A few people may have noticed a strange coincidence
that occurred last month, involving a nuclear plant.
On Feb 20, 2006, there was a 4-hour nuclear emergency
at LaSalle nuclear power plant in Seneca, Illinois,
involving a malfunction of control rods.
On the previous evening, Feb 19, 2006, I had posted
a poem called "Grandma Dora's Curtain Rods", that,
among other things, alluded to malfunctions of control
rods of nuclear reactors.
On Feb 12, 2006, I had also posted something called
"O-Ring, O-No", that had specifically alluded to
malfunctions at the LaSalle nuclear reactor.
The posts, and the dates and times, are referenced
below for anyone who might want to verify them [1].
Both poems had suggestive themes concerning
sabotage of nuclear reactors.
I suppose that to the observant reader, these
coincidences might pose a bit of concern, or
might provoke a bit of paranoia.
I would like to allay those fears to a certain
degree by saying that I have no literal involvement
of any kind in conspiracies to sabotage reactors.
I have friends an relatives in Chicago, where
LaSalle reactor is near. I am fond of the city.
The coincidences do, however, make food-for-thought
concerning "what-if" scenarios. The fears would
be wise, to a degree, because they reflect real-world
possibilities that might otherwise be overlooked.
It is much more difficult, for example, to be fond
of Toledo, in my native Ohio, where a Christian
fundamentalist is running for Congress, and openly
advocating death penalty for gays.
As I understand, the reaction to this had been tepid.
The Christian Far-Right has for years been getting
nearly a free ticket, getting courted no matter
how deep and malignant their hatreds may actually be.
This is not isolated. The Secretary of State
for Ohio in the past year made a reference,
comparing gays to farm animals.
Conservative legislators in the state have
introduced legislation trying to bar adoptions
to heterosexual families who so much as have
a gay teen living in the same household.
Growing up in small-town Ohio was very much
like being a Jew in a Nazis country. The only
teaching that I had, concerning homosexuals,
was that they were "moral monsters". There was
no such thing as an openly gay person. The
isolation was total. Teachers and professors,
without the slightest hestitation, would refer
to homosexuality as "ugly" and to homosexuals
as "freaks". These attitudes were nearly
universal.
When contempt for gays is nearly universal, how
excited will people become, even at rhetoric
as outrageous as to advocate death?
Where is their motivation, to get off their behinds,
to say something, to take it seriously?
At any rate, what motivation will they have,
if no one is waving nuclear destruction under their
noses?
It is a bad habit and a natural consequence,
when a group of human beings is regarded
essentially as a "blemish" on society, that
there is a desire to remove the blemish. That
effects the psychology of nearly everyone, not
just the extreme haters.
That is exactly how nightmares happen- the
extreme hate of a relative few, the extreme
apathy of the great many.
The real "sin" of gays has been merely the
sin of small numbers. If we were a dominating
voting bloc, the same politicians who cynically
scapegoat us would instead come courting us.
A small minority has little reason to accept
this state of affairs as something "natural"
and therefore "right". The virtues of majority
rule are not so obvious, when your role is
to be the majority's sacrificial goat
and the plaything of sadists.
Sometimes, a minority can swing the balance
by having larger families and reproducing faster
than the controlling majority.
If a minority does not do that, then there is
little means to persuade a self-interested
majority to behave decently. The cynicism
of power can be nearly all-consuming. That applies
to majority power as much as it applies to
dictators.
Democratic process is not necessarily the definition
of "uplifting". It also can become a callous pandering
to the lowest common denominator and have a spirit
that is little more uplifting than that of
a lynch mob. All that matters is votes,
money, and power.
Except, that is, until a small minority
rebels and provides a reminder as to how
destructive it can be, to make a
confrontation inevitable.
The haters of society would be equally
eager for confrontation, assuming that they
would smash the minority, once and for all,
should they dare to demand an equal place at
the table.
What they forget is the wildcard for weapons
of mass destruction. Where they lack perspective
is in the naive fantasy that is possible even
for a powerful government to gain total control
over everyone, by sinking low enough
into a police state.
That is tragic bravado and wishful thinking.
The odds are heavily against being able to defend
everything, all the time, against everyone.
The only real safety is in not making
deadly enemies, not getting too cynical
in the pursuit of self-interest, and not
becoming too needlnessly petty in the indulgence
of one's hatreds.
Most human morality is rooted in the fear
of consequences for behaving otherwise. With
the issue of near-universal contempt for gays,
there has been little historical fear of
consequences. Gays have been too brow-beaten
to show their faces, much less to organize
and fight back, much less to do so with
credible, overwhelming force.
What if there were underground groups of gays
who decided to make war against global oppression,
to infiltrate into positions that would give
them the option for the ultimate in destructive
power?
Why should anyone think that gays would not have
motive to do exactly what aggrieved Muslim militants
are commonly known to desire?
Who is more aggrieved? In Muslim countries, gays are
treated 100% as criminals. They are jailed, if they
are not tortured an killed. In what country on earth
would Muslims face a similar level of institutionalized,
oppression? Certainly not even in their much-resented
Israel.
The grievances of other minorities seem more
significant and more legitimate only because
the grievances of gays are so completely
censored, minimized and trivialized.
I have little doubt that a lot of gays, probably
even a majority, would be quite hateful of any
true militants among their number would be willing
to pursue weapons of mass destruction as a means
for forcing social change.
That attitude might be a product of brainwashing and
a lack of perspective. Society tells us, over and
over again, that violence accomplishes nothing
and only begets more violence.
Of course, society is a hypocrite. American society
is perfectly willing to rationalize Hiroshima.
A lot of gays would claim that this comparison is
invalid because America was invaded by Japan,
We were defending our lives against an "aggressor".
That, too, is a perception that is largely rooted
in brainwashing, propaganda, and lack of perspective.
Few would ask what we were doing, in the first place,
in the middle of the Pacific ocean, to be attacked
there, in the first place, if we did not have
imperialistic and expansionist schemes.
Pearl Harbor is described as a "sneak" attack by
Americans, and as a "surprise" attack in Japanese
history books.
The power of propaganda is such that a sneak attack
against gays would be as totally denied as the
Holocaust would have been denied, if Hitler had
won the war. If Hitler had won, we would ridicule
the "myth" and "conspiracy theory" of the Holocaust.
It would be pointed out how the Americans also
deterred citizens in camps. It would be pointed
out how a flu epidemic killed more humans than
the warfare did, for a time, in World War I.
The excuse would be made that deaths were of Jews
were merely from flu, and that bodies were burned
merely to prevent further infection.
There *has* been a covert Holocaust perpetrated
against gays, whether gays themselves can understand
that, or not. Thousands of gays were lured into
hepatitis B vaccine trials, immediately before
the outbreak of AIDS.
Does it not strike you as curious that the
American government would have been so concerned
about gay health, that they would facilitate
homosexual promiscuity, by trying to cure
hepatitis B among gays? The scale of these
vaccine trials was unprecedented.
In fact, the vaccine trials recruited far
more men than could be scientifically justified
for purposes of statistical collection.
The gay men in the vaccine trials were being
devastated by a strange, new disease-
Does it not strike you as curious that a
vaccine would be pronounced safe and released
to the public, in spite of the fact that
the trial participants were diseased and
dying in droves, by an epidemic that was not
at all understood?
The American public is strangely incurious.
There are standard, scientific, statistical tests
that can be applied, to attempt to determine
whether a vaccine is indeed responsible for a
small side effect such as a fatal disease.
For the hepatitis B vaccine, no reputable scientist
even *attempted* to perform such a standard
statistical measure, to confirm the vaccine's
safety.
I have a bit of background in statistics.
With assistance, I collected the necessary data
and applied the standard tests. I have verified
the results with 2 professors specializing
in statistics. It is overwhelmingly
clear that the vaccines are implicated [2].
If it is really true that AIDS is an old
disease, then it needed merely to be discovered
and put into vaccines.
The public cannot comprehend how the government
could possibly be so irresponsible.
How sane and responsible is it, to have a
Congressional candidate who advocates death
penalty for gays? America fawns over religion,
and refuses see the obvious -the hate, irrationality,
irresponsibly and sheer madness that it can spawn.
Pearl Harbor involved something over 2000 deaths.
The gay "Pearl Harbor", which was an act of murder,
not of nature, was on the order of 250,000 deaths
and counting.
If heterosexual society did not prefer for a
"Hiroshima" ending to the story, it would have
been wise not to start off with a "Pearl Harbor"
beginning.
Whether the majority of gays can understand
this is not so relevant as whether the gays
who work at nuclear plants, on nuclear subs,
at key research labs, and so on, might
understand it.
There is a paradox to mass destruction. If the
possibility could be made real enough, that might
be the best hope for a completely peaceable
transition to a more just society.
No gay person, fired from a job, would need even
the petty act of symbolic violence, to go "postal",
even once.
I, for one, certainly would never sanction use
of weapons of mass destruction without first
giving society a clear warning and a clear
means of escaping that fate. Neither would I be
one to impose unreasonable demands as a precondition.
The kinds of things that I would like for gays
are the kinds of things that should have been
granted without hesitation, decades ago,
were it not for the sake of corrupt politics
and cynical game-playing that has trumped
basic equality under the law. Gays should
be treated the same as other minorities under
federal hate crimes legislation and in terms
of job/housing discrimination.
If a society were so hateful as to prefer
self-destruction than to grant equality
under the law, then it would seem obvious
enough that any peaceful attempts at solution
would have been even more futile. If a society
is that wracked with mindless and irrational
hatreds, then it does not really deserve
survival, in my view.
No one is simply slaughtering without giving
any substantial warning, as the U.S. did in
Hiromshima. What would be the excuse of our
politicians to risk the ultimate? To defend
their right to be hateful cranks, for
all eternity, without fear of repercussion?
It would be their will and their decision,
also, if such a fate were to come. It would
be the will of the society itself, because
they can replace their politicians. Their
destruction would be self-justifying, if they
chose it.
The human race has been through Inquisitions,
witch burnings, McCarthy hearings, civil rights
crusades, burning crosses, wars, Holocausts.
Isn't it about time that it really learn the
lessons completely, and cease oppressing *all*
groups, for face the cost of failure?
Progress is not good enough, to be selective and
playing favorites, apologizing to one minority,
only turn an even more venomous face to another.
The need for a scapegoat, the need for someone
to hate, must go completely, or the entire
society can go.
Maybe there is Someone Above, manipulating
coincidence, to punctuate that very message.
Tom Keske
======================================================
REFERENCES
[1] Poetry exerpts foreshadowing LaSalle Nuclear Emergency:
3. Operators Declare, Exit Site Area Emergency at LaSalle Station:
Financial News - Y...
... Feb. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Operators at the LaSalle Generating
Station declared a "site area emergency" at 12:28 a.m. (CST) Monday during
shutdown of the Unit 1 reactor
biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060220/cgm011.html?.v=40 [Found on Yahoo! Search]
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www.talkaboutarts.com/group/alt.surrealism
Grandma Dora's Curtains "thomas keske&q... 1 Feb 19, 2006 10:46 PM
...
24. NucNews - February 11, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR Nuclear weapons:
Who
....function, control rods are inserted into the reactor chamber.
The rods ... One finding: The bombing of Dora Farms near Baghdad,
where Saddam
...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.talkaboutarts.com/group/alt.surrealism
O-Ring, Oh, No! "thomas keske&q... 1 Feb 12, 2006 01:28
...
This information notice is intended to advise licensees of
erratic behavior of certain differential pressure switches
supplied by SOR, Incorporated (formerly Static "O" Ring Pressure
Switch Company) which apparently caused failure of the LaSalle 2
reactor to scram automatically when it was operating with water
level below the low level setpoint.
...
If the reactor blows,
better count your fingers and toes
before nuclear winter brings the snow
and the Fat Lady's singing stops the show
=======================================================================
[2] American AIDS Epidemic Origin in Government-Sponsored Vaccines:
http://www.bhc.edu/eastcampus/leeb/aids/aidtesk.htm
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