Democratic Palestine : 17 (ص 29)
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- Democratic Palestine : 17 (ص 29)
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Chernobyl and the Imperialist Media
Even before the seriousness of the Chernobyl accident was grasped,
there was massive imperialist mobilization to deepen anti-Soviet sen-
allow it to enact its own policies. The US
used the Chernobyl accident as part of
its economic warfare against the socia-
list countries. It encouraged its allies in
timent internationally.
Since the regretable mishap, the wes-
tern media, and especially that of the
United States, has waged a broad cam-
paign against the Soviet Union, using
the accident to score points. The US
papers caused an international uproar
against the Soviet Union for its alleged
“‘lax safety measures’’, ‘employing old
techniques’’, ‘‘concealment of facts’’,
etc. This burning campaign, waged by
the American government, aimed at
diverting attention from the real issue.
The real issue is international peace that
is being sabotaged by the US. The US is
not only escalating the nuclear arms
race, but also further extending it into
space with the Star Wars Program.
Nuclear power will continue to make
a contribution to society’s energy needs,
and the Chernobyl! disaster is likely to
happen again anywhere. Yet interna-
tional peace could only be achieved
through successful negotiations on
nuclear disarmament. The Soviet Union
has, on many occasions, proposed dif-
ferent initiatives to reduce nuclear
experiments and the production of
nuclear arms. The last initiative was
proposed by the Soviet leader himself in
his speech during the 12th International
Youth Festival in Moscow. Gorbachev
announced a freeze on all nuclear expe-
riments, and called upon the US and all
western European countries to take the
same step. The US, aspiring to achieve
military superiority, has rejected all ini-
tiatives, inspite of domestic protest and
many setbacks for its own programs,
most recently the explosion of the Chal-
lenger. The human mind cannot imagine
the catastrophe that would have been if
the Challenger had exploded over a
populated area.
The American media launched a wave
of hysteria as if Chernobyl was the first
accident of its kind in the world. Yet the.
May 12th issue of the American Time
magazine listed seven of the most
serious, reported nuclear accidents in
the world. Four of these occurred in the
US at plants used for both energy and
military purposes. This year, other than
the Challenger explosion, there was the
malfunction at the Kerr-McGee corp.
uranium-processing plant in Oklahoma
state, which killed one worker and sent
one hundred people to hospitals. The
biggest US mishap, which occurred in
1979 in Pennsylvania at Three Mile
Island, was also caused by equipment
malfunctions and human error. Duetoa
malfunction in the safety system in
Alabama’s Brown Ferry reactor, there
was another nuclear disaster in 1979. In
1961, there was a fatal explosion of the
SL-1 reactor for military experiments
near Idaho Falls. There have been many
others. In 1952, the meltdown of
Canada’s Chalk River reactor was the
first known major malfunction of a
nuclear power plant. In 1957, at least 33
cancer deaths were traced to the effects
of England’s Liverpool plant malfunc-
tion. In Japan, leaks from a major
nuclear power plant contaminated water
for several hours, which exposed many
people to radiation.
& 33 ° % 3s
The Three Mile Island Plant 1s still being
decontaminated.
Unlike what the American media has
tried to establish, the quality and safety
of the Soviet-built nuclear reactors are
no less than the American-built ones, or
any others. None of this is to diminish
the seriousness of the Chernobyl inci-
dent, but to expose the hypocrisy of the
imperialist media that attempts to
influence international public opinion
against the SovietUnion and poison the
political and diplomatic atmosphere.
What are the real reasons behind this
hysteria?
Nuclear disarmament is a battle the
Soviet Union is winning on the ideolo-
gical level as a result of its peace initia-
tives to which some western European
countries have been more receptive than
has the US. The US government wants
to retaliate by attempting to divert
attention away from these initiatives
and portraying the real threat as coming
from the Soviet Union. This would jus-
tify the US government’s refusal to res-
pond to the Soviet initiatives, and
Western Europe and the ‘third world’ to
check all food exports coming from the
Soviet Union, despite the fact that the
Soviets certified that these were not
contaminated. (In fact, there has never
been any proof that any were contami-
nated).
In its continued efforts to solve
imperialism’s crisis to its own advan-
tage, the US seized upon the Chernobyl
accident as one more weapon for enfor-
cing its own economic and «anti-
terrorist» policies at the Tokyo Summit.
In addition, the US government tries to
present itself, to the world and its own
masses, as technologically superior to
the Soviet Union. This is especially true
after the Challenger setback. Last, but
not least, the US government tries to
divert international attention from its
aggressive policies, and calm down the
outrage as a result of its latest military
aggression against Libya. It is clear that
the attitude of imperialism to Chernobyl
was to employ the incident to serve its
ideological, military and economic
aims.
After the Chernobyl accident, the
Soviet leadership renewed its willingness
to unite efforts on the issue of nuclear
arms control. They suggested serious
cooperation with the US within the
framework of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, to pass an international
law that regulates nuclear arms produc-
tion and nuclear experiments. Comrade
Gorbachev himself extended the unila-
teral moratorium on nuclear testing
until August 6th of this year. He sug-
gested to meet with President Reagan in
Hiroshima to sign an agreement to cease
nuclear experimenting for military
purposes. .
Whatever else there is to be learned
from the incident, there is an urgent
need to respond to the Soviets’ nuclear
disarmament initiatives. Because if the
meltdown of a power plant caused so
much unrest, we can only imagine the
outcome of a nuclear bomb explosion!
International cooperation is necessary
to reduce this risk.
The Soviet Union has taken yet ano-
ther step in this direction by agreeing to
host US scientists to monitor three
Soviet nuclear stations to see if tests
occur, if the US approves monitoring of
US tests by Soviet scientists. The US
government’s initial reaction has been
skeptical, for it had already determined
its main response to the Chernobyl
incident, i.e., its announcement that it
will no longer abide by the terms of the
Salt II treaty for limiting nuclear arms.@
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