May, 31 2011, 01:01pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Germans Abandoning Nuclear Energy
AP reports: "Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany, announced plans Monday to abandon nuclear energy over the next 11 years, outlining an ambitious strategy in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster to replace atomic power with renewable energy sources."
WASHINGTON
AP reports: "Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany, announced plans Monday to abandon nuclear energy over the next 11 years, outlining an ambitious strategy in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster to replace atomic power with renewable energy sources."
HARVEY WASSERMAN, solartopia at me.com
Wasserman edits https://nukefree.org and is author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, AD 2030 (which includes an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.). Wasserman said today: The future of nuclear power has taken severe blows in the wake of Fukushima, accelerating the prospects for a world based on renewable energy. Japan, Germany and Switzerland -- all major players -- say they will build no more commercial atomic reactors.
"Japan has long been a center of the industry. But its beleaguered prime minister has cancelled plans for a dozen or more new reactors. Japan will 'start from scratch' on its energy policy, with a heavy emphasis on wind and solar, in which large Japanese companies already have major investments.
"Beset by massive anti-nuclear demonstrations, Germany's formerly pro-nuclear Chancellor Angela Merkel has permanently shut seven older reactors and says Germany's ten remaining reactors will shut by 2022. Germany will also build on its substantial stake in renewables and enhance its leadership in the global green energy revolution.
"Also in the wake of large demonstrations, Switzerland says it will abandon plans for at least three new reactors.
"China, India, Russia, the United States, Great Britain and South Korea remain the core of the future potential for new reactor construction. China has apparently put many future projects on hold, pending further evaluation of what happened at Fukushima. The U.S. Congress is engulfed in a heated battle on proposed loan guarantees to underwrite new construction.
"But the pro-green decisions of the world's third and fourth-largest economies have cast a deep shadow over the future of a 'Peaceful Atom' once promised to be 'too cheap to meter.'"
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said following the passage of the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2025 (H.R. 5009) that "it should alarm every American taxpayer that we are nearing a trillion-dollar annual budget for an agency rampant with waste, fraud, and abuse."
Jayapal, who was one of 140 lawmakers to oppose the package, emphasized that the Pentagon has failed seven consecutive annual audits.
Despite being the only federal agency to never have passed a federal audit, said Jayapal, the Department of Defense "continues to receive huge boosts to funding every year. Our constituents deserve better."
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The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the power to declare war (though presidents have used military force without getting the OK from Congress on multiple occasions in modern history, according to the National Constitution Center).
During the Cold War, when nuclear weapons policy was produced, speed was seen as essential to deterrence, according to Jon Wolfsthal, the director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, who wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last year that makes a similar argument to Markey and Lieu.
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"Amnesty International found that Israeli forces unlawfully struck residential buildings in the village of al-Ain in northern Bekaa on September 29, the village of Aitou in northern Lebanon on October 14, and in Baalbeck city on October 21," the rights group said. "Israeli forces also unlawfully attacked the municipal headquarters in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on October 16."
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The September 29 attack "destroyed the house of the Syrian al-Shaar family, killing all nine members of the family who were sleeping inside," the report states.
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A fragment of the munition found at the site of the attack was analyzed by an Amnesty International weapons expert and based upon its size, shape, and the scalloped edges of the heavy metal casing, identified as most likely a MK-80 series aerial bomb, which would mean it was at least a 500-pound bomb. The United States is the primary supplier of these types of munitions to Israel.
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Guevara Rosas said: "These attacks must be investigated as war crimes. The Lebanese government must urgently call for a special session at the U.N. Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative mechanism into the alleged violations and crimes committed by all parties in this conflict. It must also grant the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over Rome Statute crimes committed on Lebanese territory."
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