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Giuliani, Poison Water
and Public Health

by Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
September 17, 2000

The latest fallguys for Mayor Giuliani are his hapless stooges at the NYC Department of Health, blamed for keeping it a week-long secret that New Yorkers were being poisoned by bottles of water. They follow a long line of police, department of buildings, welfare and other city agency fallguys and gals who had to bite the bullet for their Furhrer.

Like innocent mentally ill homeless suspects grilled by the NYPD for 36 hours, intimidated bureaucrats can be made to confess to just about anything if it's necessary to protect the Mayor's image. Does even one person in the CitCity believe that the Department of Health-which appears to be joined at the hip with the Mayor at every Giuliani press conference as he intones the latest dead crow finding-keeps secrets from the Mayor? The reason for surpressing the poisoned water info is simple: it is devastating for NYC business. Giuliani did not want to be the bearer of any bad news for business-even if it means allowing injury and illness to New Yorkers.

According to the official website of the bottled water industry http://www.bottledwaterweb.com/indus.html bottled water accounts for $4.3 billion in domestic sales. Since most people drink bottled water for its supposed health benefits, reports of poisoned water could cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars in the NYC area which is the nation's third largest bottled water market. Now that's a health effect the Mayor Is concerned about.

It's instructive to compare the Mayor's admirable caution when dealing with his own health to his reckless enthusiasm for exposing New Yorkers to dangerous, ineffective and counterproductive health measures.

The Mayor claimed he was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in late April-making close to five months in which he spoke with every possible expert, read every piece of literature on the subject and carefully balanced all possible risks and benefits before embarking on any treatment. He then took the treatment which he believed was the safest, least invasive and which would have the least possible side effects. He chose not to take treatments which-although considered more effective-are known to negatively effect a patient's sex life.

Compare that to his approach to another health issue, West Nile Virus. Giuliani completely ignored all experts other than those he had appointed himself or who worked for the CIA-controlled CDC, the Rockefeller Institute, the chemical companies selling the insecticides or the vaccine company Oravax, who all have a clear monetary interest in this issue. He read only their literature, expressed only their opinions and acted in each and every instance to represent their interests.

No alternative viewpoints were ever discussed, including those of highly-respected scientists with contrary views, other than to ridicule them. Spraying began almost immediately upon finding evidence of the virus before it was even properly identified.

When reporters dared to ask reasonable questions about these other views Giuliani denounced them as trying to create a panic. Citizens who attempted to question his actions were denounced as "hysterical environmental activists who just want to get on T.V." I wonder if the Mayor's medical experts similarly ridiculed his concerns over prostate cancer treatment?

Chemicals his own Chem-bio handbook described as dangerous, toxic nerve gasses were indescriminently sprayed over the entire City-in direct violation of the manufacturers labeling instructions and Federal law. The Mayor consistently described them as 'safe", "non-toxic"and "natural"fully knowing that they were not and that it was illegal to so describe them.

The simplest cost-benefit analysis would lead a rational person to question the efficacy of this "treatment". It harms more people than it saves, it is grossly ineffective at killing mosquitoes and it is known to increase both the mosquito and encephalitis infection problem over the long run. The chemicals used not only cause harmful respiratory and cognitive effects but are known to be endocrine disrupters which specifically effect sexual hormones, decrease sperm count and increase the incidence of breast cancer tumors.

As thousands of reports of people experiencing negative health effects from the spraying came in the Mayor and his Department of Health flunkies supressed, ridiculed and obscured them. When a woman was sprayed with Anvil point-blank in the face and became extremely ill the Mayor attacked her credibility claiming the spraying did not happen when she said. Faced with the woman having witnesses to back up her story, Giuliani backed off that position-once again claiming the Department of Health had "misinformed" him.

Imagine how you would feel about a doctor treating you in a similar fashion by recommending a toxic treatment known to be ineffective and likely to cause far more problems than it could be expected to cure. Now imagine that the doctor didn't even ask if you wanted that treatment but instead just gave it to you and then ridiculed you as a hysteric when you questioned their actions. That's the position the residents of New York City have been put in by Dr. Giuliani.

If there even is a West Nile Virus problem in NYC the most certain cause is the Mayor cutting virtually all funding for mosquito control during his administration as he had also cut out funding for prostate cancer screening for low income New Yorkers. Of course, he has spared no expense in caring for himself and passing on the bill to the taxpayers.

This is the same Mayor who denies people with AID's a tiny room to live in, throws homeless people out of shelters, refuses food stamps to the hungry and privatizes EMS in order to be able to pass the savings on to his needy pals-like Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Donald Trump.

Yesterday the Mayor jokingly said he was radioactive. Let me take the analogy a bit further. He is a toxic menace to public health and a one-man epidemic.

He also has a very long history of blaming subordinates for his own misdeeds. When a scandal broke during the 1989 Mayoral campaign after an elderly survivor of Auschwitz told newspapers he was forced by Giuliani's Federal investigators to sit in front of a blackboard on which was written Arbeit Macht Frei, the Mayor claimed "someone" unknown to him had written it on the blackboard in Giuliani's office weeks before. That's about as believable as this bottled water story.

When it became public that the corporate lawfirms he worked for had represented Manuel Noriega, organized crime, German companies that built Iraq's chemical weapons plants, drug dealers and the son of Josef Mengele while he was a $750,000 a year partner there Giuliani also claimed he didn't know, that no one had informed him, that he was innocent. Wasn't that the main defense at Nuremberg?

If this man is innocent then no one on earth is guilty. He reminds me of a guy I once saw arrested on Fifth Avenue immediately after robbing a bank. The police were waiting for him right outside the door. Out he comes with a bag of money in one hand and a 38 in the other. As soon as he sees the police he drops the gun and starts to yell, "I didn't do it, it's not my gun, it was the other guy!".

Sure Mayor Mengele, you are innocent. I toast your health. Drink a nice cool bottle of water on me.

Newsday 8/18/89

Holocaust `Reminder' Claimed

A concentration camp suvivor who witnessed the murders of his parents and five siblings at Auschwitz claimed that during questioning after his arrest on bribery charges he was placed before a blackboard bearing a Nazi slogan by former U.S. Attorney General Rudolph Giuliani's office as part of an attempt to "break"him...Written on the blackboard was the German phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei." The slogan, "Work Shall Set You Free," adopted by the Nazi party, appeared over the gates at Auschwitz.

NY Post 9/16/2000

The Big Apple was kept in the dark about the contaminated bottled-water crisis for a week because the Health Department failed to tell City Hall what it knew. The foul-up puts the department in hot water - and has political leaders boiling.

NY Times 9/16/2000

Mayor Undergoes
Cancer Treatment

Mr. Giuliani's doctors said the seeds in the mayor's prostate would give off radiation over the next two months, and as a precaution they have told him that he should stay at least three feet away from pregnant women. They also have told the mayor that he should not get close to children 2 years old or younger...Mr. Giuliani's decision about his treatment has taken nearly five months. When Mr. Giuliani announced on April 27 that he had an early form of prostate cancer, he said that he and his doctors would make a decision about treatment within two weeks..."It's a very complex issue, and the mayor really took his time, and did a lot of research and probably knows more than we do at this point about prostate cancer," Dr. Stock said yesterday.

MSNBC 9/15/2000

Giuliani undergoes procedure
for prostate cancer

New York, Sept. 15 - Mayor Rudolph Giuliani underwent radioactive seed implantation Friday morning to treat his prostate cancer..."He told me to tell you that when you see him next he will be radioactive, and he looks forward to somehow or another interfering with your radio transmissions," Deputy Mayor Joseph Lhota told reporters at City Hall.

Newsday 9/27/93

Rudy's Screen Test
-Informed of law firm's clients?

...the firm's normal procedure was to alert Giuliani and other partners of the incoming clients to ensure that the firm's new business would not conflict with its old...among the firm's 2,000 clients are a handful of companies like Peerless Importers, a Brooklyn-based liquor distributor that was allegedly controlled by the Colombo crime family...Peerless is the sort of controversial client that almost derailed Giuliani's bid in 1989 when his old firm's work for Noriega-led Panama and companies that did business with South Africa sparked a deluge of critical articles and carping from his competitors...In the case of two German companies suspected of aiding Iraq in its chemical weapons production - Carl Zeiss and Preussag AG - Anderson Kill partners apparently were given a memo naming these incoming clients in the fall of 1991, about a year after Giuliani joined the firm and months after Operation Desert Storm, according to lawyers at the firm...Lawrence Kill, chairman of the executive committee at Anderson Kill, declined to talk about or release any memos...citing client confidentiality. But he agreed it would have been standard procedure for such a memo to have circulated...Anderson Kill's client directory also lists four other firms that have been accused in some way of helping the Iraqi military buildup...One of the other companies listed last year as a Toren client on Anderson Kill's "Matter File Listing" is German farm-equipment manufacturer Karl Mengele & Sons, the family firm of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. The U.S. Justice Department has said that the Mengele firm, founded by the father of the sadistic death-camp doctor, supplied economic support to the "Angel of Death" during the decades when he was a fugitive...

NY Law Journal 9/11/2000

Judge Raps NYC
on Town Meeting

CHARGES OF disturbing a Mayor's Town Hall meeting brought against two Chinatown residents frustrated by not being allowed to speak were dismissed last week by a Manhattan judge, who called the gathering a "mere sham." Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Arthur M. Schack said that the two defendants, who were wearing clothing emblazoned with anti-Giuliani slogans and were passed over during a question-and-answer session, should not have been charged with criminal misdemeanors because they were engaged in the lawful exercise of First Amendment free speech rights. The court said that the two men, Sau Chan and Seongshin Rhim, were justified in speaking out of turn since organizers of the meeting with Mayor Giuliani packed the house with guests of the administration, and that the defendants were passed over during the meeting as they signaled their desire to ask a question of the Mayor...The judge called the organization of the meeting by the Giuliani Administration "a travesty" and "a mere sham," effectively forcing the defendants to engage in an outburst in order to express a legitimate viewpoint...The defendants, Mr. Chan and Mr. Rhim, came to the meeting site one hour before the doors were to open and stood at the front of the line to get in. However, Judge Schack said in his opinion, invited guests of the Mayor were ushered in past the general public and given most of the seats in the school auditorium.

Daily News 9/12/2000

City Admits Spray Goof

Anvil trucks rolled two hours too soon

City officials admitted yesterday that a Manhattan woman was accidentally doused with mosquito-killing pesticides last week because spray crews hit the streets two hours early. Two days after Mayor Giuliani dismissed the woman's complaint, saying she should have been aware of the city's spraying schedule, he said the Health Department had given him wrong information.

To a Directory of Mr.Lederman's Essays

Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which he is a member or of the "No-Spray" lawsuit in which he is a plaintiff.

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