To: "Dustin Johnston" <puredreamsoul@hotmail.com>, "Raymond Shadis" <shadis@ime.net>, "The President of the United States" <president@whitehouse.gov>, "Governor Gray Davis" <graydavis@governor.ca.gov>, "Barbara Boxer, Senator (CA, D)" <senator@boxer.senate.gov>, "Office of Public Affairs/NRC" <opa@nrc.gov>
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: A gift to your children: One new ton of Slightly Used Nuclear Reactor Cores every couple of hours!
Cc: "Winonah Hauter" <whauter@citizen.org>, <pelofson1@attbi.com>, "Karl Grossman" <kgrossman@hamptons.com>, "Paul Gunter" <pgunter@nirs.org>, "Sara Barczak" <sara@cleanenergy.ws>, "PROGRESSIVE REVIEW" <ssmith@igc.org>, <moneyline@cnn.com>, <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>

To Whom It May Concern,

Below are two additional letters about Public Citizen and the Nuclear Renaissance meeting they and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard "Rich Rad" Meserve will be attending on and around the anniversary of the September 11th tragedy.  Also shown are my responses, plus URLs to all previous correspondence regarding this important media event.

-- rdh

Redistribution welcome!  My distribution list isn't really all that big!

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At 03:08 PM 8/9/02 , "Dustin Johnston" <puredreamsoul@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hey Russ,

Let it go! These people are trying to help against Nukes.They are utilizing
the ole expression "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer". Now if
Public Citizen starts to promote these cats, I will help you can 'em.

Dustin

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At 04:35 AM 8/9/02 , "Raymond Shadis" <shadis@ime.net> wrote:

 Russell,
 If I had the price of admission, $1500 for chump change, or a free ticket,
I would attend. Confronting the nuclear promoters, studying what they have
to say, plan to do, and so forth is better than denouncing from a safe
distance. You are wrong to continue to blister Public Citizen. Anyone who
has ever attended an NRC or DOE public meeting where the agencies have
shared the front table or podium with contractors and licensees has lent
credence to a stacked process and co-opted agencies. We go duck hunting in
the swamp because...that's where the ducks are.
Ray

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Response to "Dustin Johnston" <puredreamsoul@hotmail.com>:
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Hi Dustin, other interested persons:

Thank you for your followup comments (shown above, with Ray Shadis's comments).

The Nuclear Revivalist Hootenanny will be the nuclear industry's biggest self-serving salute to nuclear power since 9-11.  It is intended as both a huge slap in the face to the entire pro-DNA movement, and as a distraction from the obvious connection to, say, an attack on Indian Point, which that anniversary will conjure up in many people's minds.  You can be sure that airplane strikes (accidental or on purpose) will not be discussed frankly at this meeting of the world's most powerful and professional liars.

Without Public Citizen to be the balancing viewpoint, Meserve's appearance would be considered utterly biased, even in the NYT's, WSJ's, WP's, WT's, or LAT's eyes, don't you think?  But with Public Citizen there, what exactly is there to complain about?  I mean, from the standpoint of the appearance of bias and all that sort of stuff?  Sure, WE all know it's biased -- that's what the original set of writers I presented were complaining about -- all of them big names in the "anti-nuclear" movement.  But with Public Citizen's attendance, Meserve is, technically at least, in the middle.

Any contact with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or the rest of the Nuclear Mafia, should be done under oath (with the usual consequences for perjury).  Otherwise, everyone who bothers to talk to the Nuclear Mafia at all is just playing into their hands.

Consider this quote, from a Nuclear Regulatory Commission letter I received this Spring:

"Statements made by the public affairs officer of a NRC licensee are not regulated activities.  Therefore, the veracity of such statements will not be investigated by the NRC."

If that's not a license to lie, what is?

At the last pubic hearing I attended, immediately after I got there half a dozen NRC suits circled around me (none of whom admitted to having ever heard of me, let alone, to having ever read any of my essays), and for almost an hour I couldn't even see anyone else.  This was done with the greatest air of enthusiasm in answering any questions I might have, whilst at the same time conveniently isolating me from the press and preventing me from setting up a display model of Davis Besse I'd brought.  Oh, but it was an opportunity to talk one-on-one with NRC "big wigs"!  Then the meeting started, and I was able to take control of the room now and then, and try to make fools of our oppressors, by, for example, jumping up out of turn and reading out the above quote from the NRC letter.  I then exclaimed "And they were talking about YOU, Ray Golden!", and pointed towards Southern California Edison's Public Affairs Officer, who had just arrived and been introduced out of the audience and given the opportunity to speak out of turn.  Then I sat down.  A reporter later told me the whole tone of the meeting changed at that point.  I spoke out several more times that evening, including demanding (and getting) the closing remarks.

What's my point?  There is no point -- and THAT's my point.  Aside from that the reporters present at that meeting last April (2002) censored virtually all the testimony of the many activists who spoke that night -- testimony which was enough, in a fair and democratic society, to get the plants shut down forever, were the testimony properly considered by the NRC.  But of course, it wasn't.  Nothing I, or anyone else, said or did that night was going to make the slightest difference.  We begged.  We pleaded.  We jumped.  We danced.  We described the horror that might befall us.  We cried for those who have died already in this, the world's most epic battle.  Then we all went home and that was the end of that.

The whole purpose of the September 2002 meeting is to be able to parade one after another pro-knucklehead speaker before the pitiable, suffering press, who often start out seeking truth, but settle, time and again, for finding glamour and spectacle.  By giving them all something so seemingly important to attend and report on, the Nuclear Mafia thus keeps all interested press AWAY from the pro-DNA activists that day, who will be quite willing to speak to the press about the relationship between what happened on 9-11-01 and what could have happened if a nuclear power plant had been struck instead, should any interested reporters happen to ask.  But of course, all the "interested reporters" will be at the Nuclear American Nonsense meeting!

So who will ask the hard questions?  Public Citizen?  In previous letters to this author this week, they assured us they did not intend to speak for the movement at this meeting.  Who will, then?  Richard "Rich Rad" Meserve? The Press? The poor things rented helicopters and flew over the plume of Three Mile Island in 1979, and the new generation is at least as clueless.  Will they be able to ask the hard questions?

We could have lost millions of people, instead of thousands, if the terrorists had struck Three Mile Island and Indian Point last year, instead of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  This is the tragic truth surrounding 9-11 which the Nuclear Mafia wishes to avoid confronting.  This is how they avoid it.

Public Citizen's attendance at this upcoming media turkey-shoot is a disgrace. The media will be lied to, and any member of the media who professes the least little worry, or questions the status quo in any way, will be branded as -- what else? -- "misinformed" (a death-knell to a journalist).  If they continue to question anything in depth, they'll be labeled a "sensationalist reporter", or an "alternative media reporter", or, if they go too far, a "tabloid journalist", or a "hack".  In any case, for going against the stream, they will never be invited back to any Nuclear Mafia event (another death-knell to any legitimate journalist).  The stakes are high, and it is very wrong to think this meeting is unimportant.

There won't be a single presenter at that Nuclear Insolence meeting who is not a good liar, with the exception, presumably, of Public Citizen, who will be there all alone, wasting their contributor's hard-earned money, and wasting their own precious time, while begging for hand-outs of attention from a gullible, undereducated, lackadaisical, happy-go-lucky, God-how-we-love-high-tech, robotic media.  And lest we forget, the big nuclear power companies ALSO own CNN, NBC, etc.. (Nearly all the media giants are directly owned by large transnational nuclear companies like G.E..)

I wish Winonah Hauter and Public Citizen well if they decide to go through with being a part of this charade.  They've bitten off more than anyone could chew.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA

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Response to Raymond Shadis:
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Hi Ray, other interested persons:

Thank you for your followup comments (shown above, with Dustin Johnston's comments).

You would pay $1,500 to watch the Nuclear Mafia perform their media-manipulation voodoo?

You would give them $1,500 just to hear them repeat their lies?  You would legitimize this meeting of criminals just to have the chance to "confront" them?

It's not true that attending this meeting is the same as attending a public hearing -- something I've done scores of times and agree can be pretty useless because you are so manipulated when you do it.  (Is three minutes really enough time to properly condemn an industry?)  Indeed, one SHOULD question even participating in public hearings these days (they used to be a little better, or at least seemed so -- you had more time to speak, for instance, and the reporters stayed to the end), considering that our presence, and our undying willingness to keep trying to discuss these issues logically with our global nuclear jail-keepers and executioners, invariably legitimizes the "hearing" in the eyes of the press.  But to be a panelist at this upcoming Nuclear Revivalist's press stunt?  That's about a million times worse. And perhaps it is better to say our DYING willingness.

None of your or Dustin's comments get at the core issue:  Why legitimize this bizarre and irresponsible meeting, which has been condemned as biased (and other things) by numerous other activists, by being panelists amongst all the liars who will be there as professional speakers, each hand-picked by the Nuclear Mafia to best present their case to the media (who are also hand-picked, as much possible)?  Why not demand that all nuke meetings be held in public, since it is they who will be harmed by any maleficence?  Why not demand that what is said by the Nuclear Mafia constitute sworn testimony?  Why not demand that such meetings be broadcast interactively -- with feedback from the online attendees -- on CSPAN-235 (where else?), and on the Internet?  A lot of downwinders are poor, incapacitated, overworked, and live a long way from Washington, but many of them, thank goodness, now have computer connections.  (I consider a completely free and unfettered Internet connection, a home page which the world will keep for eternity even after you're gone, and a permanent, unique email address, to all be basic human rights.)

The pro-DNA movement has no backbone.  For example, very few of us like to be called "anti-nuclear", for a variety of reasons, but for 50 years we haven't been able to shake that label.  I think it's time we redefine ourselves, and rethink our failed efforts.  The NRC pushes us around, the rest of the Nuclear Mafia pushes us around, and the media pushes us around too, refusing, for example, to publish our letters-to-the-editor or our Op-Eds, and worse, refusing to learn about the issues (or just not bothering to learn).

The "anti-nuclear" movement has failed to alert the public to the needless risks society is taking, and all of us should be ashamed.  There are NO prizes for effort!  But Public Citizen tried to use their 30-year history as an excuse for committing THIS particular action.  I cannot think of a weaker excuse for any behavior by any nuclear activist.

Fifty million pounds of High Level Radioactive Waste exists in America because of our collective failure.  Currently, it is growing at the rate of one new ton of Slightly Used Nuclear Reactor Cores every couple of hours.  No new reactors have been ordered in 20+ years in America, but an end to that moratorium may well be announced at the Nuclear We Screw All meeting.  All currently operating reactors have, in essence, perpetual licenses, since renewals, extensions, power upgrades, major additions like dry cask storage, hauling away old reactor pressure vessels, etc. etc. are ALL virtually completely rubber-stamped processes.

Last summer (2001), I was told, by an NRC official, that San Onofre's containment domes could withstand a 747 crashing into them.  I demanded it in writing.  He refused.  Shortly thereafter, the September 11th tragedy occurred, and that particular lie was finally exposed after sudden, intense, unexpected public scrutiny, and in light of irrefutable evidence suggesting otherwise.  (I demanded a written apology from the NRC, but never got it.)  But nothing changed.  Dry Casks and Spent Fuel Pools are still exposed to the forces of nature and of evil, and the pile grows daily.

The Nuclear Mafia can still brazenly state just about every other lie they want to, at any time, with no fear of punishment or even of contradiction by other liars, because the lies are all by now very well known, very well told, and very tired.  (Some are lies of omission, such as not talking about the vulnerability of Spent Fuel Pools and Dry Storage Casks to airplane strikes, terrorists, mother nature, etc..)

The letters denouncing the meeting which I showed to Public Citizen were written without my involvement.  If Chairman Meserve is being condemned for attending this mob meeting (and he is, both roundly and rightly), then Public Citizen is being condemned too, tacitly, implicitly, by inference, and/or by association.  Public Citizen refuses to deal with the pickle they've put themselves in.  As the day approaches, that pickle will only get more sour.

Regards,

Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA

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Prior correspondence:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002i.htm
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002h.htm
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002g.htm
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002f.htm
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002e.htm
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002d.htm
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002c.htm
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002b.htm
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/public_citizen/pc2002a.htm
The original letter containing various activists statements can be found here:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/2002/nct2002b.htm

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"It may not happen in my lifetime, but I am convinced that one day there will be trials of this entire Nuclear Mafia similar to the Nuremberg Trials, and it will include every animal-torturing pseudo-scientist, every nuclear weaponeer and warhead designer, not to mention the IAEA and the Death-of-the-Earth squad."

-- Pamela Blockey-O'Brien, Douglassville, Georgia, in comments to the Department of Transportation, July, 2002:
http://dms3000.dot.gov/docimages/pdf1a/181877_web.pdf

(RSPA-1999-6283-117 Comment(s) 07/30/2002 Pamela Blockey-O'Brien)

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