By Jonathan Bennett
"When air monitors have been outlawed, only outlaws will have air monitors!”
The slogan, which has become the unofficial rallying cry of an ad hoc coalition of labor unions, environmental groups, elected officials and community activists, was environmental activist Bob Gulack’s reaction when he heard a report about the New York City Police Department’s plan to require a permit for any independent environmental sampling used in the city.
A long list of organizations and individual activists all oppose the proposed law, known as Intro 650, which was unveiled by NYPD brass at the City Council’s Public Safety Committee Jan. 8 meeting.
The proposed legislation would make it a misdemeanor for anyone in New York City to own, or use, any device that measures chemical, biological or radiological contamination. Banned devices could include smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors, Geiger counters, and any device that collects and analyzes air or water samples, for contamination without first obtaining a permit from NYPD.
It was the independently collected air samples in Lower Manhattan after 9/11 that debunked the claim by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that the air was safe to breathe.
Among those opposed to Intro 650 is U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose congressional district includes the site of the World Trade Center. Testifying to the City Council, Nadler called the bill “a great potential to threaten the important contributions made by academic research institutions, unions, and environmental and community-based organizations that conduct independent chemical, biological and radiological environmental sampling.” Nadler is a leading proponent of federal legislation to provide healthcare to people now sick due to exposure of 9/11-related contamination.
The overriding question is why would NYPD want to control the use of air monitors and other environmental sampling equipment?
“Our mutual goal is to prevent false alarms and unnecessary public concern by making sure that we know where these detectors are located and that they conform to standards of quality and reliability,” said Richard Falkenrath, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Counter-Terrorism in his testimony for the bill.
The bill’s opponents call this justification for the bill a smokescreen. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer noted that he had never heard of a false alarm caused by private environmental monitoring. “This is a fake emergency that doesn’t exist,” he said. “If it’s not a problem, let’s not try to create one.”
“As introduced, Intro 650 has the potential to adversely impact, delay or even prevent unions, environmental activists and others from doing the kind of work that is now done under the protection of laws such as the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the National Labor Relations Act,” said Dave Newman, an industrial hygienist with the non-profit New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. Also according to the police department’s testimony, the driving force behind the bill is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The police testified that the federal government asked NYPD to lobby for the bill, with the intention of using the proposed New York City law as a model to be adopted by other cities and states. In response to the strong opposition, the city prepared a revised version of the bill, which was made public Jan. 25. The revised bill exempts any detector that, “presents no significant possibility of triggering an alert of a possible biological, chemical or radiological weapons attack” from its requirements.
Despite the exemption for smoke detectors, opposition to the bill remains solid because it would require permits for almost all sampling equipment used by environmental and labor organizations to test for environmental degradation or dangerous working environments.
The bill has no provision for an appeal if the NYPD refuses to issue a permit, except to allow the applicant to submit an amended application.
Jonathan Bennett is a former Public Affairs Director with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH).
Comments
Mr Bennett,
You asked "The overriding question is why would NYPD want to control the use of air monitors and other environmental sampling equipment?"
I suggest the answer is five time zones away in the once tropical paradise of Hawaii. There are now 161 military bases in Hawaii and hundreds of abandoned and leaking military toxic waste sites. Hawaii is actually a tiny state with a fragile ecosystem and a population of about a million people in the middle of the Pacific.
Hawaii is dependent of the military and the seven million tourists who visit the Island each year for a cash economy. In 2007, citizens and native Hawaiian Islanders discovered alarming radiation spikes blowing in the wind from the Pohakuloa Live Fire Range.
Citizens radiation monitor spikes were taken very seriously by the Army and the Pentagon. They immediately denied that any uranium weapons were ever used in Hawaii, despite the clear evidence in front of their lying eyes. The Army Brass used the same bogus arguments the NYPD did a few months later about this Bill before the City government requested by Mayor Bloomberg and the so-called Homeland Security bureaucracy.
Senior US Senator Daniel Inouye later confirmed the use of Uranium weapons at Pohakuloa Live Fire Range. After the US Senator confirmed it, the US Air Force started high altitude thermonuclear bombing runs using uranium based bombs that they "promise" will not go off on impact. The bombing range is located next to a Girl Scout Camp on the space cramped, tiny Hawaiian Islands.
The Army freaked out, lied, embarrassed a US Senator in his home state, then lied some more. So, Mr Bennett, look west to Hawaii for the reason the Homeland Security Agency all of a sudden demands that their client, the NYPD, push through a model US Detector law to criminalize mere possession of a detector.
That is just wrong.
Tell them to put their proposed fascist law where the sun don't shine New York City.
Go for it!
Bob Nichols
Project Censored Award Winner
Correspondent, San Francisco Bay View newspaper
Reference:
http://tinyurl.com/37d9zp
Hawaiian Pacifists Demand An End to Island Bombings
This proposed law doesn't quite square with what the Feds say...
As reported in "The
Enemy Within" by Jay Gould.
" The Nevada down winders"
suits were unsuccessful.
Despite winning their case in
the lower courts, the Appellate
Court ruled in favor of The Atomic
Energy Commission
on the grounds that the
U.S. government could not be
held responsible.
At one point, one of the
lawyers for the plaintiffs sent
a series of interrogatories to
the AEC defense counsel with
the following simple question:
Who has the responsibility
for the safety and welfare of
persons and their property
near areas of possible fallout?
The AEC answered as follows:
"It is the responsibility of the
heads of families and owners
of property to protect their
families and their property
from possible radioactive
fallout.
When you post an article like this, please be sure to put a notice at the beginning that it can be forwarded. Yahoo! is getting very sticky about this
Bob, you are an expert on this topic. Sometimes experts forget to mention things, to the laity, because they believe it is self evident.
The component of this issue, that needs mentioning here, is the many sites here on the "mainland" that are "at risk" for radiation exposure - your new hometown being one of them.
There is a small town in Nevada that swears their cancer rates are up because of military "testing." Of course the feds deny it.
It's getting easier and easier for me to believe that our "leaders" really are radioactive resistant cockroaches from outer space inhabiting human bodies. For one thing they look much better in suits than we do.
-~wolf
Outrageous. Totally OUTRAGEOUS!
Also transparent.
When dangerous, damaging, illegal, deadly, and immoral deeds are done, it is easier to do them by stealth.
The attempt to take away the citizens' power to protect themselves is beyond obvious.
We are being conditioned to fear the imagined and be unable to detect the real terror.
We do not need more secrecy in this nation -- we need more light on the subject.
We also need accurate information.
We are getting neither.
This bill is sheer crazy! It is tantamount to outlawing Neighborhood Watch or canaries in the mine. The authorities don't want us to know that they are poisoning us. They are lying to us like the Nazis did to their victims when herding them into so-called "showers" that were in effect gas chambers. When will it become illegal to breathe?
Correction: I stated there "hundreds of abandoned and leaking military toxic waste sites. " That is not correct. The word "hundreds" is a tad light. The actual number is 856 abandoned, leaking, deadly, scuzzy, disgusting, gross military toxic waste sites.
Beware, this stuff dumped by the US military occupying the Hawaiian Islands will kill you. The best thing for the military to do is, like the British Empire in India, just leave.
Bob Nichols
bob.bobnichols@gmail.com
Mr. Bennett says that the Department of Homeland Security is behind this move by the NYPD and former Bushie Dick Falkenrath. Mr. Bennett, can you let me know who in DHS is behind this, or at least which office. Pursuing this ridiculous idea to its source will be a lot more productive than ranting about uranium in Hawaii.
Thank you.
GC
I agree that we are being treated exactly as the Nazis treated the Jews. Leading them to gas chambers instead of showers!
This is the most unspeakable, unacceptable crime yet! There must be a way to stop this madness. I hope it's not too late!
GC makes a good point. Who's behind it? Well, let's see who runs DHS. Certoff. Who's this relatively new guy Chertoff and who controls him? I don't know much about him except for the fact that he's a dual-citizen of Israel and the US.
What a second --come to think of it so is: Wolfowitz [former Sec of War, World Bank], Libby [former Cheney Asst], Zelikow [former ED of 9/11 Comm, wrote Preemptive strike in Nat Sec Policy], Tenet [former Dir of CIA], Mukasey [US Attorney General], Zakheim [former Comp of Pentagon], Fleisher [former White House Spoken], Perle [Asst Sec of War, PNAC].
I'm not sure what this apparent trend means and how it might lead to who in control, but it certainly seems like a lot of people in high places come from the tiny state of Israel.
Maybe the Israelis know something about who's in control or maybe somebody or something is in control of the Israelis--who in turn--seem to exert a disproportionate amount of control [Jews 3% of US population] in the US.
Might be worth following up on, given the dire State of the Union. How about assembling of of the aforementioned people in one room and polling them to see if maybe between all of them [there are probably hundreds more] there might be some meaningful information about who's in control. Might be worth a try.
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