Militarization of Space: Threat of Nuclear War on Earth Media Monitors Network by Rick Rozoff June 23, 2009″…American space researcher Matt Hoey stated that an arms race in space would be “increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war while shortening the time for sanity and diplomacy to come into play to halt crises.”

On June 17, immediately after the historical ninth heads of state summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Yekaterinburg, Russia on the preceding two days, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced that their nations were drafting a joint treaty to ban the deployment of weapons in outer space to be presented to the United Nations General Assembly.

A statement by the presidents reflected a common purpose to avoid the militarization of space and said:

“Russia and China advocate peaceful uses of outer space and oppose the prospect of it being turned into a new area for deploying weapons.

Godzillas Back, This Time He Says He’ll Save Us.SG Gate.com by Peter Coyote Now that Global Warming has penetrated enough frontal lobes to be sufficiently recognized as a threat, the people who have done the most to contribute to it are offering nuclear power as the way to defeat it, describing it as a “carbon-free energy source.” The first problem is that they are lying, knowingly. The construction of a nuclear power plant,the concrete required,itself a major contributor to global warming, the fabrication, the machinery to build it — all release vast amounts of carbon. The discharge of hot water from such plants, heats river to 90 degrees, destroying the life in them. But these are the small quibbles.Let’s set all political and social considerations aside for a moment and examine a single, irrefutable fact: radiation radically alters, damages, or kills any cell with which it comes into contact. Radioactivity per se, even natural radiation, threatens everything with replicating cells — from sperm to sperm whales, and crosses all plant and animal kingdoms with impunity. The implication of this is, that in order to protect the health and well-being of the biosphere, radioactivity must be perfectly sequestered for a minimum of 250,000 years. (After which time it is only half as radioactive as it was.)……………………………The second problem is, “the garbage.” As radioactive materials degenerate, they produce other, less usuable but only marginally less radioactive substances. We have no method for safely containing and sequestering this radioactive waste. Consequently, we have developed a taboo against talking about it or even considering the question, pushing the existence of mounting tons of lethal garbage onto the back-burner of consciousness. It is so lethally dangerous for so interminably long a period that finding any solution for the waste has stymied scientists and industry for the sixty-odd years since it was first fashioned into a bomb. As it is, tons of this deadly poison are leaking into rivers in Hanford, Washington and at the TVA in Tennessee, and just off San Francisco where it was dumped overboard in steel drums which are currently rotting and rusting away near the Farallones Islands, irradiating the fish so important to our “healthy life-style diet.”…………………………..Just so that everyone can consume as much power as they want. Might it not be easier to turn off the lights and turn down the heat a bit, drive less, and use a bit less of everything? Mightn’t that allow us to continue to be happily imperfect a little longer? To remain human?

Consumers’ fees pile up along with nuclear waste greenvilleOnline.com 22 June 09 Billions collected for disposalbut federal repository nowhere in sight after years of planning Since 1983, consumers in South Carolina and other states with nuclear power plants have paid a special fee on their electricity bills to cover the costs of a long-planned national repository for radioactive waste. The fee has generated more than $30 billion for the federal government’s Nuclear Waste Fund over the years, according to the Department of Energy. South Carolina’s contribution was more than $1.2 billion at the end of last year.And yet the federal government still has no firm plan for disposing of the high-level waste.

SOUTH AMERICA: Anti-Nuclear Activists to Form Common Front IPS By Daniela Estrada SANTIAGO, Jun 22 (IPS) – Environmental organisations in Chile plan to revive the anti-nuclear movement in the Southern Cone of South America, in response to vigorous lobbying by corporations and politicians in favour of nuclear energy in the region…………………………….. In a bid for survival, the global nuclear industry is desperately trying to extend the useful life of existing nuclear reactors worldwide, sign new contracts in countries that have already opted for nuclear power, and carve a niche for themselves in other nations with pressing energy needs, like Chile, according to Larraín. ………………………………. Sara Larraín, head of the non-governmental Sustainable Chile Programme. said organisations in Argentina and Brazil, which already have nuclear power plants, should play a leading role, alongside those from Chile and Uruguay, where the nuclear debate is in full swing. Nuclear lobbyists have also targeted Mexico, she said……………………… Larraín pointed out that Chile already has two experimental nuclear power plants, at which several accidents have occurred. Two conscripts who were exposed to radioactive material in 1989 later died of leukaemia, while others are suffering serious health effects.