KPFA Weekend News Anchor Anthony Fest: California has two operating nuclear power plants, San Onofre in Orange County, and PG&E's Diablo Canyon Plant in San Luis Obispo County, on the Central Coast. Both are on the coastline and both are built near earthquake faults. State Senator Alex Padilla has called for a special hearing at the State capitol on April 14 to examine the risks the two aging plants might pose. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.
PG&E's Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant on the
California Coast
KPFA/Ann Garrison: For the past five years the San Luis Obispo-based Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility has been urging California legislators and oversight agencies to require peer reviewed seismic studies to measure the risk of earthquake damage to Pacific Gas and Electric's (PG&E's) nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon and Southern California Edison's plant at San Onofre. The California Energy Commission has requested that the California Public Utilities Commission require PG&E do the latest, advanced 3-D studies on both old and new earthquake faults beneath Diablo Canyon before granting any ratepayer funding for its license renewal applications, but PG&E has opposed and fought the requirement to do the studies, and the CPUC has failed to act. Rochelle Becker, Executive Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, says that Japan's worsening nuclear catastrophe could have been California's, and that Californians should be able to insist that the studies be done now.
Rochelle Becker, Executive Director,
Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility
Rochelle Becker: The one thing that separates California from every other reactor site in the nation is the seismic proximity. There are four active faults within 5 kilometers of Diablo Canyon, one 1800 feet away. There are several active faults offshore of San Onofre and there are new studies being done that have come out of the Baja quakes last year. We are focussing on what the State has jurisdiction to do. If we step into fighting nuclear power, fighting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, then we have a much greater hill to climb. And, we are on the other side of the country from the rest of the reactors' groups. We need to focus on California. We certainly support what everyone else is doing, but in California, it is California rights that should do this. It is California officials who are responsible.
KPFA: Updates on the challenge to re-licensing California's nuclear power plants will be posted to the website of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, a4nr.org, as the process unfolds.
KPFA Weekend News Anchor: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's state newspaper, The New Vision, has reported that the UN Security Council and the Democratic Republic of Congo have agreed to join Museveni's army, the Uganda People's Defense Force, in a new offensive to hunt Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, and Jamil Mukulu’s Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. The U.S.A.'s LRA Disarmament Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2010, authorizes funding, training, and collaboration with the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Defense, the US Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Intelligence Community to hunt down the LRA. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more:
Uganda and its neighbors, the
Democratic Republic of
Congo, Central African
Republic, and Sudan.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: The Security Council, and the Congolese and Ugandan Defense Ministers said that the Ugandan Army needs to launch this new military offensive in Congo and the Central African Republic, or CAR, because the LRA keep raping and killing civilians there, though the UN Mapping Report released on October 1st, 2010, documents the Ugandan Army's own civilian massacres, mass rapes, and other sexual atrocities in Congo.
Michael Kirkpatrick is a Black Star News contributor who has traveled back and forth to Uganda and its Acholi region frequently since 1998. He says that Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army are always the most convenient excuse for military intervention:
Black Star News contributor Michael
Kirkpatrick in Northern Uganda
Michael Kirkpatrick: There is a pattern of demonizing Joseph Kony for every atrocity and every crime. Joseph Kony has become demonized to justify military intervention by the U.S. and by other forces in that part of Africa. He's become a phantom menace. He's almost like this mysterious fog that is just creeping around Central Africa but he's been able to survive for over 20 years. He's nothing but a gang leader. He's a thug. He's a rag tag bunch of criminals that's somehow been able to survive for over 20 years. There's a reason he's been able to survive. He is the bad guy in the battle. To say that, somehow, modern armies haven't been able to capture, in twenty years, a rebel thug, is preposterous.
Uganda's Rolling Stone tabloid's cover story about Islamic "homo generals" with ties to the Lord's Resistance Army.
KPFA: Last November Uganda's fanatically homophobic tabloid newspaper Rolling Stone ran a story about what it called Islamic Homo Generals, meaning terrorists, with ties to the Lord's Resistance Army.
Lori Goodman of Diné CARE, lifelong environmental
activist, of Citizens saUnited Against Ruining
Our Environment, and the Navajo Nation.
Photo: Craig Barrett
KPFA Weekend News Anchor Anthony Fest: In 1979, the same year as the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Navajo Nation suffered the worst uranium mining accident in U.S. history, when 1100 tons of mining tailings and 100 million gallons of radioactive water burst through an earthen dam, into the Rio Puerco, at a uranium mine in Church Rock, New Mexico on the Navajo Reservation.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Lori, how have the Navajo people reacted to the Japanese nuclear power catastrophe?
The Navajo Reservation is 26,000 square miles, in
Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. With a quarter
million people, it is the largest native nation in
the U.S.
Lori Goodman: Well, the Navajo people understand what's happening in Japan, and that the situation that they're in is because of the electrical power that they were receiving, in that case from a nuclear power plant. And, in the case of the Navajo people, we have two of the largest coal-fired and most polluting power plants in the western United States on the Navajo Nation. And so they see that as one and the same, and they also understand that there's a better way to generate electricity, by harnessing the sun and the wind.
KPFA: What is the stage of your renewable energy proposal. A lot of intellectual infrastructure but no capital source---is that still the case?
Lori Goodman: Ah, yes, it is. We really need the California ratepayers to go back and say "OK, we will buy energy from the Navajo Nation, from renewable energy sources."
KPFA: And are the mining corporations and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission still pressuring you, trying to ignore or override the historic uranium mining ban?
Lori Goodman: Yes, the day after it was signed, they all went into action to try and lift the ban, or sidestep. That's going on.
Warning not to drink
from the Rio Puerco,
1979, after the earthen dam at
U.S. Nuclear's uranium
mine burst. Eleven
hundred tons of tailings
and 100 million gallons of
radioactive water spilled
into the the river, before
Navajo miners, working
without protective gear,
could repair it.
KPFA: And what's the state of the attempt to clean up the toxic mess left by the many years of uranium mining?
Lori Goodman: Church Rock now is a Superfund site, but we have three other Superfund sites on the Navajo Nation from uranium mining. And there's also a need to have 20 or 30 more other Superfund sites, but unfortunately the Superfund has not been reauthorized, so there are no funds there, so people are dying and getting polluted daily.
KPFA: Lori, you're also on the Board of the Peace Development Fund. Would you like to say anything about the connection between nuclear power, weapons, and war?
Lori Goodman: Well, I think the Peace Development Fund sees that as one and the same. There's no such thing as peaceful nuclear energy. It's all destructive, as we see that being played out right now in Japan. And I do want to say that Peace Development Fund has set up donations for the communities that live next to the nuclear power plants in Japan, because we understand those people that live next to these plants are also environmental justice communities. So Peace Development Fund wants to ensure that those people get help because most of the time they're overlooked, just as we saw in Katrina.
KPFA: Lori, thank you. It's an honor to speak to you for KPFA.
Lori Goodman: Thank you for having me.
KPFA: Goodman also said that if California stopped using nuclear power, they would hugely reduce the pressure to overturn the Navajo uranium mining ban, the only native claim to resource sovereignty of its kind.
KPFA Weekend News Anchor Cameron Jones: On Tuesday, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, moved a human rights amendment to the Financial Services Bill out of committee on a unanimous vote. The amendment urges the U.S. Treasury Department to advocate that multilateral development banks supported by the U.S. not assist nations engaging in gross human rights violations, including denial of the freedom of religion and physical persecution because of sexual orientation or gender identity. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.
The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power protest
against Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act,
a.k.a. Hang-the-Gays Bill, in New York City.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Congressman Barney Frank, in his press release about the amendment, used the physical persecution of sexual minorities in Uganda as an example of the sort of human rights violations that his amendment would discourage, so most of the press has interpreted it as being targeted singly at Uganda's pending Anti-Homosexuality Act, otherwise known as the Hang-the-Gays bill, or, the Bahati bill, after its author Ugandan Parliamentarian David Bahati. Last week the New Vision, Uganda's state-owned newspaper, reported that Uganda's Speaker of Parliament has summoned MPs to report on March 22 to take up “unfinished business,” including the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Liberian born Emira Woods, Co-Editor of the Institute for Policy Studies' Foreign Policy in Focus, and one of the African advocates at the March 2nd Congressional briefing on the UN Mapping Report on Congo atrocities, told KPFA that although LGBT rights activism had most likely inspired Frank to write the amendment, it should apply to the whole range of human rights violations. She added, however, that an enforcement mechanism is hard to imagine:
Emira Woods: With the amendment and press release coming forward, what Congressman Frank has done is call much needed attention to the anti-gay legislation and I think we should commend that, and yet I think it is difficult to imagine how that will be implemented by Treasury using its leverage on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the other international financial institutions. I think this is an instance where a Congressman is using the political, sort of like a bully pulpit.
KPFA: And then you think the amendment's advocacy might be expanded to stop other gender violence such as the sexual terrorism in the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Emira Woods: I think its first important to applaud the attention that he's bringing to the issues of the anti-gay legislation in Uganda. That's huge. And I think it's much needed. And all of the champions and defenders of human rights broadly, of LGBT right in particular, throughout Africa, welcome the statements and the actions from Congressman Frank. So I think wee have to applaud that first. Acknowledge it, support it, strengthen it. And then, I think, moving further to encourage a similar bully pulpit be used to address the atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
KPFA: For Pacifica, KFPA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.
Ben Affleck and John Prendergast in Congress,
March 6th, 2010 to testify at a House Foreign
Affairs Committee hearing on conflict in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. No
Congolese or African person testified.
KPFA News Anchor Cameron Jones: On Tuesday the House Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the Democratic Republic of Congo, the most lethal conflict in the world since World War II, which has continued since the International Rescue Committee estimated, over three years ago, that more than 5.4 million people had died in the conflict, most of whom died of hardship after being driven from their homes. The hearing featured the testimony of actor Ben Affleck, heiress and philanthropist Cindy McCain, and John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, a foreign policy lobbying project of the Center for American Progress. No Congolese, African, or even African American person testified. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Friends of the Congo's Executive Director Maurice Carney told KPFA that the absence of a Congolese or even African voice at the Congressional hearing on Congo's catastrophe was no surprise even in the age of President Barack Obama.
Maurice Carney: It's part of a long pattern of the colonization of information. You have experts who claim to be speaking on behalf of the Africans.
African scholars and activists Nii Akuetta, Claude
Gatebuke, Emira Wood, Jacques, Bahati, Nita Evele, and
Kambale Musavuli, the all African panelists at the
Great LakesAdvocates' Coalition March 2nd briefing on
the 2010 UN Mapping Report, which docuemtnts atrocities
committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
None of them were invited to the March 6th Affleck/Prendergast Congressional hearing on Congo. Photo credit: Arrian Lewis
KPFA: The African Great Lakes Advocacy Coalition had, six days earlier held a briefing on the UN Mapping Report, released on October 1, 2010, which documents mass atrocities in Congo, with an all African, including Congolese, panel. An intern from John Prendergast's ENOUGH Project was in attendance, asking questions, but, as Carney noted, none of the panel's all African speakers were invited to speak at Tuesday's hearing.
Affleck and Prendergast attributed most of Congo's violence to two militias, the Democratic Federation for the Liberation of Rwanda, on Congo's southeastern border with Rwanda, and the Lord's Resistance Army on its northeastern border with Uganda, but the African Great Lakes Advocates said that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, both longstanding U.S. allies, are most responsible, and that this has been abundantly evidenced in the UN Mapping Report, and many previous UN reports referenced in the Mapping Report.
Maurice Carney,
Executive Director, Friends of the Congo
Maurice Carney: Both the FDLR and the LRA can enroll in the Museveni and Kagame School of Mass Atrocities and get a Ph.D., because the overwhelming suffering in the region has been triggered by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, led by their presidents. So, when you have people testifying in Congress and talking about FDLR and LRA, to the exclusion of U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, you feel like you're in the twilight zone, lIke 'What are you talking about?' Friends of the Congo maintains that, based on the information that these groups present, we can't help but be led to the conclusion that they're looking to cover for U.S. strategic and economic interests because their presentations are marked by two striking exclusions. One, a discussion around Rwanda and Uganda, and two, a discussion around multinational corporations, the mining companies that are directly involved in the region.
KPFA: John Prendergast is most often introduced on talk shows, and in Congressional hearings, as an author and human rights advocate, but neither he nor the ENOUGH Project hide his previous employment as Director of African Affairs on Bill Clinton's National Security Council, and on the National Intelligence Council.
Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney held Congressional hearings on the Congo conflict in 2001.
Maurice Carney: The people called in to testify are usually those who reinforce U.S. foreign policy in a particular region of the world, not those who challenge U.S. foreign policy. So that's just the way it works in Washington unless you connect with a progressive, such as Cynthia McKinney, when she was in the Congress. She brought in alternative views that exposed the role of U.S. foreign policy abroad. But we've yet to find another champion like Cynthia McKinney.
Vincent Harris reported that European governments collaborated with Gaddafi to prevent migrants from departing from making their way to Europe from Libya's long Mediterranean coastline.
KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Landau: Black, Southern Africans in Libya are in peril consequent to both racism and Western media reports that Muammar Gaddafy is using quote unquote "African mercenaries," meaning Black, Southern Africans, to put down the Libyan uprising. Pleas for help have gone up on blogs in North Africa and both NGOS and multilateral organizations are seeking access, resources, and the relaxation of immigration restrictions, so as to evacuate those endangered. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Aljazeera English recorded the voice of this Nigerian, who goes by the name of Courage, after he escaped an attack in Libya this week:
Courage: When I was coming from my work, I looked on my back. There were car after me, chasing me. They said I should stop. I can't stop because they were holding cutlass and dangerous weapons with them. I was running for my life. If they had caught me that would have been the end of my life.
Vincent Harris, Dutch creator of the blog Colored Opinionsand host of Colored Opinions Great Lakes Blogchat on Blog Talk Radio.
KPFA: Vincent Harris, creator of the Netherlands-based blog Colored Opinions, spoke with KPFA about what he calls xenophobic, anti-immigrant politics in Europe. He says European governments have a history of collaboration with Gaddafi to maintain a buffer zone meant to restrict African immigration to Europe by boat from the Libyan coast. Harris said that constraining African immigration is a high priority of most European governments and that, in exchange for his help with this goal, Gaddafi received military training for his army, and acceptance in European capitols,:
Vincent Harris: They needed Gaddafi to solve this perceived problem, that Africans were crossing into Europe, from Libya. They worked together to make sure that no Africans go into Europe.
Harris added that North Africans are nevertheless likely to meet more xenophobia than Southern Africans in Europe because Europeans perceive North Africans as Muslims and Black, Southern Africans as Christians. He also reported that on March 3rd, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, urged the European Commission to appeal to EU member nations to help evacuate and offer protection to 4,000 sub-Saharan refugees who are currently trapped in Libya. Harris’s report, “Africans trapped in Gaddafy’s Libya” can be found on sfbayview.com and afrobeatradio.net.
For Pacifica, KPFA and Afrobeat Radio, I'm Ann Garrison.
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