{"id":6199,"date":"2013-10-20T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=6199"},"modified":"2013-10-19T10:17:34","modified_gmt":"2013-10-19T14:17:34","slug":"nukes-have-always-been-a-government-sponsored-boondogle-as-cover-for-nuclear-weapons-production-john-pate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/nukes-have-always-been-a-government-sponsored-boondogle-as-cover-for-nuclear-weapons-production-john-pate.html","title":{"rendered":"Nukes have always been a government sponsored boondogle as cover for nuclear weapons production –John Pate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nFrom Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace and Matsutaro Shoriki founding\r\nthe Japanese nuclear industry\r\nto Shinzo Abe’s international nuclear salesmanship,\r\nnuclear power has always been a whitewash for nuclear weapons,\r\nwith “peaceful” nukes\r\n\r\na boondoggle for big corps subsidized by taxpayers and ratepayers<\/a>.\r\nYet the sun is rising around the world, on Japan as well as on the U.S.\r\n

\r\nU.S. President Dwight Eisenhower kicked it off with his\r\n\r\n“Atoms for Peace”<\/a>\r\nspeech at the UN, 8 December 1953,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe Atomic Energy Agency could be made responsible for the\r\nimpounding, storage, and protection of the contributed fissionable\r\nand other materials. The ingenuity of our scientists will provide\r\nspecial safe conditions under which such a bank of fissionable\r\nmaterial can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nThe more important responsibility of this Atomic Energy Agency would\r\nbe to devise methods whereby this fissionable material would be\r\nallocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. Experts would\r\nbe mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture,\r\nmedicine, and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be\r\nto provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of\r\nthe world. Thus the contributing powers would be dedicating some of\r\ntheir strength to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAgainst the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States\r\ndoes not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and\r\nthe hope for peace.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd “Atoms for Peace” was part of an organized government PR campaign\r\n(“Operation Candor”<\/a>)\r\nabout Soviet nuclear weapons; see\r\n\r\nhttp:\/\/www.eisenhower.archives.gov\/research\/online_documents\/atoms_for_peace.html”>Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library<\/a> for sources.\r\nOperation Candor was replaced by Operation Soothing Syrup (I am not making this up),\r\naccording to newspaper columnist (and leak publisher)\r\nStewart Alsop,\r\n\r\nin his column of 23 November 1957<\/a>.\r\nAlsop wanted more candor, mostly because he wanted more nuclear weapons\r\nto counter the Soviet Union’s nukes and missiles, yet his conclusion is\r\njust relevant now as then:\r\n

\r\nIt might make life simpler for high officials such as Mr. Cutler\r\nif the American people were obedient sheep who\r\nunquesiontingly obeyed the orders of daddy Governement.\r\nBut the United States is not the Soviet Union.\r\nIt is, instead, a society in which the Government\r\nderives its authority from the people.\r\nAnd such society is instantly in deadly danger\r\nif the essential facts on which to reach a\r\nreasoned judgment are concealed by the Government\r\nfrom the people.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nTake that, Atomic Energy Commission successor NRC!\r\nAnd don’t worry, it’s not just government in this boondoggle,\r\nand wasn’t back then, either.\r\n

\r\nMeanwhile in Japan,\r\nMatsutaro Shoriki, briefly jailed for war crimes during World War II),\r\nwas the head of the secret police\r\nand then founded the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, and\r\nset up the country’s first private television network.\r\nAccording to the Economist 22 December 2012,\r\n\r\nMatsutaro Shoriki,\r\nJapan’s Citizen Kane:\r\nA media mogul whose extraordinary life still shapes his country, for good and ill<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n‘To cap it all, he was the “father of nuclear power”,\r\nusing his cabinet position and media clout to transform an\r\natom-bombed nation into one of the strongest advocates of atomic\r\nenergy. That legacy now smoulders amid the ruins of the Fukushima\r\nDai-ichi nuclear plant.’…\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut television was only the next stage in his journey. By 1954 Japan\r\nwas in the grip of anti-American hysteria. After the horrors of the\r\natomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American H-bomb testing\r\nin the Pacific Marshall Islands blanketed 23 Japanese tuna fishermen\r\nwith radioactive ash. After one of the men affected died,\r\nanti-nuclear passions soared. Shoriki, as well as America’s CIA, was\r\nterrified at the thought that the Soviet Union and China might take\r\nadvantage of the uproar to displace American influence in Japan.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHe hit upon another remarkable plan, this time to use nuclear energy\r\nas a tool of pro-American leverage. Yet another biographer claims\r\nthis was a CIA plot—an idea pooh-poohed by other scholars, who\r\nbelieve that Shoriki exploited the Americans at least as much as\r\nvice versa. Dwight Eisenhower had recently made his “Atoms for\r\nPeace” speech, promoting the spread of nuclear energy to\r\ncounter the stigma of nuclear weapons. In December 1954 John Jay\r\nHopkins, president of General Dynamics, a pioneering nuclear\r\nconglomerate, suggested an “Atomic Marshall Plan” for\r\nJapan.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nShoriki pressured Hopkins to travel to Tokyo to deliver the message\r\nin person; at the first hint of assent, the Yomiuri splashed the\r\nnews on its front page. With all the hoopla that had heralded the\r\narrival of Babe Ruth more than 20 years earlier, the paper played up\r\nthe visit in May 1955. Shoriki used giant screens artfully erected\r\non street corners both to spread the pro-nuclear message and to\r\nboost the fledgling NTV’s ratings.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAt the same time he and some of his pronuclear cronies in parliament\r\nwere pulling strings, with results that still resonate. He won a\r\nDiet seat on a nuclear-energy platform, then helped form the Liberal\r\nDemocratic Party. It ruled Japan for almost all of the next 55 years\r\n(and is now returning to power). In January 1956, as a cabinet\r\nmember of the first LDP government, he was appointed president of\r\nJapan’s new Atomic Energy Commission. To the surprise and horror of\r\nsome of the scientists on the commission, his first announcement was\r\nthat Japan would have a reactor within five years. He never let\r\npracticalities get in the way of a story.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThe same Liberal Democratic Party of current Japanese Prime Minister\r\n\r\nShinzo Abe: Japan’s Nuclear Salesman-In-Chief<\/a>,\r\nas Sebastian Sarmiento-Saher called him in The Diplomat, 3 July 2013.\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn order to promote Japan’s peaceful nuclear technology exports\r\nabroad, Tokyo has recently reached out to a number of countries including\r\nthe United Arab Emirates (UAE), France, Turkey, India, and the Visegrad\r\nFour (V4), which is composed of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,\r\nand Slovakia.<\/p>\r\n

In the UAE<\/a>,\r\nMr. Abe and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed\r\nbin Rashif al-Maktoum established a nuclear\r\ncooperation agreement under which Japanese firms would supply\r\nthe UAE<\/a> with components for the ongoing\r\nconstruction of a nuclear power facility. Mr. Abe then signed a\r\ndeal<\/a> with the Turkish government for a consortium of Japanese\r\nand French companies to build a nuclear power plant and to then\r\nsupply it once it is completed.  Back in Tokyo, Mr. Abe\r\nhosted French President François Hollande last month, engaging<\/a> a\r\nwould-be competitor in an agreement to cooperate in nuclear technology\r\nexports. <\/p>\r\n

Further targeting emerging nuclear power\r\nmarkets, Mr. Abe received Indian Prime Minister\r\nManmohan Singh in Tokyo last month, where the two accelerated\r\nnegotiations<\/a> that, if successfully concluded,\r\nwill allow Japan to sell the second most-populous country\r\nin the world the nuclear technology it needs to address its own energy\r\nshortfalls<\/a>. In Europe, Mr. Abe lobbied\r\nvigorously<\/a> on behalf of Japanese nuclear\r\npower reactors and technology in Japan’s first\r\nV4 summit – where he and his counterparts agreed\r\nto cooperate<\/a> in atomic energy development in Central Europe<\/p>\r\n

Abe also traveled to Saudi Arabia to discuss nuclear\r\ntechnology while protests in Brazil caused its President, Dilma\r\nRousseff<\/a>, to postpone a trip to Tokyo where, like India,\r\nshe was set to accelerate nuclear cooperation with Japan to\r\nbuild more atomic power reactors. Given Brazil’s growing energy\r\nproblems<\/a> and the government’s plan to expand\r\nnuclear power<\/a> generation, it is likely that Brasilia and Tokyo\r\nwill have an agreement in the near future.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nNow Japan may have come full circle, back to nuclear weapons,\r\nas John Pate points out, with\r\n\r\nIs Japan Developing a Nuclear Weapons Program?\r\nHuge reprocessing plant could be used to stockpile plutonium for the future manufacture of nuclear weapons.<\/a>\r\nby Peter Symonds for Global Research 7 May 2013, sourcing from\r\n\r\nJapan’s Nuclear Plan Unsettles U.S.<\/a>\r\nby Jay Solomon and Miho Inada\r\nin WSJ 1 May 2013,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\nJapan is preparing to start up a massive nuclear-fuel reprocessing\r\nplant over the objections of the Obama administration, which fears\r\nthe move may stoke a broader race for nuclear technologies and even\r\nweapons in North Asia and the Middle East.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe Rokkasho reprocessing facility, based in Japan’s northern Aomori\r\nprefecture, is capable of producing nine tons of weapons-usable\r\nplutonium annually, said Japanese officials and nuclear-industry\r\nexperts, enough to build as many as 2,000 bombs, although Japanese\r\nofficials say their program is civilian.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nYet Abe may not succeed in peddling nukes abroad and at home.\r\nHis predecessor and mentor, former Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi,\r\nis now \r\nopenly calling for no nukes<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nAnd the \r\neconomics of solar power<\/a>\r\nmay make the whole question moot, as Japan rapidly\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nexpands its solar power production while its electric grid plays catch-up<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nEven TEPCO, flailing so badly at containing the broken Fukushima nukes,\r\n\r\nis deploying wind power offshore<\/a>\r\nand solar inland.\r\n

\r\nThe sun is rising, on the east as well as the west.

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>\r\n

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