People In The News - Ed Spinella

Ed Spinella

by p. biancaniello

Kudos to Smithtown’s Ed Spinella for doing what he loves and for doing good at the same time. Ed, a passionate cyclist, participatedEd Spinella in Babylon’s 11th annual Soldier Ride.

“A great day at a extremely well organized event, for a great cause with amazing people. Big thanks to SCPD for keeping a huge ride like this so safe,” said Ed.

The 25 mile Soldier Ride raises money and awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project. All of the money raised goes to helpL-R Mary Anderson - Corinne Ciccarelli- Carlyn Hesse- Roger Mellon- Ed Spinella- Dave Klosner- Ashley Marie warriors with combat stress recovery, job training, counseling, adaptive sports programs, and more.

The Soldier Ride began in downtown Babylon and ended at Overlook Beach. One of the highlights is riding over the Robert Moses Causeway Bridge. Participants included members of the armed forces who returned to the U.S. after suffering life changing inuries while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

For more information or to make a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project visit https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/donate

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - "Space Is A War-Fighting Domain"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

If President Donald Trump gets his way on formation of a Space Force, the heavens would become a war zone. And inevitably there would be military conflict in space. 

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 designates space as a global commons to be used for peaceful purposes.  Russia and China, as well as the United States, are parties to the treaty. If a Space Force becomes a reality, the years of work facilitating the treaty will have been wasted.

 If the U.S. goes up into space with weapons, Russia and China, and then India and Pakistan and other countries, will follow. 

Moreover, space weaponry would be nuclear-powered—as President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” scheme was to be with nuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons. As General James Abrahamson, director of the Strategic Defense Initiative, put it at a Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion, “without reactors in orbit [there is] going to be a long, long light [extension] cord that goes down to the surface of the Earth” to power space weapons.

I got to writing about and presenting TV programs on space issues more than 30 years ago. It was 1985 and I was reading a U.S. Department of Energy publication, Energy Insider, which told of two space shuttles—one the Challenger—which were to loft plutonium-fueled space probes in 1986. The Challenger’s plutonium mission was to happen in May, the ill-fated shuttle’s next mission. 

From having authored “Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power,” I knew that plutonium is considered the most deadly radioactive substance. I sent requests under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to NASA and Department of Energy asking for their data on consequences if one of the shuttles underwent a major accident on launch, in the lower or upper atmosphere, or didn’t attain orbit and fell back to Earth.

The weeks dragged on—I had hit a stone wall. I protested this apparent cover-up and, finally, 10 months later, received documents claiming that because of the “high reliability inherent in the space shuttle” the odds of a catastrophic accident on one of these nuclear space shots were one-in-100,000. (After the Challenger disaster, those odds were suddenly changed to one-in-76.)

With the Challenger accident, I broke the story of its nuclear mission ahead and began researching accidents that had happened in the use of nuclear power in space. I connected the interest in using nuclear power in space with “Star Wars” and how it was based on nuclear-powered battle platforms overhead. 

This resulted in my writing two books, “The Wrong Stuff” and “Weapons in Space,” and three TV documentaries, the first “Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens.” Considerable travel and presentations followed—including two presentations before members of the British Parliament and a series of talks at the UN in New York and Geneva. As the years have gone by I’ve continued to pursue the issue especially when there were administrations that pushed space warfare, the two Bush and now the Trump administration.

“It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space,” Trump said at a meeting of the National Space Council last month, announcing his intention “to establish a Space Force.”

In one of the TV documentaries, “Star Wars Returns,” on the push to revive the “Star Wars” program in the George W. Bush administration, I interviewed Craig Eisendrath who had been a U.S. State Department officer involved in the creation of the Outer Space Treaty. “We sought to de-weaponize space before it got weaponized…to keep war out of space,” he explained. It has been ratified or signed by 123 nations and provides that nations “undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction.”

 The U.S. military has been gung-ho on space warfare. A U.S. Space Command was formed in 1982. “U.S Space Command—dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into war-fighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict,” it declared in its report “Vision for 2020.”

There have been attempts to expand the Outer Space Treaty to bar all weapons from space. This is called the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty and leading in urging its passage have been Canada, Russia and China. There has been virtually universal backing from nations around the world. But U.S. administration after administration have refused to back the PAROS treaty preventing its passage. And now with the Trump administration, there is more than non-support of the PAROS treaty but a new drive to weaponize space. 

That could be seen coming. In a speech in March, Trump asserted: “My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.  

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Interdependence

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

In recent weeks there have been large demonstrations across Long Island and the nation protesting the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from families seeking asylum in the United States—and on the Fourth of July that was the scene in my little village of Sag Harbor.

Heralded as a “Walk for Interdependence: Keep Our Families Together,” it drew a remarkably high number of people—I’d estimate 400. It was sponsored by the Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island (OLA), area churches and synagogues and others. It started with speeches and songs at the windmill on Long Wharf and continued with protesters walking up and then down the sidewalks along Main Street.

Many carried signs such as: “Children Should Never Be Caged! This is America!,” “Compassion for Families Seeking Asylum,” “Hate Has No Home Here,” “No One Leaves Home Unless Home Is The Mouth of a Shark,” “ No Human Is Illegal,” “Families Belong Together,” “End Family Detention,” “Make America Humane Again,” “Only Monsters Put Children in Cages,” “Descendants of Immigrants—We Stand With Our Latino Brothers and Sisters,” “Trump and the White House Don’t Belong Together. Families DO,” “Mary and Joseph Fled Violence and Were Turned Away. LOVE” and “We got a call from France. They want their statue back.”

A member of the only group not immigrants to the U.S.—Native American—Nichol Dennis Banks, a former trustee of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, dressed in colorful native clothing, held a sign reading: “30,000 Native American Children Placed in ‘Boarding Schools’ Between 1880-1902. Keep Families Together. Stop the Trauma.”

“We call this interdependence because we all depend on each other,” said Minerva Perez, executive director of OLA, at the windmill. She sang a song with the lines: “You do not walk alone. I will walk with you—and sing your spirit home.” She continued singing the song at the side of the protesters as they walked along Main Street.

A young Latina girl, Isobel, at the microphone at the windmill, said: “The children need to stay with their families because they need the love to get through this hard time.”

To understand what those fleeing to the U.S. at our southern border are running from with their families, it is helpful to visit countries from which they are escaping. Years ago, I wrote a book on conflict in Central America and went to Honduras. Years before, as a student at Antioch College, I participated in its program in Guanajuato, Mexico. In Honduras, my first interview was with Ramon Custodio, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras. He was a doctor, having gone to medical school in England and receiving training in pathology in the U.S., and was founder and former president of the medical college in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. 

Dr. Custodio used a word I had never heard decades before from my Universidad de Guanajuato professors—desaparecidos. In English it means “disappeared persons.”

In Honduras, there’s been an increase in desaparecidos,” related Dr. Custodio. “It is a disturbing pattern.” Some bodies are found in “clandestine cemeteries.” The judicial system refuses to investigate the disappearances.  Honduran police, he said, will often keep people in custody without a trial for weeks and there have been numerous cases of torture by police.

I asked Dr. Custodio why he put himself at risk leading the 100-member human rights group. “It’s my duty to defend human rights where very few speak out,” he answered. “I know how to say it, write it, maybe I have the guts for it. I have the moral duty. I’d hate to be living in this country and be silent and be in the position of the many German people when Hitler came to power.”

Not all of Central America is in such a situation. Costa Rica and Belize are not.

But trying to survive in Honduras and El Salvador is really dangerous. And in the resulting flight-or-fight calculus, many seek to flee—and the dream is to go to the U.S., long known as a refuge for those escaping tyranny. Indeed, one speaker at the windmill last week said that with the Trump administration “zero-tolerance” program directed at these newest refugees, “The Statue of Liberty has tears in her eyes.”

The use of the word “interdependence” for the walk was meaningful. Like other immigrant groups that have sought refuge in the U.S., Latinos are vital in doing what others here usually won’t do—landscaping, hard restaurant work, etc. We are interdependent.

Perry Gershon, Democratic candidate for Congress in the lst C.D., was at the demonstration last week and told me: “What Trump is doing is not America. Our Congress has a duty to speak up loudly not only to end family separation but to accelerate family reunification.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.  

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Perry Gershon's Remarkable Commitment

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The victory of Perry Gershon in the primary last week for the Democratic nomination to run against Republican Lee Zeldin in the lst Congressional District was about an aggressive, well-financed campaign—but it was more than that.

On the afternoon of Primary Day June 26th, there was a knock on our door—and virtually no uninvited person has come down the long private dirt road to our rather isolated cottage in the 44 years we’ve lived there. The nice-looking young man at the door introduced himself as Marshall Gershon and asked for a vote “for my dad.”

One thing is expending large amounts of money on TV commercials and slick brochures, but this sort of thing is way beyond that—it reflects a remarkable commitment.  

(I’m not enrolled in any party—to emphasize being non-partisan as a journalist. I advise my students going into journalism to do the same. My wife, however, is an enrolled Democrat and young Gershon was in search of her primary vote.)

Hours after the results were in, Mr. Zeldin, in the way of President Trump with whom he is politically and personally close and who likes to use epithets to diminish people—“little rocket man,” “crooked Hillary,” etc.—issued a statement referring every several sentences to Mr. Gershon as “Park Avenue Perry.”

It will be a hot contest. Now we’ll see what the extraordinarily high Gershon energy will mean in a Gershon-Zeldin race.

Remarkable, too, the number of rivals in the primary—five. In more than 50 years following Suffolk politics, I know of no primary contest of any party in which there were so many contestants. I believe it to be a record.

From the outset, Mr. Gershon, a political outsider, broke out of the starting gate strong—and continued strong. A successful New York City businessman with a home in East Hampton, the son of two noted doctors, a Yale graduate who initially studied medicine, too, but then decided on a business route, his campaign issued hard-hitting literature—going for the jugular.

“Together We Can Beat Lee Zeldin And Stop Donald Trump,” declared one brochure. “It’s Time To Take Back Our Country.” And there were brochures on specific issues: “Medicare For All Isn’t Just My Fight—It’s Our Fight,” said one. “Perry Gershon Has A Plan To End Gun Violence” and this includes “banning assault weapons,” said another. “Our Environmental Treasures Must Be Protected…Perry Gershon will be protecting our coastline and drinking water. Global Warming Is Real, No Offshore Drilling,” said another. “Standing With Planned Parenthood. Protecting The Right To Choose,” said another.

The campaign literature and the TV commercials described Mr. Gershon as a “bold progressive”—and continued a drumbeat tying Mr. Zeldin, of Shirley, to Mr. Trump.

There was a large primary turn-out—almost double the number of Democrats who turned out for the 2016 primary pitting former Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst against David Calone, ex-chair of the Suffolk County Planning Commission, in a race to challenge Mr. Zeldin that year. 

Former Suffolk Legislator Kate Browning of Shirley, who came in second to Mr. Gershon, told supporters this indicated that “Democrats are energized to succeed in November.”

Mr. Gershon spent a great deal of money in the primary contest—a lot his own. Federal Election Commission records show that by June 6th he had raised $2,110,371 and spent $1,660,210. Ms. Browning raised the second-highest amount with $493,850.

Mr. Gerson received 35.5 percent of the vote, Ms. Browning 30 percent. (Mr. Gershon garnered in 7,226 votes, Ms. Browning 6,159.)

Other candidates in the race were former Suffolk Legislator Vivian Viloria-Fisher of Setauket who received 16 percent of the vote, former New York City Council staffer David Pechefksy, a Patchogue native now of Port Jefferson, who got 12 percent, and former Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist Elaine DiMasi of Ronkonkoma who got 6 percent.

Mr. Zeldin, then a state senator, first won the lst C.D. seat in 2014 defeating Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop of Southampton. The lst C.D. includes all five East End towns, all of Brookhaven, most of Smithtown and a slice of Islip town. Through the decades it has been represented by both Democrats and Republicans and, for a time, a Conservative, William Carney of Hauppauge, who ran with GOP cross-endorsement. 

Editorial - Getting Ejected At Zeldin Kick-Off

I am at a loss for words. Last night I was ejected from the Lee Zeldin kick-off rally, which I WAS INVITED TO, without cause. Yes, I was invited to attend the rally by the Zeldin Campaign and was credentialed by the Zeldin Campaign.  Upon arrival I was told to go anywhere I wanted to take photos, again by the Zeldin campaign. I stood in the same spot, with my credentials plainly in sight, for roughly an hour and a half before, out of the blue, I was told to leave…  without an explanation. I was forced to climb over a rope to get to the path leading to a door (one woman sneered and said “bye bye” as I walked past).  Once out the door and in a back yard area, I was mocked by a group of people. A man upset that I was taking photos smacked my camera and I was told by security to leave the Elks Club premises. All while I was wearing the press badge supplied by the Zeldin campaign and telling everyone I was an invited press person.

I am confident that my behavior was professional. This was not a ‘question and answer’ press event.  The press was there as observers.  I took photos, and for approximately one and a half hours I listened to guest speakers talk about Lee Zeldin and their impression of his work ethic, his belief in America and his relationship with Donald Trump. This was a rally for supporters meant to energize, create positive thoughts and a “can do” attitude about this candidate.

Here’s what the speakers didn’t say, and you should now know about Lee Zeldin. He, through his staff, will discriminate, try to embarrass, and arbitrarily have the invited press removed without benefit of an explanation and without cause. Another thing the speakers didn’t mention about Lee Zeldin was that his love of country falls short of the 1st Amendment rights of free speech or free press. Was the Press being invited to cover his event and then being ejected, (David Ambro of The Smithtown News was also ejected), for the purpose of showing his disregard for the work journalists do?  Was it intended as a preemptive strike against future work? This behavior was an attempt to taint the belief in journalist objectivity - after all, he can say that he had to have the Press ejected. Imagine a news article written about Lee Zeldin now…  imagine how the story is perceived by someone who learns that the writer was thrown out of his kick-off rally. Will the writer be seen as a fair source of information?

These are challenging times. Elected officials are taking unique steps to quiet the voices of those who challenge or question them. For our democracy to flourish a strong press is necessary. I will continue to do all I can to maintain a high ethical standard and I call on you to push back on abuses like this.

Pat Biancaniello and this is Smithtown Matters