|Press Release| The Nuclear Liability Bill is in our National Interests

It has been proven that Global Warming was a liberal conspiracy to screw us over. Out of every 1000 pages of scientific reports published on global warming you will find two complete sentences that quote an inappropriate source! After such monumental oversight, the urban Naxals now want to deny us a right to nuclear energy by criminalizing industrial accidents incidents. Why should we let them have their way?

Nuclear incidents pose NO threat (e.g. Chernobyl)

• After the minor leak in Chernobyl, the dirty red communists in Russia used scare tactics to evacuate residents from the area.
• The real reason for evacuation was not nuclear radiation but faulty Geiger counters produced in socialist factories that showed up vast quantities of radiation when there was actually no radiation. We all know that factories with unions produce faulty goods. 
• Since all residents were evacuated there is no way to prove that several generations will be affected by the incident. Any genetic mutation amongst animals in the region has to be put down to Darwin’s theory of evolution.
• More importantly, Chernoby happened before Google (BG) putting it so far in the past that it loses all relevance.

Nuclear technology is safer than air-travel

• More people die when travelling to the airport than do people of nuclear radiation. (If there is such a thing as death by Radiation).
• For the enviro-terrorists reading this – apples and oranges are both fruits. They can and should be compared. By the way..some cancers can be cured and to include them as a potent side-effect is unfair.

Bhopal is a Red Herring

• Bhopal remains a vibrant city with great music, art and even a theatre scene.
• Like in every other Indian city, a few people in Bhopal are blind and few more have cancer.
• Dow chemicals and Union Carbide have never been convicted with criminal liability in any court and are hence innocent.
• It’s been 25 years since the disaster, it’s time we admit that Union Carbide has a halo around their heads.
• The fact that reputable senior lawyers defend Union Carbide vehemently in trial courts in criminal proceedings proves their innocence. Lawyers such as these should be made into spokespeople for the Nuclear Liability bill. They understand how painful criminal proceedings can be for companies that act in India’s National Interests. 
• Union Carbide may have known that the technology that they used in Bhopal was risky. So what? Every business has risks. Do you want us to become a society where the general public gets to participate in business decisions? Financial business risks have nothing to do with their lives! Only shareholders and management should have a right to opinion in such matters.
• Business leaders have said that it is unfair to make Dow Chemicals clean up the mess at the Union Carbide plant. We need to put our faith behind such stalwarts who are leading the fight against anti-democratic elements (such as illiterate filthy tribals who don’t want to give up their land for the cause of development). There will be resistance when we need to open up more open-cast Uranium mines and we need to be prepared.

Why worry about the water table? There are alternatives!

• We all know that bottled water is the future. So what if we drop a few chemicals into the water table – Beverage companies will be able to give us amazing drinking water from places like Plachimada.
• Privatizing our water distribution system and giving it to folks like Bechtel can guarantee urban India all the water they need. 
• Rainwater harvesting is for the communists.
• E.g. - A recent incident where contaminated heavy after was mixed with drinking water at a nuclear plant was contained very well. Nobody died from drinking heavy water in that incident.QED.

Seizing the competitive advantage

• For more than a few years now, the US has not commissioned a new nuclear reactor.
• This shows their lack of foresight when it comes to growing energy needs. 
• We need to beat China at everything and at any cost.
• In case of the highly unlikely event of a nuclear incident, we have the medical skills to cope with things like cleft-lips, genetic deformities and cancers. IF they occur, we can cure them. 

Let us be democratic about Nuclear Liability

• When we can’t demand a guarantee from our watermelon vendor, why should we demand a guarantee from the guys who build a nuclear reactor?
• Democracy is about equality and furthering free enterprise isn’t it? All vendors should be equal in the eyes of the law. 

It’s about Dharma and Karma

• Let us for a second assume that Nuclear technology is risky. If there is an incident, we know that vendors will take measures to fix the problem in future power plants. Everybody makes mistakes and can learn from them. Nuclear technology vendors need not be made into criminals for accidental mistakes. 
• Based on the above assumption, a few people may be exposed to radiation that is supposedly dangerous. If anything like this does happen we must assess the karma of the people who are affected. Dharma demands that people who have bad Karma face the consequences of their actions in previous lives. You can’t blame the vendor for that. Such blame-games would harm the sentiments of the majority. 
• We all know that opponents to the bill are either violent naxals or enviro terrorists or ISI agents.

How can you help get the Nuclear Liability Bill passed?

• Corruption is illegal but lobbying is not!
  Get your MP to stop listening to Indian environment groups and scientists. The EPA is giving grants to people who can work within the system to create civil recourse as opposed to criminal recourse. Please get you parliamentarian to listen to people who have funding from the EPA. After all if they are supported by American EPA, they must have our interests in mind.
  
• Direct Action! Talk to your local Resident's Welfare Association, MLA, MP and Corparator. Ask them to set aside land for a Nuclear Reactor in your neighbourhood. We must lead by example! It would be wonderful if the good folks of Koramangala, Banjara Hills and Cuffe Parade show us the way by proving that nuclear reactors are safe for their children.
  
  
• Do not attend any Communist and/or Naxal Events. We need to become a nation of pragmatic realists concerned with National Interests. Urban Naxalities are romanticising the nuclear liability debate. They are doing this by incorrectly focussing attention on the risks associated with the complete nuclear lifecycle. Organizations like the Environment Support Group, The Corporate Accountability Desk and The Alternative Law Forum may organize seminars to discuss the Nuclear Liability issue. Please spread the word about these events and encourage people not to attend.

Issued in Public National Interest by



Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Nuclear Technology Vendors
(STPCNTV)

Note – STPCNTV was Established on April 1 and is an unregistered institution with one member.

Tourism and the art of murder

Some states are now bending over backwards and rolling out the red carpet to the tourism sector. This is a scary thought and sends a shiver down the spine. The tourism industry is a leading expert in exploiting natural resources for personal short-term gains.This is always done at the cost of local interests.

For starters the industry is an expert at green washing. We fly people halfway around the world for an eco-holiday and completely ignore the fact that long haul flights are probably one of the biggest culprits when it comes to pollution. We mow down a tract of pristine forest to construct a "luxury" camp-site so that a visitor can view wildlife through the comfort of an air-conditioned tent. We kick out the tribals from a core-zone in the name of conservation and macadamize roads inside forests in the name of infrastructure. To top it all off, we wear an armband that says we are “green”. Eco-tourism has become about as green as my car battery.

The tourism industry is one of the loudest proponents of neo-liberal policies. Crony capitalism has become an essential part of the industry. You can not succeed unless you have land. You do not have land unless you are well connected with folks in government (for e.g. forest officials). Once you are well connected you need to be willing to grease the wheels. If you succeed in doing so, land is yours for the grabbing. You can then be-rate all the small operators who work for “Indian” tourist.

It does not matter if the land belongs to tribals. It makes no difference at all that people were evicted to accommodate the dam that creates a reservoir where "water-sports" can be promoted. The words "eco-tourism", "adventure", "large-dams" and "Public-Private-Partnership" are now used in the same sentence to invite "investment". At who's cost are we doing this? Have 1000s of people not been evicted to build the dam that holds back a reservoir? Does the land in the valleys not belong to the tribals? Who gives a trans-national the greater right to this land? Who are we to waltz in and sign MoUs on hot-air balloons to declare that these national assets are for sale? Can we stop dancing on graves in the name of Incredible India!?

The Indian media loves the tourism industry. They have hours of programming and reams of supplements dedicated to the largest industry in the world. They will, as usual, not have the courage to upset their advertisers and launch into a critique of everything that is wrong with the industry. They will watch in silence as wild-life and experiential travel become a playground for the elite while locals suffer the burden of unwanted "guests".

Mining has been notorious for it's impact on locals. Maybe the PR guys in mining need to lift a page or two from the tourism industry. Their impacts are similar - environmental degradation, loss of local control over land and locals are never long-term beneficiaries. How does the tourism industry get away with it? I guess tourism goes where mining can't go.

Jeffery Sachs: The First Son of Disaster Capitalism on Climate Change

Milton Friedman was the father of contemporary disaster capitalism and the ideologue behind capitalist genocides post 1970. If he is the undisputed father than Jeffrey Sachs is the leading contender for the title of "first son". Sachs has successfully driven hundreds of thousands of people into the depths of poverty based on his agenda of structural reform in Bolivia, Poland and Russia. He man is now getting interested in the Copenhagen conference on Climate Change. The likes of Jeffery Sachs thrive in a crisis and find the most innovative ways of manufacturing and profiteering in a crisis. Their area of super-specialization is to bring a country to it's knees by forcing it to sell their assets and waiting for the coffers to get drained before stepping in with reforms that drive the country to poverty. Sachs, after killing democracy in Russia,  is now wearing a halo and talking about poverty, famine and climate change.

His article in today's Hindu - We need action, not Kyoto II - sent a shiver down my spine. If Iraq was a disaster capitalism success story than the climate crisis is tailor made for Sachs and Chicago Boys. The crisis will be the playground from which Sachs can wrest the title of successor to Milton Friedman.

This paragraph in the article is very revealing -

The climate issue is too complicated to swallow in one gulp, as was tried in Kyoto in 1997. This invites a toothless agreement that could be more posturing than progress. We should think about the component parts of real progress, and then insist on practical policies by all major players, even as the legal framework is hammered out for later signature. There is still time for a three-part package: a political framework, a financing package, and a series of practical steps announced by all major regions to tilt the trajectory on emissions.

When a disaster capitalist like Sachs who evangelizes the shock doctrine uses the term "political framework" it translates to killing democracy (Russia, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Poland) and butchering any opposition (preferably with a bloodbath). When he uses the words "major players" he refers ONLY to MNCs that profiteer based on his work.

When somebody like Sachs talks about a "financing package" it will mean removing the safety nets for the poorest of the poor in the globe and providing taxation benefits to the largest corporates. It will mean creating a free market for common property resources and putting a permissible price tag to corporate pollution rather than treat it as a crime.

Sach's "Practical Policies" led to the rise of the Oligarchs in Russia, an invasion of Chechnya, a doubling of the suicide rate, the destruction of the parliament building and immunity for businessmen and politicians from being prosecuted for corruption. How practical is that?

Based on Sach's track record around "Practical Policies", "Political Framework" and "Financial Packages it is obvious that the disaster capitalists are going to tax sub-saharan Africa and other poor countries while encouraging the increase of consumption in the first-world. They will find a way to make it look "fair" by inventing a way to trade "carbon" (read "trade" as "I pollute and you pay").

The fact that the article is bereft of any mention of the contribution that his country makes to global pollution is conspicuous.His call for an interim agreement will be the cornerstone argument adopted by the Americans in ensuring that a concrete settlement remains elusive. The only agreement acceptable to the disaster capitalists of this world will be a scenario where the First World can continue to create war, destabilize nations and steal their wealth either overtly or covertly. Such an agreement will be readily signed by Obama (even without a tele-prompter).

In my opinion, the best way to begin the Copenhagen Summit would be to burn an effigy of Jeffery Sachs and Milton Friedman. We should ensure that the IMFs, World Banks, WTOs and Halliburtons of this world have nothing to do with deciding the fate of our environment. We should also ensure that America has no space on the negotiating table. Their only mandate should be to comply. They lost their participatory rights the day they set foot in Vietnam.

We should ask for a complete retreat of all US troops to their barracks. America and Europe should be taxed for the environmental damage that they have caused over the last seventy years. Americans must be severely taxed to prevent any escalation of their destructively consumptive patterns. Any failure to comply should be dealt with in the same way that they dealt with Iraq. Bomb all the factories, bridges, hospitals, electricity plants and water treatment facilities on US soil. Once the corporatist structure of the US economy lies in ruins one will be able to see the world bloom and the environment begin to heal itself. Somebody has to tell Mr Sachs that Copenhagen is not about American Imperialism or economics. (...it is about the environment stupid!)

PS- Unlike some of us, the media still has their head where the sun does not shine. The media will go to any length to promote Sachs and his policies. The media continues to manufacture consent for people like Sachs who have so much of blood on their hands.

Explain this to me like I am six year old

• If you can-not allow an athlete found guilty of drug abuse to compete in a sporting event, how can you allow a sporting event to be managed by a known drug felon? (I am referring to Lalit Modi and his brush with the law in the US as a student)
• How can an environmental activist in their right mind ask for the involvement of the TATA’s in anything? (I got shouted out of a DL for critiquing the TATAs). That's like a Brahmin priest asking for Beef!
  
• Why have the English news channels in India not yet been hounded by the public for a) horrendous reporting b) selective story telling c) astroturfing and d) manufacturing consent
• It is mandatory to place a label of ingredients on manufactured food. Why is it not mandatory to publish a list of advertisers on manufactured news?
• Why do intelligent people use “I AM THE VICTIM HERE” whenever you talk of poverty being brushed under the carpet by the media.