Knocking on the Devil's Door: Our Deadly Nuclear Legacy - a documentary of the greatest urgency

Knocking on the Devil's Door: Our Deadly Nuclear Legacy - a documentary of the greatest urgency

by Jan Lundberg

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/779/1/

"We must outlaw nuclear reactors."  - Admiral Hyman Rickover, the Father of the Nuclear Navy, to Congress in his farewell speech Gary Null, radio talk show host and author, with Producer Richard Gale, has produced a comprehensive indictment of nuclear power and weapons. The first thing the public needs to know is that it is not merely a debate about which way to go with policy. Rather, the nuclear issue is about life and death now. So a big public service is in exposing the nuclear industry's lies that are killing people today at increasing rates. Premiered in August, Knocking on the Devil's Door: Our Deadly Nuclear Legacy has taken on the political, financial, technical and other scientific aspects of a monstrously complicated and scary topic. In 135 minutes the film takes a semi-informed viewer from innocence to mind-blown amazement -- and perhaps depression. If one could just watch an abridged version of Knocking on the Devil's Door, of maybe only one-fifth of the whole film, it would totally undermine any misplaced faith in the nuclear industry and its handmaiden, the government. The additional four-fifths' content is excellent for burying the zombie forever. Beginning with footage of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, the early history of the nuclear weapons/power complex and its government backing set the stage for in-depth interviews with well-informed scientists and activists. As the film goes on, the facts and dangers pile upon yet more facts and dangers that soon cause any viewer's head to spin with sadness and outrage. All aspects of the nuclear assault are covered in this documentary. The expertise is unassailable, including international scientists, and well known anti-nuclear activists such as Pediatrician Helen Caldicott, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Michio Kaku, Greg Palast, Harvey Wasserman, Chris Busby,  Dr. Janette Sherman, Karl Grossman, Ernest Sternglass, Aileen Mioko Smith, and Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamp.  Find an expert to put them down or object to the premise of the film, and you have an expert who is alright with environmental rape and damage to the human gene pool, and who believes ever more technology and energy is tantamount to (materialist) life itself. After all, such an expert insists, we all must be reasonable and compromising in a democracy. The film reminds us of basics that we would rather forget: there is no radioactive-waste disposal system that works long term. The stuff is piling up and leaking. It is dangerous and causes cancer and birth defects. All nuclear power plants are ticking time-bombs for accidents, natural disasters, or terrorism. Bomb material comes from nuclear power plants. Worse, government primarily serves industrial profit, so it is not there to protect us or the planet, but to cover for and enrich the polluters and scam artists of the nuclear industry. Understandably, almost no one wants to believe that the corporate state that foists thousands of years of violent poison on us is so stupid and evil that corruption is the order of the day. But upon watching this film, learning of the games played by Tokyo Electric, nuclear plant  contractors, and government officials around the world, one must believe it. Gary Null For example, as told by journalist Greg Palast in the documentary, Stone and Webster, now a subsidiary of the Shaw Group, was found guilty of racketeering and fraud for faking seismic data; fined $4 billion. Now the company is bringing on three new nuclear plants. The Shaw Group is a top donor to the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. Years before Fukushima's reactors blew in March of 2011, Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) faked and manipulated inspection results to fool government inspectors. When this became known in a national scandal, the government ruled it was okay because the rules needed to be relaxed. When such institutional crimes are allowed, disaster eventually comes. And it is still coming, loaded into the pipeline perhaps beyond our ability to survive it. Entergy, once an obscure Arkansas company, now owner of Indian Point reactor near NYC, is part of "one of the worst cases of political power and abuse that I saw with Bill Clinton and the lawyer for Entergy, Hillary Rodham," says Greg Palast in the film. "Entergy owns the Clinton family. The company buys nuclear plants that are supposed to be retired, then gets extensions on them." Karl Grossman, journalism professor at SUNY, said candidate Obama was quite antinuclear, saying nuclear power plants "can blow up." "But once in office, forget about it. After Fukushima blew, Obama called for loan guarantees for more nuclear, because Wall Street won't touch it."    _ _ To read the remainder of this report, see http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/779/1/ * * * * * Culture Change Publisher and Editor: Jan Lundberg, independent oil industry analyst P.O. Box 3387, Santa Cruz, CA 95063 USA tel./fax: 1-215-243-3144 Send feedback to info@culturechange.org