Cross-posted at EuroTrib.com.
The IAEA has a “contradictory role, as nuclear policeman and nuclear salesman,” said Greenpeace International’s Mike Townsley (AFP), criticizing the choice of Mohammed ElBaradei and the IAEA as recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. (Take the POLL BELOW: Do you agree?) Townsley did acknowledge that ElBaradei has been “‘a voice of sanity’ in his advocacy of a nuclear-free Middle East.”
PHOTO CAPTION: ” Greenpeace activists attach a 60-metre long (65 yards) banner and a balloon in the shape of a nuclear bomb in front of the United Nations building in Vienna September 26, 2005. The activists denounced the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying it promoted the use of nuclear power and thereby aiding the spread of nuclear weapons.” (Yahoo/Reuters)
A French group, Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear) accuses IAEA of promoting civilian nuclear plants while giving “countries the means to build atomic bombs” and “hoodwinking” the public while nuclear proliferation accelerates. (Yahoo/AFP Photo : ‘Sortir du Nucleaire’ activists demonstrate on a Brittany beach in July 2004.)
Equally severe was The Guardian columnist George Monbiot:
George Monbiot … said the 2005 prize to the IAEA and its boss “was a reward for failure in an age of rampant proliferation.”
He saw a parallel with the controversial awarding of the 1973 Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. The former US secretary of state and national security advisor helped extend the Vietnam War to Laos and Cambodia before negotiating the conflict’s end.“The currency (of the Nobel Peace Prize) is beginning to be devalued,” Monbiot said.
ElBaradei like Henry Kissinger? Well …
As Meteor Blades said in his recommended diary — “A Nobel Bush Won’t Love” — here on October 7, much of our initial satisfaction came from the fact that the ElBaradei had not only survived Dick Cheney and George Bush’s attempts to throw him out of the IAEA, he also proved them and the Neocons wrong on Iraq, and more:
Whoever’s on the Nobel committee this year, let me give you a big kiss. Choosing Mohammed El Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency to receive the 2005 Peace Prize warms my heart for three reasons: 1) both have deserved it for years; 2) its recognition that the smirky American rightwing attitude toward international agencies is gravely misplaced; and 3) it pokes Washington in the eye, but that is redundant.
“In addition to their traditional worries about nuclear proliferation,” reports AFP, “environmentalists are concerned that the civilian nuclear industry — dealt a crippling blow by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — is on the rise once more.”
Nuclear power is becoming eagerly pursued in China and India to help meet surging energy needs at a time of expensive, vulnerable oil supplies.
And in Europe, some countries that vowed to scrap or freeze their nuclear power programmes are now discreetly looking at reviving them to meet their commitments on greenhouse-gas pollution from fossil fuels.
I suppose you in the U.S. have seen the new, dreamy TV ads about the need for more nuclear energy. Well?
