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Archive for January, 2012
NO War! NO Sanctions! NO Intervention! NO Assassinations on IRAN
January 31, 2012
Byron Nuke Station Shut Down, Radiation Leak
January 31, 2012Nuclear Reactor Near Rockford Loses Power, Vents Steam
The steam contains low levels of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, but federal and plant officials insisted the levels were safe for workers and the public
The Byron Nuclear Generating Station in Ogle County, Illinois.
A nuclear reactor at a northern Illinois plant shut down Monday after losing power, and steam was being vented to reduce pressure, according to officials from Exelon Nuclear and federal regulators.
Unit 2 at Byron Generating Station, about 95 miles northwest of Chicago, shut down at 10:18 a.m., after losing power, Exelon officials said. Diesel generators began supplying power to the plant, and operators began releasing steam to cool the reactor from the part of the plant where turbines are producing electricity, not from within the nuclear reactor itself, officials said.
The steam contains low levels of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, but federal and plant officials insisted the levels were safe for workers and the public.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission declared the incident an “unusual event,” the lowest of four levels of emergency. Commission officials also said the release of tritium was expected.
Exelon Nuclear officials believe a failed piece of equipment at a switchyard caused the shutdown but were still investigating an exact cause. The switchyard is similar to a large substation that delivers power to the plant from the electrical grid and from the plant to the electrical grid. Smoke was seen from an onsite station transformer, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said, but no evidence of a fire was found when the plant’s fire brigade responded.
Mitlyng said officials can’t yet calculate how much tritium is being released. They know the amounts are small because monitors around the plant aren’t showing increased levels of radiation, she said.
Tritium molecules are so microscopic that small amounts are able to pass from radioactive steam that originates in the reactor through tubing and into the water used to cool turbines and other equipment outside the reactor, Mitlyng said. The steam that was being released was coming from the turbine side.
Tritium is relatively short-lived and penetrates the body weakly through the air compared to other radioactive contaminants.
Releasing steam helps “take away some of that energy still being produced by nuclear reaction but that doesn’t have anywhere to go now.” Even though the turbine is not turning to produce electricity, she said, “you still need to cool the equipment.”
Candace Humphrey, Ogle County’s emergency management coordinator, said county officials were notified of the incident as soon as it happened and that public safety was never in danger.
“It was standard procedure that they would notify county officials,” she said. “There is always concern. But, it never crossed my mind that there was any danger to the people of Ogle County.”
Unit 1 was operating normally while engineers investigate why Unit 2 lost power, which comes into the plant from the outside power grid, Mitlyng said. She said Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors were in the control room at Byron and in constant contact with the agency’s incident response center in Lisle, Ill.
In March 2008, federal officials said they were investigating a problem with electrical transformers at the plant after outside power to a unit was interrupted.
In an unrelated issue last April, the commission said it was conducting special inspections of backup water pumps at the Byron and Braidwood generating stations after the agency’s inspectors raised concerns about whether the pumps would be able to cool the reactors if the normal system wasn’t working. The plants’ operator, Exelon Corp., initially said the pumps would work but later concluded they wouldn’t.
Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/byron-nuclear-plant–138343789.html#ixzz1l0vXLzte
No Other Way than Abolish Nukes (No Assurance of Nuke Radiation, Disaster, Terrorism, Mishaps, …)
January 31, 2012
File photo: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (photo: Channel 4/UK)
Stopping Iran Without a War
By Leslie H. Gelb, The Daily Beast
30 January 12
The robust sanctions against Iran won’t work by themselves. Looking at Iranians from their perspective helps explain why. By Leslie H. Gelb.
he United States, Israel, and Europe are inching closer to war with Iran because of what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. What they are doing is squeezing Iran with unprecedented economic sanctions (which is good); but Western leaders know full well the penalties won’t cause Tehran to abandon its nuclear program. What the West is doing is drawing “red lines” that are backing its leaders into untenable and dangerous corners, as well as cornering Iran. What they are not doing is leveraging these economic and military pressures with a negotiating proposal that can curtail Iran’s nuclear-bomb-making capabilities without war.
As Western leaders back Iran into a corner and as they are locking themselves into a war policy they haven’t seriously contemplated and don’t really want, now is the time to offer a deal. The peace package is simple: Iran keeps its uranium facilities but with capabilities to enrich reduced to levels fit only for civilian use. Tehran also agrees to the tightest international verification procedures. The West lifts sanctions gradually as Iran complies with both reconfiguring its nuclear plants and accepts the necessary verification. For sure, President Obama has tried similar proposals before. This time, however, Iran may find that the biting economic pressures make the deal more palatable. For sure, neither I nor anyone else knows whether Iran will accept this time. But I do know this: if we don’t at least try the negotiating track, a war of untold uncertainties and dangers can come upon us.
To see why economic sanctions alone won’t lead to Tehran’s capitulation, try to look at the situation through Iranian eyes. Here’s what they see: Pakistan, a country that has already given away nuclear secrets to terrorist and renegade states and which itself could be heading toward a Muslim extremist takeover, got the bomb. We did nothing about it. North Korea, one of the nuttiest states around, which has also given nuclear knowledge to Syria and Pakistan (among others), also acquired nukes. We did nothing about that either. Washington accepted India’s nukes and even made special verification arrangements with New Delhi that expressly contradicted the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And of course, Israel has long had a substantial nuclear strike capability, and Washington secretly applauds that, as do I, openly.
Washington and Israel say Iran is a special case. One reason is that Tehran is supposedly more likely to use its nukes. But why? North Korea and Pakistan are even less predictable than Iran. Another reason is that Iran’s nukes will cause its neighbors, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear. But just as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have restrained themselves regarding North Korea, so too can Iran’s Arab neighbors. What should calm the waters in the Mideast, as in Asia, is confidence in the U.S. deterrent power. If Pyongyang so much as twitched a nuclear finger, its existence would be a thing of the past. Iran would face the same fate.
As Iranians see it, the real reason they are made the only exception to America’s no-nukes wall is this: Israel. The Netanyahu regime is convinced that Iran actually will go to nuclear war against the Jewish state, no matter Tehran’s certainty that it will be utterly destroyed in return. Tel Aviv thinks the mullahs are Hitlers bent on the destruction of Jews, no matter the cost to themselves. Besides, they reckon that Israel’s options to use force against its neighbors will be dangerously limited if Tehran possessed nukes and made nuclear threats.
These Israeli judgments have to be taken seriously. At the same time, it needs be said that many if not most Israeli intelligence officers and key senior military officers have taken nearly the opposite point of view. Of course, they worry about such an Iranian threat. But they believe that Israel’s powerful nuclear deterrent will work, that the Iranian leaders are not crazy Hitlers. And they further argue that war would solve nothing and could have grave consequences. Nothing would be solved, they say, because Iran’s nuclear march would be set back only by a year or two, then go further underground and be even harder to destroy. And they contend that the adverse reaction to an Israeli attack around the world would be devastating politically, to say nothing of the prospect of a wave of anti-Israeli terrorism.
Faced with these circumstances and prospects, Washington has decided to toughen its stance rhetorically. The good old formulation that “all options are on the table” is no longer sufficient. Now, with full White House support, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has gone much further in reducing ambiguity about what the U.S. would do if Iran proceeded with its nuclear development. He didn’t define that “red line,” but the inevitable neoconservatives are doing it for him and for President Obama. They’re maintaining that almost any further moves by Tehran along the nuclear path should trigger U.S. strikes against all possible nuclear targets. Some U.S. military leaders seem to think red lines make sense; most military leaders decidedly do not.
I’d like to see President Obama show the courage of offering a solid peace proposal instead of just drawing chest-thumping red lines.
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors arrived in Iran on Sunday for a three-day inspection tour. Most recently, that agency, charged with checking what’s going on within suspect nations, issued a report saying it could not attest that Iran’s program was peaceful, and that it could be headed toward nuclear weapons. The agency didn’t say so in its report at that time, but most analysts now predict that Iran could have usable nukes within one to two years. Such precision belies their intelligence capabilities as well as America’s. But there we are.
And here we Americans are in a presidential election year. At these times, the straps of restraint on tough talk and tough action are almost always loosened. That’s especially true when Democrats hold the White House – Democrats who are quadrennially scared stupid by the prospect of Republicans accusing them of being lily-livered liberals and selling out the nation’s security. I’d like to see President Obama show the courage of offering a solid peace proposal instead of just drawing chest-thumping red lines. Meantime, he doesn’t have to withdraw any sanctions or any “red lines.” Just cut the usual diplomatic and political baloney, and try. With so much pressure now being applied on Iran, it might work. In the midst of a barrage of economic and military pressures, it is not a sign of weakness or lack of resolve to offer peace. It is classic negotiating from strength.
Iraqis Outraged Over Unauthorized US Drone Flights
January 31, 2012Published on Monday, January 30, 2012 by Common Dreams
Iraqis Outraged Over Unauthorized US Drone Flights
“Our sky is our sky, not the USA’s sky”
- Common Dreams staff
Top leaders of Iraq are infuriated that the United States is continuing to fly unmanned (and unauthorized) surveillance drones to protect US assets such as the massive US Embassy in Baghdad as well as American embassy employees and private contractors, The New York Timesreported Monday.
Occupied: The drones are the latest example of the US State Department’s efforts to take over functions in Iraq that the military used to perform. Photo: ReutersThe US military left behind the drones during its “withdrawal” from Iraq last December—and have continued the flights without approval from the Iraqi government.
Iraqi officials say the US government needs Iraqi approval to use the drones.
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From the New York Times report:
A senior American official said that negotiations were under way to obtain authorization for the current drone operations, but Ali al-Mosawi, a top adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki; Iraq’s national security adviser, Falih al-Fayadh; and the acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, all said in interviews that they had not been consulted by the Americans.
Mr. Asadi said that he opposed the drone program: “Our sky is our sky, not the U.S.A.’s sky.” […]
“If they are afraid about their diplomats being attacked in Iraq, then they can take them out of the country,” said Mohammed Ghaleb Nasser, 57, an engineer from the northern city of Mosul.The American plans to use drones in the air over Iraq have also created yet another tricky issue for the two countries, as Iraq continues to assert its sovereignty after the nearly nine-year occupation. Many Iraqis remain deeply skeptical of the United States, feelings that were reinforced last week when the Marine who was the so-called ringleader of the 2005 massacre of 24 Iraqis in the village of Haditha avoided prison time and was sentenced to a reduction in rank.
“If they are afraid about their diplomats being attacked in Iraq, then they can take them out of the country,” said Mohammed Ghaleb Nasser, 57, an engineer from the northern city of Mosul.
Hisham Mohammed Salah, 37, an Internet cafe owner in Mosul, said he did not differentiate between surveillance drones and the ones that fire missiles. “We hear from time to time that drone aircraft have killed half a village in Pakistan and Afghanistan under the pretext of pursuing terrorists,” Mr. Salah said. “Our fear is that will happen in Iraq under a different pretext.”
Still, Ghanem Owaid Nizar Qaisi, 45, a teacher from Diyala, said that he doubted that the Iraqi government would stop the United States from using the drones. “I believe that Iraqi politicians will accept it, because they are weak,” he said.
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Glenn Greenwald writing this morning in Salon:
So militarized is U.S. foreign policy — and so reviled is the U.S. in Iraq — that even when it “withdraws” from that country, it maintains a presence that is so large and menacing as to be unimaginable in most other countries around the worldSo militarized is U.S. foreign policy — and so reviled is the U.S. in Iraq — that even when it “withdraws” from that country, it maintains a presence that is so large and menacing as to be unimaginable in most other countries around the world: basically the equivalent of a small army. Then we have this, about the state of Iraqi domestic politics vis-a-vis the United States:
The United States, which will soon begin taking bids to manage drone operations in Iraq over the next five years, needs formal approval from the Iraqi government to use such aircraft here, Iraqi officials said. Such approval may be untenable given the political tensions between the two countries. Now that the troops are gone, Iraqi politicians often denounce the United States in an effort to rally support from their followers. […]
When the face you constantly show to the world is one of extinguishing the lives of civilians from the air — which is exactly what the U.S. has been doing for a full decade in multiple Muslim countries — then it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this is how people in that region react (just imagine what an attack on Iran, either with direct U.S. involvement or support for an Israeli attack, would generate in this regard). One of the favorite tropes of the American media is how propagandized and misled Arabs are in that part of the world, yet here we find yet again that well-informed, justified skepticism is prevalent over there – “drone aircraft have killed half a village in Pakistan and Afghanistan under the pretext of pursuing terrorists” and “our fear is that will happen in Iraq under a different pretext” — in exactly the ways that an uninformed American citizenry most lacks and most needs.
Defiled (Selfish,Sinful) vs. Undefiled (Wholly Wholesome) Goodness
January 30, 2012Corporations Have No Use for Borders
Truthdig, Posted on Jan 30, 2012
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| AP / Carolyn Kaster |
| A police officer holds a tear gas launcher at the ready during a standoff with protesters at the G-20 Summit in Toronto in June 2010. |
By Chris Hedges
What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.
But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.
The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.
“I want to tell you that I was arrested because I am seen as a threat,” Canadian activistLeah Henderson wrote to fellow dissidents before being sent to Vanier prison in Milton, Ontario, to serve a 10-month sentence. “I want to tell you that you might be too. I want to tell you that this is something we need to prepare for. I want to tell you that the risk of incarceration alone should not determine our organizing.”
“My skills and experience—as a facilitator, as a trainer, as a legal professional and as someone linking different communities and movements—were all targeted in this case, with the state trying to depict me as a ‘brainwasher’ and as a mastermind of mayhem, violence and destruction,” she went on. “During the week of the G8 & G20 summits, the police targeted legal observers, street medics and independent media. It is clear that the skills that make us strong, the alternatives that reduce our reliance on their systems and prefigure a new world, are the very things that they are most afraid of.”
The decay of Canada illustrates two things. Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere. They play worker off of worker and nation off of nation. They control the political elites in Ottawa as they do in London, Paris and Washington. This, I suspect, is why the tactics to crush the Occupy movement around the globe have an eerie similarity—infiltrations, surveillance, the denial of public assembly, physical attempts to eradicate encampments, the use of propaganda and the press to demonize the movement, new draconian laws stripping citizens of basic rights, and increasingly harsh terms of incarceration.
Our solidarity should be with activists who march on Tahrir Square in Cairo or set upencampamentos in Madrid. These are our true compatriots. The more we shed ourselves of national identity in this fight, the more we grasp that our true allies may not speak our language or embrace our religious and cultural traditions, the more powerful we will become.
Those who seek to discredit this movement employ the language of nationalism and attempt to make us fearful of the other. Wave the flag. Sing the national anthem. Swell with national hubris. Be vigilant of the hidden terrorist. Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver, responding to the growing opposition to the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipelines, wrote in an open letter that “environmental and other radical groups” were trying to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” He accused pipeline opponents of receiving funding from foreign special interest groups and said that “if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.”
No matter that in both Canada and the United States suing the government to seek redress is the right of every citizen. No matter that the opposition to the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines has its roots in Canada. No matter that the effort by citizens in the U.S. and in Canada to fight climate change is about self-preservation. The minister, in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry like the energy czars in most of the other industrialized nations, seeks to pit “loyal” Canadians against “disloyal” Canadians. Those with whom we will build this movement of resistance will not in some cases be our own. They may speak Arabic, pray five times a day toward Mecca and be holding off the police thugs in the center of Cairo. Or they may be generously pierced and tattooed and speak Danish or they may be Mandarin-speaking workers battling China’s totalitarian capitalism. These are differences that make no difference.
“My country right or wrong,” G.K. Chesterton once wrote, is on the same level as “My mother, drunk or sober.”
Our most dangerous opponents, in fact, look and speak like us. They hijack familiar and comforting iconography and slogans to paint themselves as true patriots. They claim to love Jesus. But they cynically serve the function a native bureaucracy serves for any foreign colonizer. The British and the French, and earlier the Romans, were masters of this game. They recruited local quislings to carry out policies and repression that were determined in London or Paris or Rome. Popular anger was vented against these personages, and native group vied with native group in battles for scraps of influence. And when one native ruler was overthrown or, more rarely, voted out of power, these imperial machines recruited a new face. The actual centers of power did not change. The pillage continued. Global financiers are the new colonizers. They make the rules. They pull the strings. They offer the illusion of choice in our carnivals of political theater. But corporate power remains constant and unimpeded. Barack Obama serves the same role Herod did in imperial Rome.
This is why the Occupy Wall Street movement is important. It targets the center of power—global financial institutions. It deflects attention from the empty posturing in the legislative and executive offices in Washington or London or Paris. The Occupy movement reminds us that until the corporate superstructure is dismantled it does not matter which member of the native elite is elected or anointed to rule. The Canadian prime minister is as much a servant of corporate power as the American president. And replacing either will not alter corporate domination. As the corporate mechanisms of control become apparent to wider segments of the population, discontent will grow further. So will the force employed by our corporate overlords. It will be a long road for us. But we are not alone. There are struggles and brush fires everywhere. Leah Henderson is not only right. She is my compatriot.
Growing Rooftop Farming in NYC, 1,200 acres
January 30, 2012
policies, plans, and programs for sustainable urban food systems
Growing Rooftop Farming in NYC, 1,200 acres
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
New York is leader in rooftop agriculture, with several innovative farms: the nearly one-acre Brooklyn Grange, Eagle Street RooftopFarm, Gotham Greens, and the aeroponic growing system atop Bell, Book, andCandle restaurant. An affordable rental building in the Bronx will open with a new rooftop commercial greenhouse, and the Brooklyn Grange plans to launch a new farm on the Brooklyn waterfront to serve the dual purposes of growing food and capturing stormwater, thanks to a grant from the NYC Department of Environmental Protection.
To make even more rooftops available for food production the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) released a proposed zoning text amendment on, on December 12, 2011 that would exclude rooftop greenhouses atop commercial buildings from the lot’s floor area ratio (FAR) and height limits. According to a recent study by the Urban Design Lab, there are approximately 1,200 acres of flat rooftops on private commercial or industrial buildings in New York City that are at or over the maximum FAR. The new zoning would make this potential growing space available.
To qualify for the exemption from FAR and height limits, greenhouses must:
· not be on buildings that contain residences or other uses with sleeping accommodations. DCP believes that residential building owners will turn rooftop greenhouses into additional living space instead of growing space.
· only be used to grow plants (or if they are accessory to a community facility, are used primarily for plant cultivation.)
· not exceed the building height limits by more than 25 feet.
· have roofs and walls that have at least 70% transparent material (not counting for accessory office or storage space, which may take up no more than 20% of the floor space and have solid walls and roofs).
· be set back from the perimeter wall by at least 6 feet all around if the greenhouse exceeds height limits.
· incorporate a rainwater collection and reuse system to reduce the demand on the potable water supply and to minimize stormwater.
The proposed text amendment was referred out on December 12, 2011 and will go through a public review process, including referral for 60 days to all community boards, borough boards and borough presidents for review and comment, followed by review by the City Planning Commission and City Council.
For more information, or to download a copy of the text amendment, go tohttp://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/greenbuildings/index.shtml
A Call for Mass Action Against Suppression of Occupy Movement
January 30, 2012
Occupy Wall Street activists are forcibly removed by New York City Police from Liberty Plaza, 11/15/11. (photo: Lucas Jackson, Reuters)
A Call for Mass Action Against Suppression of Occupy Movement
By Emma Kaplan, OpenMike
30 January 12
hese past several months have witnessed something very different in the U.S. People from many different walks of life came together to occupy public space in nearly 1,000 cities in the U.S. They stood up to vicious police violence, they broke through the confines of “protest as usual,” and in the middle of all that, they built community. Even in the face of media attempts to ridicule, distort, and demonize these protests, their basic message began to get through. People throughout the U.S.-and even the world-took notice of and took heart from these brave and creative protesters.
The political terms of discourse began to shift; the iced-over thinking of people in the U.S. began to thaw. Standing up to the unjust brutality and arrests became a badge of honor. People began to listen to and read the stories of some of the victims of this economic crisis, and to share their own. And most of all, as the protests spread to city after city, the fact of people occupying public space forced open debate and raised big questions among millions as to what kind of society this is, and what it should be. Why does such poverty and need exist in the face of a relative handful of people amassing obscene amounts of wealth? Why do the political institutions of society seem only to serve that handful? Why do so many youth feel they face such a bleak future? Why does the insane destruction of the environment continue to accelerate? And what is needed to overcome all this?
Those who actually wield power in this country regarded these protests, and these questions, as dangerous, and reacted accordingly. Time and again those who wield power violated their own laws and ordered police to pepper spray, beat with clubs, and shoot tear gas canisters at the heads of people who were doing nothing more than non-violently expressing their dissent and seeking community. This reached a peak in the recent coordinated and systematic attacks of the past few weeks against all the major occupations. In fact, the mayor of Oakland admitted on BBC to being part of conference calls that coordinated national strategy against the occupiers. On top of all that, and in another blatant show of illegitimate force and power, they attempted to prevent journalists and photographers from covering these acts of repression-unless they were “embedded” with the police.
To put the matter bluntly, but truly: the state planned and unleashed naked and systematic violence and repression against people attempting to exercise rights that are supposed to be legally guaranteed. This response by those who wield power in this society is utterly shameful from a moral standpoint, and thoroughly illegitimate from a legal and political one.
Now this movement faces a true crossroads. Will it be dispersed, driven into the margins, or co-opted? Or will it come back stronger? This question now poses itself, extremely sharply.
One thing is clear already: if this illegitimate wave of repression is allowed to stand… if the powers-that-be succeed in suppressing or marginalizing this new movement… if people are once again “penned in”-both literally and symbolically-things will be much worse. THIS SUPPRESSION MUST BE MASSIVELY OPPOSED, AND DEFEATED.
On the other hand, this too is true: movements grow, and can only grow, by answering repression with even greater and more powerful mobilization.
The need to act is urgent.
As a first step in the necessary response, there must be a massive political mobilization on a day, or days, very soon to say NO! to this attempt to suppress thought and expression with brutality and violence. This mobilization should most of all be in New York, where this movement started… but it should at the same time be powerfully echoed all around the country and yes, around the world. This is a call for massive demonstrations-soon-carried out in public spaces where they can have maximum impact and exposure and where the authorities cannot pen in, suppress, and otherwise attempt to marginalize these demonstrations.
These demonstrations must be large enough to show clearly that people will not tolerate that which is intolerable… that people will not adjust to that which is so manifestly unjust. Such demonstrations, along with the efforts to reach out and build them, can draw many more people from passive sympathy into active support and can awaken and inspire even millions more who have not yet been reached. Such demonstrations can powerfully answer the attempt by “the 1%” to crush and/or derail this broad movement. Thousands and thousands in the streets, acting together, can seize new initiative and change the whole political equation. The urgent questions raised by Occupy-and other urgent questions that have yet to be raised in this movement-can once more reverberate, and more powerfully than before.
The repression of the Occupy movement must not stand. Act.
Signers of this Call include:
Prof. Cornel West
Gbenga Akinnagbe, actor on the HBO series “The Wire”
Carole Ashley
Fr. Luis Barrios
Renate Bridenthal, Professor of History, Brooklyn College, CUNY, retired
Elaine Brower, World Can’t Wait & Military Families Speak Out
Craig Phipps, Ombudsman, Casa Esperanza
Cynthia Carlson, artist
Nina Felshin, independent curator
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC
Harmony Hammond
Barry Holden
Camille Hankins, Founder and Director: Win Animal Rights and No Kill New York
Ray Hill, producer/host of Ray on the Raydio Internet radio show, Houston, TX
Lee Siu Hin, National Coordinator, National Immigrant Solidarity Network
Judith Henry
Rev. Dr. James Karpen, Church of St Paul and St Andrew, New York City
Chuck Kaufman, Executive Director, Alliance for Global Justice
Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Harlem
Jim Long, artist
Waqas Malik, artist
Lydia Matthews, Dean of Academic Programs, Associate Dean of Parsons/ Professor
Ann Messner, artist
Travis Morales
Dorinda Moreno, Fuerza Mundial / FM Global / Hitec Aztec, U.S. Liaison Secretariat, International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement/TICPM
Nick Mottern, ConsumersforPeace.org & kNOwdrones.org
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
Bradley Olson, Psychologist, Activist
Rosemary O’Neill
Lindsay O’Neill-Caffreyv
The Rt. Rev. George E. Packard, Retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries
Ana Ratner
Suzanne Ross, PH.D., Clinical Psychologist
David E. Rousline, Ph.D. Berkeley CA
Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, New Sanctuary Movement
Jayce Salloum, artist, Vancouver
Irving Sandler
Donna Schaper, Senior Minister, Judson Memorial Church
Stephen Soldz, Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Bob Stein
Rev. Max Surjadinata, Area Coordinator of Friends of Sabeel North America
David Swanson, warisacrime.org
Matthew Swaye
Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait
Athena Tacha
Dennis Trainor, Jr, Writer, Producer & Host of Acronym TV
Marina Urbach, independent curator, other projects, New York
Nancy Vining Van Ness, Director, American Creative Dance
Jim Vrettos, Adjunct Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Jen Waller
Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights
Andy Zee, Spokesperson, Revolution Books
David Zeiger, Displaced Films
Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War
January 30, 2012|
Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation
ONLINE READER
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
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Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference. Please Forward the GR I-Book far and wide. Post it on Facebook. [scroll down for I-BOOK Table of Contents] GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES
The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation Michel Chossudovsky (Editor) I-Book No. 3, January 25 2012 Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles and videos, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. In this Interactive Online I-Book we bring to the attention of our readers an important collection of articles, reports and video material on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and its impacts (scroll down for the Table of Contents). To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here. INTRODUCTION The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation. The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:
Nuclear radiation –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities. While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes – Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011) Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO’s (Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant. The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained. The realties, however, are otherwise. Fukushima 3 was leaking unconfirmed amounts of plutonium. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”. An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government’s information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011) The Impacts in Japan The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that “the severity rating of its nuclear crisis … matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster”. In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:
Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011 Worldwide Contamination The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:
While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) “quoting diplomatic sources” stated that only “tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health.”
The spread of radiation. March 2011 Public Health Disaster. Economic Impacts What prevails is a well organized camouflage. The public health disaster in Japan, the contamination of water, agricultural land and the food chain, not to mention the broader economic and social implications, have neither been fully acknowledged nor addressed in a comprehensive and meaningful fashion by the Japanese authorities. Japan as a nation state has been destroyed. Its landmass and territorial waters are contaminated. Part of the country is uninhabitable. High levels of radiation have been recorded in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has a population of 39 million (2010) (more than the population of Canada, circa 34 million (2010)) There are indications that the food chain is contaminated throughout Japan:
Japan’s industrial and manufacturing base is prostrate. Japan is no longer a leading industrial power. The country’s exports have plummeted. The Tokyo government has announced its first trade deficit since 1980. While the business media has narrowly centered on the impacts of power outages and energy shortages on the pace of productive activity, the broader issue pertaining to the outright radioactive contamination of the country’s infrastructure and industrial base is a “scientific taboo” (i.e the radiation of industrial plants, machinery and equipment, buildings, roads, etc). A report released in January 2012 points to the nuclear contamination of building materials used in the construction industry, in cluding roads and residential buildings throughout Japan.(See FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies, January 2012) A “coverup report” by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (May 2011), entitled “Economic Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery“ presents “Economic Recovery” as a fait accompli. It also brushes aside the issue of radiation. The impacts of nuclear radiation on the work force and the country’s industrial base are not mentioned. The report states that the distance between Tokyo -Fukushima Dai-ichi is of the order of 230 km (about 144 miles) and that the levels of radiation in Tokyo are lower than in Hong Kong and New York City.(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery, p.15). This statement is made without corroborating evidence and in overt contradiction with independent radiation readings in Tokyo (se map below). In recent developments, Sohgo Security Services Co. is launching a lucrative “radiation measurement service targeting households in Tokyo and four surrounding prefectures”.
“A map of citizens’ measured radiation levels shows radioactivity is distributed in a complex pattern reflecting the mountainous terrain and the shifting winds across a broad area of Japan north of Tokyo which is in the center of the of bottom of the map.” “Radiation limits begin to be exceeded at just above 0.1 microsieverts/ hour blue. Red is about fifty times the civilian radiation limit at 5.0 microsieverts/hour. Because children are much more sensitive than adults, these results are a great concern for parents of young children in potentially affected areas. SOURCE: Science Magazine The fundamental question is whether the vast array of industrial goods and components “Made in Japan” — including hi tech components, machinery, electronics, motor vehicles, etc — and exported Worldwide are contaminated? Were this to be the case, the entire East and Southeast Asian industrial base –which depends heavily on Japanese components and industrial technology– would be affected. The potential impacts on international trade would be farreaching. In this regard, in January, Russian officials confiscated irradiated Japanese automobiles and autoparts in the port of Vladivostok for sale in the Russian Federation. Needless to say, incidents of this nature in a global competitive environment, could lead to the demise of the Japanese automobile industry which is already in crisis. While most of the automotive industry is in central Japan, Nissan’s engine factory in Iwaki city is 42 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Is the Nissan work force affected? Is the engine plant contaminated? The plant is within about 10 to 20 km of the government’s “evacuation zone” from which some 200,000 people were evacuated (see map below).
The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war. Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap. In Japan at the height of the disaster, “the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan’s civilian nuclear power plants”.1 (See Yoichi Shimatsu,Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research, April 12, 2011) It should be noted that the complacency of both the media and the governments to the hazards of nuclear radiation pertains to the nuclear energy industry as well as to to use of nuclear weapons. In both cases, the devastating health impacts of nuclear radiation are casually denied. Tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb are labelled by the Pentagon as “safe for the surrounding civilian population”. No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using “safe for civilians” tactical nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. Such an action would result in “the unthinkable”: a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East and Central Asia. A nuclear nightmare, however, would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing another Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout. (For further details See Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2011) The Online Interactive I-Book Reader on Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War In view of the official cover-up and media disinformation campaign, the contents of the articles and video reports in this Online Interactive Reader have not trickled down to to the broader public. (See Table of contents below) This Online Interactive Reader on Fukushima contains a combination of analytical and scientific articles, video reports as well as shorter news reports and corroborating data. Part I focusses on The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened? Part II pertains to The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan. Part III centers on the “Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe”, namely the cover-up by the Japanese government and the corporate media. Part IV focusses on the issue of Worlwide Nuclear Radiation and Part V reviews the Implications of the Fukushima disaster for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry. In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, this Global Research Online I-Book on the dangers of global nuclear radiation is intended to break the media vacuum and raise public awareness, while also pointing to the complicity of the governments, the media and the nuclear industry. We call upon our readers to spread the word. We invite university, college and high school teachers to make this Interactive Reader on Fukushima available to their students. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened
PART II The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan
71,000 people in the city next to the Fukushima nuclear plant “We’ve Been Left to Die” - 2011-03-19 Tokyo Water Unsafe For Babies, Food Bans Imposed – by Karyn Poupee – 2011-03-23
Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe: Cover-up by the Japanese Government and the Corporate Media
PART IV The Process of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation
PART V Implications for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry
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Occupy Oakland Live
January 29, 2012Dying Honeybees: It Was the Insecticides All Along
January 28, 2012
Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder may have a simple cause, after all. (photo: redorbit.com)
Dying Honeybees: It Was the Insecticides All Along
By Jeanne Roberts, Celsias
28 January 12
ith news that the U.S. honeybee population has been so devastated that some beekeepers will qualify for disaster relief dollars, comes a report from Purdue University that one of the causes of honeybee deaths is – as long suspected – neonicotinoids.
I say one of the causes, because the article does. In fact, the levels of neonicotinoid contamination of the powder used to spread seeds – up to 700,000 times the lethal dose – suggest that this pesticide may be the major, or precipitating, cause, with Varroa mites and other problems simply the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
And this, a myriad of causes, none of them dominant, is what agencies like the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture would have us believe, either because (as some suggest) they are understaffed to adequately investigate Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), or because some of their former (or present) members are in bed with major chemical and genetically modified (GM) seed manufacturers.
The study, by Christian Krupke (professor of entomology) and Greg Hunt (professor of genetics and honeybee specialist), explains that the contaminated powder is residue from the seed treatment. What happens is, corn and soybean seeds are treated with neonicotinoids in a talc base to keep them moving through today’s high-tech vacuum seed spreaders when it comes time to plant.
But not all the talc stays attached to the seeds. Some is released as residue due to excessive application or machinery vibrations, or when cleaning the seeders after use, and settles on nearby flowering plants or in the soil. Some even manages to survive the growing year intact on corn pollen.
One of the neonicotinoids, clothianidin (and its precursor, thiamethoxam), was also found regularly, albeit at low levels, in U.S. soils up to 24 months after treated seed was planted. This is the same insecticide, or pesticide already banned across much of Europe, including France, Italy, Germany, the UK and Slovenia.
Several countries, like Germany, have also sued clothianidin maker Bayer CropScience for its role in the manufacture and distribution of the highly toxic pesticide, which is aimed at replacing imidacloprid (whose patent ran out, so it doesn’t bring as much sales revenue to chemical corporations like Bayer CropScience!).
This is the same Bayer that came under the gun in 2010 for its GM rice, which contaminated three fields of genetically pure rice in Germany. The cost, to Bayer, was $1.5 million, but the truth is that the Big Five Frankenfood creators (Bayer, Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow and DuPont) rarely get tagged for their perversion of the natural world, making their takeover of the global seed market and their promotion of monocropping spectacularly successful (and almost complete, thanks to help from Codex Alimentarius).
Should you doubt this is true, consider the case of Monsanto in India, where the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, and the World Bank, both pushed regulators, who in turn pushed farmers to buy and sow expensive Monsanto cotton seed, which (because it carries a “terminator” gene) needs to be bought again every year, where once farmers either bought cheap, native cotton seed or saved seed for replanting.
When cotton fields from this GM seed failed to materialize – largely because farmers had been growing native cotton that required less water to survive – farmers lost everything. Many committed suicide by drinking the very (and also expensive) pesticides and weed killers tailor-made to work alongside their GM fields. The final death toll was 125,000.
Surprisingly, Europe – which seems to be dominated by a policy of central control (in everything from finances to law to farming), at least when compared to the U.S. – has been the staunchest opponent of Frankenfoods, from crop chemical to seed.
Not so the U.S., where beekeepers are losing about one-third of hives each and every year. But now the state of California, ever at the forefront of earth-friendly policies, has put forward a right-to-know referendum which will enable residents to find out about genetically engineered foods (i.e., who makes them, what they are, where they are sold) – something the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, has stubbornly refused to demand in food labeling.
Nor has the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stepped up to the plate. In fact, it failed to pay attention to reports from its own scientists, and was completely taken in by the deeply flawed Bayer study about clothianidin-treated canola crops.
The situation in the U.S. has now reached what beekeepers and their advocates, like Steve Ellis of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, are calling a ‘critical tipping point’ beyond which honeybee colonies may not survive to replenish themselves.
Thanks, Bayer et al; we needed that!
