Real War On Terror in the East Channel

Date: April 20, 2007
Time: 22:43
Place: A hundred yards north of the vanguard

I saw a couple of the six new electricity generating turbines installed over by the Welfare Island Bridge this morning. This pilot project will generate the electricity to run the Gristede's and the Motorgate garage. Eventually, between 300 and 500 of these 15 foot wide turbines will sit in the East Channel, supplying about 10 MW, which is adequate for 8,000 homes, which is about the projected size of Roosevelt Island. No story is more important to national security, the economy, or the environment than these six turbines.

Our foreign policy is bizarrely and ludicrously warped beyond logic or sense by the fact that we need to import over fifty percent of our oil from a market where prices are set by Saudi Arabia. Our addiction dictates that we can't say "Boo" to the very people who fund Al Qaeda. This situation will only worsen as India and China modernize and demand more of this limited commodity. World Wars have started this way. Anybody who frets about Islamo-fascism and then says nothing about energy independence is just not serious.

That is why these six turbines are such a big story. Each turn of the blades pulls another bit of greenhouse gas back into the sea. Each turn of the blades brings back another bit of America's engineering and manufacturing base. Each turn of the blades strikes another blow in the real war on terror. Also, as I said before, each turn of these three blade propellers is an upraised middle finger to King Abdullah, Osama Bin Laden, and Dick Cheney.