flow was restored, another worker inadvertently closed a valve that was designed to vent steam from the containment vessel. As pressure built up inside the vessel, the pumps could no longer force water into it and the fuel rods were once more exposed.
Workers failed to check the fuel gauge on a pump. Another worker simply shut a valve. And now a manmade nuclear disaster looms. We are told constantly by the people who want to build these things that nuclear power is safe, that all safeguards are taken, that experts are in control. Obviously not. And increasing nuclear energy production in the U.S. is part of the Obama administration's approach to reducing our reliance on foreign oil sources for our energy. It's a policy that flirts with disaster, and that is based on a failure to imagine the excesses of nature, and of human incompetence.

I don't see the logic in risking mass deaths and an uninhabitable environment for the sake of cheaper light bills or lower factory production costs. Nuclear power generation is not safe. Even low-level nuclear waste creates massive disposal problems in a world with finite resources, and finite places to store such things. Add in the human propensity to do the unimaginably stupid - not watching a fuel gauge on a crucial power generator qualifies - and we are creating our own recipe for self-annihilation. Maybe nuclear energy can be produced safely. But that safety can't be guaranteed, as we're seeing. Why would we accept this risk, given the potential damage from failure?

Nuclear energy is not safe. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the West Valley Project, Hanford and other examples have all shown us that. Our power companies cannot be trusted to safeguard our well-being. These power sources need to be abandoned. This is a monster that we have created. It is a monster we need to curtail. Better a worldwide economic depression because of lack of energy, than a worldwide catastrophe because, in our hubris and our thirst for wealth, we think we can control the uncontrollable.


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Maybe I should thank Rep. Pete King

March 10, 2011
Tags: current events, history
This feels like time-warp territory, and the House Un-American Activities Committee is back in full swing. It's called the House Homeland Security Committee now, led by U.S. Rep. Pete King (R-NY) and the target of the new generation of hearings is radical Islam. But the template is clear, and its existence serves as proof that we, as a nation, have learned little from the errors of our past.

One of the points of my forthcoming book, The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, is that U.S. government has a long history of cracking down on First Amendment (and other) rights during times of stress, a history Geoffrey Stone detailed in his Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism from 2004. So maybe I should be thankful these folks are bringing this dark past back to life.

The Los Angeles Times had a brief item about L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca's showdown with the committee today, and the dialog is straight from the McCarthy era.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca shot back at a congressman who warned him during a congressional hearing Thursday that a Muslim group the sheriff supports is affiliated with terrorists and is "using" him.

The reference to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose Southern California branch Baca has allied with, came during a controversial House hearing on the question of whether American Muslims are becoming radicalized.

"You are aware" that CAIR is affiliated with Hamas, Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) said.

"No I'm not aware," Baca interrupted.

"Let me bring this to your attention ... I'm trying to get you to understand that they might be using you," Cravaack said.

Baca, noticeably irritated, told the congressman that he is aware of no criminal allegations have been made against CAIR. If there were any such allegations, he said, "bring them to court."

"We don't play around with criminals in my world," Baca said before the packed hearing.

Great response by Baca. But what's next? "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Muslim?" This is deplorable conduct by our elected representatives. Combine it with the rank opportunism of the anti-union push in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Tennessee, and the State of Michigan moving to give its governor the power to rule municipalities by fiat, and you have to wonder why more people in more places aren't exercise the First Amendment right to free assembly - while we still have it. Read More 
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A couple of other things to remember today

March 7, 2011
Tags: history
Photo from the Chicago Daily Tribune the day after the Ford Hunger March.
Those of you who follow me on Facebook (and if you don't, please do go over there and friend me up) know today is my birthday, an event I rarely spend much time celebrating. But I do take a certain pride in sharing the day with two notable events that appeal to some of my more radical impulses, and my belief in the power of collective action to make social and political change.

The first came on this day in 1932, a bitterly cold afternoon in Detroit. In the depths of the Great Depression, with hundreds of thousands of Detroiters out of work, local communists and other political radicals arranged for a march on the Ford Rouge plant in the adjoining city of Dearborn. The march was a demand for food, work, and other aid from Henry Ford and his auto business, built through the labor of Detroit workers. Ford had struck a recalcitrant position during the Depression (which I'm detailing in the Detroit: A Biography book project I expect to finish by the end of the month), refusing on principal to donate to local charities.

The march began under the watchful eye of Detroit police officers, but once it reached the Dearborn city line, all hell broke loose. First fire hoses, then guns, were turned on the marchers, who responded with fusillades of rocks. The bullets won. Four marchers were killed that afternoon; a fiifth died three months later of his injuries. The response from local police and the Wayne County district attorney: A crackdown on, and round up of, pro-union agitators in Detroit, and calls for the arrest of the national communist leader William Z. Foster who had the previous day encouraged Detroiters to join the march. None of the Dearborn police or Ford security men were held accountable. But the march became a rallying point for progressive activists who continued to push for aid for the starving working class in Detroit and elsewhere.

The second event came a generation later, in 1965, when some 600 Civil Rights activists had barely begun a protest march from Selma to Montgomery before the Alabama state police met them with clubs and tear gas (in the picture at left, future U.S. Rep. John L. Lewis is beaten bloody by police). The marchers were routed, but in their failure they helped catalyze a movement. Two weeks later, armed with a court acknowledgement of their right to march in protest, some 25,000 people walked from Selma to Montgomery demanding the extension of civil rights to African Americans. Five months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.

As I said, a couple of other events that occurred on this day in which we should all take pride, and which, as a nation, we ought not forget. Read More 
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The Supreme Court, and noxious speech

March 2, 2011
Tags: current events, history
Credit: Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.
There hasn't been much the current U.S. Supreme Court has done that strikes me as right, and reasonable, but this week they've hit two opinions that have been somewhat heartening.

The first was the decision that found corporations have no right to privacy when dealing with the government and regulators (AT&T had sought to keep public records sealed). This was a bit of a surprise given its earlier ruling on campaign spending that effectively equated corporations (and unions, which regular readers of this blog know I support at a genetic level) with individuals, and thus they have the right to spend what they want in political campaigns. Our republic is the worse for that one - elections are expressions of voters' sentiments, and giving corporations and unions free rein to spend perverts what should be a discussion among individual voters.

Then the Supremes followed with a dicier, but right, call in the case of those highly objectionable morons, the Phelps family, who run around the country proclaiming that God hates everything - including soldiers killed in foreign combat. It's an emotional issue, and today's ruling that protects the rights of the noxious to speak has lit up social media sites (my comments here, in fact, are reprised from a discussion on my Facebook page).

There are many reasonable people who believe the Phelpses should be muzzled, especially when they protest outside military funerals. My sentiments are with the families of the dead, but we as a society have to move beyond the emotional and stand with the protesters' right to protest, as noxious and twisted as they might be.

The problem lies in who gets to define the conditions under which free speech can be abrogated. I despise these protesters, same as I despised the neo-Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois, a generation ago. But their First Amendment right to free speech is inviolable, as hateful as the exercise of it might be. Years ago there was a group in the midwest somewhere that found an ingenious way Read More 
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American idiocy, and Sharia law

February 23, 2011
Tags: current events, history
When I was writing The Fear Within, wedged in the back of my mind was that as venally idiotic as some of our political figures were in the 1940s and 1950s, at least those days were behind us. Now it looks like our national fear is back. But instead of torching civil liberties over political beliefs, the modern flashpoint is religion.

Tennessee legislators are pushing a bill that would make observing Islamic Sharia law a criminal offense punishable by 15 years in prison. Its ostensible aim is those who would act to replace the U.S. government with an Islamic state. Specifically, the proposed law says "knowing adherence to sharia and to foreign sharia authorities is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States government and the government of this state through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States and Tennessee Constitutions by the likely use of imminent criminal violence and terrorism with the aim of imposing sharia on the people of this state."

Note that acts are not required, just belief. The parallels to the 1940 Smith Act, which was the basis for the prosecutions I wrote about, are eerie. Chillingly so. Then, membership in the Communist Party was, according to the federal government, a de facto effort to violently overthrow the U.S. government, since theoretical communism called for the violent destruction of the capitalist state. This law would say the same thing about followers of Sharia law - whose interpretations vary widely. Belief is tantamount to action, and thus illegal.

Yes, fundamentalist Sharia law carries some draconian elements. But so does the Christian Bible - eye for an eye, anyone? Modern, mature societies and religious observers are capable of placing such outdated directives within their proper historical context. When was the last time an adulterer was stoned in Tennessee? Or a thief's hand cut off? Or, conversely, a mosque burned or an abortion provider attacked by Christian fundamentalists? (For the record, I'm an atheist).

This is religious intolerance at its most naked, an attempt to codify hatred. Burning mosques apparently isn't drastic enough in Tennessee, a place where crimes in the name of Christian extremism occur far more often than crime rooted in Sharia. The problem lies not in the faith, but in extremism, regardless of the religion at hand. And we have laws governing extremist acts in our criminal codes.

These proposals to criminalize the expression of religious faith are preposterous. We're being governed by Chicken Littles, though in truth we do keep electing these bozos, so we only have ourselves to blame. And you have to wonder whether we should redraw some of our existing legal lines. Could it be a hate crime to propose a law that would criminalize faith? Read More 
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Wisconsin, and the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire

February 21, 2011
Tags: current events, history
Some of the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.
Like many people, I've been watching the events unfolding in Wisconsin with a sense of fascinated revulsion. The rank opportunism of political figures in using the financial crisis to blow up public employees' rights to organize is as callous a move as we've seen in a long time (though I am very heartened by labor's response; general strike, anyone?). Same for the folks in Congress using the crisis to defund public broadcasting and Planned Parenthood. None of those proposals do more than throw a pail of water on a raging fiscal fire; the motives are based on shifting power, not balancing budgets.

But the fire analogy is apt. The New York Times this morning has a wonderful story about how the obsession of one researcher has led to the identification of the final six victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which marks its 100th anniversary on March 25th.

Like the ludlow Massacre, the Triangle fire was a critical moment in the union movement, and the sheer scope of the tragedy - 146 killed as fire raged through a sweatshop in a building that is now part of New York University - led to significant reforms in fire codes, building codes, and working conditions.

It's a good lesson to learn from history in these union-busting days. Labor's response to that fire, and the pressure it put on government, revolutionized fire, safety and labor codes. For those who would have less government, it's a good juncture from which to look at "before" and "after." What working conditions were like when business owners were given a free hand, and the safeguards we as a society decided were necessary to rein in their killing excesses.

Remember, in that era, workers were considered disposable (some things don't change). In the Colorado coal mines, workers were valued less than mules. If a worker was killed, managers could always hire another one, in essence renting time and labor from another supplier. A mule, on the other hand, would have to be replaced. My guess is the owners of the Triangle sweatshop lamented the loss of their sewing machines as much if not more than the loss of life.

Unions emerged for a reason. And as the balance of power - and wealth - continues to shift toward corporations and away from workers, no matter the color of their collars, we would be well served by understanding how and why unions came to be in the first place. And those who think their relevance is in the past could not be more wrong. As long as our national policies and, for that matter, our national psyche, values profit over people, there is a need for unions. Read More 
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The first advance review for The Fear Within

January 24, 2011
Tags: writing, history, nonfiction
I'm still in Detroit (for one more day) finishing up research for Detroit: A Biograhy, and received a nice email from the publicity folks at Rutgers University Press: the first advance review for The Fear Within from Kirkus Reviews. They seem to like it, which is always reassuring for a writer. It's in the February 1 issue, limited to subscribers, but I was lucky enough to get a copy of it.
An evenhanded revisiting of the trial of the U.S. Communist Party leaders that tested the pernicious efficacy of the Smith Act.

Journalist Martelle (Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West, 2007) focuses on Dennis v. the United States of America, which had dramatic and disturbing ramifications to First Amendment rights to this day—e.g., the Patriot Act, which the author mentions but does not dwell on. In August 1945, Soviet spy turned FBI informer Elizabeth Bentley spilled incriminating evidence about leaders of the U.S. Communist Party, and the two-count indictment was handed down, charging 12 men with violating the Smith Act because they “unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly did conspire with each other” by their society and meetings to “teach and advocate the overthrow and destruction of the Government of the United States by force and violence.” Among the men were New York City Councilman Benjamin Davis, Jr., Daily Worker editor John Gates, decorated war hero Robert Thompson, top party leader William Z. Foster and general secretary Eugene Dennis. The nine-month Foley Square trial became a cause célèbre, not only for the anti-Communist crusaders, including Harry Truman, who was up for reelection, but for defenders of the First Amendment and radical activists who believed fiercely that the men were innocent and being framed for their beliefs. Their defense should have been an opportunity to defend their political views and present an education in Marxism and Leninism, as Dennis did vociferously during the trial, representing himself. Instead, Judge Harold R. Medina threw the book at them, and at their attorneys, who received jail time and disbarment. Not until the Warren Court of the ’50s did the “roundups” cease.

Martelle treads carefully through the evidence, keeping a close harness on his own sympathies for the defendants.
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A book I'd have loved to have written

November 27, 2010
Tags: writing, history, nonfiction
Actually, there are two books mentioned here I'd have loved to have done myself, both by Bill Barich, a former New Yorker writer who now works in television. The first is his align="left">new Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America, a look at Americans during the 2008 election following the template of John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley (my profile of Barich, which ran in the Los Angeles Times today, is here).

It's an interesting, and intricately drawn, portrait of Americans as they wrestled with a souring economy, the stresses of a nation engaged in two wars, and a viciously split electorate masked somewhat by the ordinariness of everyday lives.

The other is one of Barich's earlier books, A Pint of Plain: Tradition, Change and the Fate of the Irish Pub, in which he rambled around Ireland (where he was living at the time) looking for a pub that would stand as the perfect Irish watering hole. In both cases, Barich approaches the projects in a way that I've long found appealing - using a somewhat thin template around which to build a detailed and meandering view of a people, and a place. In the case of Long Way Home, the model is revisiting Steinbeck's tour with his dog, detailed in Travels With Charley. In the latter, it is using a subjective quest as an excuse to take a close look at a cultural institution.

In both, the tack gives a writer an excuse to poke around in places one might otherwise not write about, let alone visit. Within that forced relevance, you can learn a lot about people, and place. And, occasionally, get a nice pint of ale. Read More 
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Pages proofed, another step in the process

November 16, 2010
Tags: writing, history, nonfiction
Last week I sent back to the publisher my edits of the page proofs for The Fear Within, lending a nice sense of finality to my end of the production process. Well, not quite final. Still awaiting the index pages to proofread, but we're almost there.
align="left">I have to say I like the design and the feel of the pages. Looks like you'll have a chance to see them for yourselves come May, or even mid April (earlier, I was told the pub date would be March). This is one of the harder adjustments to make from a career in daily newspapers, and even doing this kind of blogging. Book publishing moves very slowly. Frustratingly slow, at times. But then, the books last a lot longer than newsprint.

But the odd part is that we'll be fully into the marketing phase of The Fear Within while I'll be finishing off the manuscript for the third book, Detroit: A Biography. So I feel like I'll be lapping myself, which is an odd sensation.

That means I'll soon be contemplating what to tackle next. And yes, I have some ideas, but I'm keeping them to myself for now. Those seeds need a little more germination time. Read More 
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A nice sense of accomplishment

October 30, 2010
Tags: books, writing, nonfiction, history
It's a nice fall day in Southern California, a little rain overnight and mixed clouds and sunshine this morning. Sitting at my desk in front of the open patio door I just finished proofreading the printed pages for The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, which left me with a tremendous sense of satisfaction.

As you all know, I've been deep into researching and writing Detroit: A Biography, which has become (as you might imagine) an all-consuming project. I haven't read or thought much about The Fear Within in months as it has worked its slow way through the pre-publishing process. So it was with a fresh eye that I went through the page proofs over the past couple of days. And you know what? It's not a bad bit of work (there are a few passages for which I wouldn't mind a do-over, but it's a bit late for that now).

Can't wait for you all to be able to read it in March. Read More 
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