“I’ll be philosophical. Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on earth; that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn’t have any life—fish or anything. Gradually, about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet—and probably in the entire system—reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin . . . Now when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible . . . Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it . . . I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. Have I given you an answer to your question?”—Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the U.S. nuclear Navy, “On the hazards of nuclear power. Testimony to Congress” (28 January 1982); published in Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982)
(WMR)—The corporate-owned and operated right-wing lunatics on radio and television, particularly major league insanity-based commentator Sean Hannity, may be legally entitled to utter total falsehoods about the Japanese nuclear disaster without worrying about a Federal Communications Commission-enforced Fairness Doctrine to set the record straight. However, it is a violation of FCC broadcast licensing for the right-wing cacophony to spout absolute false information that impacts on public safety. That is a flat-out violation of FCC licensing requirements for broadcasters to serve the public interest.
On March 14, Fox “News” host Hannity had on his program a nuclear industry propagandist named Jay Lehr from The Heartland Institute, a climate change denial outfit. Lehr proceeded to make statements downplaying the effects of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Lehr’s comments and Hannity’s agreement with them not only defied logic but were absolute disinformation worthy of Joseph Goebbels. The comments came a day before the Fukushima nuclear event was rated a level 6 disaster. Three Mile Island in 1979 was rated a 5 while Chernobyl in 1986 was rated a 7. The Fukushima disaster will go down in history as one of the worst nuclear power plant catastrophes the world has faced.
After Lehr stated, “I can tell you with the utmost confidence there will not be a health impact of anything that is going on at the Fukushima power plant,” he had the absolute gall to say of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, “there was no long-term impact on health from anybody away from the plant due to the radiation cloud. There were 1,000 cases of leukemia in the village right surrounding Chernobyl, and 998 of them were cured.”
The Heartland Institute, based in Chicago, is one of a number of vile corporate-funded right-wing non-profit organizations that invent their own facts and statistics to suit the agenda of their corporate paymasters. Armed with barrels of corporate cash and prepared junk science and phony history talking points, spokespersons for organizations like the Heartland (Heartless) Institute find eager media outlets like Fox News to spew their copious amounts of bovine excrement.
As for Lehr’s statement that 998 people in a village near Chernobyl were cured of leukemia, WMR is publishing a photograph that proves Lehr to be a revolting disinformation purveyor. In September 1990, this editor visited, along with an 80-member U.S. delegation, a children’s hospital outside Minsk, in the then-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, where dozens of children from near Chernobyl were being treated for cancer, including leukemia. In the years following our visit, I discovered from one of our guides that all the children at the hospital had died from cancer contracted as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.
Children in Byelorussia in 1990 suffering from cancer as a result of Chernobyl.
In the above photograph taken at the children’s hospital, a one-time Soviet Communist Party retreat that was turned into a cancer clinic for children affected by Chernobyl, there are four boys seen. The young boy at the back right was wearing a Philadelphia Phillies cap I had given him, with foreknowledge that hair loss was inevitable at some stage. Lehr claims a 98 percent cure rate from Chernobyl. How about a 100 percent death rate among these children at the hospital outside of Minsk! That is a fact compared to the Heartland Institute’s contrived history of Chernobyl and the Koch Brothers-funded junk science and fake history.
I hope that Hannity, Lehr, and the Koch Brothers who fund the Heartland Institute’s propaganda output take a close look at the faces of these children. They all died from cancer resulting from the effects of Chernobyl’s radiation.
Chernobyl was a Level 7 event. Fukushima is approaching that level. Alas, it will have no effect because when Japanese children become cancer victims as a result of General Electric’s failed reactors at Fukushima, the right wing will eject as much venal propaganda as the Japanese reactors are in emitting high-levels of radiation. Pro-corporation right-wingers, like their Nazi and fascist ideological predecessors, are heartless and soulless ogres who love money more than any fellow human being.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2011 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
Pingback: The UFO Phenomenon: Fact, Fantasy and Disinformation, J | ufo-tv.com