Rolf Martens
Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:23:11 -0700
UNITE! Info #292en: 3/3 From earlier articles on "green" warfare [Posted: 14.09.2007]
[Continued from part 2/3] SECTION 4. >From Info #278en, "Bush and Reinfeldt agree on energy strangling", 19.05.2007 THEME 1 WHICH BUSH AND REINFELDT DIDN'T TOUCH ON IN THEIR MEETING: NUCLEAR ENERGY This is a quite big theme, since many decades back, concerning the country where I'm writing this, Sweden, and not least concerning the relations between the politicians of that country, on the one hand, and those of the USA, on the other. ... On the history of nuclear energy in Sweden, from the 1960s on and up until February 2005, there are some main points at the "Background" page of the website of the (non-party-political) Committee Save Barsebäck, of which I'm a member. [http://www.save-nukeplant-barsebaeck.com/background.html] ... Note, Sept. 2007: This is a small organization, created in 1997 for combating the efforts of the ruling reactionaries to close the excellently-functioning nuclear power plant at Barsebäck, not far from Malmö were I live, which earlier produced 6% of all electricity in Sweden, down. Despite this being opposed by at least some 90% of the people in Sweden, those reactionaries managed to close down one of its two reactors in 1999 and the other in May 2005. Our committee together with some other organizations campaigned as strongly as we could in particular against that latter closure but was not able to prevent that serious crime either. (See also below.) Another interesting thing, and this one an indubitable fact, concerning US influence in Sweden on such matters, is that it was from a longer visit to the USA that the Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén, whose specialty was nuclear fusion, returned in 1970 with his then new conviction that nuclear fission was "a very bad thing", "what with the wastes and everything", and in his turn convinced the then new leader of the Centre Party - originally a farmers' party - Torbjörn Fälldin, of his new Gospel, which it in the following decades was to become Fälldin's and the Centre Party's "main mission in life" to preach and to practice - in particular under Fälldin's premiership in the period 1976-1982, and this has not been abandoned today either - much to the displeasure of most farmers, since agriculture today of course needs lots of cheap and clean energy too. One early book dedicated to "warning" people against nuclear energy, in this case against breeder reactors quite in particular, appeared in the USA too, in 1969,: "The Careless Atom" by Sheldon Novick. Another party in Sweden, the so-called "Leftist Party the Communists" ("VPK", as it was called then), closely connected not only with the Soviet social-imperialists but with the US imperialists too although this was less obviously visible, went openly anti-nuclear-energy too approximately at the same time, the early 1970s. In 1977 this caused a split in that party, one pro-nuclear-energy and also very pro-Soviet-social-imperialism faction breaking away from it. ... In 1973-74 there was the first international "oil crisis", caused not at all in the main by the Arabic-speaking countries' quite justified demands for a small raise in the price of their raw material or their use of oil as a "weapon" against some glaring international injustices, but mainly by the US and some other other ruling reactionaries who took this as an excuse to raise the price of oil enormously much more, so as to curtail its use and hit at the industrial production in many countries. It was no coincidence that approximately that very same time, actually beginning in the spring of 1973 and thus immediately before the "oil crisis", there was a spate of articles in Swedish newspapers attacking the use of nuclear power plants and there soon began a debate in the parliament here on this issue, in which the then prime minister Olof Palme played a role no smaller than that of Fälldin in advocating "zero growth", and which led to decisions by that parliament in 1975 not only to cut the nuclear-energy programme down radically, from 24 reactors to 13, but also one actually envisaging that in the future, Sweden's energy use was not to increase at all. These quite extreme decisions by the Swedish parliament, very much in accordance with the "Club of Rome" programme, undoubtedly very much had to to with the considerable influence of the US imperialists here in this country, At the same time, the latter were criticized relatively severely by some of the people who made these decisions, notably Palme, for their ongoing aggression against Vietnam, but concerning energy, their "commands" were obeyed by the politicians here, in part because they also represented the common wishes of the bourgeoisie as a whole. THE CONSTRUCTION RESPECTIVELY NON-CONSTRUCTION AND DESTRUCTION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN SWEDEN - BEFORE AND AFTER THE BIG TURNABOUT HERE Because of the Swedish bourgeoisie's earlier pro-nuclear-energy standpoint and because of some other factors already mentioned above, more electricity-producing capacity utilizing nuclear energy was built in this country than in any other in the world, if you count capacity installed per capita. (Sweden had and still has some 9 million inhabitants.) This took place between 1970 and 1985. 12 nuclear power reactors were built here then, in that 15-year period, with a combined electricity production capacity of over 10 GW (10,000+ MW). After the recent scandalous shutdowns of two of them, bitterly opposed by a large majority of people here, namely both of those at the Barsebäck plant, in 1999 respectively in 2005, Sweden with 46% of all its electricity still coming from nuclear power plants, compared to 78% in France today, has lost that internationally leading position which it formerly had, in the respect of functioning nuclear power electricity production capacity per inhabitant, and is rather precisely on a par with that other relatively modern capitalist country in this respect, with some 1 GW (1,000 MW) of such capacity, corresponding to one normal-sized nuclear power reactor, per million inhabitants. But things since long are going downhill, as to nuclear energy in this country. The nuclear power plant construction here in Sweden now rather long ago, in 1970-1985, anyway may be taken as an example of what it's technically possible and not very difficult to do today, as to such construction, in any country which has the necessary technology. This is worth noting today, when the bourgeoisie internationally already has retreated so far from that very most modern of energy sources that any nuclear energy programme in any country, calling for the construction of just a few reactors, is being described by the media as a "big" or even "radical" one. This example shows, for instance, that in the USA, a country of some 300 million inhabitants, which today has some 104 functioning nuclear power reactors, with not a single new one built in the last 25 years and with only some 20% of its electricity coming from nuclear energy, it would be quite easy, technically, to build 300 such reactors, of 1 GW each, in the next 15 years. After Bush was elected president in 2000, he among other things "promised" the people in the USA - where even according to recent "opinion polls" (those are always "slanted" in a reactionary direction), some 70% are in favour of nuclear energy and where the industrial capitalists know quite well too that this already today is the cheapest way to produce electricity - that there would now be "a new stance" on nuclear energy in that country, and in early 2002 a governmental programme on this was decided on which its originators called a "bold" one. So far, five years later, that programme has resulted in the start of construction of - not one single reactor. China and India today, where some 30 respectively some 20 new reactors reportedly are envisaged for the next 20 years, are being said by the media to have "big" nuclear energy construction programmes. And these construction programmes, in those countries to which today, because of their cheap labour power and for political reasons too, much industry is being transferred from some of the "richer", imperialist-type countries, something which also causes unemployment in the latter ones, indeed to some small extent may alleviate that raging energy crisis which there now is in China, in particular, because of the long time revisionist rule there. But, as the earlier example of Sweden shows too: Supposing that China and India, with their 1,300 respectively 1,000 million inhabitants, have one-fifth of the nuclear energy construction capability of the relatively most highly-developed capitalist countries, it would not be difficult, technically, to build some 300 respectively 200 reactors in those countries in the next 15 years. Their present construction programmes thus are really quite small too, as reckoned by ordinary, normal, non-bourgeois people. THE "HARRISBURG" MANIPULATION IN 1979 AND THE FANTASTIC "REFERENDUM ON NUCLEAR POWER" IN SWEDEN IN 1980 On 28.03.1979, there occurred a so-called "accident" at reactor No. 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant not far from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the USA. Nobody got hurt by it and there was only moderately large material destruction, but this event was taken as an opportunity for some even much louder anti-nuclear energy howling by the mass media, in the USA itself and not least here in Europe, than ever before. At that time, I got a phone call from my then comrades in the abovementioned, tiny but actually Marxist-Leninist party in Germany, who said that they strongly suspected, not least because of the point in time in which it occurred - the international political situation which was a particular one in several respects then - that this was not really an accident at all but a manipulation by the US imperialists, in order to create a certain diversion and not least in order to get the anti-nuclear-energy "movement" going again, after the political exposure of its real background and movers had brought it to almost a halt in (West) Germany, for instance. (US president then was Jimmy Carter, known among other things to be rather extremely anti-nuclear-energy; he for instance quite openly had tried to prevent the then West Germany from transferring nuclear-energy technology to Brazil.) My comrades asked me to help collect information internationally on the TMI incident. And I did find, above all, a particularly "juicy" piece of such information. I've earlier written about this in Info #034en, entitled "US trickery on Barsebäck" and posted to newsgroups etc on 27.05.1997, from whose part 2/3 I quote: "After the anti-nuclear-energy campaign had been criticized and the motives behind it disclosed, it was slowed down considerably in Europe in 1978. Therefore and for some other reasons, there for some [people] arose a 'need' for a 'serious nuclear-energy accident'. And one such was arranged, in the Three Mile Island 2 reactor south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA, on 28.03.1979. The 'Harrisburg accident' is a whole story by itself, one that I so far haven't gotten around to post much about - I'm planning to do so later. The KPD/ML (NEUE EINHEIT) in April '79 published a leaflet on it, disclosing several vital facts, some of which had been discovered by me (who also reproduced that leaflet in Swedish). One detail which we found to be very telling was: One week before the 'accident', on 21.03.79, a certain 'fantasy story' appeared in the York Dispatch, a paper published in York, West Virginia, a city just as close to the TMI plant as is Harrisburg, only across the state border. The story, entitled 'The Total Meltdown', was about how, precisely one week later, on 28.03, precisely the reactor TMI 2 'suffered a pump failure and then [its core] melted down completely'. 'Here the parapsychologists have something in which to sink their teeth', wrote the correspondent [in New York City, the USA] of Sydsvenska Dagbladet, Malmö, the only paper - as far as I know - that brought the information about this in Europe. In fact all who read it must have understood what it clearly pointed to. But nobody else but we Marx adherents ever referred again to the 'strange coincidence' of this story told one week in advance." The background of that story in fact could only have been one of two things: Either it was a "warning shot" in advance against a manipulation of that TMI reactor which some people in the USA had gotten to know was being planned and wanted to prevent. Or else it was a scare story planted in advance by people who intended to manipulate precisely that reactor precisely a week later and wanted to make people in its vicinity believe that its core indeed was to be made to melt down completely - with then perhaps "a serious release of radioactive substances" - and thus "hopefully" create a public panic in that area (which in the actual event did not occur anyway). On the results of the US "Harrisburg" manipulation here in Sweden, where it did "succeed" even more dramatically than in any other country, I wrote in the same Info part: "In several European countries, the 'Harrisburg accident' had considerable repercussions, and in particular here in Sweden. On 4 April, a day later called 'Mad Wednesday', several politicians made a complete turnabout - it's known that in the days before, a person employed by the US government had made statements here about how they 'obviously didn't know what significance this event had in the USA and were unable to draw the correct conclusions from it' - and decided on a so-called 'referendum on nuclear power' in Sweden. This took place a year later, on 23.03.1980, and was not just any 'referendum' either. All three 'proposals' in favour of which you were allowed to 'vote' said squarely 'no' to nuclear energy, which according to these 'proposals' was to be curtailed and eventually banned completely in this country - which was then and which in fact is still the one with the largest amount of all of electricity from nuclear power plants per inhabitant (10 GW of installed effect for somewhat less than 9 million people). And to this day, all politicians in Sweden do 'stand by' the 'result' of this 'referendum', the 'democracy' of which you must admit beats even the one of the so-called 'elections' in, for instance, Brezhnev's Soviet Union." [So far Info #178en] SECTION 5. >From Info #258en, "The reigning system's weakness", 02.05.2006 And when Gorbachov became president in the Soviet Union in 1985 and wanted to pursue another, though likewise extremely reactionary, policy, one of "green" strangulation of industry together with the ruling persons in the USA, the then still powerful military leaders in the Soviet Union tried to force the Gorbachov group into accepting their own line of massive threats and perhaps even aggression against West Europe, by having their intelligence service the GRU assassinate Sweden's prime minister Palme on 28 February 1986. A scapegoat first got convicted of that murder but was later acquitted, after some people within the establishment here on 24 August 1989 had reported publicly on a certain result of a bugging of a GRU agent in February 1986. It's likely, in our judgement, that the largescale sabotage later, on 26 April 1986, of a nuclear power reactor at Chernobyl which was part of a certain military complex, among other things was intended as a counterattack by the Gorbachov group and/or its US friends, against those Soviet military who among other things had then recently assassinated Palme. That it was a sabotage and not an "accident" that killed 42 people then and caused large material damage is obvious. No less than 6 different safety systems were shut off deliberately in that reactor, where, incidentally, it was possible to cause an explosion only because its moderator consisted of graphite, not of water as in all nuclear power plants in for instance Sweden. The largest damage in this connection has been caused by a massive lie propaganda, which has maintained that those very small extra amounts of radiation which arose in other countries because of the Chernobyl sabotage were "harmful", and not, as are such small amounts, actually good for people's health. [So far Info #258en] Note, Sept. 2007: I'm repeating here two things which I already wrote in my "News with brief comments" item 311 on 12.09, where the above from Info #258en was quoted too and which was headlined "'The Chernobyl disaster very probably a sabotage'": This the blogger Alain wrote yesterday 11.09.2007 in his important blog in French, mainly dedicated to the origin of oil, at http://petrole-abiotique.blogspot.com/, which also contains articles pointing out that those same powerful reactionaries in the world who are making the oil price be so high are also the propelling forces behind the massive campaign, since many decades back, against nuclear energy. He motivates what he is saying about Chernobyl above all with a close look at the technical details of this disaster in 1986, which cost some 42 people their lives. ... Since the fact mentioned here concerning such small doses of ionizing radiation as those mentioned above no doubt still is unknown to many, and the international mass media since many decades back very much are trying to scare people of all radiation, even such at levels with which people in many regions on earth have always lived, their health in general being better and by no means worse than those with lower levels of natural so-called background radiation, it may be suitable to include here references to two actually scientific websites on this question: On low-dose ionizing radiation, a site managed by S. M. Javad Mortazavi, Ph. D., Iran, and containing articles by scientists in many countries: http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/ T. D. Luckey (USA) on beneficial effects of low-dose ionizing radiation: http://www.giriweb.com/luckey.htm This concludes my summary now concerning "green" warfare, with its main elements and history roughly outlined and with some aspects of it gone into in some detail too. _____________________ Message posted by: Rolf Martens Malmö, Sweden Phone and fax: +46 - 40 - 124832; [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.rolf-martens.com ______________________ _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list