Archive for September, 2011

Michael Leonardi of CAN telling like it is – a must read

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

Fighting Back Against Nuclear Power

Published in CounterPunch on September 28th and written by MICHAEL LEONARDI

As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Nuclear Industry, and Obama administration continue to push nuclear energy as safe and clean, a grassroots insurgency is growing from the awakening depths of the growingly vociferous American maelstrom. Fukushima’s three meltdowns continue to emit over a billion bequerels of radioactivity a day into the environment and that radiation is spreading. The international media and all Atomic regulatory agencies around the world have been complicit in keeping the reality of this catastrophe silent. In the United States of America, despite reports of a decrepit, failing and unsafe nuclear program from the pages of CounterPunch to the Associated Press, CBS News and beyond, most Americans remain quiet and numbed on this issue. Much of this country’s union leadership, beholden to a broken and corporate owned Democratic Party and the monstrous energy giants that provide them jobs, have a slave plantation mentality toward their Radioactive, Oil Extrapolating and Gas Fracking bosses. The promise of a Green revolution based around economically viable, RENEWABLE and truly safe energy sources seems to be bound and shackled by a ball and chain mentality, but signs of a breaking point have finally begun to surface!

A truly grassroots insurgency is underway and is introducing itself to the world on October 1st with actions across North America. The Coalition Against Nukes has mobilized for the past several months to begin a no nuke uprising that won’t stop until ALL of our nuclear power plants are shut down and our future generations can look forward to a Nuke Free World. Isn’t it enough that we are leaving our future generations with the legacy of millions of gallons of nuclear waste and thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel to monitor and control for thousands of years? A part from Governor Perry’s idea of nuking Texas — which we might want to consider — there is no solution to ridding ourselves of this extremely toxic and highly radioactive waste piling up in hotspots around the globe. Enough is Enough!

The time has come to look beyond the lies and propaganda of our so-called world leaders and see them for what they are. We are being led down a path of destruction by criminal governments running a global system of mafia wars, rape and pillage as they take more and more from us all while poisoning and desecrating our air, land and water beyond any natural recognition. Our children are suffering now from respiratory illnesses and disease and the search for a cure for cancer lies in eliminating the industrial pollutants that cause it not in a research laboratory. As of yesterday the Palisades Nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan was venting radioactive steam. The amounts are minimal and harmless say the NRC and Entergy spokespeople, THEY ARE LYING as they always do and this is the essence of their existence.

Look to the lessons we are learning from Japan. If there is a serious nuclear accident this is what we can count on from our governments, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and those “in charge”. They will lie to us for months, they will abandon us to die and they will act like nothing is happening. This is what is unfolding in the Crime Against Humanity devastating the 3 million residents and mainly the children that have been left in areas 5 times more radioactive than the areas of the Ukraine evacuated until this day after Chernobyl. Try and get your minds around how callous and utterly disdainful our governments have become toward their populations. Our governments represent the Inhumane Capitalist Engine and we are all disposable. Let us die our cancerous deaths while we are told that we have nothing to fear is the stark reality we are facing not tomorrow but today.

The alarm bells are ringing as Wall Street becomes the target of a global revolt. As C.A.N. organizer Remy Chevalier put it “It is time to zero in on Entergy, Exelon, Constellation, Dominion… all the sick nuclear power companies run by thugs.” These are just a few and I’d broaden that to include all of the Energy, Chemical and Biological Mutating giants that are hell bent on destroying the life affirming forces this beautiful planet has offered our species.

This is a call to action and the time to act is now. Not on facebook, not with letters and petitions, but in the streets and parks across the land on October 1st and beyond. The Coalition Against Nukes has pulled together rallies across the US and Canada on October 1st. The rally in New York will have a powerful list of speakers including CounterPunch contributors Helen Caldicott, Harvey Wasserman, Kevin Kamps, Karl Grossman and more. In downtown Toledo, Ohio congressmen Dennis Kucinich will join us in a rally calling for the shut down of Davis Besse and Fermi 2! Dennis is bucking the Democratic Party trend and as he has always done by saying No to Nukes! He will be joined by two Democratic council members, Green Party activists and more. In Virginia activists will target the state capital in a state that wants to bring back Uranium Mining. In California, Chicago, New Jersey, Florida, and Washington State NO NUKES will be the message. They will be drumming Against Nukes in Toronto Canada and as we voice our solidarity with the people of Japan and cry out NEVER AGAIN! The Japanese will be standing up to say no more nukes! In India they are marching and hunger striking to ban nukes. Italy banned nukes with a successful grassroots storm. Germany will be Nuke Free by 2022. It is time for this movement to rise up in United Sates too! NO NUKES ! ! ! Please visit the C.A.N. website at www.coalitionagainstnukes.org/ and join a rally near you or do something creatively anti-nuclear on October 1st and spread the word.

Michael Leonardi is a C.A.N. organizer and writer living for now between Toledo, Ohio and Italy. He is currently working for the Service Employees International Union to repeal the attack on collective bargaining in the State of Ohio. He can be reached at mikeleonardi@hotmail.com

Solar Energy is Far From Over

Friday, September 16th, 2011

News reports have depicted Solyndra's bankruptcy as the end of solar power in the U.S. Coming to this conclusion without any kind of analysis is ridiculous. All growing technologies have their growing pains.

The Vote Solar Initiative puts it this way: "[it is] like saying there is no future for the internet because Netscape went out of business." The same could be said for the early days of electricity, computers and cars. All of these industries had their failed companies, yet the industry went on to great success.Reports of Solar's Death are greatly exaggerated.

New Wind Turbine Design from Japan

Monday, September 12th, 2011

– Energy Output Tripled

Here in the US, we derive 3.2 % of our total electricity from wind power. Just adding the new design, called a wind lens, would increase the power produced by wind to 9.6% of the total. The new design would also make wind power cheaper than coal and nuclear power, sans subsidies.

Read all about it in the Earthy Report

Nuclear Power and the Nuremberg Code

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

The Nuremburg Code arose from legal proceedings against the notorious Nazi Doctors. Although it did not prevent human experiments, like radiological studies, it did eventually lead to the notion of "informed consent", and some other good things.

Steve Breyer points out that nuclear power and the bomb from which it derived are human experimentation.Countless rushed experiments were necessary to complete the Manhattan Project. An explosion tested the first Bomb in the New Mexican desert; within weeks, Hiroshima and Nagasaki became radioactive laboratories (and sarcophagi).

Beginning with rushed experiments to complete the Manhattan Project the experimentation includes atomic testing in the Nevada desert, the Soviet Arctic, the Kazakh steppe, the Algerian Sahara, French Polynesia, and on “American” atolls in the South Pacific enabled the development of the hydrogen bomb and sundry innovations. Nuclear testing was done underground for Britain, the US, and the USSR after the enaction of the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963) . France continued atmospheric testing on Pacific islands, as they were not party to the treaty.

The number of victims of nuclear weapons manufacture and testing is unknown, but include Navajo uranium miners, soldiers, Utah sheep farmers, and residents around places like Rocky Flats, Colorado and Colonie, New York. Some New Mexicans. Helen Caldicott and Harvey Wasserman estimate 1000s of cancers result from civilian nuclear power annually. The recent book of collected studies on Chernobyl show nearly 1,000,000 deaths directly due to the accident.Time will reveal the toll Fukushima will take, although as with Chernobyl, great efforts will be taken to hide the data.

Countries employing nuclear power need to be held to the directives of the Nuremberg Code, as are social and medical scientists, we’d likely see a quick retreat from the nuclear brink.

The text of the Code, here edited for brevity, comes from Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law, No. 10, Vol. 2 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), pp. 181-182. It is available online)

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.

3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.

4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur.

6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.

9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

Credit to Steve Breyer's article on Dianuke

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