Nuclear Weapons Production: The Ultimate Trans Generational Crime Against Humanity

Source DC Bureau.org

Washington – Frustrated by the fact President Obama’s nuclear summit last month was undermined by the reality that the United States and other attendees had actually increased spending on all things nuclear, anti-nuclear activists point out there are still no practical answers to nuclear waste from weapons and power production.

Further, political promises of technical solutions to nuclear waste have all ended in failure. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deep involvement in the failed Mixed Oxide Fuel program of the United States has raised serious questions of any real reforms coming from a second Clinton Presidency. So far the failed program to convert nuclear warhead pits to plutonium reactor fuel has cost almost $50 billion including the failed small pilot plant at the Savannah River Site has been defunded by President Obama.

Accidents, explosions and other major program failures costing billions at Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration facilities are not being ignored around the world. Lawyers from Japan and Europe are frustrated by Administrations in Japan, France and the United States that pushing nuclear power and ignoring the warnings of scientists about the result waste and health dangers. The fact that these civil nuclear power efforts depend on huge taxpayer assistance and require legislative protection to protect shareholders from liability should these plants expose the public to radiation.

While the anti-nuclear movement in the United States is in the hands of a handful of aging leaders and the American nuclear established has succeeded in co-opting many of the major foundations and organizations that once scrutinized the United State’s nuclear cartel. a new generation of leadership is emerging around the world.

In Europe. the legal community is emerging as the nuclear industrial complexes biggest new threat. Last March in Frankfurt a religious conference on the morality of the nuclear power and weapons production cycle focused on a tough new approach which would essentially make those participating in the production of nuclear power and weapons criminals because of the damage the industry inflicts on future generations.

Further, religious leaders, including Pope Frances, have spoken out about the immorality of nuclear production.

“Abolition of nuclear technologies is a global and trans generational necessity” are the words of Professor Emilie Gallaird, a young French legal scholar used to open the international religious conference earlier this spring on the threat to humanity by the nuclear weapons and power industries. Professor Galliard now travels the world educating leaders on the importance of a legal code that will ratify ecoside as a crime against humanity.

After outlawing chemical weapons and land mines, the third and most deadly triad in erasing mankind – participating in the nuclear production chain – is now seriously being debated as a criminal act against future generations.

In contrast to the ineffective and aging anti-nuclear movement in the United States – a movement that has often been cleverly coopted by politicians with financial ties to the nuclear and defense industries new approaches to how to deal with trans generational threats dominated the conference sponsored by Zentrum Oekumene, a major German protestant Church organization. What made the conference unusual was the level of expertise and attendees who have had first hand experience with both nuclear weapons, nuclear power and legal scholars from around the world.

A coherent legal argument is being made that that the nuclear chain does so much damage, just in the production of weapons and operation of power plants, that this alone, even without a nuclear weapon being exploded, is in itself a crime against humanity. Because the damage of nuclear production crosses generations this eco crime is trans generational and amounts to ecocide against the earth and her people.

Standing in a stunningly modern conference center in the hulk of an old protestant church in Frankfurt, Professor Galliard laid out a powerful case for codifying trans generational crime as a way to reign the modern day oligarchs and robber barons whose influence over governments allows them to continue to run the industries that are destroying the world’s environment and public health.

Professor Gaillard is from the University of Caen. She was invited to speak at the Zentrum Verkundigung in Frankfurt in early spring to open the conference on nuclear issues entitled “from the courts to the streets.” In half an hour she laid out a plan to change the world’s laws to make those responsible for ecocide face justice. We have posted edited version her presentation because what she is proposing is a revolutionary way of responding to the political power of the nuclear and government partnership that has dominated the debate.

Professor Gaillard’s ideas were presented while health experts, activists, lawyers, and victims who had dealt with nuclear damage first hand from Russia, Poland, Germany, Japan and elsewhere looked on. The single mother from France quickly tied her presentation to the city she was speaking in.

“I would like to warmly thank the organizers for permitting me to take an active part in this symposium on Justice and Faith Against Nuclear Risks. It is all the more an honor to make this presentation in Frankfurt, especially because two major authors I’ve studied and I’m still studying, are from the famous “School of Frankfurt” (Hans Jonas and Günther Anders).

“I may first introduce you to my research area in order to explain and justify my angle of analysis. I defended a thesis in 2008 at the University of Orléans (France) entitled “Future Generations and Private Law: Towards a law for Future Generations”. This PhD has been awarded a Prize by the French Academy of Political and Moral Sciences in 2010. The book has been printed in 2011 (in French).

“The core of my research is to identify a new temporal paradigm, which tends to renew the legal imaginary and which initiates new legal logics in order to protect the future. Not only Future Generations but also the environment and the very nature of humankind need new legal framework in order to be respected.

“I develop these thoughts from international environmental, bioethical or human rights law all the way to French or European law. I am also interested in integrating comparative law analysis in order to enrich my proposals. I consider law to be of a prospective nature and ask how a trans generational law can been created in order to confront trans generational harms.”

Avoiding the Tragedy of Human Rights: A Pledge for Legislations Stipulating Transgenerational Responsibilities

“In my thesis I highlighted the fact that we have inherited a limited temporal matrix in which the social contract is supposed to take place. This philosophical perception has been inserted deeply into the heart of the French constitutional imagination. It also inspired others in Europe and in the world.

“For instance, Article 6 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen states that: “Law is the expression of the general will”, it is, evidently, that of actual people. This infers a paradigm that law doesn’t have any regard to the future as such would be contrary to the freedom of individuals.

“This has been stated in article 5 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen which sets out that: “The Law has the right to forbid only actions which are injurious to society”. Given that the XIXth century’s society was not in touch with future generations, the concept of law could not be conceived of in another way that of reciprocity between human beings. In other words, there is a paradigm of juridical reciprocity that has expanded from our constitutional imagination to the implementation of laws. This paradigm also exists in other constitutions.

“Since the XXth and XXIst centuries are characterized by new actions of humankind that are harmful for future generations by directly posing a threat to the condition of future generations or indirectly by depleting their natural resources. Can we now ask if it wouldn’t legitimate to take the future into legal account?

“Following global news, it is hard not to be aware that humanity has entered into a new era. The globalization of trade is now accompanied by a globaliztion of pollutions and threats. Huge plastic gyres in our oceans, air pollution on top of the Himalaya, and ocean acidification are illustrating the entry of humankind in a new era.

“More and more people are environmentally aware and more and more ask for a sustainable future to continue life on Earth. This change in the way of thinking is all the more necessary and accelerated by several new processes, challenges and even disasters such as transboundary and transtemporal pollutions, climate change and nuclear disasters.

“Still, if geologists have to establish this word, maybe in next April in Oslo, more and more authors name this new era the Antropocene: this new word, proposed in 2000 is now widely used in order to name a new geological period characterized by the human footprint. Humankind has acquired an unprecedented power on the Earth, on the conditions of the livings and of those to come.

“This is a profound metamorphosis of the action of Man on Earth and finally, it deeply questions -from a theoretical and a pragmatic point of view- the foundations of Law. Whatever is the philosophical or religious entry of analysis, the Law (from international to national scales) has to now face new challenges which are the preservation of the Future and of the Earth.

“The very specific challenge of facing Nuclear Risks in particular requires a law protecting Future Generations.

“The concept of Future Generations is part of the definition of sustainable development and has now been widely recognized, both internationally and in national constitutions throughout the world. This concept has the power to affect our way of thinking in law on issues which happen today but also in the long term.

“Until now, the dominant paradigm was that the Law of the Future would take care of the Future. However, in many instances this is no longer true.

“In my doctoral thesis I was able to show to what extent the progress in international environmental law involves historical transformations in how law is thought out and formulated, so that the future may be held in respect.

“The arrival of concepts such as the “Common heritage of humanity”, “sustainable development”, and more particularly that of “Future generations”, has come to confirm that. This dynamic also leads to transformations and surely heralds an emergence of a “law of the Future,” both in international and within national and regional juridical systems. Other expressions of this law relating to the vulnerability of humanity still need to be researched in international law regarding human rights

“For example, it is possible to propose a trans generational analysis of Human Rights: the right to health is also a right of Future Generations, the right to a healthy environment is at the same time an individual, a collective and a transgenerational human right.

“Nuclear technologies introduce a deep gap between our abilities to put future generations into danger and our abilities to think about their legal protections or their representation in contemporary democracies.

“Three major authors from the Frankfurt School have prepared the way to the formulation of a trans generational ethics of responsibility.

“At the end of the twentieth century the philosopher Hans Jonas clearly demonstrated that entry into the technological civilization demanded an ethical theory capable of instituting respect for the future. This new vulnerability of humankind in the future requires us to think out and transpose a new obligatory ethical framework: respect for future generations and holistic means of preserving their future.

“Jonas made a pledge for new foundations in ethics. In his point of view, the awesome transformations brought by modern technology require a new Imperative of Responsibility. Why should such a responsibility towards future generations be instituted? Jonas believed that “humanity has no right to suicide” and that “the existence of man should not be gambled with” He wrote: “the future existence of humanity is an obligation laid upon us, and also the maintenance of human nature as it is.” Jonas’s thought is an authentic plea aimed at preserving the life of future generations.

“This ethic has become necessary because of the acquisition of unprecedented power over humanity’s future, affecting either their intrinsically human characteristics or essential conditions for life on Earth. In other words, the fact of placing the future under authority requires a new utopia (in the full sense of the term) enabling future horizons to remain open.

“The merit of this major current of philosophical thought, left to us as a heritage, consists in de-compartmentalizing the paradigm of responsibility: This should henceforth be considered in a trans generational mode. This is a first source of inspiration for thinking in law in a trans generational way.

“Another philosopher, Günther Anders, also from the School of Frankfurt, wrote more specifically on the nuclear issues. He doesn’t make any distinction between “nuclear energy in a context of peace” and “nuclear power in a context of war” (which is still used today by politicians): Both are nuclear technologies. This technology is specific because it integrates a disruption in the history of Humankind and it has the potentiality to introduce a disruption in the very concept of History.

It is important to remind ourselves that, after the Second World War, there have been profound and silent transformations in the History and destiny of Humanity.

“After the double atomic explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Anders highlighted the fact that Humankind entered into a new era:

“The nuclear technology prevails on human morality: In other words, the capacities of destruction of humankind are total, but the moral capacities of humans to think this new all-powerfulness are not adequate. In Anders’ point of view “the very foundations of our moral existence have changed” because of the technification of our being: we can be do things which can have consequences “beyond the horizon of our eyes and imagination.” (Letter to Claude Eatherly, June 3rd, 1959). There is a discrepancy between our abilities to imagine what we are doing. There is a promenthian gap between our actions and the actual abilities of the human imagination. Anders highlighted the fact that there is a new asymmetry which can have apocalytic consequences: On one hand we have unlimited power (nuclear technologies) but, on the other hand, we have limited cognitive abilities to figure out what we are doing. “Even more so our feeling” (Commandments in the Atomic Age, p. 12). We are now living “in the Age of inability to fear” (Ibid).supra l

He invented a word to name this situation: supraliminarité

(Dieter Birnbacher, also a German philosopher underlined the fact that human cognitive abilities are limited to face our responsibility for future generations)

He has clearly and early denounced the reality of a total catastrophe: “we have become accustomed in the most terrifying way to the actual fact of the menace (…) so we are not just blind to the apocalypse (…) we are also deaf”

“The main idea is the following: as long as we have acquired a power on Future Generations, all the more when it is an apocalyptic power, there is an urgent need to take into account and protect Future Generations by ethics.

“So how do we write a legal code of trans generational responsibilities?

“A new juridical Utopia is now moving on, specifically aimed at protecting the future. It takes account of the finitude of human existence, the essential transmission of conditions and possibilities for life of future generations (understood as being in a systemic relationship with the environment and all living beings). It presupposes an upsurge of conscientious awareness of our common life and destiny. There is a paradigm shift to realize if we want to integrate a law protecting Future Generations.

“The first, that of temporal non-discrimination, makes it possible to draw into the legitimate field of law the ethical imperative of protection of the future. By virtue of this principle, the non-existence of future generations can no longer be synonymous with an absence of juridical protection.

“This principle enables a stand to be taken against a real abuse of power by present generations over the future, based on the priority of temporal existence.

It may be applied differently according to the state of scientific knowledge (in a context of certainties or uncertainties of trans-generational harm) – I will apply this thought specifically to nuclear technologies in my third part.

“The second principle, that of the dignity of future generations, is at the same time both descriptive and normative. Descriptive, for this principle corresponds to an evolution already recognised in international law and also in national law concerning the protection of future generations. This is particularly evident in law relating to the environment and human rights. Indeed, more and more legal provisions tend to protect the environment, biodiversity and we have entered into an era of ecological transition. Normative, because this principle is designed to be the matrix of a law giving respect to future generations. It can become the cornerstone of a system of human rights open to protecting the future.

“I also plead for a transgenerational presentation of Human rights.

“If we have to face a technology which puts populations, the environment including Future Generations in the long run, eternally, irreversibly into danger, one can ask whether we are not facing a new category of crimes: crimes against future generations, crimes against the humanity to come. To integrate the principle of temporal non-discrimination by opening up the temporal matrix of international criminal law to protecting the future:

“The substance of the principle of temporal discrimination proposed by us in 2008 is taken up in the report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon entitled “Intergenerational Solidarity and the Needs of Future Generations.” To integrate the principle of the dignity of future generations which, moreover, justifies the adoption of a trans-generational reading of human rights.

“We now have to go further and to implement a trans generational framework of legal rules in order to assure a safe environment and healthy life for our children and grandchildren. Nuclear technology has many particularities and raises transgenerational questions of responsibility from the very beginning to the end. “

When?

“At any time, nuclear technologies are a trans generational and trans spatial threat

“I would like to emphasize the fact that there are situations in which there is a reversal of History: This specific situation can be qualified « The tragedy of Human Rights » i.e. the tragedy of human rights not being made available to everybody, in particular to people coming after us.

“The main idea of this concept is the following: whenever a return to the status quo is impossible i.e. whenever conditions for life are adversely affected, the very concept of Human Rights makes no more sense.

“From the very beginning to the end of this technology, the threat is just unacceptable. Hannah Arendt also paved the way for anticipating the disruption between our technological abilities and our cognitive abilities to think the threat.

Before choosing any technology, one should ask whether there is a risk of disaster or not. A disaster is defined as this particular case as a reverse of History.

“According to Dupuy: Catastrophes are characterized by this temporality that is in some sense inverted.” As an event bursting forth out of nothing, the catastrophe becomes possible only by “possibilizing” itself and that is precisely the source of our problem. If one is to prevent a catastrophe, one needs to believe in its possibility before it occurs. If, on the other hand, one succeeds in preventing it, its non-realization maintains it in the realm of the impossible, and as a result, the prevention efforts will appear useless in retrospect.

“It is hard to accept how blind and deaf we still are to the nuclear threats ! At the very beginning, the choice of the technology is also a choice to create new disasters !

We choose this technology without having the slightest thought of what effect radioactive wasteould have on the next generation. This is totally irresponsible towards future generations!

“Examples are uranium mining is a trans generational threats to health and to environment. Uranium mining raises also lots of questions: we have already inherited trans generational harms and contaminations. We must map and protect all the places that have been contaminated as forbidden from Chernobyl to Fukushima and protect these sacrifice zones. We should visualise the reality of a human civilization which puts the whole of humanity into danger.

“In France alone, there have been 210 uranium mines. In order to obtain thousands of tons of uranium, we had to move hundreds of thousands of tons of minerals. Even if there are no more uranium mines in France, we are discovering that many sites have durably contaminated the environment. We learned that lots of mineral residues, including radioactive ones, have been put under our roads, evenunder parking spaces.

“Uranium mining causes a lot of problems in France, but of course in other countries it is even worse! There is unfortunately so much to say on this in Niger, in South Africa and in the United States.

“Then we have the issue of the French government owned company AREVA which is spreading nuclear power around the world, even Africa. One argument being made is that nuclear can supply the power to desalinze seawater for drinking. This entire idea is nonsense. I asked a man in favor of these projects for explanations. For me, it is hard to hear that the future of Africa is building nuclear power plants. In France, Areva has many difficulties to end the building of a new generation of power plants.

“We are used to be confronted to lies: everything is undermined! the cost of construction is far underestimated! From 6 billion euros evaluated the Chantier costs now 12 billion euro! This is possible just because there is a complex and deep mix between the French State, military interests and the companies who control and build power plants.

“We are used also to observe changing in laws in order not to stop this technology!

Lastly, building nuclear power plants, is also taking un pari sur l’avenir!

We experience in France drones flying over nuclear plants, demonstrating the limits to imagination of the dangers related to these installations. We now have to face new dangers during exploitations : there is a range of risks of disasters !

“The truth can only prevail with nuclear technologies

In France, we know that there has been a nuclear incident which generated a pollution of the river la Loire by plutonium!

And the head of the French Electricity company (EFD) was really minimising this! Again, it is unacceptable to let a company contaminating the environment and the people with radioactive substances for a transgenerational period!

“At the Hague, well known place because Areva takes in charge nuclear wastes, there is a pollution of the ground waters by nuclear substances ! Again, this is unacceptable !

“There is a total impunity which cannot remain the rule!”

Dismantling & burying of nuclear wastes

“Finally, we are now entering in the era of dismantling and burying nuclear waste.

“It is in failure we decided to invest in a technology with a blind faith in the paradigm of progress. But actually, we do not know what to do about our nuclear waste! We do not know how to durably and permanently protect future generations and the environment from our radioactive waste! The costs of dismantling is tremendous, the conclusion is clear: It is a technology which has no future from a rational point of view.”

Nuclear Disasters

“Finally, Nuclear Disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima raise the very question of the imperative of protection by law. States have the duty to protect their people,

Companies should not be allowed to put the environment, future generations and people into danger!

In Japan the government is forcing residents to come back to their homes even though the environment remains contaminated. The truth is hidden! No iodine tablets have been givento the population!”

Implementation of Trans Generational Human Rights and the Recognition of Crimes against Future Generations

“There is an urgent necessity to give respect for the future a legal framework and implement it. I do not understand how come that the principle of “non harmful use of the territory” is not applied in the international Court of Justice in order to ban nuclear technologies: Due to this principle of international public law, no State shall authorize the exploitation of any activity on its territory which can cause a damage to the environment of another State!

“I am glad to know that Germany is now asking to France to close the Fesseheim nuclear facility. As it happened, that during a course I tought, a student reacted violently saying that it was nonsense and that I was saying false things when I exposed to the class the fact that Fesseheim is build on a seismic fault line! It is at least striking, if not historic, to notice that more and more voices are being raised wishing for the day when crimes against future generations are recognized in international law.

“We should recognize crimes against Future Generations in the case where unbearable threats are at stake. Recognizing crimes against future generations is to start a quest for a new juridical indicator, that is to say a new conceptual category to define particularly serious types of harm. Crimes against future generations are among those going beyond the traditional conceptual, temporal and spatial limits of law.

“As regards the heritage of lasting danger to the future, it is also possible to look forward. In our opinion, abandoning nuclear is a necessity in view of the complex, systemic and trans generational implications connected with this technology.

When actions endangering the environment are taken in a context of certainty, a crime against future generations becomes a glaring reality which cannot be passed over in silence.

“The behaviour of nuclear totalitarism can be described as criminal: there is a deliberate process of endangering the lives of other people and of life. The lasting pollution of the environment ought henceforth to be taken into consideration, since it is the source and support of all life. We also need to enrich our legal framework by anticipatory rules. Transmitting a culture of anticipating trans-generational risks.

“As an example:, the precautionary principle, which requests among other things further research, due to new technologies, is very valuable in the situation of DRR.

In this respect it is a logic of anticipation, based on the principle of precaution, which will prove best suited to preserve the future of the future, to accompany and support independent international research in order to guarantee the absence of lasting harm to present and future generations

“Finally I shall insist on the civil society is also demanding that harm caused to the environment should be criminalized. There is a growing convergence of civic movements in favor of protecting future generations to end ecocide on earth.

Faced with the lack of any similar public initiative on the part of the United Nations, such as the European Citizens’ Initiative instituted by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, End Ecocide on earth is becoming a vast public movement on a global scale with many ramifications, working in the hope of some national support so that their amendment to the Statute of the International Criminal Court may be proposed. “Their new objective is: Recognizing ecocide as a new international crime against the environment, peace and future generations. An amendment to the statute of Rome has been drawn up by lawyers who support this initiative with the aim of widening the scope of the ICC to include ecocides. This amendment aims at protecting global communal assets with the specific aim of incriminating the causing of major damage where even now such events rank as unthinkable and thus inhabit an international legal void. It is important to mention that many other public initiatives are now also taking place.

“The President of the French Republic tasked Madame Corinne Lepage with drawing up a declaration of human Humankind, that is to say the right for all inhabitants of the earth to live in a world where the future is not compromised by irresponsibility in the present. One objective could be to celebrate the anniversary of December 10th 1948, the day when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. If such a declaration were to be celebrated, it would mark a new stage in the evolution of human rights. This would highlight the trans-temporal dimension in a new way.

The systemic recognition of a principle Future Generations’ dignity

“So my research aims to transpose these thoughts into the legal field and to confront concretely the reality of our era notably by identifying trans generational harms or trans generational risks which are unacceptable, illegitimate and some of which maybe constitute crimes against future generations.

“On reflection, asking how to protect the future condition of humanity and the integrity of the environment through time amounts ultimately to considering the basics of civilizing values which cannot fail to be universally recognized. Indeed, it is a matter of protecting the humanity of Humanity, the durable integrity of the environment and of health for both humans and all living beings.

“There is also a shift of paradigm: Corinne Lepage french lawyer and former french minister of the environment Switzerland has just introduced a complaint for endangering the lives of others and water pollution against France for the nuclear power plant of Bugey.

“Rational thought about crimes against future generation involves more than ever before imposing limits to civilization in respect of any development liable to close possible future horizons. Put otherwise, not establishing crimes against future generations in cases where actions particularly harmful to civilization take place, amounts in the long term to consenting to the Tragedy of Human Rights.

“Wherever a return to the previous status quo is impossible, where even conditions for life are adversely affected, the very concept of Human rights is downgraded into obsolescence. To conclude, I would like to quote Hans Jonas who was aware of the deepness of the difficulties we have to face. He said:

“Because our actions can have apocalyptic consequences …our epoch, which is crying out for an ethical theory, seems suspect to many by appearing to want to reach for the moon. But we have no other solution apart from trying to act”

For more information Professor Galliard suggests our readers go to End Ecocide On Earth www.endecocide.org

Speaking on the same panel with Professor Gaillard was Attorney Otto Jackel, who is with the German section of the International Association of lawyers against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), who explained how the courts around the world were successfully challenging both governments and the nuclear industry. Also opening the conference was the Archbishop of Sczzecin Kamien-Pomorski, Poland Professor H.C. Andrzej Dziega who spoke of the nuclear chain as something beyond the reasonable control of man. This reporter spoke on the same panel about how nuclear technology has been secretly transferred by the United States and other nuclear powers.

The idea of the four and half day conference is to get the leading experts on the abuse of nuclear production from around the world to share ideas and discuss what is going on in there own countries with moral and religious leaders from around the world. The one common theme was that government secrecy regarding nuclear production was increasing at an alarming rate and the damage to human health from exposure to stored nuclear waste was far worse then the public has been told.

After the session in downtown Frankfurt conference attendees were moved to the Martin-Niemoller-Haus in the nearby mountains and where attendees discussed future plans.