From ecowarrior to nuclear champion

[CGowen]

Patrick Moore seems to court controversy.

Decades ago, he helped found Greenpeace, which fought nuclear proliferation and promoted environmental causes. But for the last several years, he has been an outspoken advocate of nuclear power as well as a critic of the environmental movement.

He now co-chairs the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a nuclear industry group, with former New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman.

Although nuclear power remains highly controversial, it's also making a comeback as concerns about global warming and electricity prices rise. Sixteen organizations are expected to file applications to build 31 new reactors in the U.S. Nuclear was a big topic at the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Moore spoke with CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos about the potential for nuclear power as well as where he thinks environmentalists went wrong.

...

http://www.news.com/From-eco-warrior-to-nuclear-champion/2008-13840_3-6228461.html

[bananas]

1. Did they interview his partner, Christine Todd Whitman?

She lied to the 911 workers, told them the air was safe:

As a legal matter, the ruling established that the suit's charges were well-documented and troubling enough to meet a legal standard to go forward. But Judge Batts also criticized Mrs. Whitman's performance in the days after the collapse of the towers unleashed, by the E.P.A.'s estimates, one million tons of dust on lower Manhattan and beyond.

"The allegations in this case of Whitman's reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking," Judge Batts said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/nyregion/03suit.html

Did they mention he's a paid shill for the PR firm that gave us "Nurse Nariyah"?

Excerpted from Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, Chapter 10

<snip>

In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."83

Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."84

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony.

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

But now we're supposed to trust these people?

Moore Spin:
Or, How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups
by Diane Farsetta

"We just find it maddening that Hill & Knowlton, which has an $8 million account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press," concluded the Columbia Journalism Review in an editorial in its July / August 2006 issue.

The magazine was rightly bemoaning the tendency of news outlets to present former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore and former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman as environmentalists who support nuclear power, without noting that both are paid spokespeople for a group bankrolled by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). NEI represents nuclear power plant operators, plant designers, fuel suppliers and other sectors of the nuclear power industry. Hill & Knowlton is NEI's public relations firm, though it's not the only firm working to build support for nuclear power.

Thanks in part to an ongoing, multifaceted PR push -- along with very real concerns about energy prices, rising energy demand, aging infrastructure, sustainability and global warming -- nuclear power is attracting serious attention from reporters and policymakers alike. The question is whether a vital public debate over energy choices is being skewed by deep-pocketed interests with a dog in the fight.

The dangers of such distortions are especially acute at the state and local levels. That's where efforts to extend the licenses of existing nuclear power plants, to maintain or expand nuclear waste storage facilities, and to site new proposed nuclear power plants, are made or broken. And that's where pro-nuclear campaigners appear to be focusing, adopting the mantle and tactics of community groups while steadfastly refusing to provide details on their operations.

<snip>

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0316-24.htm

[CGowen]

2. She is friends with Bloomberg and he killed the probe

Focus on Bloomberg at Bipartisan Summit

...

The forum included former Republican Sen. Bill Brock of Tennessee, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, former Democratic Sen. David Boren of Oklahoma, former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5izinQos18ZF8h0q5LJjf0VpGmj5wD8U1814G0



http://www.nypost.com/seven/03182007/news/regionalnews/mike_kills_sensitive_9_11_probe_regionalnews_susan_edelman.htm


MIKE KILLS 'SENSITIVE' 9/11 PROBE
By SUSAN EDELMAN
PrintEmailDigg ItRedditPermalinkStory Bottom

March 18, 2007 -- Mayor Bloomberg killed a study on the city's response to the 9/11 attacks after his lawyers said they did not want a report that cited any missteps or dealt with "environmental" or "respirator issues," says a former city official.

...