Cowardly, Whore Sulzberger NY Times BETRAYS 9-11 First Responders...

Here is one of those articles where "us good libruls" and Democratic voters are supposed to cheer "Hooray! The New York Times is FINALLY writing a long-overdue article or editorial on an issue that exposes Bush admin. craven deception, betrayal or corruption."

But the flip-side of that story is. "WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?"!

Why does the Clinton's overnight GUEST LIST at the White House - the so-called "Lincoln bedroom scandal" - rate FRONT PAGE screaming, above-the-fold bold HEADLINES, while the craven SULZBERGER New York Times BURIES the BETRAYAL of 9-11 First Responders WA-AY DEEP in the editorial section, a few paragraphs and then "FORGOTTEN!"

"FORGOTTEN!" is how the SULZBERGER TIMES **JOINS** the Karl Rove Republican PROPAGANDA MACHINE, effectively CENSORING IMPORTANT SUBJECTS by making them VERBOTTEN! on the front pages of the New York Times.

We "bleeding heart libruls" have been aware since shortly after rescue and demolition work began on the site of the twin World Trade Center tower's collapse that the pit was a hazardous environmental NIGHTMARE for workers. The toxins, smoke, asbestos, and other dust in the air at that site was SO DEADLY, that ALL workers there should have been equipped with, NOT respirators or rebreathers, but scuba-diving type completely closed air tanks. Because breathing air at ground level (above water level) has much less outside pressure than breathing air underwater, scuba tanks last a very long time when used above ground level, and even a small "pony-tank" bottle of compressed air can last over an hour. Hooking up a replacement bottle involves no more than closing the empy tank, opening and unhooking the connector from the old tank to the new in about 30 seconds, and then opening the new tank's valve. Simple, easy, no-risk, and a COMPLETE ISOLATION of the user's lungs from the toxins, smoke, and carcinogens at Ground Zero, for the cost or running an air compressor for a few minutes at a site where the air quality is good.

Filling scuba tanks with clean filtered air (from some remote site in the case of the deadly air around the 9-11 site) is relatively inexpensive - dive operators usually throw two 80 cu. ft. airtanks in with a charter dive for just $10-15 more than the price of the trip without provided air tanks - and dive shops sell the air hose and regulator (air valve and mouthpiece) that will complete the set up for just over $100 (or less, especially in bulk) all day long. For those operating heavy equipment, tanks could be mounted on the machinery; otherwise, using small "pony" air bottles, breathing clean, filtered, isolated air is not much more cumbersome than wearing the small hydration backpacks with hydration nozzle, as bikers and ultra-marathon runners do every day. (eg. "Camelback" and other brank hydration backpacks.)

The above two paragraphs digression into the utility of using scuba-type airtanks for workers at ground zero, just to explain one possible low-cost solution to the hazards of breathing contaminated, toxic air at ground zero. To arrive at a figure of how much this would have cost, multiply the total human (labor) hours of working at the ground zero site by the cost-per-hour figure of providing clean compressed air tanks and regulators. In bulk, the figure could or should have been far less than $100 per worker per day.

BUT such closed-circuit air OPTIONS WERE NOT EXAMINED, or conducted on a large scale in the field on 9-11, BECAUSE THE Bush White House AND GOVERNMENT effectively CENSORED the information about the hazardous quality of air at ground zero!

AND THE NEW YORK TIMES **JOINED IN** that information CENSORSHIP, the Times could EASILY HAVE RUN THEIR OWN INVESTIGATION into the air quality at ground-zero; "quality" here been an Orwellian word, "the Times could easily have run their own investigation into the air TOXICITY at ground zero." TOXICITY being of course a much more accurate description of the hazardous breathing environment at Ground Zero, and an organization as huge and well funded as the Times could easily have hired experts, or even two or three different air quality labs, which all would have reported the same thing: "THE AIR at Ground Zero is TOXIC and HAZARDOUS to work in, much less for extended periods of time."

Buzzflash.com is running an editorial today [http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/04/08/edi04057.html] that decries the loss of COMMON SENSE in America.

The Arthur Suzlberger NEW YORK TIMES **JOINING** the Bush White House CENSORSHIP and WET-BLANKETING of the vital information of the HAZARDOUS AIR at Ground Zero for demolition and reconstruction workers is a TEXT-BOOK EXAMPLE of that COMPLETE LACK OF COMMON SENSE in the editorial board room of the New York Times.

OSAMA bin LADEN sent hijackers and terrorists to KILL American workers and citizens in the 9-11 towers...

Mr. Suzlberger SENDS AMERICAN WORKERS TO THEIR EVENTUAL DEATHS in the 9-11 ground zero PIT, by CENSORING, DENYING THEM THE IFORMATION, that would make workers think twice about putting the future of their own families on the line.

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And Mr. Sulzberger: getting away from the issue of air quality at ground zero for First Responders and working stiffs;

....IT DOESN'T MATTER **HOW** MUCH you kiss bush-rove-cheney-scalia-scaife-murdoch butt, the Ann Coulter INSANE Right-Wing is STILL going to hate you and the Times ANYWAYS.

(Coulter infamously declared that it was a shame that Timmy McVeigh had not bombed the New York Times building before he went off to bomb the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City... and because America has an incredibly loud double-standard when it comes to Right-Wingers 'right' to urge people to hate, violence, and lying propaganda spin, Ann Coulter IS STILL WELCOME on PRIME TIME TV 'news' casts.)

SO, Mr. Sulzberger, you might as well STAND FOR HONESTY and TRUTH IN REPORTING, instead of this slimey "Kiss Bush butt, SQUASH the CIA outing scandal story; JOIN the Bush administration in STALLING or STONEWALLING the need for a 9-11 Commission in the first place; and then, when the Commission releases it Final Report, "D" and "F" FAILING GRADES for preparations to PREVENT FUTURE 9-11 attacks, YOUR PAPER conveniently BURIES that news as well!

(Or runs it only once or twice on the front pages, effectively FORGETTING about the whole issue after that.)

And all THAT's not to mention, the AUDACITY and CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT CORRUPTION, of the Bush administration's "Homeland Security" department putting pig-farms in Indiana (and other such Red-state sites) as a HIGHER counter-TERROR-FUNDING PRIORITY than dozens of vital targets in New York and Washington DC!

- Official Final Report of 9-11 Commission (pdf)
- "D" and FAILING Grades for post-9-11 counter-terror reforms!
http://www.9-11pdp.org/press/2005-12-05_report.pdf

- US is Given FAILING GRADES by 9-11 Panel - Washington Post headline
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120500097.html

- D.C.'S STUPID SCROOGES SLASH NYC
TERROR AID AND SPLURGE ON THE STICKS
by NY Post writer GEOFF EARLE Post Correspondent
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/66878.htm

And, courtesy of the NEW YORK TIMES, now this, joining the Bush administration in NEGLECTING the health and financial needs of 9-11 First Responders... and helping BushCo BURY.... YOUR OWN PAPER's conclusion, earlier today, "A Rising Threat" and "Taliban STRENGTHENING in Afghanistan and Pakistan"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/weekinreview/10rohde.html


Oh yeah... Mr. Sulzberger, we know, we know... you and your editorial writers are charter members of that whole AIPAC/neo-con/PNAC bow-down-to-the-furher President in his "wars-against-terrarists-anywhere" thing.

Sorry... we all have our priorities, and making YOUR paper a font of HONEST REPORTING and relentless investigative journalism sure 'n hell ain't it!

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An Enemy of the People
Carl Pope at HuffingtonPost.com
09.10.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/an-enemy-of-the-people_b_29132.html


Veterans of 9-11
NY Times unsigned (editorial board) editorial
9 Sept. 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/opinion/09sat1.html


Five years after the attack on the World Trade Center, more of the truth is making its way into the mainstream media. The New York Times last week finally editorialized about the appalling lack of support that the government provided to first responders -- the police, fire, and emergency workers who responded to the crisis five years ago and in the months that followed, saying that "One of the worst things about listening to those who rushed to ground zero after the attacks on Sept.


11 is that you can barely hear their stories. For many, the lungs hardly work. The cough, the ragged breathing, the confusion and even the bitterness make it hard for some of those who labored in that toxic cloud to explain how they feel forgotten... as many as seven in 10 of those who worked at ground zero and Fresh Kills on Staten Island have felt their lungs deteriorate because of their heroism."
Last Tuesday, the Times reported in some depth on the reality that "for many of the ill and those worried about becoming sick, government actions -- coming from officials whom they see as more concerned about the politics of the moment than the health of those who responded to the emergency -- are too limited and too late." Also last Tuesday, Mt. Sinai Medical Center released a new study showing that the health problems facing responders were increasing, not easing, with time. Dr. Philip J. Landrigan one of the authors of the new study, said that the toxic character of the dust at Ground Zero convinced doctors "that there would be serious health issues for years to come, especially for workers who were exposed to the heaviest concentrations in the early days after the terrorist attack.

"'This was extremely toxic dust,' Dr. Landrigan said."

Yet, official denial of this tragedy continues. New York Mayor Bloomberg says that, despite whatever data exists showing that the first responders are suffering as a group from an overwhelming set of respiratory illnesses, he's not convinced it proves anything. "I don't believe that you can say specifically a particular problem came from this particular event," the Mayor opined, saying that no correlation could ever prove causation. (One suspects that the correlation between stepping in front of a speeding New York taxi and getting injured would persuade him, so he probably doesn't mean this literally.)

And it is still very difficult to get mainstream media coverage of another grim reality -- that many, perhaps most, of these lethal health effects could have been avoided. The government knowingly chose to put these first responders at risk. Worse, this is now official U.S. government policy for any natural disaster -- to ignore basic health and safety precautions not only during a crisis but after it. A new Sierra Club report, "Harmful Legacy of Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero: How Post 9/11 Disaster Policy Endangers America," warns that federal policies for national disasters compromise worker safety, fail to require precautionary health warnings, and -- in the event of a "dirty bomb" attack -- allow for lower cleanup standards for radiological contamination. The report cites a new Bush Administration policy for our response to terrorist attacks that release radioactive contamination, such as from a "dirty bomb" or illegal nuclear device. Cleanup decisions will balance public health against a list of economic factors that even includes the impact on tourism.

The report also documents that, in responding to Katrina, many of the post-hurricane problems are the direct result of the Bush Administration's applying its new approach to cleaning up after disasters, whether natural or man-made. It reveals that, like a guilty corporation seeking to protect itself against litigation, the Department of Homeland Security has now instructed its staff working on disasters to destroy certain types of unclassified documents "when they are no longer needed." (Or it might become embarrassing.) And it raises the concern, based on an earlier Inside EPA article, that another possible step in exposing Americans to greater risk from terrorist attacks -- weakening health standards in the event of an attack on a chemical plant or refinery -- appears to be under consideration.

In 1882 Henrik Ibsen wrote a play about the efforts of a small town doctor to warn the public of a contaminated drinking water supply. The doctor's message is ignored by the political leadership in the town, and he himself is branded "an enemy of the people" because his message may discourage tourism and hurt the local economy. The Bush Administration has adopted the same approach to cleanups after a terrorist attack and natural disasters as it has adopted to global warming -- suppress and ignore the science, do what is convenient for the short-term needs of the economy, and conceal the truth from the public.

But unlike the Administration's assault on the science of global warming, which has been widely reported, its policy decision that it will ignore reasonable public health precautions in any future disaster has been almost ignored. While Clear Channel, of all media outlets, carried the Sierra Club report last week, the New York Times itself has never reported the existence of this chilling official policy. Nor has the Washington Post, the L.A. Times or the Wall Street Journal, as far as I can tell. This may be one of the biggest cover-ups yet.