Nuclear Power and Democracy Don't Mix

[kristopher]

Nuclear Power and Democracy Don't Mix
Posted: 04/ 3/2012 11:12 am

On Monday South Korea deported three senior Greenpeace staff, known for their role in our campaign against that country's nuclear expansion plans. This is just the latest proof that nuclear power and democracy do not mix. It's the latest attack on freedom of speech from an industry forged in the furnace of military secrecy, which has over the last 60 years left in it's a wake a legacy of lies, cover-ups and broken promises.

What is it the industry and its government sponsors fear? What do they hope to achieve by excluding peaceful people from Greenpeace? What do they have to hide? What is it that they do not wish the people of Korea to hear?

Surprisingly, as the International Executive Director of Greenpeace, while I was stopped and questioned, I was not denied entry at the airport. Yet, I have been to Chernobyl. I have been to Fukushima. I can tell you firsthand of the devastation, of the ruined lives, and of the ongoing lies and cover-ups surrounding these nuclear power disasters.

Greenpeace scientists have highlighted that the devastation wrought on those communities, the painful legacy of radioactive contamination that I witnessed, was unnecessary. We do not have to run the risk of nuclear accidents. The world and Korea have bountiful renewable energy sources and the ability to use energy in a much smarter way. Even the respected Economist magazine in its March 14 issue ran a cover story calling nuclear power "The Dream that Failed," showing why nuclear is not a viable energy solution for the future.

I will ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kumi-naidoo/greenpeace-korea-nuclear-power_b_1399336.html

[freshwest]

1. That was the primary objection of the No Nuke crowds of the seventies.

Not a bunch of hysteria about three headed babies. Very much like the Cold War with all those bombs. Requires a police state mentality to protect all of those nasty toys that are owned by the plutocrats.

[kristopher]

2. Yes it was; and it still is for many of us.

At least, it is one of the primary reasons that violates fundamental values considered to be liberal. The "irrational fear" meme is almost entirely a straw-man creation of the nuclear industry.

Have you read Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken? By Amory B. Lovins?

It was published in '76 and was a major cultural influence. The nuclear industry still reviles Lovins for what he described.

... as national purpose and trust in institutions diminish, governments, striving to halt the drift, seek ever more outward control. We are becoming more uneasily aware of the nascent risk of what a Stanford Research Institute group has called "...'friendly fascism'—a managed society which rules by a faceless and widely dispersed complex of warfare-welfare-industrial-communications-police bureaucracies with a technocratic ideology." In the sphere of politics as of personal values, could many strands of observable social change be converging on a profound cultural transformation whose implications we can only vaguely sense: one in which energy policy, as an integrating principle, could be catalytic?

It is not my purpose here to resolve such questions—only to stress their relevance. Though fuzzy and unscientific, they are the beginning and end of any energy policy. Making values explicit is essential to pre- serving a society in which diversity of values can flourish.

Some people suppose that a soft energy path entails mainly social problems, a hard path mainly technical problems, so that since in the past we have been better at solving the technical problems, that is the kind we should prefer to incur now. But the hard path, too, involves difficult social problems. We can no longer escape them; we must choose which kinds of social problems we want. The most important, difficult, and neglected questions of energy strategy are not mainly technical or economic but rather social and ethical. They will pose a supreme challenge to the adaptability of democratic institutions and to the vitality of our spiritual life.

...

You can find a link to download that and several other papers by Lovins here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=10832

[freshwest]

3. Thanks, I'll explore those links. It was also part of the reasoning in opposing Vietnam.

All wars put societies out of balance and send wealth and power upward. We used to do research and used that 'follow the money' mantra at the time. Back then, you could find the interlocking directories easily enough, even without the internet, and see who was associating with who and getting rich off of it.

Also we saw how the DOD supported breaking the Farmworkers who had the boycott going to get better conditions in the fields by Caesar Chavez. And a few other players, such as the makers of Agent Orange. The amount of money made off Vietnam, with the same corporate players, created the political climate we have been fighting for so long. And led to more war.

It was also a time of people seeing the ecological damage being wrought by the oil companies, etc. Those entities had a clear picture of what they were doing and we did too; but they kept on working to take over everything and they've almost completed it with their propaganda, etc.

[bananas]

4. Yes, especially with the Watergate and Church Committee hearings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

[freshwest]

5. I watched the Watergate hearings that summer. Damn Nixon for resigning and Ford for pardoning him.

[bananas]

6. In New York, we had Frank Serpico making headline news in 1970 and 1971

then Watergate in 1972,
and then the Church Committee.
Who could trust the government after that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Serpico

Francesco Vincent Serpico (born April 14, 1936) is a retired American New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who is most famous for testifying against police corruption in 1971.[2] The majority of Serpico's fame came after the release of the 1973 film Serpico which starred Al Pacino in the lead role.

<snip>

Serpico's career as a plainclothes police officer working in Brooklyn and the Bronx to expose vice racketeering was short-lived because he consistently avoided taking part in the corruption. To expose those who did, Serpico risked his own life and safety.[3] In 1967 he reported credible evidence of widespread systematic police corruption. However, bureaucracy slowed down his efforts,[5] until he connected with another officer, David Durk, who helped him in his anti-corruption efforts. Serpico believed that his fellow partners knew about secret meetings that took place with police investigators. With no place left to go, Serpico contributed to an April 25, 1970, New York Times front-page story on widespread corruption in the New York City Police Department.[5] This forced Mayor John V. Lindsay to take action by appointing a five-member panel to investigate police corruption. This panel ultimately became the Knapp Commission, named for its chairman Whitman Knapp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

<snip>

A series of troubling revelations started to appear in the press concerning intelligence activities. First came the revelations of Christopher Pyle in January 1970 of the U.S. Army's spying on the civilian population[1][2] and Sam Ervin's Senate investigations that resulted.[3] The dam broke on 22 December 1974, when The New York Times published a lengthy article by Seymour Hersh detailing operations engaged in by the Central Intelligence Agency over the years that had been dubbed the "family jewels". Covert action programs involving assassination attempts against foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens.[4]

<snip>

In 1975 and 1976, the Church Committee published fourteen reports on the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies, their operations, and the alleged abuses of law and of power that they had committed, together with recommendations for reform, some of which were put in place.

[bananas]

7. And let's not forget the nuclear engineers who blew the whistle on the nuclear industry

There were a lot more than these:

http://www.komanoff.net/nuclear_power/10_blows.php

"10 Blows That Stopped Nuclear Power"

Reflections on the U.S. Nuclear Industry's 25 Lean Years
by Charles Komanoff, Komanoff Energy Associates

<snip>

5. Engineers Switch Sides—1976

In early 1976, three managers in General Electric's nuclear engineering division and a senior project manager at the NRC resigned to work for anti-nuclear organizations. The well-orchestrated "defections" garnered headlines across the country. Nuclear opponents saw their credibility bolstered and their technical firepower increased, while the sense grew among the media and the public that something was rotten inside the nuclear establishment.

The "GE 3" have thrived for the past two decades as technical advisors on nuclear dangers for governmental agencies and citizen activists throughout the U.S. and abroad. The NRC alumnus, Robert Pollard, who retired this year as senior nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, was arguably the antinuclear movement's indispensable man, providing expertise and hope to activists in countless struggles.

<snip>

[bananas]

8. And Karen Silkwood and others who worked in the industry. nt

[freshwest]

9. The Union of Concerned Scientists. Our country was a better place when we had liberal media voices.

I really miss those days when facts, the uncomfortable and inconvenient facts for the corporations, were brought to light and rational discussions were had. I remember the hearings over tobacco and the movement to prevent diseases, and how thuggish the industry was, like all of these. Back then there were real champions for social and environmental justice. We've gone down into a dark, ignorant place without them.

[Moostache]

10. Never forget WHY we are in this dark and ignorant place.

An informed citizenry does not promote the benefits of an elite few.

Reagan
Quayle
Bush the lesser
Palin
etc.

These figureheads and fools are the anointed of the corporate ruling elite. They are the useful idiots of our times.
Education and fact-based arguments are the kryptonite of this kind of world...but tune into any conservative program for 5 minutes and count the number of factual distortions or outright lies and fabrications that you hear.

The reality is we are under constant attack, and about 30-35% of our population is already irrevocably captured.

[freshwest]

11. It's also called the war on consciousness and conscience. It's relentless and it's working.