Plenty of our friends in the anti-nuclear movement often go to great pains to detail many of the PR activities that groups like NEI engage in -- Sourcewatch, being just one example.
But all too often, many of those same groups won't reveal the sources of their funding. Which is why this exchange between Rod Adams and one of his readers -- who isn't a native speaker of English -- caught my eye:
I have a friend whose girlfriend was a speaker of Greenpeace for antinuclear matters in the Czech republic, now she does the same ... for Calla (a similar organization), that is a long story, but anyways my friend, boyfriend of this lady, told me once with a surprised face: "all this environmentalists movements in Czechia are financed from Austria, you didn't know that? I thought everybody knows that."Sounds like something somebody ought to look into.
7 comments:
And all of BNFL's activities are funded from the UK, and Areva's from France, etc. So what's your point? One can only support activism within one's own nation?
Well, if you wanted to look into it, there's circumstantial evidence of correspondence or perhaps a meeting in December 1963 in which coal industry representatives asked the Atomic Industrial Forum to not talk about the health hazards of coal in exchange for the coal industry not discussing the hazards of radiation.
If there's any written evidence of such an offer, it would be in your files, and would be extremely useful if you could find it.
I can't understand what is the problem. It's true, Greenpeace Austria is financing Greenpeace Czech. Actually Greenpeace Austria, Czech, Poland and Slovakia (probably I missing some one else) are part of the same office: Greenpeace CEE (central East Europe).
And it's not secret, it's written in their website (German): http://www.greenpeace.at/
As you can immagine, mostly of their supporters in the that area are from Austria, so the Vienna's office helps the others smaller offices.
Where is the scandal!?
If Greenpeace supports it, I am usually against it. They may not be bad people, but so often, they tend to be wrong, offering criticisms without solutions.
I would consider it a privilege if you would add my mainly political blog "The Tygrrrr Express" www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com to your list of linked sites if you feel the quality is high.
Happy June.
eric
The Financial Times had something about this, according to this August 2001 comment of mine.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former H2 fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
I dont know about Greenpeace, but I know for sure that other "environmental" organizations which have been also protesting against NPP Temelin such as "Jihoceske matky" have been financed from Austria - not from GP Austria, but from the givernment of Upper Austria, which holds stakes in an energy company Alpen Adria Energie AG - a company which profits are largely decreased once a new large power source is brought on-line.
It is of course difficult to discover the financing trails, as they usually go via secret channels such as private individuals or independent foundations, however in this case they were stupid enough to write it in their yearly review and publish it on-line including detailed figures. This was I believe in year 2000, they ceased this soon after they were asked about it ...
The Financial Times link seems to have expired. But here's Radio Prague:
"... An Austrian member of parliament said on Saturday that the lower house had approved the release of 40 million Austrian schillings for what he described as 'the battle against Temelin.'"
Where the scandal is, is in the fossil fuel revenues taken by the governments that apparently fund antinuclear activities. Dividing that revenue by the annual count of people killed by pipeline explosions, carbon monoxide poisonings, and other fossil fuel mishaps yields a take of several tens of millions of dollars per death. Funding the antinuclear lobby suggests they're more concerned about the millions than about the deaths.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former H2 fan
How do cars gain nuclear cachet
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