Wampum

An off-year for peas

The International Atomic Energy Agency was formed in 1957 as the international "Atoms for Peace" organization. Representative Sterling Cole (R-NY ), Chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, resigned from the Congress on 12/1/57 and was appointed its first Director General. There is some momentary irony, which I've left in the extended section for those who enjoy detours into Republic of Irony.

Cole was succeeded in 1961 by Dr. Sigvard Eklund, who in 1957 was Secretary General for the Second International United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, and previously Director of the Reactor Development Division at the Swedish Atomic Energy Company (AB Atomenergi, Stockholm). Cole started the political enterprise of nuclear proliferation, which Eklund executed for the next 20 years, until succeeded by Hans Blix in 1981, who in turn was succeeded in Mohammad ElBaradi in 1997.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of the IAEA in intentionally causing the proliferation of a vast array of enrichment and reactor technologies, and reprocessing technologies, including plutonium seperation and the plutonium economy. As important, in the momentary sense of import, as the claims concerning Iraq's basically fictional nuclear weapons program from 1988 to the present, and the IAEA's role, first under Blix, then ElBaradi, in actually testing those claims by Republican and Likud administrations, the long range program of the IAEA remains, nuclear proliferation. A program of simply staggering present and unavoidable consequent cost, for regions of the world needing energy available by political cooperation and interdependence, rather than isolation, false independence, and eventual aggression, with, and without, atomic arms. India is proximal to the Sui and Pars natural gas fields, but the plan of record is nukes, nukes, nukes.

When the Anglo/American cooking-the-nuclear-proliferation-books is history, the sensibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director, Mohammad ElBaradei, sharing the 2005 Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize for work against the further proliferation of nuclear weapons won't look quite as good as a prize for work for peace it does as a symbolic slap in the face to the NeoCons and the Likudniks and their puppet-in-chief.

A not-faked prize for non-proliferation would go to the World Information Service on Energy. This year it went to Duke Energy, Westinghouse, General Atomics, General Electric, British Nuclear Fuels, and on and on, via their treaty-based trade association, which is all the IAEA is, for marketing and sexed-up remediation. Remember, the inspections found ... nothing.

Jersy mobsters running tanker trucks of PCPs valve-wide-open down two-lanes in Warren County North Carolina are safely disposing toxic waste too, at very low cost, for some definition of "safe", and "cost". Its simply one not shared by the people of North Carolina.

On July 2nd, 1953, Chairman Cole wrote Preident Eisenhower and proposed that the President appoint a commission to assess existing laws so that those guilty of treason, espionage, or wrongful disclosure of confidential matters did not go unpunished. "I cannot underscore too heavily my conviction," he wrote, ". . . that the integrity of official secrets must not be violated and that wrong-doers must receive their just deserts". Eisenhower's reply

Dear Mr. Cole:1 I have your letter of July second suggesting the desirability of an early re-examination of federal statutes relating to espionage, treason, or wrongful disclosure of official secrets, to overcome the present inconsistencies between the Espionage Act, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, and other laws and constitutional provisions relating to the safeguarding of information vital to our national security.2

It is clear that some action should be promptly initiated in this area, and I am accordingly requesting the Attorney General and the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission to confer on the subject and prepare recommendations for my consideration.3 Sincerely

That was a frank exchange of views between the head of, and a ranking member of, the Republican Party in an ethical universe that seems to have vanished without a trace.

Posted by EBW at October 14, 2005 09:59 AM