From Revolution to Emancipation

While class struggle exists, Franz Lee will exist.

2011-05-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

Comrade Franz Lee

Your words continue being sharp shots

Roy S. Carson, Vheadline.com:

Franz Lee, "the powerful flashlight trying to light at the end of the tunnel through the power of his language and clarity".

Franz J. T. Lee: The Gaddafi Paradigm: Our dim chance of survival against World Fascism

2011-05-13T11:47:00.000-07:00

The Gaddafi Paradigm: Our dim chance of survival against World Fascism

By Franz J. T. Lee

For global workers movements to become radical is firmly and decisively, with clear emancipatory principles, to grasp any historical problem at its roots. For example, it is to tackle the current global fascism at its very radix, that is, at its transgenetic roots, and to eradicate it together with all the economic, political, social, military and alienating conditions which have brought it about. Because capitalism exists, it is tangible, man made and planetary. Hence, organized workers creative power, that is, its 'superation' (transcendence) could annihilate it globally, not only in Libya or Venezuela, but everywhere.

Independent of different appearance forms, the very existence of past varieties of national fascism, or 'national socialism' ... in individual States like Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece and elsewhere ... and of present global fascism, which is being spearheaded nationally and internationally by the 'Empire', by the USA, its allies and military wing, NATO, is the scientific verification that a dramatic class struggle is raging on a planetary level. In the past two centuries, as a dialectical rule, violent, repressive regimes, including fascism, were preceded by huge workers class struggles which were suppressed brutally. Although these proletarian battles failed, they did change the correlation of the contending class forces; the uprisings of the workers, supported by some middle class sectors, scared the hell out of the bourgeoisie, everywhere its political reaction was the launching of fascist terrorism by State order.

The question is: why did scores of promising global proletarian revolts and revolutions fail or stagnate and were eventually nipped in the bud by capitalist, imperialist fascism?

The answer is very simple: Most of them were heroic, do merit our honor and solidarity, but they were not radical enough, were not radically anti-capitalist, in a few words, they were not modern Marxist emancipatory movements. They did not (perhaps could not) transcend the closed capitalist world order. Surely, much has been said and criticized with reference to this tragic state of affairs which has now become a gigantic global problem of possible human existence on planet Earth. Currently Venezuela and Libya, soon Syria and Pakistan, will have to try to get out of this fascist maelstrom, whirlpool of international fascist terror.

As a brief commentary, we will just highlight some of the errors committed by the Libyan leadership vis-a-vis world fascism in Africa. However, much is also valid for other 'failed societies' which form 'the axis of evil' and which merit 'full spectrum dominance' and 'military humanism'.

At the moment, it is the unfortunate turn of Palestine, Libya and Bahrain, but other countries like Syria, Zimbabwe or Pakistan will soon follow. South Africa, whose some 50 million inhabitants have experienced decades of fascism, of apartheid, is now a trustworthy ally ally of United States imperialism in Africa. However, it should learn from the Libyan catastrophe.

Now, concerning global fascism, what did Colonel Gaddafi and his government under-estimate?

President Muammar Gaddafi of Libya is learning the hard way to understand what is capitalism, socialism, globalization, fascism and emancipation.

* One should not betray one's revolutionary daydreams of youth by declaring them as 'juvenile sins'. Currently Colonel Gaddafi is the longest-governing leader in the Arab and African worlds; he rules Libya since the age of 27, when he and his comrades got rid of the repressive King Idris I in a bloodless coup. One thing is clear now: Gaddafi lives and dies an important lesson: the Gaddafi Paradidm: no matter what may be the case, as an emancipator, one always has to give his very life in defense of his people, of his comrades-in-arms.

In the sixties of the 20th century, on the waves of the African anti-colonial revolutions, Gaddafi launched his Green Revolution. This occurred during the epoch of African national liberation, of the development from African nationalism, to Pan-Africanism, to African Socialism.

* In spite of the heroic efforts of Kwame Nkrumah, the then president of Ghana, in the praxical, theoretical and military fields, the above three forces got stuck in ideological lip service, in so-called anti-imperialism, which was severed from true anti-capitalism, as dialectical negation, as scientific, philosophic socialism, as emancipatory Marxism. The Organization of African Unity lost the idea that unity must be based on principles and degenerated into the current toothless African Union.

* Like in the rest of Africa, in all her revolutions, also in Libya anti-imperialism, in realityy, pro-capitalism was and still is devouring the social emancipatory fruits of bloody class struggles. In fact, cum grano salis, today all African States, except the five, including Libya, which refused to accept the Africom of NATO, are on the track of globalization, of the Second Conquest, the final Scramble for Africa, of global fascism.

* Among the grievous errors of the government of Libya are the following: if you are swimming on an ocean of oil and fresh water, you must know that no matter how you try to escape in the end the Orwellian bloody NATO army boots will come for you: hence prepare yourself with the coming gigantic class struggle;

*President Gaddafi, alone never ever you have the slightest chance of victory if you collaborate with corporate imperialism. Also, Colonel, in principle, we cannot sign Hitler - Stalin Pacts of 1939, secret ´gentlemen agreements' with your powerful class enemy, we should not run across Europe to hunt for fair weather friendships, to organize 'peace talks' and senseless 'dialogues'. Those 'friends' are just waiting for the right moment to nail you and your family on the cross of 'terrorism', of drug-dealing, trafficking of human organs and massacring your people.

* The capitalist world order only allow change from within, it is a jail, a closed system. Within we could carry out rainbow revolutions, white, red and green ones. Revolution, the invincible arm of the power elites, is the guarantee that anti-capitalism can never realize itself, we have to come up with better ideas than ideology or revolution.

* Comrade Ghaddafi, to err is human, thus, in the name of the invaluable contributions that you have made for the sake of African emancipation, please remember that one does not kill the poisonous African black mamba serpent with its own venom, there are very effective ways to accomplish such a democratic mission. Also, if you are not one second, one millimeter ahead of your class enemies, then your chance of survival is infinitesimal.

Summing up, we live in the age of global fascism. All over, we could see, could sense and experience its mortal pangs and fangs. Big Brother states: You are free to criticize me, but never try to do it. Freedom is Slavery. Peace is War. Lies are Truths. All over Friend-Enemy relations, anti-Marxism, anti-Communism. Scape-Goats, workers fiendish regimes, lawlessness, elimination of habeas corpus, the rule of law, etc. pave the highway towards the total, totalitarian, authoritarian Corporeal and Mental Holocaust, to Barbarism.

Capitalism has a Janus-head; under 'normal' peaceful conditions, with relative economic stability, a low level of workers' struggles, in times of boom and bonanza, it is called Democracy. On the other hand, in times of severe economic crises, great depression, political upheaval, social unrest and violent class struggle, capitalism becomes savage, shows its true fascist snarl, its war mongrel face. Its functions are the destruction of the labor movement, of workers trade unions, of the 'left organizations, of Marxists. Furthermore, as a mass movement fascism controls the workers ideologically , conditioning them with aggressive political propaganda, slogans, racism and 'friend-enemy' and 'scape-goat' relations. It also introduces the 'Fuehrer' principle, the messianic great leader, the idea of a 'chosen people', a belief in a Herrenvolk, a master race and other machinations of mass psychology.The main functions of fascism are the defense and preservation of the bourgeois, capitalist, economic relations, of private property of the means of production. It is a huge campaign to save the dominant global system at all costs. Fascism tries to save the imperialist system from total collapse. Only when we know the above could we begin to eradicate fascism for ever, but time and space are running out -- our dim chances of survival are diminishing at the speed of scalar waves.
****

On the Danger of a Killer Earthquake in the Japanese ArchipelagThe Nuclear Disaster That Could Destroy Japan ... and the World

2011-04-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

On the Danger of a Killer Earthquake in the Japanese ArchipelagThe Nuclear Disaster That Could Destroy Japan ... and the World

By HIROSE TAKASHI

Translated by Doug Lummis

The nuclear power plants in Japan are ageing rapidly; like cyborgs, they are barely kept in operation by a continuous replacement of parts. And now that Japan has entered a period of earthquake activity and a major accident could happen at any time, the people live in constant state of anxiety.

Seismologists and geologists agree that, after some fifty years of seismic inactivity, with the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Southern Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake), the country has entered a period of seismic activity. In 2004, the Chuetsu Earthquake hit Niigata Prefecture, doing damage to the village of Yamakoshi. Three years later, in 2007, the Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake severely damaged the nuclear reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. In 2008, there was an earthquake in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures, causing a whole mountain to disappear completely. Then in 2009 the Hamaoka nuclear plant was put in a state of emergency by the Suruga Bay Earthquake. And now, in 2011, we have the 3/11 earthquake offshore from the northeast coast. But the period of seismic activity is expected to continue for decades. From the perspective of seismology, a space of 10 or 15 years is but a moment in time.

Because the Pacific Plate, the largest of the plates that envelop the earth, is in motion, I had predicted that there would be major earthquakes all over the world.

And as I had feared, after the Suruga Bay Earthquake of August 2009 came as a triple shock, it was followed in September and October by earthquakes off Samoa, Sumatra, and Vanuatu, of magnitudes between 7.6 and 8.2. That means three to eleven times the force of the Southern Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake.

All of these quakes occurred around the Pacific Plate as the center, and each was located at the boundary of either that plate or a plate under its influence. Then in the following year, 2010, in January there came the Haiti Earthquake, at the boundary of the Caribbean Plate, pushed by the Pacific and Coco Plates, then in February the huge 8.8 magnitude earthquake offshore from Chile. I was praying that this world scale series of earthquakes would come to an end, but the movement of the Pacific Plate shows no sign of stopping, and led in 2011 to the 3/11 Earthquake in northeastern Japan and the subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima

There are large seismic faults, capable of producing earthquakes at the 7 or 8 magnitude level, near each of Japan’s nuclear plants, including the reprocessing plant at Rokkasho. It is hard to believe that there is any nuclear plant that would not be damaged by a magnitude 8 earthquake.

A representative case is the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant itself, where it has become clear that the fault under the sea nearby also extends inland. The Rokkasho plant, where the nuclear waste (death ash) from all the nuclear plants in Japan is collected, is located on land under which the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate meet. That is, the plate that is the greatest danger to the Rokkasho plant, is now in motion deep beneath Japan.

The Rokkasho plant was originally built with the very low earthquake resistance factor of 375 gals. (Translator’s note: The gal, or galileo, is a unit used to measure peak ground acceleration during earthquakes. Unlike the scales measuring an earthquake’s general intensity, it measures actual ground motion in particular locations.) Today its resistance factor has been raised to only 450 gals, despite the fact that recently in Japan earthquakes registering over 2000 gals have been occurring one after another. Worse, the Shimokita Peninsula is an extremely fragile geologic formation that was at the bottom of the sea as recently as the sea rise of the Jomon period (the Flandrian Transgression) 5000 years ago; if an earthquake occurred there it could be completely destroyed.

The Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant is where expended nuclear fuel from all of Japan’s nuclear power plants is collected, and then reprocessed so as to separate out the plutonium, the uranium, and the remaining highly radioactive liquid waste. In short, it is the most dangerous factory in the world.

At the Rokkasho plant, 240 cubic meters of radioactive liquid waste are now stored. A failure to take care of this properly could lead to a nuclear catastrophe surpassing the meltdown of a reactor. This liquid waste continuously generates heat, and must be constantly cooled. But if an earthquake were to damage the cooling pipes or cut off the electricity, the liquid would begin to boil. According to an analysis prepared by the German nuclear industry, an explosion of this facility could expose persons within a 100 kilometer radius from the plant to radiation 10 to 100 times the lethal level, which presumably means instant death.

On April 7, just one month after the 3/11 earthquake in northeastern Japan, there was a large aftershock. At the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant the electricity was shut off. The pool containing nuclear fuel and the radioactive liquid waste were (barely) cooled down by the emergency generators, meaning that Japan was brought to the brink of destruction. But the Japanese media, as usual, paid this almost no notice.

The Hamaoka Nuclear Plant is located at Shizuoka City, on Suruga Bay. Despite predictions of a magnitude 8 earthquake on Suruga Bay, it has continued in operation. If you look at the illustration showing the configuration of the plates beneath the Pacific Ocean, you will see that there is a point at which the Philippine Sea Plate, the huge Pacific Plate, the North American Plate, and the Eurasian Plate all meet; directly over that point is the Japanese Archipelago. And the very center of the area where these four plates press together is Shizuoka.

Large scale earthquakes in the eastern and southern seas have occurred regularly at intervals of between 100 and 250 years. Today in 2011, 157 years have passed since the Great Ansei Earthquake of 1854, so we are in a period when the next big one could come at any time. And the predicted center of this expected major earthquake is – though this is hard to believe – exactly under the location of the Hamaoka Nuclear Plant. And sonar readings at the site indicate that from thirty years back the Eurasian plate has been bending, which means that it is in a condition where it can be expected eventually to spring back.

Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex. Probably his best known book is Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they're safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose hhome alf the electricity in the wires?

Douglas Lummis is a political scientist living in Okinawa and the author of Radical Democracy. Lummis can be reached at ideaspeddler@gmail.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/takashi04252011.html

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The African 'Star Wars'* - It is the Pentagon's Africom versus China's web of investments - the ultimate prize: Africa's natural resources. By: Pepe Escobar

2011-04-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

The African 'Star Wars'* - *It is the Pentagon's Africom versus China's web of investments - the ultimate prize: Africa's natural resources.*

By: Pepe Escobar

As Africa increasingly turns to China for economic investment and guidance,
Africom seeks to reverse China's geostrategic foothold on Africa

>From energy wars to water wars, the 21st century will be determined by a
fierce battle for the world's remaining natural resources. The chessboard is
global. The stakes are tremendous. Most battles will be invisible. All will be
crucial.

In resource-rich Africa, a complex subplot of the New Great Game in Eurasia is
already in effect. It's all about three major intertwined developments:

1) The coming of age of the African Union (AU) in the early 2000s.

2) China's investment offencive in Africa throughout the 2000s.

3) The onset of the Pentagon's African Command (Africom) in 2007.

Beijing clearly sees that the Anglo-French-American bombing of Libya – apart
from its myriad geopolitical implications – has risked billions of dollars in
Chinese investments, not to mention forcing the (smooth) evacuation of more than
35,000 Chinese working across the country.

And crucially, depending on the outcome – as in renegotiated energy contracts by
a pliable, pro-Western government – it may also seriously jeopardise Chinese oil
imports (3 per cent of total Chinese imports in 2010).

No wonder the China Military, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) newspaper, as
well as sectors in academia, are now openly arguing that China needs to drop
Deng Xiaoping's "low-profile" policy and bet on a sprawling armed forces to
defend its strategic interests worldwide (these assets already total over $1.2
trillion).

Now compare it with a close examination of Africom's strategy, which reveals as
the proverbial hidden agenda the energy angle and a determined push to isolate
China from northern Africa.

One report titled "China's New Security Strategy in Africa" actually betrays the
Pentagon's fear of the PLA eventually sending troops to Africa to protect
Chinese interests.

It won't happen in Libya. It's not about to happen in Sudan. But further on down
the road, all bets are off.

Meddle is our middle name

The Pentagon has in fact been meddling in Africa's affairs for more than half a
century. According to a 2010 US Congressional Research Service study, this
happened no less than 46 times before the current Libya civil war.

Among other exploits, the Pentagon invested in a botched large-scale invasion of
Somalia and backed the infamous, genocide-related Rwanda regime.

The Bill Clinton administration raised hell in Liberia, Gabon, Congo and Sierra
Leone, bombed Sudan, and sent "advisers" to Ethiopia to back dodgy clients
grabbing a piece of Somalia (by the way, Somalia has been at war for 20 years).

The September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), conceived by the Bush
administration, is explicit; Africa is a "strategic priority in fighting terrorism".

Yet, the never-say-die "war on terror" is a sideshow in the Pentagon's vast
militarisation agenda, which favours client regimes, setting up military bases,
and training of mercenaries – "cooperative partnerships" in Pentagon newspeak.

Africom has some sort of military "partnership" – bilateral agreements – with
most of Africa's 53 countries, not to mention fuzzy multilateral schemes such as
West African Standby Force and Africa Partnership Station.

American warships have dropped by virtually every African nation except for
those bordering the Mediterranean.

The exceptions: Ivory Coast, Sudan, Eritrea and Libya. Ivory Coast is now in the
bag. So is South Sudan. Libya may be next. The only ones left to be incorporated
to Africom will be Eritrea and Zimbabwe.

Africom's reputation has not been exactly sterling – as the Tunisian and
Egyptian chapters of the great 2011 Arab Revolt caught it totally by surprise.
These "partners", after all, were essential for surveillance of the southern
Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Libya for its part presented juicy possibilities: an easily demonised dictator;
a pliable post-Gaddafi puppet regime; a crucial military base for Africom; loads
of excellent cheap oil; and the possibility of throwing China out of Libya.

Under the Obama administration, Africom thus started its first African war. In
the words of its commander, General Carter Ham, "we completed a complex,
short-notice, operational mission in Libya and… transferred that mission to NATO."

And that leads us to the next step. Africom will share all its African "assets"
with NATO. Africom and NATO are in fact one – the Pentagon is a many-headed
hydra after all.

Beijing for its part sees right through it; the Mediterranean as a NATO lake
(neocolonialism is back especially, via France and Britain); Africa militarised
by Africom; and Chinese interests at high risk.

The lure of ChinAfrica

One of the last crucial stages of globalisation - what we may call "ChinAfrica"
– established itself almost in silence and invisibility, at least for Western eyes.

In the past decade, Africa became China's new Far West. The epic tale of masses
of Chinese workers and entrepreneurs discovering big empty virgin spaces, and
wild mixed emotions from exoticism to rejection, racism to outright adventure,
grips anyone's imagination.

Individual Chinese have pierced the collective unconscious of Africa, they have
made Africans dream – while China the great power proved it could conjure
miracles far away from its shores.

For Africa, this "opposites attract" syndrome was a great boost after the 1960s
decolonisation – and the horrid mess that followed it.

China repaved roads and railroads, built dams in Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia,
equipped the whole of Africa with fibre optics, opened hospitals and orphanages,
and – just before Tahrir Square – was about to aid Egypt to relaunch its
civilian nuclear programme.

The white man in Africa has been, most of the time, arrogant and condescending.
The Chinese, humble, courageous, efficient and discreet.

China will soon become Africa's largest trading partner – ahead of France and
the UK – and its top source of foreign investment. It's telling that the best
the West could come up with to counteract this geopolitical earthquake was to go
the militarised way.

The external Chinese model of trade, aid and investment – not to mention the
internal Chinese model of large-scale, state-led investments in infrastructure –
made Africa forget about the West while boosting the strategic importance of
Africa in the global economy.

Why would an African government rely on the ideology-based "adjustments" of IMF
and the World Bank when China attaches no political conditions and respects
sovereignty – for Beijing, the most important principle of international law? On
top of it, China carries no colonial historical baggage in Africa.

Essentially, large swathes of Africa have rejected the West's trademark shock
therapy, and embraced China.

Western elites, predictably, were not amused. Beijing now clearly sees that in
the wider context of the New Great Game in Eurasia, the Pentagon has now
positioned itself to conduct a remixed Cold War with China all across Africa –
using every trick in the book from obscure "partnerships" to engineered chaos.

The leadership in Beijing is silently observing the waters. For the moment, the
Little Helmsman Deng's "crossing the river while feeling the stones" holds.

The Pentagon better wise up. The best Beijing may offer is to help Africa to
fulfil its destiny. In the eyes of Africans themselves, that certainly beats any
Tomahawk.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times (www.atimes.com). His
latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at
pepeasia@yahoo.com

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily
reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/2011422131911465794.html

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As radioactive fallout skyrockets, NaturalNews advises readers to consider precautionary doses of iodine, bentonite clay and zeolites

2011-04-27T18:24:00.000-07:00

As radioactive fallout skyrockets, NaturalNews advises readers to consider precautionary doses of iodine, bentonite clay and zeolites

Monday, April 25, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)

(NaturalNews) Based on the accumulation of information from multiple sources, it
is now clear that the true scope of the Fukushima disaster has been greatly
downplayed by both the Japanese and U.S. governments. NaturalNews is now urging
its readers to begin taking regular, safe doses of three things: Natural iodine
sources (seaweed or otherwise), bentonite clay (for internal use) and zeolites
(any brand).

Naturally, be sure to check with a qualified nutritionist or natural medicine
practitioner when taking supplements. Those on thyroid medications, in
particular, should seek professional advice before consuming supplementary
iodine from any source.

Bentonite clay is, of course, completely safe for internal use (yes, you can eat
it) when used as directed. It is a cleansing substance that can bind with
various radioactive isotopes and carry them out of your body. Zeolites are also
extremely good at attracting both heavy metals and some radioactive isotopes
which are also carried out of your body.

Radiation emissions are far higher than official reports
The reason for this action notice is due to the increasing realization that
radiation emissions from Fukushima are far higher than what we are being told.
Although I have analyzed reports from multiple sources on this, perhaps the best
citizen blogger explaining this right now is found at
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/...

This blogger is Japanese, and he reads the local Japanese news sources to get a
lot of information about Fukushima before the translators screw it up (or
distort it).

His latest post reveals that Fukushima is releasing 154 terabequerels of
radiation per day. This is an order of magnitude higher than what the official
Japanese sources were saying just a few weeks ago.

Another great blogger on Fukushima is Lucas Whitefield Hixson, who published an
analysis of the photos that seems to indicate Reactor No. 3 already suffered a
massive core containment breach from the very first explosion:
http://lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/hi...

If true, this would mean that TEPCO has been lying to us from day one about the
true extend of the reactor core containment vessel breach.

Why world governments won't tell you the truth
I have good reason to believe we may very well be witnessing an event that has
already vastly exceeded the Chernobyl disaster in its total release of radiation
into the environment. Yet the admission of that fact is so politically unviable
that no government dare admit utter the words. Instead, it is much more
politically expedient to simply imagine there is no radiation (it's invisible,
after all), and hope no one notices the huge increases in cancer rates in the
coming years.

Such is the cowardice is modern-day political leaders. To avoid causing a panic,
they would rather people keep eating radioactive fish and drinking radioactive
milk. Somewhere in Washington, a group of nuclear experts must be sitting around
a table with the President, asking, "So when are we going to tell them about all
this?" The answer is, of course, "Never."

After all, any increase in cancer can always be blamed on sunbathing, or tanning
salons, or whatever convenient target the medical community is currently trying
to discredit. (Heck, they could probably find a way to say that vitamin D causes
cancer!)

This Fukushima fallout could even be a whole new profit center for the cancer
industry which has long been in the business of irradiation women's breasts with
mammography machines anyway. Cancer industry corporations must be drooling over
the profit prospects that will emerge from the global radiation exposure under
way right now.

Most people will take no precautions
The upshot of all this is that the masses may be suffering from very risky doses
of radioactive fallout right now, with no precautions whatsoever being taken to
protect themselves. After all, President Obama stood in front of his podium and
told the American people there was nothing to worry about. He said no one needed
to prepare, and this was followed up with yet more official urgings to avoiding
taking potassium iodide. (http://www.naturalnews.com/031735_O...)

The game is apparently on. What game is that? The game of culling the human
population by eliminating from the human gene pool those individuals who are too
brain dead to think for themselves. Cancer + infertility, after all, is a fairly
effective way to remove someone's genetic code from the future of the
population, and what better than a massive, global radiation dump to sort out
the brainwashed masses from those who actually take their genetic future seriously?

That's one theory behind all this, at least. Some say it's only a theory and
nothing more. But when you look at what's really happening today with the mass
intentional contamination and destruction of our planet -- the spread of GMOs,
the fluoride poisoning of the water supply, the pesticide-induced honey bee
population collapse, and so on -- you can't help but wonder if someone really is
trying to kill off a very large segment of the human population. Fukushima
either deliberately or coincidentally seems to play right into that agenda.

Or maybe that's all just paranoid conspiracy thinking, and the real explanation
behind all this is just global government incompetence combined with
pathological national leaders who have no compassion whatsoever for the lives
and health of their own citizens. Either explanation is sufficiently bizarre
enough to make intelligent people at least start asking questions... and
hopefully to start taking some precautions against radiation fallout (hence the
iodine, clay and zeolites). Bentonite clay, after all, doesn't cost much. Losing
the genetic integrity of your sperm production, on the other hand, is a real
show-stopper.

Then again, maybe all of this is just a bunch of hooey. If you believe the
"scientific" community, the government figures are always accurate. There's no
cover-up. The situation is completely under control. The radiation levels are
miniscule. There was no meltdown. Go on about your business and stop worrying.

Just eat your imported fish, go get your CT scans at the hospital and take your
antidepressants. Buy your slave-labor brand-name sports gear at the local mall,
and be sure to slather yourself in perfumes, petroleum-based skin lotions and
sunscreen (to protect yourself from cancer, of course).

And then, a few years down the road, if you find your DNA has mutated beyond
your ability to reproduce in the future, don't worry: You can always trade a
year's salary for some hormone injections at the local infertility clinic,
right? Infertility clinics, by the way, are really great at increasing the
survival rate of fetuses with birth defects which would otherwise normally be
aborted by the mother's own body (http://www.naturalnews.com/020905_i...).

*How Fukushima could create a real Spider Man!
*
So even if the next generation of children in America are born mostly to
irradiated, genetically-mutated parents, thanks to the "miracle" of modern
infertility science we can probably manage to keep a fair number of them alive
long enough for them to become the new generation of post-Fukushima X-Men with
special mutant powers that can save our world from evil villains. Fukushima
might also irradiate some spiders that could bite a few geeky teenage boys and
magically transform them into acrobatic "spider men" who magically attain
advanced hand-to-hand combat skills without ever having practiced them. What
could be bad about that?

In fact, the entire Marvel universe of comic book characters might yet
materialize out of the smoke and (radioactive) dust of Fukushima. So, you see,
Fukushima is actually the solution to all our problems, not the source of any
problems.

And if you think none of this could really happen because I'm quoting characters
from comic books, just remember this: The Japanese government is reading you
lines from a fairy tale and hoping you buy into it just the same.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032179_Fukushima_zeolites.html#ixzz1Kb3laRUJ

http://www.naturalnews.com/032179_Fukushima_zeolites.html

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Anti-nuclear advocate Helen Caldicott talks about the Fukushima nuclear

2011-04-23T17:16:00.000-07:00

(Video) Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate Helen Caldicott talks about the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe

Comentario: 

Hola Alba, estimada amiga,

gracias por intentar una respuesta en Aporrea. No importa que no te la hayan 
publicado. Lamentablemente, en algún momento hasta personas tan ciegas y 
dogmáticas como Brito van a tener que aterrizar en la realidad. Las pocas 
informaciones no censuradas que nos llegan sobre Japón son verdaderamente 
horribles. Si manejas un poquito de inglés, vaya a nuestro blog: 
http://franzjtlee.blogspot.com y lea la última entrada (la que aparece arriba en 
la página y vea también el video. Ahí habla una veterana activista contra la 
energía nuclear, Helen Caldicott, y nos da una idea de la espantosa magnitud de 
lo que pasa en Fukushima y sus nefastas consequencias para la vida en todo el 
planeta.

Un abrazo y saludos cordiales,
Franz J. T. Lee y Jutta Schmitt


(Video) Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate Helen Caldicott talks about the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and what we can expect. It ain’t pretty.

 





LINK: 
http://www.franzlee.org.ve/pandemonium01573.html
http://www.prisonplanet.com/helen-caldicott-talks-about-the-horror-of-fukushima.html





Helen Caldicott

Biography 
The single most articulate and passionate advocate of citizen action to remedy 
the nuclear and environmental crises, Dr Helen Caldicott, has devoted the last 
38 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical 
hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop 
environmental destruction.

Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1938, Dr Caldicott received her medical degree 
from the University of Adelaide Medical School 
 in 1961. She founded the Cystic Fibrosis 
Clinic at the Adelaide Children's Hospital  in 1975 
and subsequently was an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School 
 and on the staff of the Children's Hospital 
Medical Center , Boston, Mass., until 1980 when 
she resigned to work full time on the prevention of nuclear war.

In 1971, Dr Caldicott played a major role in Australia's opposition to French 
atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific; in 1975 she worked with the 
Australian trade unions to educate their members about the medical dangers of 
the nuclear fuel cycle, with particular reference to uranium mining.

While living in the United States from 1977 to 1986, she co-founded the 
Physicians for Social Responsibility , an 
organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the 
dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. On trips abroad she 
helped start similar medical organizations in many other countries. The 
international umbrella group (International Physicians for the Prevention of 
Nuclear War ) won the Nobel Peace Prize 
 in 
1985. She also founded the Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament 
 (WAND) in the US in 1980.

Returning to Australia in 1987, Dr Caldicott ran for Federal Parliament 
 as an independent. Defeating Charles Blunt, leader of 
the National Party, through preferential voting she ultimately lost the election 
by 600 votes out of 70,000 cast.

She moved back to the United States in 1995, lecturing at the New School for 
Social Research  on the Media, Global Politics 
and the Environment, hosting a weekly radio talk show on WBAI (Pacifica) 
, and becoming the Founding President of the STAR 
(Standing for Truth About Radiation) Foundation .

Dr Caldicott has received many prizes and awards for her work, including the 
Lannan Foundation's 2003 Prize for Cultural Freedom  
and 21 honorary doctoral degrees, and she was personally nominated for the Nobel 
Peace Prize by Linus Pauling  - 
himself a Nobel Laureate. The Smithsonian Institute  has 
named Dr Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th Century. She 
has written for numerous publications and has authored seven books 
, Nuclear Madness 
, Missile Envy, *If You Love This 
Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth* (1992, W.W. Norton ) 
and *A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography* (1996, W.W. Norton 
; published as *A Passionate Life* in Australia by 
Random House ), *The New Nuclear Danger: George 
Bush’s Military Industrial Complex* (2001, The New Press 
 in the US, UK and UK; Scribe Publishing 
 in Australia and New Zealand; Lemniscaat 
Publishers  in The Netherlands; and Hugendubel Verlag 
 in Germany), *Nuclear Power is Not the 
Answer* (2006, The New Press  in the US, UK and UK; 
Melbourne University Press  in Australia) and 
War In Heaven  (March 2007). Dr. 
Caldicott’s most recent book is the revised and updated If You Love This Planet 
 (March 2009).

She also has been the subject of several films, including *Eight Minutes to 
Midnight*, nominated for an Academy Award  in 
1981, *If You Love This Planet*, which won the Academy Award 
 for best documentary in 1982, and *Helen’s 
War: portrait of a dissident*, recipient of the Australian Film Institute Awards 
 for Best Direction (Documentary) 
2004, and the Sydney Film Festival 
 Dendy 
Award for Best Documentary in 2004.

Dr Caldicott currently divides her time between Australia and the US where she 
lectures widely. She founded the US-based *Nuclear Policy Research Institute* 
(NPRI), which evolved into Beyond Nuclear , of 
which Dr Caldicott is Founding President. Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and 
activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear 
weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future.

Dr Caldicott can be heard discussing urgent planetary survival issues on her 
weekly radio show If You Love This Planet 
, and is the Founder and Spokesperson 
for People for a Nuclear-Free Australia , established to 
represent the millions of Australians who uphold the strong belief that there 
should be no uranium mining, nuclear power plants or foreign nuclear waste in 
Australia.

Dr Caldicott is also a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board 
advising José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain.


Source: http://www.helencaldicott.com/about.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Helen Caldicott Talks About the Horror of Fukushima


Infowars.com 
(http://www.prisonplanet.com/helen-caldicott-talks-about-the-horror-of-fukushima.html)
April 23, 2011

Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate Helen Caldicott talks 
about the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and what we can expect. It ain’t pretty.

Source: 
http://www.prisonplanet.com/helen-caldicott-talks-about-the-horror-of-fukushima.html


 
home

Japan leader urges no panic in nuclear crisis

2011-04-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

Japan leader urges no panic in nuclear crisis
AP

    * New homes for Japan's quake survivors Play Video Earthquakes Video:New homes for Japan's quake survivors Reuters
    * Japan marks the one-month anniversary of quake Play Video Earthquakes Video:Japan marks the one-month anniversary of quake AFP
    * Business as usual despite new Fukushima earthquake Play Video Earthquakes Video:Business as usual despite new Fukushima earthquake AFP

– Tue Apr 12, 6:17 am ET

TOKYO – Japan's prime minister is urging the public not to panic after the government boosted the severity level of the crisis at a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant to the highest rating — on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people in a televised address to focus on recovering from the country's disasters.

Kan said: "Right now, the situation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant has been stabilizing step by step. The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline," he said. "But we are not at the stage yet where we can let our guards down."

Japanese regulators said they raised the rating from 5 to 7 — the highest level on an international scale — after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_earthquake_kan;_ylt=AuN64yd1WPCbcG_L26L8SK.s0NUE;_

****

Japan and the Globe: Okaerinasai - Welcome back, life?

2011-04-10T17:42:00.000-07:00

Japan and the Globe: Okaerinasai - Welcome back, life?

By: Franz J. T. Lee

Fearing a human stampede, panic and desperation, as excuse not to tell the truth to the masses may be very noble, however, not to inform millions of global wage workers about the real state of affairs of corporate imperialism, about planned, man made massacres and disasters ... this is really criminal.

In fact, across the centuries, the ruling 'creme de la creme' never told the 'wretched of the earth', the 'miserables' and 'outcasts' the truth as dominated classes. As historical process, these 'speaking tools' know very little about their mortal quo vadis, about their future, that is, their progressive pauperization and eventual extermination in a mode of destruction, based on master-slave relationships.

Must first a disaster happen which could wipe Japan off the metropolitan map before we go onto the streets to protest against capitalism and its atomic energy Moloch?

The ruling class, the world elite, the herrenvolk, the master race, has a lot of things to hide from the public, hence, its Achilles Heel is the Truth. There is nothing that Capital fears more than the Truth. This is why we have to seek the famous needle in the haystack in order to get to know what exactly occurred in Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and what is occurring now in Fukushima. We will discover that those who don´t see the imminent danger, as a result of' 'total denial', are precisely those who are living right 'on the edge' of radioactive existence. They need some distance, literally and urgently; they are sitting at the foot of the warning lighthouse, they cannot see the perilous radioactive tsunamis coming nearer by the second.

This has nothing to do with the 'gospel truth', 'revelations', Illuminati conspiracy or 'black magic', on the contrary, the dangerous truths stare humanity in the face, in broad daylight.

It concerns all of us, the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere, the global sphere. Who sows a radioactive wind, will reap a cancerous, deadly storm.

* There exist hundreds of old, vulnerable, leaking atomic reactors on Mother Earth, and many more are planned to be constructed.

Until today, we still are reaping the effects of:

* nuclear bombs ignited high above the Earth and which caused an extension of the Van Allen Belts,

* those which fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

* atomic tests conducted by the United States, the Soviet Union, France, South Africa, China, in the atmosphere, deserts and oceans,

* the radioactivity set free and radioactive wastelands caused by mining uranium

* the radioactive contamination of land, groundwater, air by the employment of depleted uranium weapons

All of all these cumulative factors together poison and cripple life, spell doom.

There is no way to clean up this radioactive mess imposed on us by corporate profit seekers of military and 'civil' kind. It's a silent, invisible killer which is going to outlast us.

According to the law of probability the very existence of the above mentioned factors already verifies that ruling class man is suicidal, is hell bent on extinguishing life on planet Earth. The reckless producing of radioactive contamination by the major metropolitan powers is one of the most heinous crimes against nature and society, against precious life. We need not search for life on other planets when we destroy life all over on our planet, from Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Irak, Gaza and Libya, to Chernobyl and Fukushima. Also, we do not develop 'Life Sciences', but rather 'Death Technology', including atomic plants.

However, in Japan, as happens in a flourishing capitalist economy, the managers used to greet each other with a proud: How is business? This is the real global context of the Fukushima disaster. Business as usual, never mind the consequences. Those who are suffering the results of this corporate dictate are, as always, the working classes, and it is the workers who sacrificed their very lives in Chernobyl and now Fukushima to save what still could be saved, and to show us what is still human, humane and humanist. However, many do not know, will never know for what they have been toiling, 'living', and why they are slowly dying of cancer. This disaster is a sad tragedy for all humanity, for all life on the planet.

But let's remember that the danger of demise has threatened life on our planet before.

In planetary prehistory we have had some huge, natural cataclysms or 'extinction events' over the last millions of years; one of which destroyed almost 95% of the planet's species. We do not know whether 'the fittest' survived, whether only the 'white children of God' were saved or whether only the 'black, sinful children of Ham' escaped the tsunamis, but what we should know is that the next huge cataclysm will be man-made.

So, what are we waiting for to stop it from happening?

Will we further promote the radioactive poisoning of our planet? Will we further promote the rupturing of our ocean's seabeds by deepwater drilling? Will we further let corporations keep pushing the envelope as is being done from this summer on when BP resumes drilling in the Gulf of Mexico? Will we further allow them to massively dump poison into our oceans once they have messed up big? Shall we wait until the corporations have ruined our land, air, skies, oceans, life? Who talks about the Gulf of Mexico today? Who talks about the Niger Delta today?

Is it not time to stop the planetary pollution of the sea, land and air; the destruction of the ozone layer, the destruction of what remains of our health by dangerous vaccinations, the spraying of chemicals into the air we breathe; the threat to life from the existence of stockpiles of arms of mass destruction, depleted uranium weapons, white phosphorous bombs, and not to mention the geophysical weapons? Only then, we could say: Okaerinasai - welcome back - life!

For more information, we publish interesting posts on the Edge Forum of the Asia Times.

*********

Asia Times / The Edge : The Nuclear Debacle in Japan

http://www.atimes.net/The-Edge/Japan/179657-THE-NUCLEAR-DEBACLE-IN-JAPAN-2011/Page-2.html

#179700
SAYONARA TOKYO - R.Sauder + SAYONARA JAPAN - F.Lee 1 Day, 21 Hours ago     Karma: -18

Excerpt from SAYONARA JAPAN:

Hence, what are the main elements of the Fukushima cataclysm?

* This ghastly disaster of Tokyo will last for months, before it could somehow be 'controlled'; the radio activity on the islands generated by the 'dirty bomb' plutonium will outlive humanity; it is known that the half-life of plutonium 239 is 24 000 years.

What is sure is that every single day the radiation levels are soaring towards maximum heights. More and more radioactivity will be falling out on 35 million people in the Tokyo region, which is only 160 miles away from Fukushima:
"The inevitable consequence of that will be a dramatic withering of the cultural, social, commercial and economic life of the huge Tokyo megalopolis. As more and more people abandon Tokyo it will become a radioactive shadow of its former self. Of course the economic implications of that for global finance and commerce are immense, Tokyo is one of the three major centers of high finance in the world, along with London and New York, so its abandonment therefore has ineluctable repercussions that will rock the modern, global civilization to its core." (2)

Do we know that already 25 foreign governments have shut down their embassies in Tokyo? That others have moved to Osaka to try and escape atomic radiation? Do we still remember that the U.S. Navy had offered on March 17th to evacuate 87,000 personnel?

Yes, the situation is very serious indeed.

A few days later, on "March 19th the U.S. Military has begun a voluntary evacuation of up to 200,000 military personnel and their dependents from Japan. " (3)

International bankers are fleeing, are leaving the radioactive country.

The truth is simply that "the evacuation of Fukushima, of Tokyo, of Japan has already begun. The next step would be to evacuate the whole planet.

Sayonara, Japan! As Marx stated:
in to this world, 'capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.' Now it is leaving Japan soaked in radiating blood and dirt!...'

Alea jacta est ... Is the game over? Will and could we wake up now and annihilate capitalism? And there we go ... more earthquakes, more tsunamis to come ...

Footnotes:
(1) www.threeworldwars.com/nwo-timeline1.htm )
(2) See: Event Horizon Chronicle -
Sayonara, Tokyo. eventhorizonchronicle.blogspot.com/2011/03/sayonara-tokyo.html.
(3) (Ibid.)

ORIGINAL SOURCE:
franzjtlee.blogspot.com/2011/04/sayonara...alist-game-over.html

posted by Armando Rozário ¹²³ Cabo Frio, Brazil - April 08, 2011;

P.S. Congratulations Richard.....Bravo Franz....two excellent reports!


#179702

Tepco’s Reactors May Take 30 Years, $12 Billion to Scrap

Damaged reactors at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant may take three decades to decommission and cost operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. more than 1 trillion yen ($12 billion), engineers and analysts said.

Four of the plant’s six reactors became useless when sea water was used to cool them after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out generators running its cooling systems.

The reactors need to be decommissioned, Tepco Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said today. He couldn’t give a timeframe. All the reactors, including Units 5 and 6, will be shut down, and the government hasn’t ruled out sealing the plant in concrete, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters today in Tokyo.
The damaged reactors need to be demolished after they have cooled and radioactive materials are removed and stored, said Tomoko Murakami, a nuclear researcher at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan. The process will take longer than the 12 years needed to decommission the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania following a partial meltdown, said Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University.

“Lack of public support may force the decommissioning of all six reactors,” said Daniel Aldrich, a political science professor at Purdue University in Indiana. Tepco “will try to salvage two if it can find public support, which may be unlikely.”
The damaged reactors will take more than a few weeks to stabilize, Katsumata, who took charge of Tepco’s response after President Masataka Shimizu was hospitalized, told reporters.

Kan’s Criticism

Prime Minister Naoto Kan yesterday blamed inadequate tsunami defenses at the plant for the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, saying that the safety standards set by Tepco were too low. Efforts to cool fuel rods at the four reactors have been hindered by detection of radiation levels that can prove fatal for a person exposed for several hours.
The utility is focusing on bringing the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant under control and can’t comment on the power station’s future, Naoyuki Matsumoto, a spokesman for Tepco, said by telephone yesterday.
Japan is studying various ways to cool water at the plant’s reactors and fuel-rod ponds, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano said. It will take “considerable time” until the temperature drops and is stable, he said.
Covering the plant with fabric and removing contaminated water to a tanker are among options under consideration for reducing the threat from radiation, Edano said.

‘Considering Possibilities’

“Specialists are considering various possibilities and means to contain the nuclear power plant situation and minimize radiation effects in surrounding areas and harm to health,” he said. “We haven’t reached a conclusion about what means are possible or effective.”
Japanese authorities rated the Fukushima accident a 5 on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 7-step scale for nuclear incidents, under which each extra point represents a 10- fold increase in seriousness.
At Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island in 1979, one reactor partially melted in the worst U.S. accident, earning a 5 rating. Its $973 million repair and cleanup took almost 12 years to complete, according to a report on the World Nuclear Association’s website. More than 1,000 workers were involved in designing and conducting the cleanup operation, the report said.

Chernobyl Sarcophagus

Ukraine is unable to fund alone the cost of a new sarcophagus to cover the burned out reactor at Chernobyl, due to be in place by 2014. The 110 meter-high arched containment structure has a 1.55 billion euro ($2.2 billion) total price tag and the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has so far raised about 65 percent of that.

The Fukushima reactors may take about three decades to decommission, based on Japan’s sole attempt to dismantle a commercial reactor, said Murakami of the Institute of Energy Economics.
Japan Atomic Power Co. began decommissioning a 166-megawatt reactor at Tokai in Ibaraki Prefecture near Tokyo in 1998 after the unit had completed 32 years of operations, according to documents posted on the company’s website. The project will be completed by March 2021, or after 23 years of work, and cost 88.5 billion yen, the documents show.
Japan Atomic took three years through June 2001 to stabilize and remove nuclear fuels from the reactor core.
“It looks indisputable that Tepco will go ahead and dismantle the four reactors, and costs may exceed 1 trillion yen,” said Murakami, who worked at Japan Atomic for 13 years and was involved in the decommissioning of the Tokai plant. “Removing damaged fuels from the reactors may take more than two years, and any delays would further increase the cost.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/tokyo-electric-s-damaged-reactors-may-take-30-years-12-billion-to-scrap.html

-------------------

P.S. IT IS A REAL NIGHTMARE....FUKUSHIMA IS KAPUT !
re-posted by Armando Rozário ¹²³ Cabo frio, Brazil - April 08, 2011.

Japanese officials estimate about 57 million litres of highly radioactive water have accumulated and hundreds of thousands of litres are added daily as the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, continues to feed coolant into the leaky structures

TOKYO: For nearly four weeks, Japanese emergency crews have been spraying water on the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactors in a desperate attempt to avert the calamity of a full meltdown.

The improvised solution to one nuclear nightmare is spawning another: what to do with the millions of litres of water that has become highly radioactive as it washes through the plant.
The water being used to try to cool the reactors and the dangerous spent fuel rods is leaking through fissures inside the plant, seeping through tunnels and passageways to the lowest levels, where it is accumulating into a sea of lethal waste. No one is sure how to get rid of it safely.

''There is nothing like this, on this scale, that we have ever attempted to do before,'' says Robert Alvarez, a former United States assistant secretary of Energy.

Japanese officials estimate about 57 million litres of highly radioactive water have accumulated and hundreds of thousands of litres are added daily as the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, continues to feed coolant into the leaky structures.

Ultimately, the water will have to be stored and processed and the highly radioactive substances solidified, a job that experts say almost must be handled in a specially designed industrial complex. Cleaning the water could take many years, if not decades to complete. The cost could run into tens of billions of dollars.

The immediate problem facing the Japanese is how to store all that water until the reactors and the spent fuel pools are brought under control. The plant's main storage tanks are nearly full. To make space earlier this week, the company released 11.5 megalitres of the least contaminated water into the ocean, expecting that its radioactive elements will be diluted. But international law forbids Japan from dumping contaminated water into the ocean if there are viable technical solutions available later.

So the plant operator is considering bringing in barges and tanks, including a so-called megafloat that can hold about 9.5 megalitres. Yet even using barges and tanks to handle the water temporarily creates a future problem of how to dispose of the contaminated vessels. US and Japanese experts say the key to solving the disposal problem involves reducing the volume of water by concentrating the radioactive elements so they can be solidified into a safer, dry form. But waste experts disagree on exactly how to do that.

The difficulty of concentrating and then solidifying the contaminants depends on how much radioactivity is in the water, the type of isotopes in the water and whether the work can be done on site. Edward Morse, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, said the water needs to be diverted soon into a concrete-lined holding pond, where natural evaporation can help reduce its volume.

Even there, it could take up to 10 years before the radioactivity would decay enough for the material to be handled, he said. Building a storage pond ''buys you time''.
Other experts disagree, saying exposing the material to open air could allow iodine and other volatile substances to drift off the site, adding to the remote contamination that is already spreading dozens of kilometres from the plant.

Nuclear power plants normally have systems in place to treat tritium on site. But the condition and capacity of that at Fukushima are not known.Professor Morse and Youichi Enokida, a nuclear chemist from Nagoya University, contend that if the water can be concentrated, it can then be rendered into a dry form or even turned into glass, as is planned at other contaminated sites around the world. This process, called vitrification, is expensive and requires a small scale industrial facility to accomplish.

The alternative - processing the waste elsewhere in Japan - is likely to be controversial. ''The fishermen will protest, this is inevitable,'' Professor Enokida said.
Professor Morse said there would be at least six months of emergency stabilisation, about two years of temporary remediation and up to 30 years of full-scale clean-up. Furthermore, the high levels of ground contamination at the site are raising concerns about the viability of individuals to work at the site in coming decades.
A workforce in the hundreds or even thousands would take years or decades to clean up, experts said.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/containing-a-calamity-creates-another-nuclear-nightmare-20110408-1d7qn.html

Fukushima Atomic Disaster

2011-04-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

Franz J. T. Lee: Important Information about the Fukushima Atomic Disaster 

    Fukushima Meltdown Confirmed by Stephen Lendman
   
*On April 6, Reuters reported that "the core at Japan's Fukushima nuclear 
reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel," Rep. Edward Markey told 
a House hearing on the disaster, saying:*

*"I have been informed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the core 
has gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor 
pressure vessel."*

*
*

Recklessly promoting nuclear proliferation, America's NRC is notorious for 
coverup and denial of its harmful effects. As a result, their rare admission 
virtually confirms a full core meltdown in one or more reactors, meaning vast 
amounts of radiation are being uncontrollably released into the atmosphere, 
water and soil, spreading over a vast area. It's the ultimate nightmare scenario 
now unfolding, but don't expect major media reports or government officials to 
explain.


Nonetheless, on April 6, New York Times writers Matthew Wald and Andrew Pollack 
headlined, "Core of Stricken Reactor Probably Leaked, US Says," stating:


America's NRC "said Wednesday that some of the core of a stricken Japanese 
reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of 
the containment structure, implying that the damage was even worse than 
previously thought."


Far worse, in fact, because molten core material then burns uncontrollably 
through the concrete foundation, meaning all bets are off.


On April 5, Times writers James Glanz and William Broad headlined, "US Sees 
Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant," saying:


/American engineers warned "that the troubled nuclear plant....is facing a wide 
array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases 
are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep 
the plant stable, according to a confidential" NRC assessment./


Identified threats include:

-- Possible further explosions because of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater used 
to cool the reactors that may have done more harm than good. According to former 
GE reactor designer Margaret Harding:


/"If I were in the Japanese's shoes, I'd be very reluctant to have tons and tons 
of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn't been checked 
since the earthquake/," and very likely is seriously damaged.


-- Because of concern about severe reactor core damage, NRC recommended boron be 
added to cooling water as a moderator to absorb neutrons.


-- Exposed/unprotected spent fuel rods in Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 pose extreme 
dangers. Moreover, explosions blew nuclear material "up to one mile from the 
units" into the atmosphere, indicating much greater damage than previously 
disclosed.


As a result, David Lochbaum from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) believes:

/"This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot 
worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things 
don't work out for them....They've got a lot of nasty things to (handle), and 
one missed step could make the situation much, much worse."/


Other experts believe criticality was reached, posing far greater dangers than 
revealed.


Yet government and Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) officials still claim "no immediate 
risk of a hydrogen explosion occurring" or serious harm to human health. In 
fact, danger levels now are extreme. More on that below.


Even the NRC admitted that salt water "severely restricted" and likely blocked 
circulation pathways. Moreover, inside the core, "there is likely no water level 
(so it's) difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel." 
Perhaps none, and three or more reactors are affected, one or more in meltdown.


*Independent Expert Opinions*


On April 4, geoscientist/international radiation expert Leuren Moret told 
interviewer Alfred Lambremont Webre that Obama and Canadian Prime Minister 
Stephen Harper are concealing the effects of tectonic nuclear war on North 
America from Fukushima's fallout. In fact, Norwegian Institute for Air Research 
(NILU) radiation maps confirm contamination on America's West Coast, Midwest, 
and Western Canada, in some areas as high as Japan's.


Radioactive Iodine-131 in rainwater sampled near San Francisco was found to be 
over 18,000 times above federal drinking water standards. Idaho, Minnesota, 
Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts rainwater samples showed Iodine-131 up to 
181 times above normal, expected to rise. It's also showing up in milk.


As a result, mobile measures in parts of America and Canada were suspended until 
further notice to conceal the disaster's gravity.


Moret cited two distinguished nuclear scientists who've publicly said northern 
Japan (one-third of the country) is uninhabitable and should be evacuated. 
Marion Fulk is one, a Manhattan Project scientist who helped develop the 
hydrogen bomb. He also was America's atmospheric fallout expert when 
above-ground tests were conducted.


Dr. Chris Busby is the other, an ionizing radiation expert. On March 30, he told 
Russia Today television that Fukushima contamination will cause at least 417,000 
new cancers.


Moret called Fukushima a false flag operation to weaken an economic rival, harm 
its economy, agriculture and fisheries, and compromise its detente with China. 
Compared to Chernobyl, Fukushima's releasing multiple times more radiation, 
perhaps amounts too enormous to imagine with potentially catastrophic global 
effects.


In response, Japan, America and Canada are in denial. Permissible radiation 
exposure levels have been raised. Legitimate reporting was halted. US and 
Canadian atmospheric testing was suspended. State authorities told California 
physicians not to give iodine to concerned patients. Measuring radiation in milk 
was also stopped.


Contamination is spreading from the Arctic to the Equator. Long-lived 
radioactive isotopes will cause environmental and human health havoc for 
generations. Moret said life forms developed over billions of years are being 
destroyed in a century.


On March 29, Chris Busby's Rense.com article headlined, "Deconstructing Nuclear 
Experts," saying:


/"What these people have in common is ignorance. (Most) who appear (in the major 
media) and pontificate have not actually done any research on the issue of 
radiation and health. Or if they have, they....missed all the key studies and 
references. (Others are) real baddies"/ who say Fukushima is nothing to worry 
about, nothing like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island (TMI).

In fact, Fukushima already way exceeds both and will get increasingly worse 
ahead as radiation releases continue and spread. Busby quoted Joseph Conrad 
saying, "after all the shouting is over, the grim silence of facts remain."

/"I believe that (the array of) phony experts,"/ said Busby, "/are criminally 
irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths....I hope they 
are sent to jail where they can have plenty of time to read the scientific 
proofs (showing) their advice was based on the mathematical analysis of thin air./"


He cited the late *Professor John Gofman, a senior US Atomic Energy Commission 
expert who resigned, saying:*

*/"The nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity."/*

*/
/*

So far, in fact, it's winning. It's entered an endgame that will decide whether 
or not humanity will survive. "Not from sudden nuclear war," said Busby. "But 
from the ongoing and incremental nuclear war which began with the releases to 
the biosphere in the 60s of all the atmospheric test fallout, and which 
continued inexorably since (to this day), accompanied by parallel increases in 
cancer rates and fertility loss to the human race."

Busby calls it "*/the greatest public health scandal in human history..../*" Who 
can disagree.


*A Final Comment*

*
*

In a personal email, environmental researcher Dr. Ilya Perlingieri explained the 
dangers of Japan dumping thousands of tons of radioactive water in the Pacific, 
saying:


/"We are all in grave danger! This was insanity! This radioactive water will 
come here (to America). There is no question about that. The currents will bring 
it to the west coast and contaminate the entire area: beaches and all sealife 
between the coast and Japan. What evaporates naturally will then come on the air 
currents around the rest of the US and then the rest of the planet!"/

/"This is epic, and it was not an accident."/

/
/

/Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at 
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net . 
mailto:lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net
Also visit 
his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions 
with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive 
Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at 
noon. All programs are archived for easy listening./ 
http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-fukushima-meltdown-confirmed-by-stephen-lendman-71269659.html
***** 

   Fukushima nuclear war and the Energy Solution Revolution (video)

    * By Deborah Dupre , Human
      Rights Examiner
    * April 9th, 2011 10:39 am ET

If Chernobyl's nuclear disaster was considered a battle, Fukushima would 
seemingly be a nuclear war according to reports being leaked in the internet. 
Lies and cover-up of Fukushima's uncontrollable meltdown are not being accepted 
as well as industry and government planned in the new war involving nuclear 
energy but better independent analysis is needed to understand the latest 
nuclear catastrophe, especially related to how it is impacting the United States.

The Fukushima psychological operations are failing partially due to Dr. Helen 
Calidicott statements of late, edutainment such as the revived film, *THE BATTLE 
OF CHERNOBYL *available on the internet, and a host of anti-nuclear human rights 
defenders empowering others to reject nuclear energy, the most dangerous of all 
non-renewable energy resources, and instead, take a stand in the Energy Solution 
Revolution.

As well-funded nuclear energy propaganda, secrets and cover-ups of the nuclear 
energy industry are in full swing in attempt to minimize the expanding Fukushima 
nightmare, President Obama is being pressured to end the nuclear industry 
subsidies  and to ensure 
an investigation of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is conducted. 
Mainstream news is, however, continuing to lead the public against its best 
interest by failing to advise of the looming radiation public health crisis 
stemming from Fukushima.

Perhaps more efficiently than any other,* Professor Jeffery Grupp 
* 
has analyzed the mass confusion related to the recent reports about radiation 
fallout in the United States, including information echoed by astute reporters 
such as Stephen Lendman, one among many trying to responsibly piece together the 
truth about Fukushima. (See: /Fukishima breakdown: Something fishy about the 
reporting, / Brasscheck TV)

Lendmen wrote this week 
 
about the NRC, the Fukushima meltdown, and mainstream news blackout on the 
latest global nuclear catastrophe spreading from Japan:

    "Recklessly promoting nuclear proliferation, America's NRC is notorious for
    coverup and denial of its harmful effects. As a result, their rare admission
    virtually confirms a full core meltdown in one or more reactors, meaning
    vast amounts of radiation are being uncontrollably released into the
    atmosphere, water and soil, spreading over a vast area. It's the ultimate
    nightmare scenario now unfolding, but don't expect major media reports or
    government officials to explain." (See: /Fukushima Meltdown Confirmed/
    ,
    Stephen Lendman, International News, April 8, 2011)

It appears that the only bonafide Fukushima explanations are from the likes of 
Lendman, Greg Palast and, of course, the leader in the field, Dr. Helen 
Caldicott who is conveying that Fukushima is more devastating than Chernobyl.

“Only one reactor blew at Chernobyl and it was only 3 months old, with new cores 
holding relatively little radiation; these ones have been operating for 40 years 
and would hold about 30 times more radiation than Chernobyl’s,” Dr. Caldicott 
recently explained in an interview with /The Independent,/ Australia 
/>.

Dr. Caldicott cited the New York Academy of Sciences report that stated over 1 
million people died as a direct result of the 1986 Chernobyl melt-down, mostly 
from cancer. This is contrary to reports by nuclear energy proponents that lead 
the public to believe "stress" caused more Chernobyl deaths than its leaked 
radiation.

"She said authorities had attempted to 'hush up' the full scale of the Chernobyl 
disaster," according to the /Independent/ that cited the official 2005 figure 
from the International Atomic Energy Agency being just 4,000 fatalities.

*Fukushima War*

The Fukushima Nuclear War is better understood by viewing THE BATTLE OF 
CHERNOBYL film that is embedded on this page at the left of this article. This 
documentary dramatically chronicles the harrowing efforts that started on the 
26th of April 1986 to stop the northern Ukraine nuclear power station chain 
reaction and prevent a second explosion, to "liquidate" the radioactivity, and 
to seal the ruined reactor under a mammoth "sarcophagus."

The BATTLE OF CHERNOBYL film provides the viewer visuals of some of the 
operation segments being attempted at Japan's Fukushima reactors that are 
destined to measure far worse than Chernobyl according to Dr. Helen Caldicott 
/>, 
the most influential environmental activist over the past 35 years. This film 
that analyzes the Chernobyl nuclear power station in northern Ukraine explosion 
is receiving renewed interest since Japan's nuclear power catastrophe that is 
said by some researchers to dwarf Chernobyl.

Dr. Helen Cladicott has called the Fukushima nuclear power plant situation in 
Japan an “absolute disaster” that could be* many, many times worse than Chernobyl.*

In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear plant was the most significant reactor failure in 
the history of nuclear power, a Maximum Credible Accident (MCA). The plant, only 
20 km away from the town center, was made of four reactor units each generating 
an output of 1,000 megawatts. One of the reactors exploded due to operational 
errors and inadequate safety measures. The meltdown was directly linked to 
routine testing on the reactor unit’s turbine generators.

In the documentary, the nerve-racking events are recounted through newly 
available films, videos and photos taken in and around the plant, computer 
animation, and interviews with participants and eyewitnesses, many of whom were 
exposed to radiation, including government and military leaders, scientists, 
workers, journalists, doctors, and Pripyat refugees.

According to the THE BATTLE OF CHERNOBYL documentary filmmakers:

    More than 200 people died or were seriously injured by radiation exposure
    immediately after the explosion. 161,000 people had to be evacuated from a
    30 kilometer radius of the reactor and 25,000 square km of land were
    contaminated. As time went on millions of people suffered radiation related
    health problems such as leukemia and thyroid cancer and around 4,000 people
    have died as a result of the long-term effects of the accident.

    Nobody was prepared for such a crisis. For the next seven months, 500,000
    men will wage hand-to-hand combat with an invisible enemy – a ruthless
    battle that has gone unsung, which claimed thousands of unnamed and now
    almost forgotten heroes. Yet, it is thanks to these men that the worst was
    avoided; a second explosion, ten times more powerful than Hiroshima which
    would have wiped out more than half of Europe.

    This was kept secret for twenty years by the Soviets and the West alike.

Advertisement
 

*Fukushima syndrome to begin*
Consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe continue today. Thousands of disabled 
survivors suffering from the "Chernobyl syndrome" of radiation-related 
illnesses, and the urgent need to replace the hastily-constructed and now 
crumbling sarcophagus over the still-contaminated reactor.
Despite soothing words from nuclear energy industry promoters in the ongoing 
Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, "each update has signalled fresh disaster and 
even more drastic warnings" writes David Donovan.
Over the past week, Radioactive Iodine-131 in rainwater sampled near San 
Francisco was over 18,000 times above federal drinking water standards; Idaho, 
Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts rainwater samples showed 
Iodine-131 up to 181 times above normal; and Iodine-131 has also been found in 
milk in the U.S.
Asked whether the Fukushima Japan disaster could be, say, 30 times worse than 
Chernobyl, Dr Caldicott said it could be even most catastrophic than that.
Lendman wrote that in a personal email, environmental researcher Dr. Ilya 
Perlingieri explained the dangers of Japan dumping thousands of tons of 
radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean:

    "We are all in grave danger! This was insanity! This radioactive water will
    come here (to America). There is no question about that. The currents will
    bring it to the west coast and contaminate the entire area: beaches and all
    sealife between the coast and Japan. What evaporates naturally will then
    come on the air currents around the rest of the US and then the rest of the
    planet!"

*Solutions*
Sustaining nuclear energy is a human rights violation. The entire nuclear fuel 
chain involves releasing radioactivity, contaminating the environment, and 
damaging human health.
"Most often, communities of color, indigenous peoples or those of low-income are 
targeted to bear the brunt of these impacts, particularly the damaging health 
and environmental effects of uranium mining," states Beyond Nuclear.
The nuclear power industry inevitably violates human rights and the solutions 
involve halting these violations.
While anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Helen Caldicott says Fukushima could spell the 
end of the nuclear industry worldwide, further public action is required to 
counter the stranglehold of nuclear lobbyists and the industry insiders who 
financially benefit from it.
Dr. Caldicott recently stated that the human rights violation involved in a 
nuclear disaster has been been needed to stop the nuclear madness.
“I have said before, unfortunately, the only thing that is capable of stopping 
this wicked industry is a major catastrophe, and it now looks like this may be it.”
Rather than spending trillions of dollars on unproved wars and bailing out banks 
that made unwise gambles, money could be spent on clean renewable energy that 
would solve the energy problem, create jobs, increase tax revenue, and end the 
need for wars for oil. These were all been presented in the multi-award-winning 
movie, /*FUEL  - */as were renewable energy projects 
implemented now and available in local communities.
Another recent study has claimed that 100 percent of renewable energy is 
possible by 2030. 
 PhysOrg.com 
reports  that 
the new research shows it is possible and affordable for the world to achieve 
100 percent renewable energy by 2030 - if there is the political will to strive 
for this goal.
Achieving 100 percent renewable energy would mean building approximately four 
million 5 MW wind turbines, 1.7 billion 3 kW roof-mounted solar photovoltaic 
systems, and 90,000 300 MW solar power plants.
The public is urged to petition to "End Nuclear Industry Subsidies." Only days 
before the Japanese earthquake, nuclear power company Duke Energy extended a $10 
million loan to Obama’s re-election convention committee. Duke Energy operates 
three nuclear plants and is negotiating with federal officials on subsidies to 
build a fourth.
President Obama needs to reject the $10 million loan from Duke Energy according 
to renewable energy and human rights defenders. They are urging the public to 
sign the petition for Obama to call for an immediate review of the safety 
measures at each of the more than 100 nuclear reactors in the United States at: 
http://tinyurl.com/69qecbu. 

    "The nuclear emergency in Japan is an unfortunate reminder that nuclear
    power is inherently dangerous. Instead of sinking billions of dollars more
    into this fatally flawed technology, we must deploy safe and clean energy
    alternatives."

While NRC continues looking the other way on reactor safety concerns and 
routinely renews licenses for aging reactors, the White House is pushing for 
even more money for toxic loan guarantees for new reactors.
Beyond Nuclear reports this week:

    "The latest news is that the Obama administration wants to triple the
    already $18.5 billion appropriated for new reactors. That's a cool $54.5
    billion, a tab that will end up being paid by us, American taxpayers. We
    can't let this happen. Please help prevent this needless and obscene giveaway."

Act now to stop President Obama from using American taxpayer money to foster 
nuclear energy. /> (See: 
www.beyondnuclear.org/actnow/ )
Call the White House (202-456-1111) and Congress (202-224-3121) and ask them to:
1. Stop toxic loan guarantees for new reactors and other nuclear projects!
2. Phase out existing reactors! 

***** 

*The cesium deception: Why the mainstream media is mostly reporting iodine 
levels, not radioactive cesium*

Thursday, April 07, 2011
by Mike Adams


(NaturalNews) Virtually all the numbers you're seeing about the radioactivity 
coming out of Fukushima are based on iodine-131 which only has a half-life of 8 
days, not the far more dangerous cesium-137 which has a half-life of 30 years. 
So while the mainstream media reports that "radiation levels are falling 
rapidly" from the 7.5 million times reading taken a few days ago, what they're 
not telling you is that the cesium-137 radioactivity will take 30 years just to 
fall by 50 percent.

It's the great global cover-up in all this: What happens to all the radioactive 
cesium being dumped into the ocean right now? It doesn't just burn itself out in 
a few months like iodine-131. This stuff sticks around for centuries.

As part of the cover story, the FDA now says it will test "all imported food 
products coming from Japan" (http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/20...). This claim 
is, of course, ridiculous on its face. Even without this Fukushima emergency in 
the works, the FDA only tests a tiny fraction of all the food imported into the 
USA. This agency has no existing infrastructure under which it could test ALL 
the food being imported from Japan. The very idea is ludicrous.

As this ABC News story reveals, the FDA says it's "really stretched" just to 
inspect a mere two percent of imported food: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/radiat...

*The FDA likes radiation!*

Even if the FDA could magically test all the food being imported from Japan, 
what allowable level of radiation would the FDA claim was "safe" in those foods 
anyway? Remember, this is the agency that has long supported the mass 
irradiation of the U.S. food supply as a way to kill e.coli and salmonella.

For all we know, FDA bureaucrats equate radiation with safety and might actually 
declare radioactive seafood from Japan to be safer than non-radioactive food 
because, they would say, the radiation "kills salmonella."

Why eating radioactive food is FAR more dangerous than nuclear fallout
The other element in all this that's hardly being reported in the press is that 
when you eat radioactive food, the threat to your health increases 
exponentially. That's because internal radiation is far more deadly to your body 
than external radiation. It all comes down to the law of the inverse square of 
the distance between you and the radiation source.

A speck of radioactive dust that's one meter away from you, for example, is 
twice as dangerous as that same speck four meters away. But if you eat that 
radioactive speck (because it's part of a fish you're consuming, for example), 
then suddenly it's inside your body. So now it might only be a millimeter away 
from your internal tissues, meaning you've decreased the distance between you 
and the radiation source by one thousand times. Because if the law of the 
inverse square of the distance, you have now magnified the radiation intensity 
by one million times (because one million is the square of one thousand).

So a speck of radiation that might have been a "low level" if it were floating 
around in the air around you can suddenly become fatal if you consume it. And 
that's what people are now facing with Japan's seafood. Yet everybody is being 
told that it's all perfectly safe, no problem, no worried, don't even think 
about it.

Where does the radiation go in your body?
We're all being lied to about the "safety" of radioactive food, you see. And 
there's more to it than what has been discussed here, actually: If a fish takes 
in radioactive cesium and it gets distributed throughout the body of that fish 
in the way that potassium would normally get distributed (because cesium follows 
nearly the same biological pathways as potassium), then the radioactive cesium 
has become part of the fish flesh.

When you eat that fish, your body breaks down the fish tissues, then reabsorbs 
the cesium into your own body, distributing the cesium into your own muscle 
tissues where potassium would normally go. You are what you eat, after all. And 
if you eat radioactive cesium, then you quickly become a walking radioactive 
dirty bomb from the inside.

If it's invisible, it must be safe
They don't tell you that on CNN, folks. I'm willing to bet their "info babe" 
news models don't even have a clue about the laws of physics in the first place. 
So while they're all telling you that eating irradiated seafood from Japan is 
perfectly safe, the truth is that it could very well be quite deadly if you're 
eating fish that contain high levels of cesium.

So you might wonder, then, are fish being detected with cesium in their tissues? 
You bet they are! You'll find the details in these news stories: 
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/co... and http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/busi...

The extremely high levels of radiation even have the local fishermen freaked 
out. "I can't go out to fish because of the radiation," one Japanese fisherman 
told ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/radiat...).

But don't worry, we're told. It's all safe to eat. The FDA is in charge, after all.

And remember what governments always say about radiation and chemicals: If it's 
invisible, it MUST be safe! 


**** 




Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031992_radioactive_cesium.html#ixzz1IzOLKuCs





http://www.naturalnews.com/031992_radioactive_cesium.html


-- 
http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com
http://juttaschmitt.blogspot.com




SOURCE:
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/fukushima-nuclear-war-and-the-energy-solution-revolution-video?CID=examiner_alerts_article





-- 
http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com
http://juttaschmitt.blogspot.com




SOURCE: 
http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-fukushima-meltdown-confirmed-by-stephen-lendman-71269659.html


-- 
http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com
http://juttaschmitt.blogspot.com




http://umweltinstitut.org/pressemitteilungen/2011/2011_03_29-863.html


-- 
http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com
http://juttaschmitt.blogspot.com

HOME

The cesium deception: Why the mainstream media is mostly reporting iodine

2011-04-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

'The cesium deception: Why the mainstream media is mostly reporting iodine 
levels, not radioactive cesium'

Thursday, April 07, 2011
by Mike Adams


(NaturalNews) Virtually all the numbers you're seeing about the radioactivity 
coming out of Fukushima are based on iodine-131 which only has a half-life of 8 
days, not the far more dangerous cesium-137 which has a half-life of 30 years. 
So while the mainstream media reports that "radiation levels are falling 
rapidly" from the 7.5 million times reading taken a few days ago, what they're 
not telling you is that the cesium-137 radioactivity will take 30 years just to 
fall by 50 percent.

It's the great global cover-up in all this: What happens to all the radioactive 
cesium being dumped into the ocean right now? It doesn't just burn itself out in 
a few months like iodine-131. This stuff sticks around for centuries.

As part of the cover story, the FDA now says it will test "all imported food 
products coming from Japan" (http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/20...). This claim 
is, of course, ridiculous on its face. Even without this Fukushima emergency in 
the works, the FDA only tests a tiny fraction of all the food imported into the 
USA. This agency has no existing infrastructure under which it could test ALL 
the food being imported from Japan. The very idea is ludicrous.

As this ABC News story reveals, the FDA says it's "really stretched" just to 
inspect a mere two percent of imported food: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/radiat...

*The FDA likes radiation!*

Even if the FDA could magically test all the food being imported from Japan, 
what allowable level of radiation would the FDA claim was "safe" in those foods 
anyway? Remember, this is the agency that has long supported the mass 
irradiation of the U.S. food supply as a way to kill e.coli and salmonella.

For all we know, FDA bureaucrats equate radiation with safety and might actually 
declare radioactive seafood from Japan to be safer than non-radioactive food 
because, they would say, the radiation "kills salmonella."

Why eating radioactive food is FAR more dangerous than nuclear fallout
The other element in all this that's hardly being reported in the press is that 
when you eat radioactive food, the threat to your health increases 
exponentially. That's because internal radiation is far more deadly to your body 
than external radiation. It all comes down to the law of the inverse square of 
the distance between you and the radiation source.

A speck of radioactive dust that's one meter away from you, for example, is 
twice as dangerous as that same speck four meters away. But if you eat that 
radioactive speck (because it's part of a fish you're consuming, for example), 
then suddenly it's inside your body. So now it might only be a millimeter away 
from your internal tissues, meaning you've decreased the distance between you 
and the radiation source by one thousand times. Because if the law of the 
inverse square of the distance, you have now magnified the radiation intensity 
by one million times (because one million is the square of one thousand).

So a speck of radiation that might have been a "low level" if it were floating 
around in the air around you can suddenly become fatal if you consume it. And 
that's what people are now facing with Japan's seafood. Yet everybody is being 
told that it's all perfectly safe, no problem, no worried, don't even think 
about it.

Where does the radiation go in your body?
We're all being lied to about the "safety" of radioactive food, you see. And 
there's more to it than what has been discussed here, actually: If a fish takes 
in radioactive cesium and it gets distributed throughout the body of that fish 
in the way that potassium would normally get distributed (because cesium follows 
nearly the same biological pathways as potassium), then the radioactive cesium 
has become part of the fish flesh.

When you eat that fish, your body breaks down the fish tissues, then reabsorbs 
the cesium into your own body, distributing the cesium into your own muscle 
tissues where potassium would normally go. You are what you eat, after all. And 
if you eat radioactive cesium, then you quickly become a walking radioactive 
dirty bomb from the inside.

If it's invisible, it must be safe
They don't tell you that on CNN, folks. I'm willing to bet their "info babe" 
news models don't even have a clue about the laws of physics in the first place. 
So while they're all telling you that eating irradiated seafood from Japan is 
perfectly safe, the truth is that it could very well be quite deadly if you're 
eating fish that contain high levels of cesium.

So you might wonder, then, are fish being detected with cesium in their tissues? 
You bet they are! You'll find the details in these news stories: 
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/co... and http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/busi...

The extremely high levels of radiation even have the local fishermen freaked 
out. "I can't go out to fish because of the radiation," one Japanese fisherman 
told ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/radiat...).

But don't worry, we're told. It's all safe to eat. The FDA is in charge, after all.

And remember what governments always say about radiation and chemicals: If it's 
invisible, it MUST be safe!


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031992_radioactive_cesium.html#ixzz1IzOLKuCs


http://www.naturalnews.com/031992_radioactive_cesium.html

Sayonara, Japan: Is the capitalist game over now?

2011-04-07T08:40:00.000-07:00

Sayonara, Japan: Is the capitalist game over now?

By Franz J. T. Lee

For planetary life, for human beings, for the past, present and future, what does the Fukushima cataclysm foretell?

Firstly, what do millions in Venezuela, America, Africa, Asia and Oceania know about current global reality? True scientific and real philosophic knowledge are not genetically acquired, they are not a divine don or gift: they do not drop like divine nectar or like holy manna from the polluted skies. Billions of workers probably never ever would learn the philosophic truth, would never acquire scientific knowledge about their earthly being and existence.

If we would have studied consciously and conscientiously, for example, the history of Venezuela, of the Americas, then we could have discover very easily that not only the ruling ideas of each epoch are the ideas of the ruling classes ... which are being disseminated mainly by socialization processes, by education, culture, religion and ideology ... but also see that the ruling truth and knowledge of each epoch are the truth and knowledge of the ruling classes, which are being spread by the international mass media, which sow confusion, distortion and indoctrination and which reap lies, hoaxes, body, mind and thought control.

Currently the only globally accepted truth, sanctioned by the United Nations, is the truth that comes out of the barrel of a corporate gun as depleted uranium bullets, as 'terrorist' atomic radiation.

To know the truth of our epoch is very simple: just listen to the politicians, read the daily newspapers and just listen to the man on the street and to our educators.

According to the famous bourgeois, mechanical materialist Sigmund Freud 'no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. '

However, he insisted that a conditio sine qua non for freedom was to know the truth. In the current global mental holocaust, in the corporate Moloch of Murdoch and Co.,, of global and globalized authoritarian and totalitarian body, mind and thought control, it is well-nigh impossible for billions of workers, for the 'wretched of the earth', to reflect, think, theoretize and philosophize about planetary historic reality, existence and transcendence.

We know what is 'lol' or 'thanx', to make the sign of the cross, but most of us, especially the youth, do not have the foggiest idea what are atomic 'meltdowns', HAARP, 'Operation Paper-Clip, Dien Bien Phu, the 'Manchurian Candidate', zeitgeist, apartheid, Chernobyl, 'chemtrails', Marx, 'geo-engineering' or plutonium. Progressively, with all the 'news' and 'education', we are becoming extinct, are being disinformed into a species of homo ignoramus instead of homo novum.

Dialectically related to the murderous, historic, capitalist process of perpetual ruling class accumulation - of violence, terror, piracy, booty, privileges, power and vandalism - across millennia the lords, water lords and warlords have developed superstructural mechanics, machinations and fabrications to control and destroy human thinking and thought of their 'speaking tools', of their 'subjects', to disable them to understand the real and true ramifications of natural and human exploitation, political domination, social discrimination, racism, 'military humanism' and 'full spectrum dominance', that is, total human alienation.

Within this transhistoric spectrum we have to see the current global fascism, euphemistically called 'humanism', globalization. The current United States belligerent hoaxes, the bare-faced, blatant NATO lies and the arrogance of its terrorist military 'commands', are happening at the level of collapse of a planetary process which, like all earthly man made processes, merits to pass away.

All the criminal attacks on states like Libya, Ivory Coast or Venezuela, demonstrate the material and social decay of a destructive culture. As it nears its end, it becomes more violent, more terrorist.

There is nothing absolutely true about capitalism, it has no everlasting existence, currently it is in decay, it is 'melting down'; desperately, like Dorian Gray, it tries to rejuvenate its obsolescence, all in vain, like King Midas, everything that it touches turns into golden diarrhea. This mode of destruction has already reached barbarous levels, in chain reaction it is destroying itself, it has become suicidal.

At this level of corporate decay and apocalyptic terrorism, inter alia, what is still worthwhile to study, reflect and consider in this 'epoch of naked survival'?

We have to use our brains, our invincible weapon, as never before. Let us look at Fukushima. But, first let us remind ourselves of certain tasks.

We have:
* To understand once and for all that 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', that one's earthly life is unique, that it 'is beautiful, hence, to enjoy it to the fullest' (Trotsky);

* to liberate ourselves from the religious and ideological cobwebs of obscurantism and begin to transilluminate the cosmic highway towards real anti-capitalist human emancipation;

* to create anticipatory contents for our emancipatory concepts and categories, for example, for revolution, class struggle, production. labor, capital, socialism, Marxism, proletariat, imperialism or fascism;

* to discover discover the real apocalyptic threat in which we encounter ourselves at this stage of the labor process, of capital accumulation and of ruling class history;

* to note that United States Ex-President George H. W. Bush at least for once in his life time told the whole of humanity the cataclysmic naked truth of global fascism, of the coming post-Orwellian 'one world government': "if the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts." (1)

* 'Stringing up' individual political leaders, like Hussein or Khadaffi, 'on lamp-posts' will not stop the inexorable nefarious free fall of capitalism into its own quagmire - great men or a few power elites may be important, alone, outside the master-slave relations, they cannot accumulate profits, make history and conduct ecocidal and genocidal wars in North Africa or the Middle East;

Now let us focus on the Fukushima disaster.

Without the knowledge and the concrete means of how to stop accidents like the one that occurred in Chernobyl a quarter of a century ago, recklessly, with a ravenous insatiable hunger for exploitation, powerful corporations were and are still constructing hundreds of atomic reactors across the globe. Measured by the current events in Fukushima, this is really 'Sayonara, Japan'! And therewith, Good-bye, 'Sapient Man'!

Currently there exist and are planned some 500 atomic reactors on planet Earth; each one of them could bring forth the same dangers which are being generated by Chernobyl and Fukushima. In a nut-shell, Japan will never be the same again. The Chernobyl atomic disaster claimed one million precious, innocent human lives. Over the next decades, millions of Japanese and other peoples will perish as a result of cancer, of related illnesses and mortal over-doses of radioactivity. The global ruling power elites do not care, on the contrary, they are planning to reduce the world population to only 2 billion - out of about 7 billion human beings. This would be a Holocaust to the nth power.

Over the danger - which Marx and Engels had warned about already in 1848 in their 'Manifesto' - the Japanese government, General Electric and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), aided by the disinformation campaigns of the global mass media, have covered a blanket of silence.

Desperately, from the very inception of this man made tragedy, the owners have lost complete control of the demon (perhaps called HAARP), which they have conjured up from the capitalist nether world to try to maximize the dwindling global corporate extra-profits. As a result of the global depression, as a corporate capitalist bulwark in the Far East, the Japanese economy is now in shambles.

In global fascism there are no true blood friends, it is a permanent war between contending belligerent corporate forces for world hegemony. Now it is Japan's turn to suffer the blows of the ax of inexorable competition, untiring centralization, ruthless concentration and relentless monopolization. Japan tried to enter the military big business of atomic powers, to possess atomic bombs, but it is being nipped in the bud. Also, it tried to neutralize class struggle at home, now it has become a struggle for pure survival.

Hence, what are the main elements of the Fukushima cataclysm?

* This ghastly disaster of Tokyo will last for months, before it could somehow be 'controlled'; the radio activity on the islands generated by the 'dirty bomb' plutonium will outlive humanity; it is known that the half-life of plutonium 239 is 24 000 years.

What is sure is that every single day the radiation levels are soaring towards maximum heights. More and more radioactivity will be falling out on 35 million people in the Tokyo region, which is only 160 miles away from Fukushima:
"The inevitable consequence of that will be a dramatic withering of the cultural, social, commercial and economic life of the huge Tokyo megalopolis. As more and more people abandon Tokyo it will become a radioactive shadow of its former self. Of course the economic implications of that for global finance and commerce are immense, Tokyo is one of the three major centers of high finance in the world, along with London and New York, so its abandonment therefore has ineluctable repercussions that will rock the modern, global civilization to its core." (2)

Do we know that already 25 foreign governments have shut down their embassies in Tokyo? That others have moved to Osaka to try and escape atomic radiation? Do we still remember that the U.S. Navy had offered on March 17th to evacuate 87,000 personnel?

Yes, the situation is very serious indeed.

A few days later, on "March 19th the U.S. Military has begun a voluntary evacuation of up to 200,000 military personnel and their dependents from Japan. " (3)

International bankers are fleeing, are leaving the radioactive country.

The truth is simply that "the evacuation of Fukushima, of Tokyo, of Japan has already begun. The next step would be to evacuate the whole planet.

Sayonara, Japan! As Marx stated:
in to this world, 'capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.' Now it is leaving Japan soaked in radiating blood and dirt!...'

Alea jacta est ... Is the game over? Will and could we wake up now and annihilate capitalism? And there we go ... more earthquakes, more tsunamis to come ...

Footnotes:
(1) http://www.threeworldwars.com/nwo-timeline1.htm )
(2) See: Event Horizon Chronicle -
Sayonara, Tokyo. http://eventhorizonchronicle.blogspot.com/2011/03/sayonara-tokyo.html.
(3) (Ibid.)

Japan radiation detected in at least 15 states and in milk samples inWashington state - By: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

2011-03-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

Japan radiation detected in at least 15 states and in milk samples inWashington state -

By: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

(NaturalNews) Radioactive isotopes unique to the Fukushima disaster are now being detected in at least 15 US states, according to recent reports from CNN
(http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/2...
). And the
Associated Press (AP) has issued a report claiming that milk samples taken in Washington state have tested positive for low levels of the same radioactive component, Iodine-131, raising concerns about the true widespread effects of the Fukushima nuclear fallout (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...
).

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and various state and local
authorities continue to repeat the same empty reassurances that all detected levels of radiation -- whether they be in air, water, or food -- are far below levels of concern, and that people do not need to worry or do anything in response. But is this sound advice?

Earlier in the week, several nuclear facilities in North and South Carolina, as well as in Florida, reportedly detected low levels of Iodine-131 in the air
(http://www.naturalnews.com/031881_r...
). That same radiation has also been detected across the West Coast, as well as in
northeastern states like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, which clearly indicates that Fukushima radiation has made its way throughout the US, at least in very low levels.

But now, reports have been issued claiming that milk samples from Washington state have also turned up contaminated with Iodine-131. The levels were allegedly far lower than the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concern limits for the radioactive particles, but they are not necessarily safe even at the levels being detected.

According to the FDA "Radiation Safety" website, the Derived Intervention Level (DIL) for Iodine-131 is 170 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg)
(http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publi...
). A /Wall Street
Journal/ report of the milk incident explains that the Washington samples
contained only 0.8 picocuries per liter (pCi/l), or 0.03 Bq/kg. That level is
clearly far lower than the FDA's DIL for Iodine-131, but is any level of this
radiation actually "safe"? And what about the other more serious types of
radioactive particles being emitted from Fukushima that authorities appear to not even be looking for?

Based on Japanese guidelines for radiation safety, Iodine-131 is the least of
our worries. Cesium, uranium, and plutonium all have much lower maximum
"concern" thresholds, with plutonium being the most serious. A Bloomberg report explains that just one Bq/kg of plutonium is enough to cause major concern if found in water or milk (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...
).
Are authorities testing for plutonium and the other serious radioactive
particles that we know have escaped from the Fukushima plant?

The mainstream media has mostly abandoned the Fukushima incident in favor of the newly-instigated war in Libya. And yet reports are still continuing to trickle in -- though mostly without much fanfare -- concerning Japan radiation popping up across the US in air, water, and now food. But all the while, the EPA and others repeatedly dismiss the situation as being no big deal, despite the fact that conditions at Fukushima have basically reached a frightening dead end
(http://www.naturalnews.com/031894_F...
).

As we keep saying here at NaturalNews, preparedness is key. And preparedness, of course, does not involve panic. It does, however, involve using your critical thinking skills to evaluate the seriousness of the situation, consider the anomalies surrounding the official US government position on it, and take appropriate steps to prepare you and your family for whatever may soon come as a result.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031909_radiation_milk.html#ixzz1ICuLi6UT

http://www.prisonplanet.com/japan-radiation-detected-in-at-least-15-states-and-in-milk-samples-in-washington-state.html

--
http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com
http://juttaschmitt.blogspot.com

*****

Mike Adams / Natural News Insider Alert - Latest developments from Fukushina: "three raging meltdowns" now under way

2011-03-31T12:43:00.000-07:00

Mike Adams / Natural News Insider Alert - Latest developments from Fukushina: "three raging meltdowns" now under way

* As the Wall Street Journal reports
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576233221749626458.html), the
U.S. government has now admitted that radiation is being found in milk from
Washington state. They say it's "safe" to drink, of course. That's the U.S.
government for you: Irradiated milk is safe, but raw milk is dangerous!

* The battle to save Fukushima is now over, as Japanese officials admit the
nuclear power complex must now be abandoned and entombed
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371793/Fukushima-nuclear-plant-entombed-concrete-Japan-admits-lost-battle-crippled-reactors.html?ito=feeds-newsxml).
The Dailymail published, "officials said it would mean switching off all power and abandoning attempts to keep the nuclear fuel rods cool." The problem with that, of course, is that there are already "three raging meltdowns" under way as Dr. Kaku explains (below). If you abandon efforts to cool the fuel rods, then an accelerated meltdown is "inevitable," says Dr. Kaku.

* Japanese nuclear experts now admit it will require 20 years to decommission the Fukushima nuclear reactors.
(http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/82090.html)

* Cesium-137 has now been found 25 miles from Fukushima at such dangerously high concentrations that they far exceed the threshold of land abandonment used by the Soviet Union following the Chernobyl catastrophe
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/world/asia/31japan.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
).
This is raising questions of whether the evacuation zone around Fukushima should now be expanded.

* It has now been revealed that Japan's nuclear disaster preparedness plans were written by complete morons. The entire Fukushima power plant complex, for example, called for only one emergency stretcher to be on-site, and only 50 protective suits (even though hundreds of people worked there). Do you see shades of the TITANIC at play here?
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576232961004646464.html)

* In a shocking video interview, physicist Dr. Michio Kaku explained, "If it
goes to a full-scale evacuation of all personnel, it means that firefighters are no longer putting water onto the cores. That's the only thing preventing a full-scale meltdown at three reactor sites. Once they evacuate, then we past the point of no return. Meltdowns are inevitable at three reactor sites, leading to a tragedy far beyond that of Chernobyl, creating permanent dead zones in Japan."
Watch that video at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=604AB3FA803FF3647DF6E34EC5E8C8A0

* Meanwhile, the *Fukushima denialists* are in full swing, complaining that
anyone talking about Fukushima's meltdown is "fearmongering." One especially idiotic journalist in the UK constructed a completely fabricated article today, claiming that "nobody has suffered or will suffer any radiological health consequences [from Fukushima]." How's that for a total denial of reality? This writer goes on to say, "The nuclear power plants in the stricken region have suffered less damage and caused less trouble to local residents than anything else that was there." (I'm not linking to this source because they don't deserve the attention, but trust me, this is from a major newspaper in the UK.) It just goes to show you that these spin doctors will stop at nothing to try to convince people that nuclear power is the safest thing in the world. There's little question that most of these denialists are on the payroll of the nuclear industry (or just hate the human race for their own twisted or demonic reasons).

* As reported by the New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/world/asia/31japan.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
),
"The level of radioactive iodine 131 in the waters off the Daiichi plant
continued to increase on Thursday, rising to 4,385 times the statutory limit... The increases raise the possibility that contaminants from the plant are continuously leaking into the sea."

* Fears about radioactive seafood are growing as Japan's ocean waters are
increasingly contaminated with very high levels of radiation, now even exceeding the 3,300 times recently reported
(http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Tainted-seafood-fears-spread-apf-166668369.html?x=0&.v=19
).

But remember, everyone: There's nothing to worry about according to your
government! Don't be concerned about radiation. *It's invisible, so it must be safe!*

At least, that's the message we're hearing from many "official" sources. The
FDA, laughably, thinks that drinking radioactive milk in the U.S. is just fine
for you, but drinking RAW milk is extremely dangerous!

That's how twisted things have become in our world today: The stuff that's
actually good for you is outlawed, criticized or suppressed. But the things that are really dangerous for your health -- ionizing radiation, vaccines, GMOs, chemotherapy and pesticides -- are all promoted as the solutions for our world.

It's insane, of course. Beyond insane. And it's all being done in the name of
"science," which has proven itself to be the cause of needless suffering, death and destruction across our world. Beware of anything being done today under the claim of being "scientific." That's now a red flag keyword for something that will probably either harm your health or contribute to the destruction of the planet.
****

Jutta Schmitt: Prospects of a radiant future: From Chernobyl to Fukushima

2011-03-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

Prospects of a radiant future: From Chernobyl to Fukushima

http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com/

By: Jutta Schmitt

Less than a month away from the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, I remember it as if it had been yesterday. The coverup was in operation from the point go. I was working for a German airline at that time, and on the 29th of april 1986, three days after the explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's infamous reactor 4, I was on duty on board a DC-10, covering the route from Frankfurt to Toronto. The captain called the crew into the cockpit, informing us that he had received information which confirmed that an accident had occured a few days earlier at a nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and that it was feared radioactive material could have been released into the atmosphere to a considerable extent. However, there was no accurate information as to what exactly had happened and more than anything else, confusion reigned. On the ground in Toronto, the crew gathered in the lounge of the hotel, trying to catch up with the bits of information or rather speculation that the international media had begun to transmit about the incident. A mixture of fear and incredulity got hold of us. For a brief moment, we considered trying to find a way to prolongue our layover in Toronto at least until we would have clarity about what was going on.

But it wasn't until way into the second week of the disaster that the silhouette of the real picture had begun to emerge. In the case of Germany, it was revealed that radioactive fallout from Chernobyl had reached the German South as soon as four days after the reactor explosion in Chernobyl, with much of it raining down on Bavaria. Although government authorities in Southern Germany had undertaken measurements of radioactive fallout in the days after news of the accident had transcended, results were deliberately withheld so as to avoid an "unneccesary concern" among the general public. As of May 6th, 10 days into the nuclear catastrophe, the values measured in Erding County near Munich - although admitted to be "relatively high" - kept being undisclosed to the public, (1) whereas the German Federal Government was quick to confirm it would hold the course of the nuclear energy option.

Uncertainty, fear and confusion spread amongst the population. On the initiative of Ekkehard Krueger, physicist and former staff member at Munich-Garching's famous Nuclear Research Reactor (dubbed the "nuclear egg" for its shape), a group of concerned environmental activists in Munich, tired of the silence from government authorities with regard to critical radiation fallout data, founded an independent research institute which was to measure radioactivity levels in the environment in order to unveil the plain and uncensored results to the public. The citizen-based Umweltinstitut Muenchen e.V. (Munich Environmental Institute -MEI-), was born. (2) The Institute focused specifically on measuring the radioactive contamination of food, making the results directly available to the people and to the media. In addition, by measuring the radioactivity of fencepost tops all over the region of Bavaria, the MEI had detected a method by which to determine the exact distribution of the radioactive fallout throughout Bavaria and thus elaborated a register of contaminated land in Southern Germany.

For taking a radical, zero-contamination stance with regard to food safety and for the mere fact of disclosing the results of their measurements to the public and the media, the Munich Environmental Institute became a headache for government authorities from its very inception. Both, the Bavarian State Office for Environment and the Federal Radiation Protection Office, waged an information war against the MEI, disavowing the accuracy of its measurements, whereas the latter, in turn, denounced the deliberate scaling-down of measured values or the arbitrary rising of 'legal' radiation thresholds as well as the overall disinformation campaign, practiced by government authorities.

In 1989, the year my brother joined the MEI doing his community service, the radioactive contamination of food and land had not subsided. Milk and milk products, as well as mushrooms, berries, nuts, vegetables, fresh produce in general and processed food, too, all were radioactively contaminated beyond the established 'legal' limits. My brother used to call me several times a week to give me the latest "war report" on radioactive contamination, according to the items measured by the MEI, which often forced me to dispose of determined food items I had bought because their level of contamination was too hazardous. Given the different ways of radiation exposure, for example through inhalation of airborne particles and dust, food and water intake, contact with contaminated soil, etc., the team working at MEI, apart from food, tested everthing ranging from air and soil samples to people's clothes and the contents of vaccuum cleaner bags. And everything they tested was still considerably contaminated.

Also and due to my brother's work at MEI, we learnt that a considerable part, that is, 20%, of the radioactive contamination of our environment is due to the atmospherical testing of nuclear weapons conducted in the 50's and 60's, which caused the massive dispersion of radionuclides all over the planet and which have been identified as one of the causes for the world wide rise of cancer, along with medical radiation exposures and exposures from radiation in close range vicinities of nuclear power plants, where cancer rates in children are 60% up from 'normal'. (3)

Today and in spite of the massive cover-up that tried to bury the facts of the Chernobyl accident under a disinformation sarcophagus, we know that worldwide almost one million people died from exposure to the radiation released from the explosion of its infamous reactor block number four. (4) We also know, that radioactive emissions from the Chernobyl reactor may have been up to 200 times greater than initially estimated, exceeding by far the fallout from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. (5) And today, as we are nearing the 25th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident, the catastrophe and coverup are repeating themselves in Fukushima, in what can only be described as a kind of 'Chernobyl to the nth power'. Russian politician and leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, echoed later by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, may perhaps turn out to be the person who's had the most accurate foresight for things to come, when - flirting with the idea of benefitting from Japanese labor potential - he suggested to offer Japanese the chance to resettle in the underpopulated areas of Russia's Far East. (6)

Considering that Fukushima power plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japanese government have been downplaying the catastrophe and covering up the true scope of the disaster to avoid a mass panic amidst an already extreme situation, delaying critical information about damages to reactor cores, containment vessels, ongoing partial meltdowns, radiation levels in air, seawater and food, and considering that a scenario as bad as the release of plutonium into the environment has been unfolding ever since last week, the question arises indeed, if the whole of Japan could be rendered uninhabitable if things continue along this path.

However, TEPCO and the Japanese government authorities are not the only actors involved in coverup and downplay, engaging in a desperate effort of damage control of whatever is left to be 'controlled'. The March 26th online edition of Mainichi Daily News reported that the International Commission of Radiological Protection (ICRP) "has recommended the Japanese government temporarily raise the annual limit of radiation exposure for the general public in light of the ongoing crisis at the quake- and tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture. The government stipulates that regular citizens in Japan should be exposed to no more than 1 millisievert of radiation per year, but the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) on March 21 recommended the limit be tentatively raised to 20 to 100 millisieverts per year, with the nuclear crisis showing no signs of abating. [...] it suggested, even after the power plant crisis is resolved, the government should keep the upper limit at 1 to 20 millisieverts per year before it gradually brings it back to its original 1, in order to prevent residents of Fukushima Prefecture from abandoning their hometowns." (7) Drastically put, in order to avoid having to accept the Russian offer of resettlement in its Far Eastern territories, all that the Japanese government has to do is raise the limit for radiation exposure and the problem is solved! Let the darn reactors spew a whole fireworks of highly radioactive and toxic particles, all you have to do is rise the legal threshold for radiation exposure and all will be just fine.

It is along a similar line of 'damage control' that the European Union has begun to act with regard to imports from Japan. In a joint press statement of yesterday, March 29th, the Berlin-based organisation Foodwatch and the already mentioned Munich Environmental Institute have expressed their criticism of Germany's 'information' policy with regard to radioactive contamination of food imports from Japan. The criticism is directed against the German Federal Consumer Affairs Minister, who talks about "reinforced control mechanisms" and "special protection standards" for imports from Japan, but has kept silent about the fact that the European Union has just recently raised the legal thresholds for radioactive contamination of food coming from the affected regions of Japan. The organisations warn that the EU has elevated the threshold for cumulated radioactivity from caesium-134 and caesium-137 from 600 becquerel per kilogram to 12.500 becquerel per kilogram for determined products imported from Japan, which amounts to an almost twenty-fold increase of the formerly established values. (8) With regard to the above mentioned "base threshold" of 600 becquerel per kilogram it must be said that any food item measured by the Munich Environmental Institute back in 1989 which would have amounted to 30, 20 or to even 15 becquerel per kilogram would already have been cause for concern, and anything beyond 100 becquerel per kilogram would have been considered unsuitable for consumption.

Meanwhile, The Guardian UK is reporting that the radioactive core of reactor 2 has melted through the containment vessel and fallen onto the concrete floor, which will conduct to a major release of radiation. The Guardian cites Richard Lahey, former head of safety reserach for Boiling Water Reactors at General Electric, as saying: "The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell, ... I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards." (9)

It is beyond doubt that both, Chernobyl and now Fukushima with their respective, nefarious crisis mismanagements and their criminal disinformation campaigns, have paved the way for a radiant future. But we will not exactly be beaming with joy.

Notes

(1) http://www.greenpeace-berlin.de/tschernobyl/tag10.html
(2) http://umweltinstitut.org/
(3) See documents available on http://www.ippnw.org, and http://www.naturalnews.com/025767_Radiation_Ct_Scans.html and
    http://www.lebenshaus-alb.de/magazin/004743.html respectively.
(4) http://janettesherman.com/2011/03/22/casualties-of-chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-“official”-and-other-versions/
(5) http://janettesherman.com/2011/03/22/casualties-of-chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-“official”-and-other-versions/
(6) http://rt.com/politics/zhirinovsky-russia-japan-immigration/ and
    http://www.eurasiareview.com/medvedev’s-offer-to-resettle-japanese-angers-nationalists-analysis-22032011/
(7) http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110326p2a00m0na005000c.html
(8) http://foodwatch.de/presse/pressearchiv/2011/atom_katastrophe_in_japan/index_ger.html
(9) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/29/japan-lost-race-save-nuclear-reactor

10/24/10

Achieving big things in small spaces: Towards Venezuelan food sovereignty

Jutta Schmitt
jutta@franzlee.org.ve

Venezuela and the Globe, will we go down in atomic radiation without putting up a global anti-capitalist fight?

2011-03-29T09:02:00.000-07:00

Venezuela and the Globe, will we go down in atomic radiation without putting up a global anti-capitalist fight?

By Franz J. T. Lee

Venezuela, the question is: as a huge oil producing country will we really go down in atomic radiation disaster without declaring global war against the current imperialist disasters in Japan and Libya?

As ruling classes, in reality, as a Lilliputian, infinitesimal, powerful minority, arrogantly they declared themselves as a herrenvolk, as a master race, as homo sapiens sapiens, but they never ever nurtured real human philia (love) nor did they cultivate sophia (wisdom) with regard to nature and working slaves. They only believed in their hen kai pan, in their one and all, in themselves as 'chosen' Platonic philosopher kings; even when they lose popular 'democratic' presidential elections - like in the cases of Bush I and of Bush II - they still take it all. They only believed in a systemic panta rhei, in the eternal dialectical flux of accumulation of corruption, privileges, wealth, profits and war is the father of all things' (Heraclitus). Like Napoleon, for them global life is veni, vidi vici', is: I came, I saw, I conquered. They have a ravenous, insatiable hunger for blood, conquest, war and booty. Currently in North Africa, in Libya, and in the Middle East, NATO and its Western allies and Arab puppets verify this quintessential, wolfish trait of this imperialist, Hobbesian homo homini lupus, of his bellum omnium contra omnes, of his imperialist 'war of all against all'.

Those who did not belong to the sonorous species, to Man - among them, wo-men, natives, pagans, Blackamoors, Black slaves, Red Indians, Bushmen, 'les miserables' (Victor Hugo) and 'witches' (later upgraded to 'bitches') were simply burned at the stake, persecuted, exploited, violated, tortured and quartered. The 'royal' treatment given to non-European 'pack animals' and 'camel drivers' is practically beyond description.

On this side of the Rubicon, the European rulers, the clergy and nobility, were trying to erect an earthly 'Civitas Dei' (City of God) of St. Augustine. On the other side, in feudal reality, outside divine wishful thinking, ten thousands were killed in cruel 'peasant wars', crusades and the 'Thousand Years War'. Violently they were sent into the hereafter, into everlasting fire.

Small wonder that the present kith and kin of these Draconian ruling classes could kill without any respect for life, for nature and society.

Since millennia, behind all this was (and still is) the brutal historic process of capital accumulation.

The rulers - nobility, clergy, feudal lords and upsurging capitalists - became incorrigible experts in telling lies, in organizing theft and endless torture, terror and murder. Inter alia, this whole historic process was euphemistically called civilization, Western Culture, Christianity, humanity, freedom, democracy, peace, revolution and progress. What are the real connotations of the above terms we could see across the globe, could read in Orwell's novel "1984". The rest is simply political lip service and diplomatic jargon, sweet talk of the rulers, their hoaxes and racist, arrogant ideology.

During discovery, conquest and colonialism, that is, during the era of the transatlantic slave trade and the establishment of the world market, horrendously, without any moral feeling or mercy millions and millions of innocent peoples were sacrificed on the racist altar of the Moloch of capitalism.
Till today, this is the 'vale of tears' for the poor, are the soulless conditions in a heartless world, in globalization. This is happening now in Libya and could soon occur here in Latin America, in Venezuela.

Across the past millennia, ever since the introduction of capitalism, inexorably a mode of anarchic destruction was launched on Mother Earth. Until now, in latency and tendency, that is, in scientific and philosophic possibility, this world order, globalization, is hell bent on destroying the experiment life on Planet Earth. In colonial and imperialist world wars, millions and millions of rebellious slaves, peasants, serfs and workers were simply massacred in the name of business, of capitalism.

Who really cared about the 'outcasts' of bourgeois society, about the 'white man's burden' (Kipling), who still cares today? Where is concrete, effective international workers' solidarity?

In reality, all over we see the signs of a coming global apocalypse. Capitalism is destroying the very substratum of the experiment life on the blue planet, and therewith the cosmic experiment homo novum.

What the experimentum mundi (Ernst Bloch) has created across more than four billion years, now homo homini lupus is busy to destroy within the next decades.

In case we have deleted and forgotten some events of contemporary reality, let us refresh our memory and transilluminate some issues which reveal a most troublesome global reality for humanity.

* Till 1996, France carried out atomic tests in the vicinity of the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in the South Pacific. Today still the indigenous peoples are suffering from intensive radiation. Even the turtles have lost their sense of direction and are perishing.

* The same is true elsewhere for bees and birds. Einstein warned that if the former should happen to die, then mankind probably could have only a few years more to live.

* According to scientific estimates, over the past decades the atomic reactor 'accidents' of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have already claimed one million victims.

* The Exxon-Valdez oil disaster near Alaska has already killed nearly all those workers who were trying to clean up the corporate mess; it seems that none of them reached the age of fifty years; the death toll will be much higher for the 'heroic liquidators' in Japan.

* The current apocalyptic situation (the oil 'leaks') in the Gulf of Mexico and the Niger Delta are still spelling doom for the inhabitants of the region. The corporate giants do not care a dime what is happening all over with precious human life.

* Millions of human beings are dying as the results of the experiments in the production of biological and chemical arms of mass destruction.

* Also AIDS, bird and swine flu, after having left the military laboratories, especially as vaccination, are also take their million death toll across the globe.

* Not only uncountable plants, insects, fish and birds are perishing, a while ago, a million 'mad 'cows' were cremated; more recently in South Korea, a million infected pigs were buried alive.

* Who knows, as a matter of pure speculation, during the Iraq wars, how many soldiers probably could have suffered the same fate. After electro-magnetic treatment, followed by an overdose of Extra Low Frequency (ELF) waves, some thousands may have been buried alive under the desert sand; in fifty years, like in the case of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, we might get wise.

* ELF-waves, depleted uranium bullets and white phosphorus bombs complete the initial stage of capitalist global destruction.

* Those African countries which did not join 'Africom' - Libya, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Eritrea - are now being violently integrated into NATO.

The Second Conquest, the Third World War, is even more devastating, it already is launching the total, totalitarian bodily, mind and thought holocaust, the global maafa (Swahili: apocalyptic disaster).

The earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan is just a premonition, an ominous warning about far worse things to come, about true, real global fascism, called globalization.

What is taking place in Japan now, the same could occur anytime in France, the USA or Russia. Hundreds of atomic reactors are ready to give up the ghost. A tremendous continental or regional black-out could already spark off a chain reaction of uncontrollable events. With the weapons of mass destruction stockpiled all over soon we will be playing Russian roulette. Powerful arms like HAARP could reproduce the Japanese maafa anywhere, could cut the USA into half, in fact, could split the planet itself, and could even rip it out of its orbit.

What is happening in Japan now is not comparable to more recent events, perhaps in its possible human toll partially to the Transatlantic slave trade and the Conquest. In all probability there is no Japanese on the islands who are not affected radically by the atomic radiation, if not yet affected, then very soon in the following months everybody will have a huge problem. The real dimension of this disaster, which is really beginning now, we will only know in the next decades. This time not only Chernobyl or Japan are threatened, all human life is in danger of extinction.

Not even at this dimension of danger seven billion 'condemned of the earth´are taking up arms against a sea, a tsunami of troubles. Venezuela and Elsewhere, Will we go down in history, in the solar system, without a global anti-capitalist fight?

What is to be thought, done and transcended?

As we stated in so many writings already, the very simple answer to this multiple question is: To get rid of world capitalism in all its manifold dimensions, in all walks of life, of nature and society! Who has not tried to do this since birth already has a serious mental and physical problem, but it is not too late to mend. This is how capitalism surpassed all obsolete modes of production, and how it also became obsolete and merits to pass away. Dialectically, like any historic process capitalism affirms and negates itself ,as 'A' and 'Non-A'. It makes no sense only to attack the affirmation (A) of capitalism, to be truly anti-capitalist, radically we have to get rid of 'Non-A' too, have to transcend the whole capitalist global order, towards cosmic, creative emancipation, towards homo novum, the New Man.
franz@franzlee.org.ve
http://www.franzlee.org.ve

Chernobyl-Style Yellow Rain Causes Panic In Japan

2011-03-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

Chernobyl-Style Yellow Rain Causes Panic In Japan

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, March 24, 2011

Authorities assure alarmed citizens yellow powder is pollen, but victims of 
Chernobyl radiation were told the same thing

Radioactive yellow rain that fell in Tokyo and surrounding areas last night 
caused panic amongst Japanese citizens and prompted a flood of phone calls to 
Japan’s Meteorological Agency this morning, with people concerned that they were 
being fed the same lies as victims of Chernobyl, who were told that yellow rain 
which fell over Russia and surrounding countries after the 1986 disaster was 
merely pollen, the same explanation now being offered by Japanese authorities.

“The (Japan Meteorological) agency received more than 200 inquiries Thursday 
morning about yellowish residue left on roofs and elsewhere by the rain, 
stirring concerns that radioactive substances had fallen after accidents caused 
by the March 11 quake and tsunami at a nuclear power plant around 220 kilometers 
northeast of Tokyo,” reports Japan Today.

Officials later suggested the discoloration was caused by air-borne pollen 
falling with the rain. “The JMA believes the yellow patches are pollen, but has 
yet to confirm this,” reports the Wall Street Journal, adding that the JMA 
received over 280 calls after residents in the Kanto region discovered yellow 
powder on the ground.

“A health official at the Tokyo metropolitan government also said there is a 
possibility that the rain contained radioactivity but not at a level to have had 
adverse effects on people’s health,” adds the Japan Today report.

Given the fact that Japanese authorities have been habitually deceptive about 
the Fukushima crisis from start to finish, assurances that the yellow powder was 
merely a result of air-borne pollen particles are dubious at best. With people 
living in Tokyo already being told that tap water is unsafe to drink, along with 
contaminated vegetables and milk from certain areas near Fukushima, the fact 
that they were panicked by yellow rain is unsurprising.

Although pollen can turn rain a yellow color, the fact that the phenomenon 
occurred a couple of hundred kilometers south of the radiation-spewing Fukushima 
nuclear plant has stoked alarm, and understandably so given the fact that 
victims of Chernobyl nuclear fallout in 1986 were also told by authorities that 
yellow rain was harmless pollen, when in fact it was deadly radioactive 
contamination.

A University of California Daily Bruin article entitled “Remembering Chernobyl,” 
documents how children in Belarus happily splashed around in puddles of yellow 
rain having been assured by Russian authorities that it was merely pollen, when 
in fact it was a toxic mixture of radioactivity that had been blasted from the 
Chernobyl plant 80 miles away.

Thinking back to 20 years ago, it’s the splashing in yellow rainwater that 
Antonina Sergieff vividly recalls.

“We all jumped in the puddles with the yellow stuff. … You don’t see (it in) the 
air, it doesn’t materialize. But when you see the yellow dust, you see 
radiation,” Sergieff said.

When these elements first reached Sergieff 20 years ago, they came in the form 
of yellow rain.

It was not long after that residents in her hometown knew it wasn’t simply 
“pollen” – which is what government officials assured them, she said.

The effects of this “pollen” soon confirmed that those puddles of yellow rain 
contained something far more sinister, namely iodine-131, caesium-137, 
strontium-90 and plutonium-239.

“Soon, people started losing their hair, pictures of deformed animals sprouted 
up in independent newspapers, and incidences of cancer in Belarus skyrocketed, 
Sergieff said. According to the U.N. brief, cases of breast cancer in Belarus 
doubled between 1988 and 1999, among other increases.”

With levels of radiation emitted by Fukushima now approaching those spewed out 
by the blast at Chernobyl, as the establishment media bizarrely pretends that 
the crisis is all but over, seawater samples taken around 330 meters south of 
the plant confirm that levels of radioactive iodine released are the highest yet 
recorded.

As we have highlighted, despite UN and World Health Organization studies that 
claim Chernobyl led to a maximum of 9,000 deaths and 200,000 cases of radiation 
sickness, more contemporary studies have shown that nearly a million people have 
been killed from cancers caused by the disaster over the course of the last 25 
years.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the 
author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex 
Jones Show.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/chernobyl-style-yellow-rain-causes-panic-in-japan.html

Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan - Lifting the Veil of Nuclear Catastrophe and cover-up - By Keith Harmon Snow

2011-03-23T21:39:00.000-07:00


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan
Lifting the Veil of Nuclear Catastrophe and cover-up

By Keith Harmon Snow

Global Research, March 18, 2011
ConsciousBeingAlliance.com - 2011-03-17

As the sun set over quake-stricken Japan on Thursday 17 March 2011, we learned 
that four of six Fukushima nuclear reactor sites are irradiating the earth, that 
the fire is burning out of control at Reactor No. 4's pool of spent nuclear 
fuel, that there are six spent fuel pools at risk all told, and that the sites 
are too hot to deal with. On March 16 Plumes of White Vapor began pouring from 
crippled Reactor No. 3 where the spent fuel pool may already be lost. Over the 
previous days we were told: nothing to worry about. Earthquakes and after 
shocks, tidal wave, explosions, chemical pollution, the pox of plutonium, 
contradicting information too obvious to ignore, racism, greed -- add these to 
the original Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine and Death. 
The situation is apocalyptic and getting worse. This is one of the most serious 
challenges humanity has ever faced.

The U.S. nuke industry is blaming Japanese experts, distancing itself from the 
monster it created. Instead of sending nuclear or health experts to assist the 
Japanese people in their time of desperate need, US President Barack Obama first 
sent teams of intelligence agents and FEMA trained military grunts with special 
security clearances. The Pentagon floated a naval strike force led by the 
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan off the coast of Japan: 
advertised as a 'humanitarian' operation, the strike force was repositioned 
after it was partially irradiated. Can we trust officials and the corporate news 
media to tell us what is happening in an honest, timely, transparent manner? Are 
there precedents to the nuclear crisis in Japan? What is the U.S. defense 
establishment really concerned with here?

Humanity now faces a deadly serious challenge coming out of Japan -- the 
epicenter of radiation. Intentional efforts to downplay or dismiss this 
catastrophe reveal the immaturity of western civilization and some of our most 
acute human pathologies, including our worship of technology and our 
psychopathology of denial. The widespread distortion and cover-ups to protect 
private profits, national and corporate interests, to fool and betray the 
people, are unacceptable. Here are some of the deeper whats and whys and hows -- 
some technical issues and the kinds of questions people need to ask -- about the 
nuclear apocalypse unfolding on planet earth. Prayers are not enough. It's time 
to question everything, to put politics aside, to take personal action to halt 
nuclear expansion and defend ourselves from this industrial juggernaut.


PRO-NUKE ANTI-NUKE NO NUKES


I know something about technology, and science: I have Bachelor's and Master's 
degrees in Electrical Engineering -- with honors -- from one of America's top 
Engineering schools. Before 1990 I worked in classified programs for General 
Electric -- the maker of the nuclear reactors now irradiating Japan. I worked at 
GE Aerospace Electronics Laboratories: low-level classified government programs 
in communications, radars and missile guidance systems for Ronald Reagan's 
infamous Star Wars (Strategic Defence Initiative) programs.

 >From 1990 to 1993 I taught English at Japan's big Soga Shosa (trading houses) 
like Mitsubishi and Sumitomo Corporations, and meanwhile I biked the rivers, 
swam the beaches, hiked the mountains and studied the culture of Japan. Japanese 
corporations were paving the shorelines and rivers with concrete, sinking giant 
tetrapods off shore. One corporation even developed these giant rubber bladders 
-- the size of football-fields -- sunk offshore, which could be pumped full of 
seawater to provide a giant barrier against tsunami's. Of course, the profit 
margins for these corporations supplying these bags were huge, but I wonder what 
happened to the technology, if these were ever deployed, and where.

For the first 34 years of my life I was in favor of nuclear power. This changed 
when I saw young people in the United States put their bodies on the line to 
protest the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Station operations in Tennessee (1994). The 
commitment and integrity of these young people made me rethink my nuclear bias.

I began my career as a journalist by looking deeply into the rabbit-hole of 
nuclear power from 1993 to 2000. I visited the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's 
(NRC) Public Document Rooms -- which have since been closed in many places -- 
where I read thousands of microfilms and scanned microfiche records and 
excavated document after document in search of truth. I visited nuke plants in 
New England and industry conferences. I interviewed officials and I attended the 
most boring and sometimes secretive public meetings with the most stifling and 
unimaginative bureaucrats and with engineers (like me) so dry they squeaked. And 
then I reported on regulatory corruption, technical failures, undemocratic 
initiatives to betray the public trust, and the accumulating radiation and 
nuclear poisons -- and the many ways that the mass media supported and 
perpetuated the mythology.

THE ARROGANCE OF HUMANISM

"I repeat, there was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity 
from the damaged Japanese reactors," wrote Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
professor Dr. Joseph Oehmen on March 13. "By 'significant' I mean a level of 
radiation of more than what you would receive on -- say -- a long distance 
flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high 
levels of natural background radiation."
So begins a recent U.S. business sector article titled You Can Stop Worrying 
About A Radiation Disaster in Japan -- Here's Why, published four days after the 
earthquake struck in Japan. It has already proved false. Properly understood for 
what it is -- a childish, myopic, arrogant attempt to belittle the truth and 
influence public opinion -- the article provides an apt example of the rampant 
industry disinformation that is sweeping aside rational and compassionate and 
precautionary assessments with irrational jingoism, simplistic emotional 
appeals, and wrong-headed thinking. The post went viral and was republished widely.

How do we define apocalypse? EARTHQUAKE + TSUNAMI + AGED NUKE PLANT + 
LOSS-OF-COOLANT ACCIDENT + PLUTONIUM + FIRES + DISINFORMATION + GREED + DENIAL + 
FEAR + POLITICS = APOCALYPSE.

How many nuke plants are involved? We don't really know. Not that we have not 
been told, we have. There are six reactors at the Fukushima site, one reactor at 
the Tokai nuclear facility and three reactors at the stricken Onagawa nuclear 
complex. There are toxic chemical spills, petroleum refinery fires, gas fires, 
dangerous debris and human pathogens from the thousands of dead people and 
animals. The place is an apocalyptic nightmare, to be sure, but from the 
beginning the most important facts regarding the status of the nuclear pants and 
their components, their functioning or failing systems, the operability of the 
control rooms or integrity of the reactor containment structures, were being 
denied to the public. Now we are seeing some damage control by the U.S., the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the media.

It is simultaneously as though we are believed to be incapable of even the most 
rudimentary understanding of what is going on, while also being denied the truth 
in keeping with more than sixty years of secrecy and denial by the cult of the 
atom and its incestuous cult of intelligence.

The question is: what can we believe to be true? Look at the photos of the 
explosion. Are we stupid enough to believe that no radiation has been released 
from this reactor's primary or secondary containment systems? On Wednesday March 
16 we were finally told that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had ordered 
its remaining staff to evacuate areas of the Fukushima plant after radiation 
levels spiked and plumes of white vapour "were seen pouring from what 
authorities identified as [emphasis added] the station's No. 3 reactor.

The language about white vapors "seen pouring from what authorities identified 
as the stations No. 3 reactor" does not inspire confidence that 'authorities' 
had any clue about the status of things. Indeed, they are not in the control 
room, obviously, or anywhere near it, or anywhere near 'the station's No. 3 
reactor' because they are standing back trying to identify what they are seeing, 
to see what is going on, and where it is going on. The reactor's are too hot: 
this is radiation: this is the nightmare scenario we were told could not happen. 
Radiation is contaminating air, soil, ocean, people.

The You Can Stop Worrying "article" first appeared as a reader's comment posted 
following the Business Insider journal story Japan Death Toll Climbs 
Astronomically As Nuclear Crises Intensifies, which was itself a republished and 
retitled New York Times feature of Monday March 13. At first glance, the two 
Business Insider stories couldn't be further apart in their general themes: You 
Can Stop Worrying, which translates to, calm down, don't get hysterical, pay no 
attention to those anti-nuclear fanatics who think that even microwave ovens 
will kill you, versus the Death Toll Climbs Astronomically feature, which for 
all practical purposes we can translate to Holy shit, brother! Run for your 
life! Duck and Cover!

However, both stories serve as part of the unraveling global media 
disinformation campaign about the ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan. The 
primary imperatives of this campaign are economic. In other words, most of the 
reportage out there about what is happening in Japan -- so far -- has been 
anchored in western epistemological frameworks based in money, greed, private 
profits and loss. The loss should not be interpreted to mean that people (mostly 
we are talking about people NOT affected by the apocalypse in Japan) care about 
who lives or dies, but rather that their primary concerns are their financial 
balance sheets, their corporate images, their personal retirement portfolios, 
and the fall of the Nikkei Index and Dow Jones trading they drool over.

Sadly, the attitudes of many "news" writers (and their readers), government 
officials, energy consultants, corporate executives, nuclear experts and 
technicians, western humanitarian relief professionals (such as World Vision 
careerists), or of environmentalists for nuclear power -- like scientist James 
Lovelock -- and many other people who, for one reason or another, have had 
something to say about the nukes crisis in Japan, or about how Japan's nuclear 
misfortune can never become a Chernobyl, or how Three Mile Island didn't kill 
anyone, or why the events in Japan, no matter how alarming, should not be 
allowed to interrupt the "nuclear renaissance" touted by U.S. President Barrack 
Obama, or something about the beauty of some nuke somewhere else, are all based 
in self-interest, not the altruistic and compassionate concerns of all humanity, 
of environmental stewardship or the preservation of all life on earth, but in a 
self-righteous, arrogant and ignorant selfishness of the kind that author David 
Ehrenfeld elaborated in his monumental work, The Arrogance of Humanism.

Japanese are technical geniuses. The rail system and subways were precise: you 
could set your watch by them. In 2003, their advanced magnetic levitation 
Shinkansen bullet trains performed at 581 kilometers per hour (361 mph). If the 
Japanese can't do, no one can. Yet today Japan is on fire -- the epicenter of 
deadly radiation now emanating out of that sizable island. This is not about 
Japan, folks, or national borders: its about all of us, everywhere.

SPENT FUEL POOL FOOLS

While the absence of cooling water facilitated the nuclear crises in Japan, most 
likely some major reactor components (proven unsafe) also failed under the 
seismic stresses of the 9.0 quake. Key components likely cracked or shattered. 
The tsunami and huge aftershocks advanced the chaos. These factors were 
complicated by the loss of offsite electrical power (an electrical BLACKOUT), 
the failure of emergency diesel generators, and the subsequent loss-of-coolant 
(water).

Embrittlement of nickel-based superalloys that comprise reactor internals was 
flagged as a major safety issue as early as the 1960s, yet such problems were 
bureaucratically dismissed, covered over, buried in paperwork and regulatory 
studies produced by the NRC ("NUREG" documents), and ignored. Intergranular 
stress corrosion cracking of BWR core shrouds (the core shroud is next to fuel 
rods deep inside) is another major safety issue in GE designed BWRs built by 
Hitachi at Fukushima, and these plague every BWR reactor in the U.S.

We don't know, however, and for many days we were offered the standard industry 
refrain: no need to worry, no threat to public health and safety. BWR core 
shroud cracking (NUREG-1544), reactor pressure vessel cracking (NUREG-1511), 
embrittled components and aging (NUREG/CR-5939), cooling system failures 
(NUREG/CR-6087), reactor containment isolation systems failures (NUREG/CR-6339) 
-- all thoroughly documented.

The redundancy and ever-touted 'defense-in-depth' systems failed at Fukushima. 
All over the U.S. such systems have been routinely disabled to minimize 
electricity-generating outages, increase output power and maximize corporate 
profits. There are as many possibilities of failures outside what we have been 
spoon-fed -- the official sequence of events -- as there are dead people.

Amongst the most troubling and most deeply underplayed questions of the entire 
crisis concern the Fukushima Spent Fuel Pools. These basin are packed with tons 
of irradiated fuel rods that need to be cooled. One of the major postulated 
accident scenarios involves a Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LOCA) to the reactor 
core, but a LOCA event can also occur with a spent fuel pool. It has. Fires and 
explosions in Japan. The Spent Fuel Pools at the six Fukushima reactors are NOT 
inside primary containment. They are exposed. Burning. About to burn.

Reactors No. 4, 5, and 6 at Fukushima were shutdown when the earthquake struck. 
After the water drained and the spent fuel became exposed, the pool at reactor 
No. 4 caught fire, and continues to burn, as of Thursday March 17, releasing 
massive amounts of radiation into the environment. The status of the other six 
spent fuel pools at Fukushima is unknown. A courageous U.S. journalist Rachel 
Maddow explored the spent fuel pool issue with a former government official. The 
most important, critical point made by Princeton professor Frank Von Hippel 
occurs at minute 14:19 -- where Rachel Maddow talks over him: these are 
LONG-LIFE RADIONUCLIDES being emitted from the spent fuel pool(s). Isotopes of 
cesium: Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 years and will be around and hot for decades.

How much disaster are we talking about? The atomic bomb that exploded at 
Hiroshima created about 2000 curies of radioactivity. The spent fuel pools at 
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant (U.S.) are said to hold about 75 million curies. 
There are six spent fuel pools at Fukushima, but the numbers of tons of fuel 
rods in each have not been made public.

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) did the math: If Fukushima's 
Reactor No. 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of irradiated fuel per 
year and each ton is equivalent to 24 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by 
the Hiroshima bomb, then each fuel pool could contain on the order of 24,000 
times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, if all the 
produced irradiated fuel remains in the fuel pool.

Nuclear stupidity No. 1: the Fukushima reactor buildings are square (not 
circular) and had to absorb the force of the tsunami wave straight on. Stupidity 
No. 2: six reactors clustered too close together. Stupidity No. 3: no shoreline 
protection against a tsunami. Stupidity No. 4: reactors sited on earthquake 
faults. Stupidity No. 5: assumptions and calculations proving that the reactor, 
prior to its construction, could withstand anything that nature threw at it. 
Stupidity No. 6: it didn't begin in Japan: the industry, with all its 
corruptions, false assumptions and technological hubris, was born in secrecy in 
the United States of America.

Stupidity No. 125: spent fuel pools are packed too tightly, as is 
well-established by industry documents, for economic reasons, discarding safety 
concerns. Stupidity No. 458: the Spent Fuel Pools at Fukushima are suspended up 
high inside the reactor buildings secondary containment -- the same buildings 
whose roofs are blowing off! Are we to believe that the massive explosions that 
were captured on film, and others that were not, did not damage these elevated 
time bombs?

How many stupidities do we need to admit before we admit that it can happen in 
the United States and Europe and Canada too? Imagine those courageous Japanese 
nuclear workers at Fukushima -- sacrificing their lives! -- trying to save their 
families, Japan and the rest of us from our unprecedented stupidity!

During World War II they were called kamikazis and we have always portrayed them 
as terrorists: they were soldiers and pilots sacrificing their lives for the 
sake of their nation. Well, these heroic men and women sacrificing themselves at 
Fukushima have my deepest respect.

There is an ocean adjacent to the Fukushima complex, and yet the reactors and 
fuel pools cannot be kept cool. Impossible. The huge heat sink necessary to cool 
the melting fuel is not available. This is not about earthquakes and tsunamis -- 
it is about loss of off-site power, backup generators and emergency systems that 
occur in a blackout. Do electrical outages and blackouts occur anywhere else? 
Blizzards? Tornadoes? Hurricanes? The world is seeing more and more extreme and 
unpredictable weather. Claims that a serious nuclear 'accident' cannot happen in 
the U.S., Europe or Canada are false, and nuclear executives know it. That is 
why corporations refused at first to get into the nuclear power business, until 
the U.S. Government indemnified them with the Price Andersen Act (1957).

"What this [Fukushima] station suffered was a station blackout," says Deb Katz 
of the Citizens Awareness Network, who helped shut down Yankee Atomic in Rowe 
Massachusetts, "and the backup safety systems that were supposed to keep it 
operational -- the backup diesel generators -- failed. This can happen without 
an earthquake. A midwest [U.S.] power company caused the northeast grid to fail 
a few years ago; a flood or a terrorist attack could do the same. We could then 
experience a similar slow motion catastrophe though not on the grand scale of 
the Japanese site with its 6 nukes."
A LONG HISTORY OF DECEPTION

Like the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the International Atomic 
Energy Agency, Japanese officials have a long history of covering up ugly 
nuclear realities. In a recent WikiLeaks diplomatic cable, politician Taro Kono, 
a high-profile member of Japan's lower house, told U.S. diplomats that the 
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (MITI) -- the Japanese government 
department responsible for nuclear energy -- has been "covering up nuclear 
accidents and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear 
industry." In 2002 "the chairman and four executives of TEPCO, the company that 
owns the stricken Fukushima plant, resigned after reports that safety records 
were falsified."

Such singular but remarkable events follow a pattern of wholesale U.S. cover-ups 
that define the industry as secretive and criminal, and they involve shoddy 
equipment, human incompetence, unsafe designs, inadequate safety measures, and 
economic decisions that have occurred since the very beginining of Japan's 
nuclear power era -- which itself was born out of the bombing of Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki with U.S.-made weapons of mass destruction.

In the 1960's, TEPCO planned to build a reactor outside Kashiwazaki city: 
nuclear officials told the local community, for example, that radioactivity from 
the plant would increase rice cultivation and the coloring of the carp (a 
delicacy): seven reactors were eventually built there. In June 1973, radioactive 
waste water leaked from a storage tank at Fukushima's reactor No. 1. In July 
1974, Kansai Electric asked Westinghouse Corporation to replace the steam 
generator of one of Kansai's two Mihama reactors after Mihama I experienced four 
major shutdowns in less than four years.

In September 1974, following the emergency shutdown of 21 of the then 55 U.S. 
reactors due to radioactive leaks at the Illinois Dresden Reactor No. 1, 
Japanese officials inspected their six Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), similar to 
the Dresden BWR, and they found similar defects at Fukushima I and Hamaoka. 
Ditto, 1975: emergency shutdown's in the U.S. prompted inspections that 
discovered Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) problems at the Fukushima I and 
Tsuruga BWR reactors. Japan's Mihama reactors were plagued with radioactive 
'leaks' and faulty equipment that prompted Kansai officials to demand a refund 
from U.S. contractor Westinghouse Corporation. The Mihama Pressurized Water 
Reactors (PWRs) have been scrammed and shutdown and leaked. The accident at the 
Mihama Reactor No. 3 on 9 August 2004 was previously considered Japan's worst 
nuclear accident: there was no tsunami, and no earthquake.

Japan's fleet of white elephant nukes only grew more problematic. From April to 
September 1977, six of Japan's fourteen reactors were shutdown. Japanese 
corporations joined with Westinghouse and General Electric in the 1980's to 
export their destructive technology to other countries, mostly targeting the 
so-called Third World. Before 1979 there were some 25 reactors under 
construction or completed in Japan, and until last week there were 55 operating 
reactors. In 2006, GE and Hitachi Corporation teamed up to create three joint 
venture nuclear companies to expand nukes in North America.

One fact is certain: we have already been massively lied to about a massive and 
still unfolding nuclear disaster. The radiation releases from some four to six 
nuclear reactors in collapse are already known to be excessive, described by 
reputable experts as "worse than Three Mile Island but not as bad as Chernobyl." 
It may be worse than Chernobyl yet.

Additional radiation has been reported at the Onagawa complex, but this was 
explained away as wind-blown radioactivity from the Fukushima complex. 
Meanwhile, in the same reports, officials said that radiation was not leaking 
from Fukushima, or it was minimal, and there was no cause for alarm.

After several days of lies and distortions and official government censorship, 
reports appeared under the headlines Japan radiation leaks feared as nuclear 
experts point to possible cover-up. Reports also began citing partial meltdowns 
of nuclear fuel rods. The threat of meltdown is real, it has been happening to 
some degree, and it has already occurred far more than we have been told. The 
physical and thermonuclear states of materials and systems and the spread of 
radioactivity at Japan's reactors remains shrouded in disinformation and silence.

THE CLEAN AND GREEN PROPAGANDA


Of course, technology gurus and corporate executives and financial consultants 
are hysterical, claiming there were no deaths from Three Mile Island and that 
deaths at Chernobyl are exaggerated by the mass media. These claims are false. 
The new book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the 
Environment provides irrefutable evidence of massive loss of life.

"The book is solidly based -- on health data, radiological surveys and 
scientific reports -- some 5,000 in al," says journalist Karl Grossman. "It 
concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly 
of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the 
accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow."

James Lovelock, author of the renowned GAIA Hypothesis, is a celebrated 
environmentalist for nuclear energy peddling nuclear power as a clean, green, 
renewable energy source of the future. However, Lovelock has a long history 
working for NASA -- the outer-space division of the Pentagon -- and is deeply 
enmeshed in the western epistemological framework.

Commenting on Japan's nuclear crisis, Lovelock said that people were 
'prejudiced' against nuclear power unreasonably. "It is very safe," he said. 
Chernobyl, for instance, was "an idiotic mess-up that could only have occurred 
in the Soviet Union", and according to UN estimates had killed only about 56 
people. More people are routinely killed in oil refineries and coal mines, he 
pointed out."

James Lovelock's Chernobyl statement should immediately discredit him as a 
quack: Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is unwilling to go on record 
claiming anything less than many, many deaths. Further, Lovelock's comment about 
the 'idiotic mess-up' by Russians is inherently racist: the Russians were the 
first to put a satellite (Sputnik) into orbit, for example, and NASA 
collaborated with the Russian MIR Space Station, which broke all kinds of records.

Lovelock suggests that nuclear reactors are our only hope to curtail global 
climate change, and that this may involve, for example, the 'suspension of 
democracy'. However, democracy has been long since suspended for many of the 
earths people and species -- forced to live and die with our burgeoning wastes, 
consumption and exploitation. Lovelock's analysis is patently false -- 
contaminated by his own inability to see beyond his privilege and self-interests.

Not convinced? Lovelock has also reportedly stated, wrongheadedly: "One of the 
striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the 
richness of their wildlife. This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb 
test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the United States' Savannah River 
nuclear weapons plant of the Second World War."

Tell this to the mutant babies, weak-spined and deformed children from the 
Chernobyl killing zones, chronicled in Russian filmmaker Vladimir Kuznetsov's, 
"While We Are Still Alive, and to the people of Bikini Atoll whose stolen island 
is officially acknowledged to be highly contaminated. Savannah River is another 
SUPERFUND site.

The nuclear power cycle involves disease, despair and death from the uranium 
mining to daily operations to the nuclear waste "'dumping'. Uranium mines in 
Niger that have built France's entire nuclear complex are toxic wastelands 
spreading radiotoxins across north and sub-Saharan Africa. The Tuareg and Toubou 
nomads have been completely shattered by the confiscation, exploitation and 
irradiation of their lands by the nuclear complex. Native Americans continue to 
suffer massive epidemics of disease, contamination and confiscation of lands in 
the Secret Nuclear War at the American Ground Zero: the nuclear complex has 
compounded the native American genocide begun in 1492. Daily contamination 
releases into water, soil and air occur at every operating nuclear reactor in 
the world. There is no 'disposal' of deadly nuclear toxins that now exist to 
perpetuity, and yet wastes are typically dumped on poor communities like 
Barnwell, South Carolina, or native American lands.

Out of sight, out of mind: nuclear poisons are colorless, odorless, and deadly.

START WORRYING, HERE'S WHY
The writing You Can Stop Worrying About A Radiation Disaster in Japan -- Here's 
Why is packed full of disinformation and technical jargon, masked as scientific 
expertise, meant to confound, confuse and scientifically impress the 
un-technical (concerned) reader. The author at first did not identify himself, 
which is a tactic many people use so that they do not have to take 
responsibility, or worry about being held accountable. Appended as a sort of 
disclaimer to the article that morphed out of the comment we find the statement: 
"Since posting this, we have learned that it was written by Dr. Josef Oehmen, a 
research scientist at MIT."

In the nuclear arena, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is known 
for the infamous Nuclear Reactor Safety Study (WASH 1400), chaired by MIT 
nuclear scientist Norman P. Rasmussen (commonly known as The Rasmussen Report), 
that whitewashed the massive flaws and safety failures of a burgeoning, 
secretive, incestuous nuclear power industry, even while it exposed them to some 
degree.

According to a Nuclear Information and Resource Service fact sheet on Fukushima, 
in 1986, Harold Denton, then the NRC's top safety official, told an industry 
trade group that the GE "Mark I [BWR] containment, especially being smaller with 
lower design pressure, in spite of the suppression pool, if you look at the WASH 
1400 safety study, you'll find something like a 90% probability of that 
containment failing."

Produced at the height of the United States' anti-nuclear movement in 1974, the 
Rasmussen Report downplayed the risk of nuclear accidents and polished the image 
of a technologically diseased industry. The stridently pro-nuclear MIT has spent 
billions of taxpayers dollars on secretive and highly biased research programs 
of all things nuclear. MIT is also a known hotbed of the Central Intelligence 
Agency (CIA), with a revolving door from MIT to government to the CIA.

"I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake," 
wrote MIT's Dr. Josef Oehmen in his initial post of March 12. "There has not 
been one single report that was accurate and free of errors... By 'not free of 
errors' I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism - that is quite 
normal these days. By 'not free of errors' I mean blatant errors regarding 
physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an 
obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors 
are build and operated. I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single 
paragraph contained an error."

Turns out Dr. Oehmen's report had so many errors, and yet was so widely 
regurgitated, that it was taken over by MIT's nuclear experts. Dr. Oehmen 
employs the standard ruse of claiming that the press, which can very easily be 
shown to as stridently pro-nuclear as MIT itself, is instead plagued by 
"tendentious anti-nuclear journalism -- that is quite normal these days." He 
then explains nuclear power (wrongly) arriving at last at his definitive 
statement that, "I repeat, there was and will *not* be any significant release 
of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors."

"The first 'type' of radioactive material is the uranium in the fuel rods," 
wrote Dr. Oehmen, "plus the intermediate radioactive elements that the uranium 
splits into, also inside the fuel rod (Cesium and Iodine). There is a second 
type of radioactive material created, outside the fuel rods. The big main 
difference up front: Those radioactive materials have a very short half-life, 
that means that they decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. 
By fast I mean seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the 
environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not dangerous, at 
all. Why? By the time you spelled "R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E", they will be 
harmless, because they will have split up into non radioactive elements..."

It takes about five seconds to spell R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E and it takes about 
the same amount of time to read a chart (below) which shows the actual lifetimes 
and half-lives of radioisotopes that people need to be concerned about today.

Not only does Dr. Oehmen intentionally misinform people about the inherent 
design flaws and potential failures of nuclear reactors and subsystems, but he 
knowingly disinforms about the potential for serious health consequences and the 
radioactive contaminants that are typically released during a nuclear power 
accident. While millions of people in Japan are suffering the personal 
psychological terror of a possible nuclear holocaust, the fears and horrors of 
life and death from a natural disaster, starvation and thirst, and radioactive 
poisoning. Dr. Joseph Oehmen -- safe in Boston Massachusetts -- has been been 
boasting about his blog post -- equally popular with people who hate it and love 
it -- which spread like a virus on the Internet.

During nuclear fission, the uranium from the fuel rods splits into many 
radioactive fission products that can then escape during a nuclear power 
'event'. These include dangerous Noble Gases (xenon and krypton); Hallogens 
(including iodines and bromines); Alkali Metals (including cesium 137); Alkaline 
earths (including barium 133 and strontium 90) and the elements Tellurium and 
Ruthenium. Some fissionable elements decay rapidly and are inconsequential 
during releases, but some decay into other, more deadly nuclides. The most 
dangerous nuclides have half-lives in days (I-131 = 8 days), years (Cs-137 = 30 
years) or centuries (Pu-239 = 24,000 years). Half-life is the time it takes for 
one-half of the material to decay -- lest we forget that the other half is still 
present.


All of these fissionable products are potentially released and they have varying 
degrees of half-lives, mobility, migration and toxicity depending on factors 
like atmospheric conditions, temperature of the reactor core and operating 
capacity (megawatts) at shutdown, and the presence of coolants. The most 
dangerous of these are iodine 131 (I-131), cesium 137 (Cs-137), strontium 90 
(Sr-90), cobalt 60 (Co-60) and plutonium 239 (Pu-239). All of these negatively 
affect the human body and all of these have been released in nuclear power 
'accidents', during venting of radioactive steam or flushing of radioactive 
water, and other 'events'. Another deadly isotope which seems to consistently 
'escape' from nuclear power sites is cobalt 60 (Co-60), half-life 5.2 years. 
Co-60 accumulates and migrates through steam generator tubes and other secondary 
coolant processes, in core shrouds and reactor pressure vessels, and many of the 
other components of nuclear reactors whose histories of failures are thoroughly 
documented.

Is radiation leaking in Japan? Yes and no. The term 'leak' suggests air 
squeaking out of a balloon. In Japan we have leaks, here and there, but we also 
have explosions, fires and other phenomena that create massive radioactive 
emissions. To say 'leak' is to downplay what is happening. The balloons in Japan 
have burst: primary containment has been breached at Reactor No. 3 and at least 
one spent fuel pool is burning up. With the walls blown out and roof blown off, 
it seems at least one other spent fuel pool is gone or going.

Nuclear advocates deride and dismiss public ignorance about radionuclides like, 
for example, the noble gases. Nuclear advocates frequently state that both xenon 
and krypton decay and disappear in a matter of seconds or minutes. What they 
don't tell us is that these isotopes decay into daughter isotopes that are 
extremely deadly emitters. Many credible physicians, scientists and other 
nuclear experts -- free of the self-interests of nuclear profits, academic 
sponsorship or career advancement -- have outlined the absence of 
epidemiological studies of certain radionuclides emitted or flushed at nuclear 
reactors. Dr. Helen Caldicott has elaborated the detrimental health effects of 
the noble gases xenon (Xe) and krypton (Kr), and she notes that these have 
appearance hundreds of miles from reactors believed to have emitted them.



• Xenon 137, with a half-life of 3.9 minutes, converts almost immediately to the 
notoriously dangerous cesium 137 with a half-life of thirty years.
• Krypton 90, half-life of 33 seconds, decays to rubidium 90, half-life of 2.9 
minutes, then to the medically toxic strontium 90, half-life of twenty-eight years.
• Xenon 135 decays to cesium 135 with an incredibly long half-life of 3 million 
years.
• Large amounts of xenon 133 are released at operating reactors, and although it 
has a relatively short half-life of 5.3 days, it remains radioactive for 106 days.
• Krypton 85, which has a half-life of 10.4 years, is a powerful gamma radiation 
emitter.
• Argon 39 has a 265-year half-life.


"Other dangerous noble gases include xenon 141,143 and 144, which decay to 
cerium 141,143 and 144," Dr. Helen Caldicott reports in Nuclear Power is Not the 
Answer. "According to the National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP Report 
No. 60) these three cerium isotopes,which are beta emitters,are abundant 
products of nuclear fission reactions and have moderately long half-lives. They 
bio-concentrate in the food chain, and they irradiate the lung, liver, skeleton, 
and gastrointestinal tract, where they act as potent carcinogens."

On March 14 Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) outlined the risks from 
Japan. Iodine 131 migrates in air and is known for causing thyroid cancers, 
especially in children. Strontium 90 causes different cancers. Cesium 137 
concetrates in bone and causes leukemia. Microscopic particles of plutonium 239 
cause lung cancer if inhaled and Pu-239 kills instantly in any sizeble dose. 
Areas contaminated by plutonium will have to be abandoned -- as happened at 
Chernobyl.

"Since 2010, Fukushima Daiichi Unit-3 reactor had been using mixed-oxide fuel 
(also called plutonium fuel or MOX)," PSR reported, in Japan's Nuclear Crises 
Worsens, "which is even more dangerous to the public than a severe accident with 
uranium fuel. Plutonium fuel contains plutonium and other very toxic actinides 
that would increase the number of resulting cancers. Current reports say that 
this fuel has been exposed to air."

"Pressure in at least two of the reactors have reported to be well above normal 
levels," continued PSR, "and the reactor operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, 
released some of the pressure by venting radioactive vapor from the containment 
structure. In addition, the radionuclide cesium has been reportedly found 
outside the reactor, which indicates that there has been fuel damage."

The proponents of nuclear power have used all kinds of disinformation and 
tactics to protect the industry -- compelling the nuclear complex to arm guards 
to 'protect' these secrets and to 'protect' civilian reactors. It is not only 
'terrorists' that the nuclear establishment seeks to protect us from: the armed 
guards and classified documents are to prevent the public from learning the 
truth about the destruction of documents, the disappearing of evidence, the 
falsification of reports and records, the calculated fudging of risk and safety 
assessments. There have been countless exposes, such as Daniel Ford's 1982 book 
The Cult of the Atom: The Secret Papers of the Atomic Energy Commission.


FALSE STATEMENTS AND PREMATURE ASSURANCES

The original New York Times story, Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief 
Efforts Intensify (retitled by Business Insider, commented on by Dr. Joseph 
Oehmen), follows the patterns of the media and government begun on DAY ONE, 
wherein authorities offered false assurances, premature evaluations, and 
outright lies. These officials -- and the media that quoted them -- repeatedly 
reiterated that there was no cause to worry. At first, no radiation was 
released, we were told, over and over, even though, admittedly, there were some 
slight reactor problems here and there. Then there were explosions, but still 
the radiation levels were normal, or, well, maybe there was a puff of steam, 
which we were told was a hydrogen blast, but radiation monitors showed nothing, 
and there was no threat to the public health or safety.

The Japanese Government soon dispatched health and rescue teams dressed in white 
moon suits and breathing through respirators and hauling around geiger counters 
to measure radiation levels in frightened children, but still, no radiation was 
released, they chanted, no cause for alarm, the media reported. A handful of 
citizens reported to the hospital showing signs of radiation poising, but still 
there were 'no serious radiation concerns', officials were everywhere quoted, or 
else what little radiation was released was compared to what you might get 
riding on a school bus in the sunshine. While evacuating thousands of people in 
the 20 kilometer zone (12 miles) around Fukushima, on the one hand, the 
government continued to tell people that the public was not at risk, on the 
other, and the media continued to report the lie, as they have always done, and 
still do, with radiation emergencies in the United States.


For example, on November 23, 2009, a radioactive contamination at Three Mile 
Island led to a Reuters news report titled Federal Officials: Radiation Leak At 
Three Mile Island No Threat to Public Safety. Like the 'news reportage' coming 
out of Japan, the Three Mile Island leak story was bereft of any discussion, 
analysis, counterpoint or critique from anyone. Journalists who collaborate with 
the western English-language news-consuming media have no comprehension of the 
technological issues, the industry cover-ups, the deceptions, the bureaucratic 
inertia or the radiological poisons produced and the concomitant epidemics of 
disease clustered around nukes. They have swallowed the industry slogans and 
green-washing for so long that their capacity to provide comprehensive, 
informed, investigative reportage is less than zero. Hence we find innocent 
[sic] people like CNN's Anderson Cooper (360) reporting from 100 kilometers 
north of Fukushima and then freaking out and running for their lives from the 
invisible killer: radiation. Meanwhile, CNN cuts back-and-forth from Cooper to 
Jim Walsh -- 'our nuclear expert and CNN contributor' -- who arrogantly 
reassures the increasingly anxious Anderson Cooper that everything is under 
control and the blasts and white smoke are of no concern.

"We had an explosion," MIT's Dr. Jim Walsh reports, the Boston, Massachusetts 
skyline and the Prudential Center skyscrapers glimmering brightly behind him. 
"It turned out that explosion did not compromise the [nuclear] core facility," 
he guesses (minute 29). Walsh immediately betrays his speculation a few minutes 
later (minute 59). "Hopefully [emphasis added], it's just the outer structure, 
and has left unaffected the reactor, and unaffected the containment vessel. 
Because if it were to affect those things...uh... that would be bad news..."

"The subtext here is Should I Get Out of Here?" interrupts the alarmed Anderson 
Cooper, in the live on-the-air broadcast. Of course, from this point on the 
western press increasingly focuses the public's attention on the trials and 
tribulations and death-defying escape of the courageous [white] investigative 
reporter, Anderson Cooper.

"I hear you Anderson," responds expert Jim Walsh, chuckling. "I want to err on 
the side of caution for you here, Anderson." Walsh is barely able to contain his 
laughter as he sells Cooper out. "Uh, ah, my guess is that you are O.K. But I 
don't want you to sue me if I am wrong. But, uh, I'm inclined that you're O.K."

"There have been release of..uh..uh...I guess a gas," Cooper continues, "and 
correct me, I flunked science... There have been releases out over the 
ocean...why were they doing these controlled releases?"

Dr. Jim Walsh then pontificates that radiation releases that ostensibly drift 
out over the ocean -- releases questioned by the ill-prepared and uneducated 
Cooper -- are 'mildly radioactive', unwanted but not dangerous, in any case, 
that they are being screened for dangerous radonuclides by the Japanese reactor 
experts, and "it's not going to be a major health threat."

Nonsense! Here is a simultaneous catastrophe beyond human comprehension: At 
least six nuclear reactors in various states of collapse, out-of-control, and in 
partial meltdown, and at least one even more deadly spent fuel pool overheating 
and burning, amidst the apocalypse from the original Richter 9.0 earthquake, the 
Richter 5.0 and 6.0 aftershocks, the Tsunami, the massive death toll, the lack 
of emergency vehicles and spreading radioactivity, the fires, the melting Spent 
Fuel Pools -- they are not "screening" radioactive releases which, in any case, 
are now uncontrolled.

Of course, according to his own biography, CNN's nuclear consultant, Dr. Jim 
Walsh, an expert in international security and a Research Associate at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program (SSP) -- which 
also shares U.S. special forces as 'research fellows'. He is published and 
selected as the chosen expert by the major U.S. and European media. Dr. Jim 
Walsh is the former Executive Director of the Managing the Atom project at 
Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a visiting 
scholar at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory -- one of our Department of Energy SUPERFUND sites, deep 
down the dark [nuclear] rabbit hole. Dr. Jim Walsh is another government spook.

For another example, "[T]he most urgent worries concerned the failures at two 
reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant," the New York Times 
wrote, in Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief Efforts Intensify, "where 
engineers were still struggling to avert meltdowns and where some radiation had 
already leaked. An explosion at one of the reactors on Monday did not appear to 
have harmed it, Japanese officials said."

In one sentence we are told that a nuclear meltdown may be imminent, and in the 
next sentence, same paragraph, Japanese officials assured the public (the New 
York Times backed them up) that an explosion occurred but the reactor was not 
harmed. Is this believable? When the Japanese nuke experts took the drastic 
measure of pumping seawater into the reactors they knew that the reactors would 
be ruined forever. Given the economics of such a choice -- billions upon 
billions of Japanese yen destroyed forever -- we can infer that the situation is 
beyond grave: the Fukushima area is now a permanent sacrifice zone: people, 
wildlife, land has been sacrificed to the Gods of nuclear technology.

"We have no evidence of harmful radiation," deputy Cabinet secretary Noriyuki 
Shikata told reporters after one of the recent reactor building explosions.

Environmental activists in the area of the Fukushima reactors began to cry foul 
after finding that radiation monitoring stations were not operating. At the top 
of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Monitoring Website it said 
"monitoring goes on around the clock year round" and at the bottom it said "THIS 
SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY SHUTDOWN." Activists believed that TEPCO was downplaying 
radioactive releases. At the same time, TEPCO was announcing that it planned to 
vent the containment [vessel] to relieve the pressure, which caused releases of 
radioactivity into the air.

On Wednesday March 16, National Public Radio reported that "the chief of the 
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that all the water is gone from one of 
the spent fuel pools at Japan's most troubled nuclear plant, but Japanese 
officials denied it." Of course, National Public Radio has been heavily 
subsidized by the nuclear power industry and has consistently advanced the 
nuclear industry agenda.

More nonsense: Radiation from Japan's troubled nuclear reactors has virtually no 
chance of reaching the U.S. -- the West Coast, Alaska or other locations -- the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday March 15. (Note that they don't want 
to disturb the tourist industry, so they say nothing about Hawaii.) The 
statement from the NRC said that "the 'small' radiation releases so far [sic] 
from the Japanese reactors has been blown out to sea, away from populated areas."

On Wednesday March 16, the United Nations Comprehensive Test Ban treaty 
Organization reported that a radiation plume from Japan nukes would hit Southern 
California late Friday. Of course, health and NRC officials say it poses very 
little risk.

DISTANCING U.S. NUKE INDUSTRY FROM JAPAN


NBC News on Wednesday evening (March 16) ran several short 'news' clips about 
Japan's nuclear crises. One of these was clearly intended to distance General 
Electric and the nuclear Regulatory Commission from Japan, a sort of betrayal of 
the culture of secrecy and their historically incestuous relationship. Why? To 
perform damage control, improve investor confidence, assuage public fears of a 
similar catastrophe at one of the 110 reactors in the U.S.

The NBC broadcast began by pointing out that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission (NRC) has advised U.S. citizens who are within 50 miles (80 
kilometers) of the Fukushima reactors to evacuate or stay indoors. The U.S. set 
a higher standard, and the news went on to promote the idea that Japanese 
officialdom cannot be trusted, but U.S. officialdom can.

Then the NBC News reporter, Lester Holt, was shown being scanned for radiation 
after returning from the Sendai area: no contamination on his body, but his 
"shoe bottoms [soles] contained slightly elevated amounts of radiation, but of 
no danger to us," he said. Again, the standard tactic of reporting that 
contamination has occurred -- this time it is on his shoes -- but that it is of 
no danger. Furthering the myths about radioactivity and its deadly means of 
spreading disease, the shoe bottom problem was nothing a little soap and elbow 
grease couldn't fix. And so, later in the hour, they showed the shoes being 
scrubbed and everything being returned to [business as] normal.

NBC followed the news tidbits about radioactive shoes with pictures of Fukushima 
reactors -- buildings with their roofs blown apart -- accompanied with 
assertions that there is a POSSIBLE breach of containment at the Fukushima 
Reactor No. 2, and that a breach of Reactor No. 3 containment vessel is CONFIRMED.

Cut to the U.S. Congress, where NBC brings us a very, very short clip from a 
special Senate hearing held on Wednesday March 16. Suddenly the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (NRC) is awake, and they care, and they are telling an 
equally awake and suddenly concerned U.S. Congress that they believe that Japan 
has covered up the extent of the nuclear disaster.

"Radiation levels are extremely high," proclaims NRC chief Dr. Gregory B. 
Jaczko. The spent fuel pools are dry. Secondary containment at the reactor [No. 
3] has been breached, but Tokyo is denying this."

Finally, NBC informs its viewers, in passing, that General Electric -- the 
designer and salesmen of the GE Mark I Boiling Water reactors that General 
Electric dumped on Fukushima back in the 1970s -- is a part owner of MSNBC. Full 
disclosure, of course.

Suddenly the 'news' shifted to big bold banners flashed across the TV screen in 
big blue fonts. These banners remind good, tax-paying and law-abiding citizens 
-- good people watching the evening news after a hard day's work -- that GE has 
reviewed the safety concerns that were previously raised about GE BWR reactors, 
and so reactors in the U.S. are safe. It was no longer news: it was a public 
relations ploy, a photo op for GE to improve its image, right out of George 
Orwell's 1984.

The latest psychological operation underway is to convince and reassure the U.S. 
public and English-language speaking world that General Electric is not 
responsible for what is happening in Japan; that U.S.-based G.E.-designed 
reactors elsewhere, being of the same age and design, are not going to have the 
same problems as reactors in Japan. The message is also that the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission runs a tight ship, that oversight is comprehensive and 
thorough, people are doing their jobs, and that the nuclear industry in the U.S. 
is nothing like the secretive and bungling industry in Japan.

While the message is racist at its [nuclear] core, nothing could be further from 
the truth. It can happen here. San Onofre. Diablo Canyon. Vermont Yankee. There 
have been all kinds of warning signs. It won't be a tsunami, on the back of an 
earthquake, or maybe it will. It will be a BLACKOUT scenario of some kind, as it 
is in Japan.

In the Congressional Hearing, Senator Barbara Boxer was suddenly awake, and 
suddenly concerned, and suddenly the U.S. Congress is going to straighten this 
all out and protect us. The U.S. Senate Hearings began with some grandstanding 
by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), whose jabs were directed at Republicans, 
but in the end she asked a few questions.

The next speaker, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla) reads a garbage speech about how 
wonderful the NRC is and how safe are U.S. reactors. Our first and foremost 
concern is safety, he says, and we must continue to develop and site and license 
and operate new reactors world wide. "We've delayed for 30 years now. So I think 
that we certainly don't want to slow down, let's keep going."

The hearing was completely corporate, one Senate official citing recent New York 
Times stories that have suddenly awoken them (the Senators) to the many warnings 
that had previously occurred. My God, we didn't know. Meanwhile, the NRC 
Chairman testified that the NRC can not attribute a single death to the nuclear 
accident at Three Mile Island.

A few months ago, President Obama signed some 8.5 billion dollar loan guarantees 
for a nuclear reactor construction project for U.S. nuclear corporation Southern 
Company, in partnership with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

Of course, the Price Andersen Act, passed in 1957, indemnifies nuclear utilities 
and reactor operators from all lawsuits, financial liability or related 
responsibility.

Everything suggests that it will be business as usual. Destabilization, 
destruction, war and catastrophe have always been turned into a big business for 
the United States of America. Across the ocean tens of thousands of people are 
protesting in Germany and France and Briton. Here, even the discussion is off 
course. The wrong questions are being asked and the wrong people are answering 
them. Instead of talking about limits to growth, the focus is on expansion, 
profits, trade and so-called progress. Why would this situation be any 
different? As Senator Barbara Boxer eventually said: we should be humbled.

Perhaps the worst horror of all is that people trapped in the contaminated zones 
are now being shunned by outsiders, including aid organizations. Radiation 
fears, mingled with a sick sense of abandonment, reported the Los Angeles Times, 
as people are afraid to help them. People in the evacuation zones - elders and 
those without fuel or transport -- are geting no help, and no information. We 
should be humbled.

Keith Harmon Snow is a war correspondent, photographer and independent 
investigator, and a four time (2003, 2006, 2007, 2010) Project Censored award 
winner. He is also the 2009 Regent's Lecturer in Law & Society at the University 
of California Santa Barbara, recognized for over a decade of work, outside of 
academia, contesting official narratives on war crimes, crimes against humanity 
and genocide while also working as a genocide investigator for the United 
Nations and other bodies. From 1985 to 1989, he worked as Engineer, and then 
Manager, GE Aerospace Electronics Laboratories, Syracuse NY. He has three papers 
published in the journals of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics 
Engineers (IEEE).
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of 
the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on 
Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the 
author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or 
liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.

© Copyright Keith Harmon Snow, ConsciousBeingAlliance.com, 2011

The url address of this article is: 
www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=23764

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23764 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The moment nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people- By David Derbyshire

2011-03-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

*The moment nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people* 

By David Derbyshire 

Last updated at 8:55 PM on 18th March 2011

    * Officials admit they may have to bury reactors under concrete - as
      happened at Chernobyl
    * Government says it was overwhelmed by the scale of twin disasters
    * Japanese upgrade accident from level four to five - the same as Three    Mile Island
    * We will rebuild from scratch says Japanese prime minister
    * Particles spewed from wrecked Fukushima power station arrive in California
    * Military trucks tackle reactors with tons of water for second day

Overwhelmed: Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cries as he leaves after a press conference in Fukushima

Overwhelmed: Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cries as he leaves after a press conference in Fukushima

The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing 'several radiation deaths' by the UN International Atomic Energy.

Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the 
radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in 
three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, 
suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down.

After Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis.

He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said: 'The unprecedented scale of the 
earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, frankly speaking, were among many things that happened that had not been anticipated under our disaster management contingency plans.

'In hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and coordinating all that information and provided it faster.'

Nuclear experts have been saying for days that Japan was underplaying the 
crisis' severity.

It is now officially on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in 
Pennsylvania in 1979. Only the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 has topped the scale.

Deputy director general of the NISA, Hideohiko Nishiyama, also admitted that they do not know if the reactors are coming under control.

He said: 'With the water-spraying operations, we are fighting a fire we cannot see. That fire is not spreading, but we cannot say yet that it is under control.'

But prime minister Naoto Kan insisted that his country would overcome the 
catastrophe

'We will rebuild Japan from scratch,' he said in a televised speech: 'In our 
history, this small island nation has made miraculous economic growth thanks to the efforts of all Japanese citizens. That is how Japan was built.'

_It comes after pictures emerged showing overheating fuel rods exposed to the elements through a huge hole in the wall of a reactor building at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant. _

_Radiation is streaming into the atmosphere from the used uranium rods at 
reactor number four, after a 45ft-deep storage pool designed to keep them stable boiled dry in a fire. _

And some of the radioactive material could reach Britain within a fortnight, 
according to experts.

However they say it will not be dangerous when it reaches our shores while low levels of radiation have already hit Southern California.

See: http://www.prisonplanet.com/nuclear-plant-chief-weeps-as-japanese-finally-admit-that-radiation-leak-is-serious-enough-to-kill-people.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=David+Derbyshire
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Venezuela, after Libya, to prepare ourselves for the Second Conquest!

2011-03-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

Venezuela, after Libya, to prepare ourselves for the Second Conquest!

By Franz J. T. Lee

A. It ain't necessarily so!

It is extremely difficult to tell an alienated mind that it is being bamboozled by propaganda and disinformation. How could a mind-controlled person know what really is happening in Japan or Libya?

In Plato's "Republic", the first model of apartheid politics, we find the secrets of mind control, the fons et origo of the current post-Orwellian corporate barbarism. Many years ago we identified this 'democratic' barbarism as global fascism, as 'globofascism'. In the third part of Plato's "Politeia" he explained to us what really are ruling class 'information', ideology and education, especially their barbarous functions. Furthermore, he elaborated the urgency of censorship and the necessity to tell blatant lies to the exploited and discriminated 'subjects' in order to perpetuate political domination and to preserve various types of exploitative slave-owning 'democracy'. Of course, the kratos of the demos was exclusively reserved for power elites, for the slave-owners, for the philosopher kings.

The idea was (and still is), now more than ever, to control the bodies, minds and thoughts of the toiling slaves, peasants, serfs and modern wage slaves. Across the ages during feudalism, religious Stoicism, Judaism and Christianity ferociously were attacking the human intellect of peasants and workers, of all laboring classes.

B. Dubito, cogito, ergo sum! (Descartes)

By pumping religion into their very hearts, the servants were taught to 'believe', not to think, not to ask questions, especially not to doubt what their masters preach. They were forced to believe in great gods, men, ideas, races and chosen peoples, all who supposedly make and direct world events, world history. No doubting Thomas was allowed to enter the kingdom of heaven. In the bourgeois revolution against absolutism precisely the opposite was en vogue. To doubt was revolutionary, was democratic.

With the upsurge of the bourgeois classes, against the feudal lords and corrupt clergy, capitalist ideology was based in atheist mechanical materialism. A true capitalist, a bourgeois, a democrat, a mechanical materialist was an atheist. The Cartesian philosophy taught the rulers how to doubt, to doubt that the 'information' coming from ancient Greek mythology, feudal religious dogmas and modern political institutions are absolute truths.

Rene Descartes insisted that: It ain't necessarily so!

His motto, as a guide for capitalist ruling classes, - against religious obscurantism and bigotry, against mind and thought control - was very simple:

Dubito, cogito, ergo sum! (I doubt, I think, therefore I exist!)

Surely, this could also give birth to the New, to emancipatory doubting Thomases.

William Shakespeare taught us why we should doubt the veracity of anything that comes out of the mouth, out of the mouthpieces of the Murdoch Empire, CNN or Fox News about Venezuela, Libya or Japan, in fact, out of bourgeois capitalist mass media.

Also, in this case, information from Japan or Libya ain't necessarily the truth.

However, there is no reason to become defeatist, to lose all 'faith' in oneself and in humanity.

Like Heracleitus and Anaximander, the Ancient Greek hylozoists, Shakespeare told us in 'Hamlet' that who does not expect the unexpected, that is, human emancipation, will never find it.

Hence, the unexpected, the 'wondrous strange' could be possible. Why?

"Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".
In every military attack on the workers of the world, capitalism is attacking itself, is destroying its negation, is digging its own grave. A true dialectician knows what will follow when a closed system dialectically only permits 'change from within'. Such a unilateral process destroys its own life wire, its dynamo, its dynamei on. Both its affirmation and negation lose their contradictory relations, they perish and pass into galactic oblivion. This happens in all internal processes, in all revolutions, that end up in the 'negation of the negation', in the eternal affirmative 'A' again. This is the 'curse' of capitalism, from which it cannot escape, it 'merits to pass away' (Hegel).

C. After Libya, who and what next?

In how far the above concerns us, is pertinent for Venezuela, for humanity?

A few weeks ago I published an article which indicated that in the oily crystal ball of Libya Venezuela could see her future. Mercilessly, NATO, the military arm of global corporate fascism, of globofacism, is attacking Libya to grab her potable water, oil, gas and other natural resources. Imperialism, in the sense of Kant, has developed itself to full recognizability. As a result of the global Mental Holocaust', very few sane minds are left to see and to know what is happening.

The Mental Holocaust, the Murdoch Moloch is devouring us.

Who will be next, will be victims of this military barbarism and belligerent, 'humanitarian' vandalism in North Africa? Iran or Venezuela?

Capitalism is desperate, is collapsing.

Venezuela, urgently, we better prepare ourselves for this coming Second Conquest! Will we allow that world fascism fetch us one by one?

D. Japan: the eve of a century of catastrophic woe

We knew that after Capitalism Barbarism would be a gruesome option. However, in our wildest nightmares we could not imagine how it would begin.

We did not know about the coming nuclear dangers, about HAARP, military tsunamis, explosive methane gas in the Gulf of Mexico and about the floods, droughts and earthquakes which could wipe out countries like Japan. What is happening now in Japan could happen globally anytime, anywhere again. We did not know that the Chernobyl disaster today still is costing more than a million of infected lives. The victims of the NATO wars in the Middle East and North Africa probably are surpassing a million human corpses of 'collateral damage' already. Birds, fish, bees, cows and swine die like flies ... what next?

Those who claim to be the defenders of human rights are the greatest war criminals.

Official disinformation could be fatal for millions over this decade. In fact, as I warned in a previous article, nuclear meltdowns did occur and in the following decades a whole state is in danger of possible nuclear extinction, while NATO is on another military spree, to kill thousands of Africans. Post-Apartheid South Africa, that voted against Libya, together with its masters, showed its true ANC bloody rainbow colors; it not only betrayed its own 'Freedom Charter, its own peoples, but the whole of Africa. The Arab League and the African Union followed suit. Africa will not survive this Second Conquest.

As pointed out above, the Negation within capitalism is diminishing dangerously; dialectically, this indicates that the world system is collapsing. Anything without a negation is in agony, is dying.

This is a cosmic tsunami that very few people are noticing.

However, as the indigenous American Indians said: "Time Longer dan Rope!"

Concerning this colonial Amerindian prediction, this transhistoric 'rope', about this 'peaceful' transition, Father George H. W. Bush Sr. - who together with his son Bush II lost presidential elections, and nevertheless, as loser took it all - warned his corporate bosses as follows:

"If the American people knew what we have done, they would string us all up on lamp posts". (1)

Already J. Edgar Hoover, ex-FBI director, very poignantly confirmed the above as follows:
“The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.” (2)
(2) Ibid.

However, if we do not act now, all these ropes, to which Bush referred, the very corporate capitalists would still sell in time before they enter into everlasting heavenly bliss.

Meanwhile, where have the flowers of Japan gone? To graves everywhere? What is left of humanism in Libya? Would HAARP also stop the coming of Spring in Venezuela?
*****
(1) See: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Super-Depression-Ernst-Bl-by-Franz-J-T-Lee-090424-914.html

(2) Ibid.

franzjutta@cantv.net
http://www.franzlee.org.ve

Franz J. T. Lee: Globalized Apartheid, Asian Tsunamis and Racist Invasions in Africa

2011-03-13T09:01:00.000-07:00

Globalized Apartheid, Asian Tsunamis and Racist Invasions in Africa

By Franz J. T. Lee

Whatever were the real geophysical causes of the mega-earthquake and the accompanied tsunami in Japan, one thing is very clear, it is only the beginning of a century of worse natural and technological disasters. Also in such a case, disinformation rules the scene. However, all the damage reported, especially about the possible reactor meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, like Chernobyl, and the escape of atomic radiation, indicates that humanity is sitting on a time-bomb which in chain reaction could blast the whole planet out of orbit. According to latest reports, more nuclear reactors are now being threatened by possible meltdowns.

Our great corporate leaders of NATO, like global 'blood hounds', more precisely, like 'military humanitarians', have nothing else to do than to prepare a belligerent attack, in fact, the brutal 'murder', namely , the 'collateral damage' of thousands of innocent men, women and children who in all probability would soon perish in Libya.

Our international world order has become a dangerous explosive mixture of Globalized Apartheid, Asian Tsunamis and Racist Invasions in Africa.

The current magnates and tycoons are more interested in oil business than in the protection of lives, of their own workers, especially on the west coast of the USA. Where NATO urgently is needed to save lives and to help the poor Japanese workers, this is not a top priority. Again here we see what is social discrimination, racism; the live of a poor Bedouin, a Tuareg, a 'camel driver', is not worth a farthing, not a dime. Obviously, if the United Nations should approve it, then if necessary, these 'marauding', migratory, poor devils could easily be sent to heavenly eternity, by means of military humanism.

With HAARP - with other similar geophysical arms of mass destruction - or geo-engineering, wherever the power elites should desire it, their corporate gendarmes of the globe could create droughts, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes. They can even move planets out of their orbits. The weather is not fine anymore, not normal; the same is also true for the thousand of tremors and earthquakes.

Because all these crimes are 'natural', it is impossible to catch the bellicose culprits in flagranti. This imperialist vandalism has already a very long racist history, especially with reference to the African continent.

As Marx and Engels have warned in 1848, because of anarchic, unplanned production, the capitalists have set free mighty natural forces of the nether world, which they cannot control anymore. They want to control the bodies, minds and thoughts of billions, but they cannot quench their own ravenous, insatiable hunger for power, oil and profits.

Is this the possible twilight of Humanity?

In historic retrospection, let us now look at the imperialist roots of this global drama. In the middle of the 20th century in South Africa the apartheid racists were claiming that the ancestral lands and natural wealth of the indigenous Bantu and Khoisan peoples were 'white man's country'.

Long ago already Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom ... from 1954 to 1958, Apartheid Prime Minister of South Africa ... had informed us about the nature of colonial land-grabbing in Africa.

He stated:
"Our view is that in every sphere the European must retain the right to rule the country and to keep it white man’s country." (1)

All over Africa, international corporations are grabbing or buying the best lands of Africa. Like in the current case of Libya, NATO organizes the military grabbing of the oil, gas, potable water, mineral and metal wealth of Africa. Like how the arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, owner of the British South Africa Company, had considered Northern and Southern Rhodesia (today Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively) as his personal private property; today, the United States of America with their military arm, the NATO, consider Africa (and the rest of the world) to be their very own private booty. With racist double standards, arrogantly they plunder natural resources, topple legitimate governments and invade foreign territories. Nobody and nothing can stop them, nobody can terminate this inhuman barbarism. Across the past centuries millions and millions of heroic freedom fighters have sacrificed their lives in the class struggles of world revolution, in the wars of proletarian permanent revolution, alas, the Frankenstein monster is more powerful, more violent and terrorist than ever.

Is capitalism dialectically destroying its own negation, socialism, and therewith inexorably it is annihilating itself? Capital without Labor is like a Master without a Slave and vice versa.

Let us just illuminate some forgotten colonial racist practices. Currently this is important to understand the renaissance of McCarthyism in the USA, of witch-hunts of Muslims and Arabs in the USA; and also of modern forms of racism in Europe.

What is presently happening in North Africa, especially in Libya, which easily could spill over to Latin America, to Venezuela, is the corporate 'Second Conquest'. It concerns racism, lies, hoaxes, corruption, land-grabbing, plunder of natural resources and massacres. This time the imperialist conquest concentrates on total body, mind and thought control, on 'full spectrum dominance', technologically generated by a planned global Mental Holocaust. The reason for the production of a slave mentality and inferiority complexes in the official ideology factories and mass media is to avoid that African wage slaves ever would break out of the closed corporate Moloch and create the New, could transcend this 'vale of tears' towards human emancipation.

It is now or never, either billions defend themselves or together with our rulers we would end up in total barbarism.

Shakespeare already told us in 'Hamlet' that the unexpected could be possible:

"Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy". (2)

The racist ideological view of African history

Racism is a quintessential element of global capitalist master-servant relations. Economically, the unequal exchange on the world market more than ever is reflecting the super-exploitation of international labor forces and natural resources by corporate vandalism. The superstructural ideological reflex of contemporary imperialist barbarism, also called globalization, is simply racism. It is an integral part of apartheid and Zionist regimes. The logical coming into being of a fascist 'one world government' of the current capitalist mode of destruction, militarily already launched by the USA and NATO, would drive virulent racism to its zenith, to the possible extreme of global systemic and systematic mass genocide and ecocide.

The beginning of Orwellian double standard racist attacks - which are now using sophisticated war technology - can already be witnessed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, Somalia, Sudan, Ivory Coast and Libya. It is the advent of a trying era for humanity, for 'coolies', 'camel drivers', 'slit-eyes' and 'niggers', for the emancipatory quo vadis of the 'wretched of the earth', for billions of working peoples, whose future belligerently is progressively being truncated every second by racist hegemony and megalomania.

Racism in Her Majesty's Language

What does a human being from Africa, from Ghana or the Congo - endowed by Mother Nature, by Nyx, with black pigmentation to protect him or her from dangerous tropical sun rays - feel and think when he reads the following words which in general pejoratively are associated with obscure, morally negative things, with his very skin color black? How does she feels when white skin, blue eyes and blond hair are supposed to be attributes of a first class citizen? And from where will she import a 90-60-90 international figure to become a 'beauty queen'? A 'Miss Universe'?

The Christian conqueror identified evil and the devil with black, with the African

Let us mention just a few of the many English words which the thought and mind control Moloch permanently is generating:

"Black magic, black art, black comedy, black book, black cat, black sheep, blackout, black cap, Blackshirt, Black Pope, Black Monk, Black Maria, Black Peter, Black Orpheus, black widow, black market, blackguard, blackballing, black faced, black browed, black headed, black hearted, black humoured, black hole, blackwater, blackmail, blacklist, blackball, Black Monday, Black Friday, Black Sabbath, Black Muslims, Blackamoors, Black Africa, Black Continent, Black Africans, etc., etc., ... "

These are the subliminal ideological messages which we are receiving in education, culture, socialization, in all walks of life. In Christianity our minds are being over-flooded with white angels and black devils. The conqueror has perpetuated racism in his very language. He identified evil and the devil with black, with the African. We need not only new thoughts, we need a completely new emancipatory language.

If we do not study the history of modern capitalist racism, that is, the ideological superstructural reflex of the world market, of the global division of labor, It would be practically impossible to understand how the emancipatory quo vadis of Africa (and therewith of humanity) was violated by colonial capitalism-imperialism. Across the last centuries, the tremendous degree of metropolitan social scorn, political disdain and economic contempt indicates the inhuman magnitude of merciless exploitation and domination of Africa.

In a nutshell, racist ideology always was a diatribal, propagandist cover-up for capital and cardinal war crimes against Humania South, against humanity at large. As we will see later, like in the apartheid regime (and elsewhere), like today in globalization, these colonial, genocidal crimes were scientifically premeditated, were perpetrated by means of violent exclusion of Africans from the species Homo sapiens. The European pseudo-historians, lumpen-social ideologues, oligarchic theologians and corrupt politicians degraded (and still humiliate) the peoples of Africa; they called them all kinds of pejorative names: 'apes and monkeys', 'truculent Kaffirs', non-whites, non-Europeans, non-humans or even 'children of Ham'. Racist ideology was the religious excuse, the capitalist justification to massacre and enslave millions and millions of inhabitants of the 'Third World', in the name of Western, Christian Civilization, in other words, of the accumulation of capital, in the service of surplus value production, of extra-profits, of world order and world power.

According to historic reports, a merchant from Tunis had asked the famous Portuguese 'discoverer of the seaway to India' Vasco da Gama in Spanish the following: 'The devil take you, what brought you here?"

Succinctly Vasco da Gama replied: "We have come to look for Christians and spices."

This reply was written down in Portuguese by Vasco da Gama's friend Alvao Velho. (3)
(

The "devil did not take him", also not the colonial masters, but very early already, the capitalist relationship between Christianity and Big Business was established and consequently also with slavery of all genres. During that European epoch of 'God, Gold and Glory', of conquest, pillage and vandalism, Vasco da Gama was searching for 'Christians and spices', in reality, it ended up to have been a maafa, a continental disaster, a transhistoric hunting for a transatlantic slave trade. In reality, it was for the establishment of a capitalist world market. Carefully the European upsurging ruling classes were organizing the First Conquest - by means of 'discovery', Christianization and militarization - to enslave millions of indentured laborers and, last but not least, millions of cheap African, 'emancipated', wage slaves.

This is also the colonial essence of current Conquest Version 2, of the planned invasion of Libya!

In the 20th century African wage slaves were necessary for arch-imperialists like Cecil John Rhodes to toil in agriculture, plantations, mining and industry, especially in Southern and Central Africa.

As Shakespeare's Hamlet told us, the above is part of the "wondrous strange" things which happened (and are occurring daily) in African history, about which many of us know very little today.

Body, mind and thought control ... the exploitation of physical labor force, the domination of the mind and social discrimination, that is, racism, ... the wiping out of all self-thinking, of historic memory and of social resistance, namely, the Mental Holocaust (alias capitalist education and socialization for barbarism) destroys historic class consciousness, working class memory, revolutionary praxis and emancipatory theory.

Even erudite scholars are falling prey to this avalanche of fascist propaganda

What we were (and are still) being told in our mass media, in schools and universities, was that 'European civilization', 'democracy' and 'world peace' were being threatened by scalping 'Red Indians', dazed, opiate 'slit eyes', bellicose 'camel drivers', treacherous 'coolies' and 'truculent Kaffirs'. Till today these lies are being disseminated by the mass media about Africa. The latest disinformation distributed by the corporate mass media about events in Libya demonstrates that 'info war' is part and parcel of the current world wars of NATO and its allies. CNN and other press agencies discriminate the protesting starving Africans on the streets of North Africa as a 'cheering mob'. This attitude towards Africans has a long colonial tradition. According to many illustrious, racist European philosophers of the Enlightenment, Africans were part of the 'scum of the earth', the 'white man's burden' and are soulless pagans and 'outcasts'. For them Africans form an inferior species of 'hewers of wood and drawers of water'; they have been living outside civilized reality, were (and still are) 'living outside world history' (Hegel): they have no spiritual essence, no intellectual capacities.

Past European and North American ruling class arrogance and racism - which today are living on in the "international corporate crime syndicates" (Jane Buergermeister) - knew (and more than ever know) no limits.

Worse even, bombarded with racist propaganda, for example, big lies and hoaxes against the Arab peoples, the majority of global workers, especially those living in metropolitan countries, has internalized this social racism, they have developed inferiority complexes; they even believe in all this racist terrorist crap. Even in Libya Gaddafi seems to believe in the United States Bin Laden and Al-Queda propaganda myths.

Even erudite scholars are falling prey to this avalanche of fascist propaganda, 'information' and 'news', which are coming from the Murdoch empire and the already existing post-Orwellian 'One World (United States) Government'. To affirm corporate globalization all over we could find galaxies of 'information'. To defend emancipation, to negate corporate terrorism, to know the truth about Venezuela and Libya, we have to look for needles in the global burning haystacks, in the wild bush fires, in the white clouds of phosphorous rain over Falujah and Gaza, and in the 'chemtrails' over NATO countries and even over Brazil and South Africa.

For Africa to be able to annihilate racism and capitalism, it never was a matter of grabbing a gun, then to disappear in the next jungle, and to kill the enemy forces. In this way we could never stop Microsoft, Murdoch, the Pentagon and NASA.

The liberation struggle against global racism and apartheid has to be carried out on all fronts

Nearly three decades ago, in 1983, the reporter of 'Cuadernos del Tercer Mundo' (Mexico), German Wettstein, made an interview with me in Mérida (Venezuela) titled "It is the moment to attack". Later Wettstein came to the conclusion that I was a 'true academic guerrilla'.

However, in this interview I tried to explain the modern liberatory quintessence of the contemporary quo vadis of Humania South. I explained central issues pertaining to a future radical emancipatory approach with regard to the coming global self-defense of our oppressed peoples. Concerning the organization of a working people's international, I explained that the liberation struggle against global racism and apartheid has to be carried out on all fronts. Then already I underlined the central role which "economic and technological guerrillas" will have to play. in future socialist struggles. (4) To read the Spanish version of this interview, click the link in the footnote.

Whether we like it or not, after the massacre of the guerrilla leader Raul Reyes Reyes in Ecuador by the United States military forces, and with Venezuela soon totally encircled by Yankee military bases, we will have no option but to consider new tactics and strategies of self-defense. After Libya, we may be next on the NATO list of global military targets. We cannot wait that they fetch us one by one, at least, humanity has the cosmic obligation to perish proudly in upward gait, in legitimate fighting for life, for emancipation.

Today, thanks to the small mercy of the Pentagon for having granted us the wonderful gift, the internet, as a means of trying to disseminate the truth about global reality. However, beware, in imperialism freedom is slavery, no capitalist good is free, this is too good to be true ... soon this Janus-headed gift will be totally restricted.

In the current information wars which are raging everywhere, in Libya, North Africa and the Middle East, our beloved toy, the internet, was switched off, anytime it could be taken away from us again, at the earliest when it has fulfilled its purpose of global surveillance, of mind and thought control of Love for 'Big Brother'.

The current nuclear disaster in Japan, like the Transatlantic Slave Trade, is marking the crossing of the Rubicon: to Barbarism or to Human Emancipation?

In the epoch of the total collapse of world capitalism, in the era of multiple world wars, why is this mega-disaster happening now, and why in an imperialist country? Will it save world capitalism?

*****
Footnotes:
(1) For more information about 'Education for Barbarism', see: Franz J. T. Lee, Anatomy of Apartheid in Southern Africa, An Alexander Defense Committee Publication, New York, 1966.
(2) William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet, act 1, sc. 5, l. 164-7.
(3) See: http///www.jstor.org/stable/1595839
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=105026315
(4) For the complete interview, see: http://www.franzlee.org.ve/marxengels16.html

http://www.franzlee.org.ve
franzjutta@cantv.net

Japan: The Twilight of the 'Wretched of the Earth'?

2011-03-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

Japan: The Twilight of the 'Wretched of the Earth'?

By Franz J. T. Lee

Whatever were the real geophysical causes of the mega-earthquake and the accompanied tsunami in Japan, one thing is very clear, it is only the beginning of a century of worse natural and technological disasters. Also in such a case, disinformation rules the scene, however, all the damage reported, especially about the reactor meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, like Chernobyl, and the escape of massive atomic radiation, indicates that humanity is sitting on a mortal time-bomb which in chain reaction could blast the whole planet out of orbit.

Our great corporate leaders of NATO, like global 'blood hounds', more precisely, like 'military humanitarians', have nothing else to do than to prepare an attack, that is, the 'murder', namely , the 'collateral damage' of thousands of innocent men, women and children in Libya. They are more interested in oil business than in the protection of their own workers, especially in the west coast of the USA. Where NATO is urgently needed is to help the poor Japanese workers. Again here we see what racism, what social discrimination, is all about.

With HAARP, with other similar geophysical arms of mass destruction, or with geo-engineering - wherever the power elites desire - the corporate gendarmes of the globe can create droughts, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes. They can even move planets out of their orbits.

Because all these crimes are 'natural', it is impossible to catch the bellicose culprits in flagranti. As Marx and Engels have warned in 1848, because of anarchic, unplanned production, the capitalists have set free mighty natural forces of the nether world, which they cannot control anymore. They want to control the bodies, minds and thoughts of billions, but they cannot quench their own ravenous, insatiable hunger for power, oil and profits.

Is this the beginning of the possible twilight of Humanity?

Franz J. T. Lee: What happened to the hope-inspiring 'sweet bird of youth' of Ernst Bloch?

2011-03-07T09:06:00.000-08:00

What happened to the hope-inspiring 'sweet bird of youth' of Ernst Bloch?

By Franz J. T. Lee

In the same way that a sensitive, sensible human mind cannot for long tolerate the infernal, hammering noises of modern 'music' that comes out of a myriad of 'blockbusters', shops, cars, cellphones, radios and TV apparatuses day and night infesting even more the polluted air across the love forlorn planet, similarly, with few exceptions, it hurts the very ear drums to listen to the eternal, sterile, rattling and crackling noises which generally accompany 'democratic' political gatherings and electoral campaigns which are saturated with ossified, 'democratic', demagogic slogans and ideological catch words. For example, on a world scale, the following words are top favorites: 'humanitarian help', 'revolution', 'rogue states', 'society', 'failed societies', 'transition', 'socialism', 'change', the 'process', the 'new man', democracy and peace. Most of these terms have lost all their original cognitive connotations. Most of them have just become ideologically infiltrated empty shells. The word 'ideology' itself is the best example of this category. Without any liberatory destiny, such words and phrases are whirling around in the enslaved brains of millions; simply like barren, dry, crackling leaves in the raging storms of the bellicose corporate typhoons. Consequently, under such trying circumstances, it is well-nigh impossible to think profoundly, to create emancipatory theory.

Surely, many of us seriously study the above concepts and are trying to fill them with transhistoric emancipatory contents. However, the vast majority of peoples on a world scale, in the raging 'war of ideas', are being bombarded with alienating songs, are technologically violated by 'psychotic dissociation', are bamboozled with subliminal messages, psychological terror, 'cognitive dissonance', 'cognitive infiltration' and CIA 'wikileaks'.

In the end, we, the evergreen youth and sempiternal students, are getting totally confused, we cannot differentiate ideology from theory, practice from praxis anymore.

The modern youths and students in Venezuela and elsewhere have an immense difficulty intellectually to grasp philosophic terms like nature, society, labor, revolution, socialism, capitalism, emancipation, praxis, peace and democracy. Here daily we could witness the political danger of incorrect identification of the class enemy and of imprecise conceptualization of anti-capitalism, of socialism. In our university seminars or public discussions theoretical reflection is deteriorating into 'learning by rote' or in some cases of committing 'internet plagiarism', of 'drag and drop' malpractices. This is not an exception to the rule, even a contemporary German defense minister could participate in such illegal practices to obtain a much desired doctorate.

In the 20th century at the height of the students' revolts and the campaigns against the Vietnam War, apartheid in Southern Africa, Zionism in Israel and global imperialism, the German Marxist philosopher of the 'principle of hope', Ernst Bloch indicated that there is a radical change of the epoch in the air, that is, currently the weltgeist and zeitgeist are ushering in a new era, the New itself. Human alienating labor would eventually be surpassed by natural emancipatory creativity, by human creation; as such, according to Bloch, the divine myths and religious chimeras would fade away, and a new epoch of accelerated unfettered human creation would be dawning on the planetary horizon.

This is not wishful thinking; in globalization already both the dialectical affirmation and the negation of capitalism are in agony. Corporate capitalism is digging its own global military tomb. As far as the proletarian 'permanent world revolution' is concerned, we are living in the era of huge global class struggles. Nonetheless, for the time being we have not been able to launch a New International. However, in this 'transvolutionary' epoch of space colonization and militarization, of 'geo- and genetic-engineering, cloning, Tesla- and nano-technology, we should prepare ourselves for many new cosmic surprises, for an exodus, for an already raging global 'exvolution'. Why are the USA militarizing every square meter of this planet? But, as living humanity, we are made of cosmic stardust, of much sterner stuff than treachery, murder, avarice and megalomania.

Furthermore, Bloch emphasized that future hope for mankind is being born in the youth, in youthfulness. The central question remains: Venezuela, Africa, what happened to the hope-inspiring 'sweet bird of youth' of Ernst Bloch? Is it already dropping dead from the 'chemtrails' infested skies of NATO?

What did the students and youths of the 1960s know and have been studying diligently and conscientiously?

Where are their thoughts and acts today?

* Since decades already, are we losing two whole generations of youths? Or is it just the calm before the storm?

* And who is sowing the transilluminating wind; is it the workers of the world?

* Where is the permanent world revolution? The workers' international?

Hence, what have we, the youth and students of the 21st century urgently to study in order to understand what is happening in North Africa and the Middle East today? Let us put this problem in transhistoric perspective.

Ever since the 19th century, since the political victory of capitalism over feudalism in Europe as the new dominant mode of destruction, many erudite scientific and philosophic socialist scholars have seriously studied and unraveled the objective, physical, exploitative essence of capitalist vandalism, its subjective, alienating, social existence and its barbarous, military immorality and mortality. Among the outstanding socialist scholars are Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Eduardo Galeano, Mao Zedong, Kwame Nkrumah, Ernest Mandel, Samir Amin et al, whose works are respected across the globe, even by their most fierce liberal academic adversaries. They identified the systemic internal tendential laws of the bourgeois, democratic, capitalist revolution. With scientific incision and philosophic precision they transilluminated the inexorable terrorist warpath of imperialism towards globalization, that is, towards global exploitation of all natural resources, a one world fascist government, totalitarian militarization and the criminal launching of Orwellian authoritarian body, thought and mind control, and thus the total destruction of the thinking faculties of laboring humanity.

Among the tendential laws of the transhistoric development of capitalism, indicated above, and whose veracity could be verified today more than ever before, are the brutal competition, concentration, monopolization and the belligerent destruction of capital. At this moment we experience the geometric explosion of pauperization on a world scale, of hunger, poverty and misery of billions especially in Africa, Asia and America. There is nothing obsolete about Marxist praxis and theory. Socialism is the dialectical Negation of Capitalism, is Non- or Anti-Capitalism; hence Marxism will only become obsolete when capitalism itself will be fading away into galactic conflagration, into cosmic entropy.

To know what is Marxism is to know what is Capitalism, and vice versa. They are contradictory opposites, two sides, the unity and contradiction of the very same current historic process, of the capitalist revolution, - as was explained by Marx and Engels in 1848 in their 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' - that is, of globalization.

Very clearly we could see today that globalization is the belligerent attempt of the United States of America and their allies, spearheaded by NATO and all its global military 'commands', to gain the final capitalist politico-military victory, to complete the one and only bourgeois capitalist democratic revolution on a world scale.

The only thing that could stop this 'permanent world revolution' is to surpass it, to transcend it with global human emancipation, with the creativity of billions, who could create, could create a new world, the New Man, that is, Mother Nature anew. This is a topic for another collective writing.

Nonetheless, what is our real, true problem? Capitalism? Really? Or do we just want our 'privacy', carpe diem, our 'peace', to have a job, to consume, to vegetate on the immediate zero point of a wretched non-existence?

If this is not the case, well, then in simple terms what is capitalism? What is it de facto for one billion people in Africa?

In other writings we have summarized the planetary contradictory quintessence of capitalist production, of the imperialist process of globalization as follows:

* economic exploitation of Nature and of physical human labor power;
* political domination by means of the State machinery of the ruling classes or power elites;
* social discrimination, master and slave relations, racism, apartheid, Zionism;
* militarization, world wars, genocide, full spectrum dominance, 'peace'-keeping forces, Global Commands, military humanism;
* alienation, religion, ideology, destruction of human thinking and thought, hoaxes, lies, 'weakileaks', 'mal-education', disinformation of corporate controlled mass media, ´war of ideas', psychological operations, 'cognitive infiltration' of the enemy, body, mind and thought control, Global Mental Holocaust.

If we would find any of these attributes in any State or society on planet Earth, then we could be sure that it is definitely caught up in the corporate pangs and imperialist fangs of world capitalism. If we would know this, then we could have an idea what is anti-capitalism, what is socialism.

Socialism is the negation of the above capitalist affirmation, of its quintessence, it is the dialectical opposite of capitalism.

In how far does the above concern the workers of Africa, America or Venezuela?

Revolution, capitalist revolution brought about contemporary globalized exploitation, domination, discrimination, militarization and alienation. All over everybody is seeing all kinds of revolutions. At the moment we all speak about revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. Tomorrow we could have a revolution of Vatel in the frying pan; or a revolution on the Moon or Mars.

What we do not know is that we are so right. Even Marx confirmed what we are suspecting. We are living in the epoch of accelerated capitalist world revolution, of globalization. As Marx explained nothing has revolutionized human production more than capitalism, than capitalist revolution; it is the dynamo, the life wire of capital and power accumulation.

There are not rainbow or colored revolutions, they are all different appearance forms of the very one and only global capitalist revolution. Millions and millions have died in the name of 'revolution' and still capitalism is revolutionizing us out of existence.

To avoid an apocalyptic man made cataclysm of mankind, it is of ultra-importance to investigate the ideological phraseology which we are using and to replace it with thoughtful concepts and theories for global, emancipatory, creative praxis.

Who does not expect the unexpected will never find the anticipatory New, never be the emancipatory New.
http://www.franzlee.org.ve
franzjutta@cantv.net

Franz J. T. Lee: Current United States bellicose 'Cognitive Infiltration' of the Enemy

2011-03-03T12:55:00.000-08:00

Current United States bellicose 'Cognitive Infiltration' of the Enemy

By Franz J. T. Lee
In the last analysis: Wikileaks is the 'Cognitive Infiltration' Operation of the CIA

The Third World War has begun long ago already, it is claiming millions of African, Palestinian and Arab lives. Important for Venezuela to note is that currently there is waging an inexorable global 'war of ideas', the counter-attack of the United States of America against emancipatory theoretical praxis and praxical theory. This 'full spectrum dominance' is now called: "cognitive infiltration of the enemy', of the extremist and terrorist groups.

Nothing in capitalism is new, it has no relation to the New, to the homo novum. Hence, this latest 'psychological operation' is not new, it is a war strategy as old as Metusalem. It was used by all ruling classes, especially those of the fascist caliber or the Nazi pedigree.

Let us see what the ancient philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus explained to us 2500 years ago.

Before Humania South was flooded by the Christian religious deluge, also called 'Christian Civilization', by its patriarchal progenitors, in Ionia, in Ancient Greece, where capitalism was born with its respective ideological superstructure, already the materialist hylozoist thinker Heraclitus explained that 'war is the father of all things'. This statement he made within the general context of his philosophic gnome: panta rhei, everything flows, change alone is unchanging. Hence, ages ago, at the eve of the coming epochs of slavery, feudalism and capitalism, Heracleitus already postulated what is universal, systemic contradiction, motion and revolution. In fact, philosophically he showed why 'change', the 'process', the revolution only could come from within, from within the One, within the status quo, namely, of capital and power accumulation. In well-known fragments of his philosophy which have survived, he identified the universal process as follows: 'From all things one and from one all things.' Here already surreptitiously began intellectual mechanisms of permanent social control of the thoughts of the workers, the manipulation and unilateral deviation of the laborer's mind. The above we can easily trace in Platonic idealist philosophy, but it appears also in ancient dialectical materialism, in hylozoism.

Heracleitus explains how ideology is being reproduced as 'culture' in the very 'souls' of the toiling workers. It is controlling their very sleep, their dreams. He wrote: 'Even sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the Universe. ... Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls.'

Here we see that 'culture' is the social substratum for ruling class psychological operations and 'infiltration of the enemy', of 'extremist groups' or of 'terrorist' study circles. However, he was insisting that we cannot hide our ignorance forever , our ideology, for very long: 'Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.' Yes, in vino veritas! But, very often, it is true what he said: when the wine is in, the wit is out.

In the end, historically directed across the millennia towards the Murdoch empire and the 'think tanks' of corporate imperialism, with reference to contemporary hoaxes, double standards, lies and 'class justice', Heraclitus made a remarkable transhistoric comment:

'Justice will overtake fabricators of lies and false witnesses.'

This could only be the emancipatory justice of the New, of the homo novum, of Mother Nature. '
http://www.franzlee.org.ve
franzjutta@cantv.net

Could Venezuela see her future in the oily crystal ball of Libya?

2011-02-28T17:57:00.000-08:00

Could Venezuela see her future in the oily crystal ball of Libya?

By Franz J. T. Lee

The Twilight of the 'Wretched of the Earth'

What is behind the series of popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East? What or who triggered them off? The CIA or hunger, or both? And 'Cui bono?' - whose interests do they really serve? Is Venezuela next? Can she see her future in the oily crystal ball of Libya, of Gaddafi?

The capitalist system globally has reproduced itself in all walks of life; it has internalized itself in the very psyche of the 'wretched of the earth'. By sacrificing their very lives millions defend and save their future butchers, the new ruling classes. Hunger, famine and poverty have been magnified ever since the original accumulation of capital, they are root causes of many popular revolts. What is special, new about the current uprisings? Are we making revolution and/or human emancipation, the New?

These and many other questions have seriously to be studied in Venezuela. Like in the 1960s very easily the African sparks could set the American prairie on fire. The common factors of Venezuela and Libya are dangerously similar: 'dictators' who are producing bloodbaths for their peaceful, poor citizens. Apart from these, they have oil, gas, water (under the Sahara Desert and in the Orinoco Delta), oxygen, strategic metals and minerals but also exotic hot weather and blue skies, still void of toxic 'chemtrails' and HAARP geophysical terrorism.

Just to possess the greatest oil reserves of the world is reason enough to receive bellicose royal treatment from the Fourth Fleet or NATO.

Hence, Venezuela, beware!

Let us look at some aspects of the current uprisings in Africa.

Foremost, in the current epoch of the post-Orwellian global disaster, what should be studied and debated urgently before we, the 'wretched of the earth', as international working classes, could get down concretely to emancipate ourselves as still breathing and fighting humanity? It is pertinent to identify the real global syndicates of organized war crimes and not to be fooled by bourgeois ruling class ideology and practices; in modern terms, by the Murdoch Empire, which preaches that 'Great Men', ... that is, 'dictators', like 'Muammar Gaddafi' or 'Hugo Chavez Frias', or 'saints' like 'Bush I and II, ... who were both losers but they 'took it all' ..., that is, that these 'great heroes' of the 'fatherland' all alone could make or break history. The problem is that most of us, but also the billions of the 'wretched of the earth' believe in such ideological, messianic, political grandeur. Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Frantz Fanon, Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Bloch have taught us, as a result of rigorous, stringent, theoretical analysis, that emancipated 'Man' should not strive to be 'great', not become a 'great dictator', but rather a homo novum, a New Man, the New per se. In the current corporate vandalism in Africa, especially in the land-grabbing, we could perceive that nowhere the new, the hopeful, the emancipatory, are on the agenda of the African Union, NEPAD, Africom or the 'African Standby Force' (ASF).

The latter is opening a new market for a flourishing arms sales industry in Africa, to serve the belligerent necessities of United Nations' 'peace-keeping' forces on the continent, but also violently to keep a macro-migratory exodus in search for food at bay.

Yes, corporate imperialism is not interested in the millions of starving children, in the spreading of pestilence, illness and AIDS, the new black elites just talk about business, about Great Business, about arms production in South Africa, corruption, about preparing for Great Wars.

Neither on the placards nor in the political speeches of the revolting, starving masses in North Africa and the Middle East, could be detected traces of the radical anti-capitalist New. It seems that the quo vadis, the whither, the future of whole Africa is truncated by world fascism. It seems that twilight is darkening the 'Cradle of Humanity'.

The major demand of all uprisings was that a dictatorial great man must step down from decades of autocratic power.

For pharisaic reasons, even Berlin and Washington D.C. favored and defended this 'human right'; all over the army and the State continued to serve the metropolitan interests of their corporate masters.

Venezuela and Libya, we should recall that
there exists no revolution without 'violent' class struggles. If the latter are absent in any region, or if we try to annihilate workers' class struggles on a continental scale, then this is the best proof that no social revolution is taking place there. Class reconciliation is not revolution, it is capitulation.

With emancipatory transhistoric processes the situation is more transcendental. There is no human emancipation possible when anywhere still exist labor and capital, master and slave relations, that is, exploitation, domination, racism. genocide and alienation. At the end of the first millennium, early North African and Arab materialist philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes, were already expressing the creative quintessence of human emancipation as natura naturans and natura naturata, namely, as that what is created, creative and creating, that is, Mother Nature, Mother Africa, Pacha Mama, Gaia and Isis. Creation signifies theoretical Praxis, the emancipation of Mother Nature, Mother Africa, the New, of the Woman.

The Novum is the emancipatory specter that is haunting the contemporary world order, it could be setting North America also ablaze. Since centuries capitalism brutally suppressed all possible emancipatory endeavors. Corporatism launched an avalanche of physical and mental holocausts to control the toiling masses. Since yore, the masters called these authoritarian and totalitarian machinations and mechanisms humanism, peace, education, transition, democracy, 'one world government', culture, faith, good manners, etiquette, civilization, customs, credos, commandments, laws, morals, ideology and religion.

The low degree of class consciousness and the high level of inculcated ignorance about socialism by no means belittle the courage, optimism and heroic resistance of all the contemporary workers' struggles. However, it is important to note why corporate imperialism could silence these brave fighters again, can 'nip them in the bud'. This occurred in all the social democratic revolutions of the 20th century. Today, where are the novel, creative fruits of the heroic social revolutions of Vietnam, China, Yugoslavia, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Eritrea, Djibouti, Mauritania, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa?

Is the current state of affairs in Africa the freedom for which we fought ... for which many millions 'peacefully' were maimed, mutilated and massacred? In Africa, are we confronting a new maafa (Swahili: disaster), a new type of Conquest, a modern Transatlantic Wage Slave Trade, a new Bermuda Triangle? What is Africom doing on the soil of Mother Africa, and why did we, a billion African human beings, allow it to settle there to kill us 'softly' one by one?

If our autocratic, theocratic, technocratic and bureaucratic 'great leaders', especially those in Humania South, could be accepted by corporate America, then by the grace of the 'great gods', who own 'great ideas' ... and by the 'superiority of the great master races' ... they would be ordained as the loyal guardians, the fascist 'storm troopers' of the apocalypse', as the Chief Executive Officers of the oil, gas, gold, metal and mineral supply and shipment to the USA, to the metropolitan opulent tycoons.

However, the danger is that we see all over colorful 'revolutions', hundreds, millions of them. We do not realize that there is only one single revolution: the capitalist, bourgeois, democratic revolution, the father of all reformist vipers.

In his writing, 'The Jewish Question', as early as 1843, Marx himself informed us that our objective is to topple bourgeois revolution by means of proletarian human emancipation.

In the epoch of globalization where systemic revolutions are already becoming obsolete, we should seriously reflect and think about our basic liberatory concepts, about their corresponding anti-capitalist praxis.

As far as we could reflect, publicly, nowhere in the recent popular uprisings, the capitalist mode of destruction has been negated radically, is being transcended towards the real, true New, towards planetary emancipation.

On the 'Dark Continent' the Twilight of the 'Wretched of the Earth' is casting an obscure anticipatory awakening on the northern part of the continent; soon dusk will set in and remind us of how black, how mysterious, the natural nights could still be.

http://www.franzlee.org.ve
franz@franzlee.org.ve

audi Arabia: First Signs of Uprising in World’s Top Oil Exporter, by Finian Cunningham

2011-02-26T17:35:00.000-08:00

Saudi Arabia: First Signs of Uprising in World’s Top Oil Exporter 

By Finian Cunningham


The popular uprisings across the Middle East are sparking similar unrest in the 
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with youth groups and workers in that country now 
calling for a “Day of Rage” demonstration in the capital, Riyadh, on March 11.

Already there have been protests last week in the city of Qatif and other towns 
in the country’s oil-rich Eastern Province demanding, among things, the release 
of political prisoners and a raft of social reforms. There are also reports of 
prominent Shia clerics being detained by the Saudi Sunni authorities, and 
security forces mobilizing in anticipation of further protests.

Sadek al-Ramadan, a human rights activist in Al Asha, Eastern Province, said: 
“People here are watching closely the protest movements across the region, which 
are tapping into long-held demands for reforms in Saudi Arabia.”

Al-Ramadan said that there are “deep frustrations” in Saudi society over high 
levels of poverty, unemployment, poor housing and perceived widespread 
corruption among the rulers of the world’s top oil exporter whose Gross Domestic 
Product last year is estimated at $622 billion.

An indication of the concern among the Saudi monarchy about growing unrest in 
the country was a closed meeting this week between King Abdullah and King Hamad 
al-Khalifa of Bahrain. The latter travelled to Riyadh to greet his 87-year-old 
Saudi counterpart on his return from the US and Morocco, where the ailing ruler 
had been receiving medical treatment. On the same day, Wednesday, the Saudi 
government unveiled a $37 billion social fund aimed at tackling youth 
unemployment and chronic shortages in affordable housing. A 15 per cent hike in 
salaries for government employees was also announced.

Al-Ramadan said that while the country’s minority Shia communities have “felt 
discrimination and repression most keenly over many decades, their grievances 
are also being shared increasingly by the majority of Sunni people”. Saudi 
Arabia’s population is estimated at around 19 million, with an expatriate 
workforce of some eight million.

“Unemployment is as high as 50 per cent among Saudi youth, whether Shia or 
Sunni, and there is a serious shortfall in housing and education facilities,” 
said Al-Ramadan. “People want more transparent governance, an end to corruption, 
and better distribution of wealth and welfare.”

He said that there was widespread recognition that reform in Saudi Arabia is 
badly needed. “The question is: how far will the call for reforms go?”

The Saudi authorities are undoubtedly mindful of the rapid escalation of 
anti-government protests in the neighbouring Persian Gulf island state of 
Bahrain, which is only an hour’s drive away from the Eastern Province across a 
25-kilometre causeway. Noticeably, the last two weeks have seen a big fall in 
the numbers of Saudis who usually come to Bahrain for a weekend getaway, with 
reports that Saudi officials have been turning away would-be visitors trying to 
cross the causeway.

Before the recent rallies began in Bahrain on February 14, small groups of 
Bahraini protesters were calling for relatively mild constitutional reforms. But 
after a week of heavy-handed repression resulting in seven civilian deaths and 
hundreds of injured, the protest movement in Bahrain is now bringing up to 
200,000 people on to the streets every night demanding the overthrow of the 
al-Khalifa monarchy.

In the coming weeks, the Saudi rulers face a difficult balancing act. Too little 
reform or too much repression by the authorities could set off the kind of 
full-blown uprisings sweeping the Middle East. And there is a lot at stake for 
the kingdom’s rulers. Up to 90 of the country’s oil production and processing is 
located in its restive Eastern Province, where the state-owned oil company Saudi 
Aramco has its headquarters in Dhahran. Some 80 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s 
national income is due to its oil and gas sectors.

Middle East analyst Ralph Schoenman said: The oil wealth of Saudi Arabia is 
concentrated almost entirely in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province - that 
sector of Arabia where popular disaffection is as profound and political 
alienation as explosive as it is in Bahrain.”

Schoenman added: “Beneath the appearance of calm, the Saudi royal family and 
King Abdullah have been consulting frantically with the other Gulf Sunni feudal 
sheikhdoms - from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates to Qatar and Oman.”




http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23396

Wisconsin Unions Preparing a General Strike - Written by David

2011-02-24T13:22:00.000-08:00

Wisconsin Unions Preparing a General Strike     Print
Written by David May
Thursday, 24 February 2011 14:30
http://masspartyoflabor.org/

After more than a week, demonstrations by public sector workers defending their pay, benefits and their right to union representation continue to grow. The struggle in Wisconsin is rapidly becoming a nation-wide struggle, a kind of American "Tahrir Square," a point of reference for workers under attack around the country. Demonstrations against similar cuts have spread to Ohio and Indiana, both states where unions have traditionally been very strong. Dozens, if not hundreds, of solidarity actions have taken place around the country. In a development that would have seemed unthinkable just 2 weeks ago, Wisconsin unions are now preparing for a state-wide general strike if Governor Walker’s bill is passed by the state legislature. While this struggle has only just begun and is far from finished, it marks an important turning point in the U.S. -- the class struggle is back!

Wisconsin workers have also received solidarity from a place where the workers' mass struggle recently led to the overthrow of an unpopular leader: Egypt. On Monday, Kamal Abbas of Egypt's Center for Trade Unions and Workers Services, a participant in the 1989 strike at the Helwan Steel works, which was brutally repressed by the now-defunct Hosni Mubarak regime, wrote:

"We want you to know that we stand on your side. Stand firm and don't waiver. Don't give up on your rights. Victory always belongs to the people who stand firm and demand their just rights...Today is the day of the American workers. We salute you American workers! You will be victorious. Victory belongs to all the people of the world, who are fighting against exploitation, and for their just Rights.”

The revolutionary events in the Middle East have clearly had a big impact on the consciousness of workers and youth everywhere. The capitalist system connects every country into the world market, but it also creates a world working class that shares the same interests. The victories of workers in one country are an inspiration to workers everywhere! The main lesson to be drawn from the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions is that mass action, with the working class at the head of the movement is the way forward. This is the way forward here too!

On Thursday, 3,800 union members and supporters filled the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus as hearings began on a bill which if passed, would deprive all state workers of collective bargaining rights. Following Wisconsin's lead it is possible that other public sector struggles will erupt in Indiana, New Jersey, Missouri and Iowa in the coming weeks. A call has gone out for a national day of action on March 2nd to defend the public sector, which is sure to be taken up around the country.

The Indiana legislature is due to begin discussing a bill that would deprive teachers of union rights. New Jersey Governor Christie has for weeks been telling public workers that they “have to face reality” and prepare for cuts. Iowa Republicans have said that the state’s collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions are “too expensive.” Missouri, which has a Democratic Governor, may soon see a referendum on a “right to work” law, which if approved would mean that both public and private sector workers employed at a union organized workplace would not be required to pay dues, which would hamper unions’ ability to struggle against the bosses by taking away their economic base.

Meanwhile, the crowds outside the Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin grew from 40,000 on Friday to 60,000 or more on Saturday. Despite the largest outpouring of the working class in the US for decades, Walker and the Republicans have refused to back down and continue the push to break the public sector unions.On Tuesday, February 21st, the South Central Federation of Labor (SCFL), the umbrella organization of southern Wisconsin unions, voted to prepare a general strike if the state legislature approves Walker's bill. This is the resolution they passed:

"Motion 1: The SCFL endorses a general strike, possibly for the day Walker signs his 'budget repair bill,' and requests the Education Committee immediately begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike.

"Motion 2: The SCFL goes on record as opposing all provisions contained in Walker’s 'budget repair bill,' including but not limited to, curtailed bargaining rights and reduced wages, benefits, pensions, funding for public education, changes to medical assistance programs, and politicization of state government agencies."

The mass demonstrations in Wisconsin are inspiring millions of other workers to fight against the barrage of cuts. Without thousands and millions of working people standing up and saying “enough is enough!” things will never change. But as important as these mobilizations are, they are only one component part. The experience of the class struggle in the US and around the world shows that it is not enough for masses of ordinary working people and youth to hit the streets; it is also necessary that the movement have a leadership that is willing to fight the bosses and their political representatives "no-holds-barred."

SCFL’s call for a general strike is a huge step forward. Walker is single-mindedly intent on breaking the public sector unions, not working with them, and a general strike is the only way to defeat “Hosni” Walker. Victory in Wisconsin would set the tone for other public sector struggles getting ready to erupt across the country.

The Democrats’ Role

However, it must be said that the call for a general strike wasn’t made by the union leaders as a recognition of the movement’s strength, but rather as a last resort. On Friday, the day before the SCFL’s announcement of preparations for a general strike, the leaders of two of the largest public sector unions, Mary Bell of WEAC and Marty Beil of AFSCME Council 24, announced that they were willing to accept all of Walker’s demands for pay and benefit cuts (totaling $30 million), if only he would withdraw his demand to dismantle collective bargaining. True to form, and fully supported by the billionaire Tea Party-backers the Koch brothers, Walker rejected their offer.

AFSCME's Beil said afterwards that this position was “not a compromise,” but the union’s original bargaining position. With tens of thousands of workers and supporters surrounding the Capitol, why bargain for concessions in the first place? With meetings, marches and other events taking place all day, Beil and Bell should have instead organized a mass meeting of workers and supporters to discuss the terms to present to Walker and point the way forward, including the preparation of a state-wide general strike. Instead, it seems their concession-laden "compromise" was proposed without seriously consulting the thousands of workers who would be affected.

Unfortunately, Beil and Bell‘s concessions offer shows that if public sector workers are called out on a general strike, these leaders cannot be counted on to take the struggle to the end. It is therefore absolutely necessary that the strikers have complete, direct and democratic control over the struggle. SCFL must urgently organize a mass “town hall” meeting of Madison public and private sector workers, students, and community suporters, to begin planning how the general strike will be carried out, and make a call for the formation of coordination and action committees in every factory, workplace, and school, linked up centrally and governed by democratically elected representatives.

The union leaders are under tremendous pressure, not just from below, by the thousands of rank and file union members at the Capitol who are ready to struggle and are pushing the leadership forward, but also from above, specifically from the Democratic National Committee (DNC,) which has sent dozens of its members and operatives to Madison. Their intervention is being backed up in the media, with Obama speaking against Walker’s assault on the unions. Beil and Bell’s line is the same as the line of the Democrats in the state legislature, who returned from a four day boycott to move amendments to the bill which would keep Walker’s pay and benefit cuts but maintain the right to collective bargaining.

Neither the Democrats or Republicans represent the working class majority; they represent the interests of the big banks, the Fortune 500, and the wealthiest in society. Unlike the working class in many countries, US workers lack a mass Labor party that can represent our class interests. In such a situation, two parties representing the same tiny minority in society have to lean on the vast majority of the population to maintain the status quo. Both the Republican and Democratic parties engage in different forms of populism to do this, with the Republicans leaning on conservative churches, the Tea Party, etc., and the Democrats leaning above all on the unions for support, not in the unions’ interest but in their own.

The two parties, while representing the same capitalist class, defend this tiny minority in very different ways. The Republicans are using the budget crisis as a cover to attack the unions directly, hoping to weaken them in both the public and private sector. The Democrats, on the other hand, jump to “support” the unions by pushing a “compromise” in the "middle." The Democrats would like not just to lead the movement in Madison, but to more importantly to use it. The Republican and Democratic proposals in the state legislature have one thing in common: cuts. This is because the crisis of the system demands it. The difference is that the Democrats are seeking a roundabout way of pushing them through.

This has been their strategy for decades, and was seen most recently in the auto industry bailouts where the Obama administration offered GM and Chrysler a financial rescue package, leaning on former UAW President Ron Gettlefinger to force concessions on the membership in exchange. But this old relationship between the unions and Democrats will be increasingly difficult to maintain, as evidenced by events unfolding in Wisconsin, with SCFL being pushed to call a general strike.

Make the rich pay for the crisis!

Across the country, Republican public officials and the media have been howling after public sector workers, pointing to their pay and benefits as the cause of state budget deficits. After almost four years of recession and a "jobless recovery," with millions still unemployed, this does not fool many people. Instead, it justifiably angers most working people. As one sigen held by a protester said: "Attacking Workers Doesn't Create Jobs!" It is insult added to the injury of the economic dislocation, uncertainty and hardship of the vast majority since the “Great Recession” began in 2008. An article on the first demonstration inside the Ohio Statehouse from Bloomberg Online gives a glimpse of what many public sector workers think of the Republican attacks:

"Joe Rugola, the former president of the Ohio AFL-CIO who also is executive director of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees, said he represents bus drivers and janitors who earn about $24,000 a year. 'I’m still looking for this privileged class of workers,’ Rugola said in an interview while waiting to testify.’ This is just part of a national attack on working people.'"

Almost every state in the US is either in debt or will be soon. State Governors and legislatures are presenting the situation as an "open and shut" case. They say that the only choice is between layoffs and job cuts or massive concessions. But the leaders of public sector unions would not be good "lawyers" if they simply accepted the other side’s argument (even if they do call for demonstrations and even strikes)! The union leaders have to answer all the lies of Big Business.

The budget crisis is the result of the weakened economy, massive military spending, and the huge tax breaks and give-aways to big corporations and the wealthy, not the salaries and benefits of public workers. For the past 30 years there has been a colossal transfer of the division of national income in the United States, from the working class to the capitalist class. In 2010, a Duke University study found that the top 20% of earners controlled more than 84% of the nation’s wealth. From 1979 to 2005, the after-taxes earnings of the top 1% of earners increased by 175%. Between 1998 and 2009, 57% of all US corporations did not pay any Federal taxes for at least one year. At the same time, state and city governments have for years been sucked into a downward spiral of tax incentives and breaks to get these same large corporations to move businesses to their areas, which then proceeed to lay off workers and shutter operations once the tax and other incentives run out. At the same time, average inflation-adjusted wage levels for workers have not risen since 1975!

Despite growing profits and massive cash reserves of the largest corporations during the recent "recovery," these same capitalists are not investing and creating jobs, but are instead squeezing more productivity from fewer workers. These corporations have more than $2 trillion in funds and assets, but they still refuse to invest. Librarians, teachers, and firefighters did not cause the economic crisis -- the slump is a result of the inherent problems of the capitalist system. If the union leaders are to address the root causes of the public sector struggle, they cannot ignore this fact.

The resources exist to maintain public sector workers' jobs, pay and benefits, and to continue to provide much-needed public services. The resources are also there to provide quality union wages and conditions for workers in the private sector. There is also more than enough to go around to provide jobs for the millions of unemployed, and to provide free, quality education for students, who will be tomorrow's workers. The problem is that both major political parties are firmly wedded to the big banks and corporations and they refuse to make real inroads against the wealth and privileges of the tiny handful of capitalists -- the top 1% -- who really "call the shots" in US society. The Labor movement will always be fighting with one hand tied behind its back as long as the leaders of the unions continue to support the Democratic Party, which is just as tied to the big banks and corporations as the Republicans.

So let's be clear: the capitalists, not the workers are to blame for the crisis. Instead of supporting the Democrats and hoping for better times, the unions should break with the Democrats and form a Labor party. Instead of parceling out the scraps left over from the table of the 1%, a Labor party should demand that the rich pay for the crisis. A Labor party would be able to fight in Congress and in the state legislatures alongside the unions in the streets and in the workplace for a massive program of public works, to build schools, universities, and repair the country’s aging infrastructure, all of which could provide millions of jobs. Last but not least, these jobs should be 100% unionized and pay a living wage.

The cost of such a program should not come in the form of higher taxes or reduced public services for working people but should come from the top 1%, the big banks and the Fortune 500 companies, not just in the form of higher taxes but also by instituting an “open book” policy to make the banks’ and corporations’ finances public knowledge. Then much of the colossal wealth that has been siphoned off by this tiny minority at the expense of the overwhelming majority could be put in public hands, to be democratically administered in the interests of all. This is a critical fight for labor movement, both in the public and private sector. The victory of the public sector workers will strengthen the unions in the private sector, while the defeat of the public sector workers will weaken the position of these unions.

    * An injury to one is an injury to all! Full solidarity with Wisconsin's public workers!
    * No to concessions! For an all-out one-day general strike in Wisconsin to stop the cuts!
    * Break with the parties of Big Business! For a mass party of labor based on the unions!

http://masspartyoflabor.org/

World Socialist Website - Popular uprisings spread across Middle East despite brutal crackdowns

2011-02-20T17:16:00.000-08:00

World Socialist Website

- Popular uprisings spread across Middle East despite brutal crackdowns

By Mike Head
19 February 2011

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/lead-f19.shtml

Mass demonstrations and pitched battles with the military and police continued 
across the Middle East and North Africa yesterday, despite brutal massacres of 
protesters by autocratic-Western backed regimes. As well as Bahrain, Libya and 
Yemen—where there was fierce street fighting and many deaths—anti-government 
protests and strikes spread to other US client states in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait 
and Jordan.

The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have triggered protests across the region, 
from Algeria to Iraq, causing consternation in the Obama administration and 
among the major European powers, which have long relied upon the regional 
dictatorships to suppress their respective populations and maintain order 
throughout a strategically crucial, oil-rich part of the world.

For the fifth day in a row, there were bloody clashes in the tiny island 
monarchy of Bahrain, where the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based. At least three 
people were killed when the army opened fire on demonstrators. Some 25,000 
people, a huge crowd for a country of less than a million adults, had turned out 
for a funeral march for protestors killed the day before.

It was the first protest in the centre of the capital, Manama, since the police 
stormed the Pearl Roundabout before dawn on Thursday, killing four people and 
wounding around 200.

A Salmaniya hospital doctor told Al Jazeera that the hospital was full of 
severely injured people: “We need help! Our staff is entirely overwhelmed. They 
are shooting at people’s heads. Not at the legs. People are having their brains 
blown out!”

A protester told the news agency: “They had machine guns, not rifles or hand 
weapons, and they shot people who ran away.” Another demonstrator, Hussein Ali, 
said: “They started firing from the bridge without any warning, then they 
started firing from their cars ... It was terrifying, a nightmare. Small 
children and women were falling over.”

Bahrain’s monarchy, no doubt acting in close collaboration with Washington, is 
trying to stabilise itself. Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa appealed 
for a “national dialogue” once order was restored. Any such “dialogue” would be 
aimed at salvaging the regime—even if in a slightly modified form, with the help 
of officially-tolerated opposition groups, as the Egyptian military has tried do 
since the fall of Hosni Mubarak a week ago.

Bahrain, located in the Persian Gulf between Saudi Arabia and Iran, is also home 
to the US Naval Forces Central Command. It is of vital importance to Washington 
because some 40 percent of the world’s oil passes through the Gulf. The US has 
been an ardent supporter of the wealthy royal family and elite that controls the 
state.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday made 
statements of “deep concern” about the violence in Bahrain, as well as Libya and 
Yemen. “The United States condemns the use of violence by governments against 
peaceful protesters in those countries and wherever else it may occur,” Obama said.

Just last December, however, Clinton visited Bahrain, praising it as a “model 
partner” in the region. “I see the glass as half full,” she said when asked 
about the arrests of prominent opposition politicians and reports of torture. 
She said she was “impressed by the commitment that the government has to the 
democratic path that Bahrain is walking on”.

The responsibility of the US and its allies for the repression in Bahrain was 
underscored by reports that the security forces used UK-supplied weapons against 
demonstrators. A British government business department report, cited by the 
/Independent/ newspaper, said London had given approval for British arms 
manufacturers to sell “CS hand grenades, demolition charges, smoke canisters and 
thunderflashes” to Bahrain.

Not least of “concern” to Washington are the implications for the neighbouring 
monarchy in Saudi Arabia, the third largest recipient of US military aid for the 
past three decades after the Israeli and Egyptian governments. A former US 
ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, told Al Jazeera that the “Saudis will 
not tolerate excessive unrest” in Bahrain because of its proximity to their main 
oilfields in eastern Saudi Arabia.

Similarly, the global oil companies are closely following the possible collapse 
of their local crowned heads. Platts, an industry site, reported: “Saudi Arabia, 
the oil Goliath which holds in its hands the only significant spare production 
capacity that can meet any potential global supply disruption, has been besieged 
by bloody riots in neighboring Bahrain and a growing anti-government protest 
south of its border in Yemen.”

*Libya*

Intense battles raged across Libya for the fifth day yesterday as protestors 
demanded the removal of the 41-year-old regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who 
has also become a close ally of the West and the oil giants in recent years. 
Media access to Libya is tightly controlled, but reports from various sources 
described insurrectionary scenes in the wake of Thursday’s “day of rage” in 
which at least 25 protestors were killed.

Security forces were deployed around the eastern city of Al-Baida, a source 
close to the authorities told AFP, following a Reuters report that anti-regime 
protesters had seized control of the city with the aid of local police.

YouTube videos showed demonstrators marching through the streets of Benghazi, 
the country’s second largest city, chanting anti-government slogans. Protesters 
had set fire to the headquarters of a local radio station in Benghazi, after the 
building’s guards withdrew, witnesses and a security source told AFP. Residents 
also reported that police there had been replaced with military troops. Mohamed 
el-Berqawy, an engineer in Benghazi, told Al Jazeera a “massacre” was occurring 
in the city.

According to a toll compiled by AFP from different local sources, at least 41 
people have lost their lives since demonstrations first erupted on Tuesday. 
Libyan authorities claimed that the west of the country was quiet. But 
demonstrations were reported in other cities, including the capital, Tripoli.

*Yemen*

Yemen, another US ally, also resorted to lethal force yesterday against mounting 
protests, bringing the death toll since the unrest erupted on Sunday to 10. 
Anti-regime protesters in the volatile city of Taez were blasted in a hand 
grenade attack on Friday, leaving two dead, as fierce clashes in several areas 
of the southern city of Aden killed four and wounded at least 27. Clashes also 
broke out in the capital Sana’a in which four anti-regime demonstrators were 
injured, according to witnesses and journalists, who were also beaten.

The grenade attack came as hundreds of protesters took to central Taez after the 
weekly Muslim prayers to demand President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ouster. A local 
official told AFP the grenade was lobbed at protesters from a speeding car with 
government number plates.

In Sana’a, several journalists were severely beaten by supporters of the ruling 
General Peoples Congress (GPC) who attacked the demonstration using batons and 
axes, an AFP correspondent reported. Thousands of demonstrators, mostly 
students, had gathered following the weekly Muslim prayers. “People want to 
overthrow the regime,” they chanted.

*Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan*

* *

Significantly, unrest has spread to both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and re-emerged 
in another key US-backed state, Jordan. In Saudi Arabia, foreign construction 
workers went on strike at the King Abdullah Financial District and the King Saud 
University in the capital Riyadh. The /Arab News/ reported that workers had 
stopped work either because their salaries or overtime pay were not paid.

In Kuwait, at least 1,000 stateless Arabs demonstrated in Jahra, northwest of 
Kuwait City, demanding citizenship, leading to dozens being arrested by police. 
Ambulances rushed an unspecified number of wounded protesters and security 
forces away from the scene. Security forces dispersed the demonstration, using 
smoke bombs and water cannon. The government insists that Kuwait’s roughly 
100,000 stateless Arabs are not entitled to nationality.

In Jordan, thugs wielding batons turned on anti-government marchers in the 
capital Amman. Protesters claimed they were attacked as they started to disperse 
after a march calling for an elected government and an end to official 
corruption. Demonstrators have been calling for economic and political reform 
since mid-January. King Abdullah II sacked his entire cabinet last month, in an 
effort to head off the protests, but many were dismayed by his appointment of 
Marouf Bakhit, one of the king’s henchmen, as the new premier. Bakhit, a retired 
army major-general, served as Jordan’s prime minister from 2005 until he was 
forced to resign in 2007 after blatantly rigged elections.

The situation in Jordan exemplifies the intractable social crisis driving the 
protests. It has a high unemployment rate among its population of six million, 
the majority of whom are under 25, and is suffering from the rising world prices 
of food and fuel. None of the region’s regimes, all of which preside over 
ever-more glaring inequality—as do governments around the world—in any way seek 
to address the economic and social needs of their populations.

James Petras: Washington Faces the Arab Revolts - Tom Eley: Egyptian military tortured, “disappeared” thousands of demonstrators

2011-02-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

Washington Faces the Arab Revolts
For the US there are no strategic relationships only permanent interests.

By James Petras

To understand the Obama regime's policy toward Egypt, the Mubarak dictatorship and the popular uprising it is essential to locate it in an historical context. The essential point is that Washington, after several decades of being deeply embedded in the state structures of the Arab dictatorships, from Tunisia through Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, is attempting to re-orient its policies to incorporate and/or graft liberal-electoral politicians onto the existing power configurations.

While most commentators and journalists spill tons of ink about the “dilemmas” of US power, the novelty of the Egyptian events and Washington’s day to day policy pronouncements, there are ample historical precedents which are essential to understand the strategic direction of Obama’s policies.

Historical Background

US foreign policy has a long history of installing, financing, arming and backing dictatorial regimes which back its imperial policies and interests as long as they retain control over their people.

In the past, Republican and Democratic presidents worked closely for over 30 years with the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic; installed the autocratic Diem regime in pre-revolutionary Vietnam in the 1950’s; collaborated with two generations of Somoza family terror regimes in Nicaragua; financed and promoted the military coup in Cuba 1952, Brazil 1964, Chile in 1973, and in Argentina in 1976 and the subsequent repressive regimes. When popular upheavals challenged these US backed dictatorships, and a social as well as political revolution appeared likely to succeed, Washington responded with a three track policy: publically criticizing the human rights violations and advocating democratic reforms; privately signaling continued support to the ruler; and thirdly, seeking an elite alternative which could substitute for the incumbent and preserve the state apparatus, the economic system and support US strategic imperial interests.

For the US there are no strategic relationships only permanent imperial interests, name preservation of the client state. The dictatorships assume that their relationship with Washington is strategic: hence the shock and dismay when they are sacrificed to save the state apparatus. Fearing revolution, Washington has had reluctant client despots, unwilling to move on, assassinated (Trujillo and Diem). Some are provided sanctuaries abroad (Somoza, Batista),others are pressured into power-sharing (Pinochet) or appointed as visiting scholars to Harvard, Georgetown or some other “prestigious” academic posting.

The Washington calculus on when to reshuffle the regime is based on an estimate of the capacity of the dictator to weather the political uprising, the strength and loyalty of the armed forces and the availability of a pliable replacement. The risk of waiting too long, of sticking with the dictator, is that the uprising radicalizes: the ensuing change sweeps away both the regime and the state apparatus, turning a political uprising into a social revolution. Just such a ‘miscalculation’ occurred in 1959 in the run-up to the Cuban revolution, when Washing stood by Batista and was not able to present a viable pro US alternative coalition linked to the old state apparatus. A similar miscalculation occurred in Nicaragua, when President Carter, while criticizing Somoza, stayed the course, and stood passively by as the regime was overthrown and the revolutionary forces destroyed the US and Israeli trained military, secret police and intelligence apparatus, and went on to nationalize US property and develop an independent foreign policy.

Washington moved with greater initiative, in Latin America in the 1980’s. It promoted negotiated electoral transitions which replaced dictators with pliable neo-liberal electoral politicians, who pledged to preserve the existing state apparatus, defend the privileged foreign and domestic elites and back US regional and international policies.

Past Lessons and Present Policies

Obama has been extremely hesitant to oust Mubarak for several reasons, even as the movement grows in number and anti-Washington sentiment deepens. The White House has many clients around the world – including Honduras, Mexico, Indonesia, Jordan and Algeria – who believe they have a strategic relationship with Washington and would lose confidence in their future if Mubarak was dumped.

Secondly, the highly influential leading pro-Israel organizations in the US (AIPAC, the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations) and their army of scribes have mobilized congressional leaders to pressure the White House to continue backing Mubarak, as Israel is the prime beneficiary of a dictator who is at the throat of the Egyptians (and Palestinians) and at the feet of the Jewish state.

As a result the Obama regime has moved slowly, under fear and pressure of the growing Egyptian popular movement. It searches for an alternative political formula that removes Mubarak, retains and strengthens the political power of the state apparatus and incorporates a civilian electoral alternative as a means of demobilizing and de-radicalizing the vast popular movement.

The major obstacle to ousting Mubarak is that a major sector of the state apparatus, especially the 325,000 Central Security Forces and the 60,000 National Guard are directly under the Interior Ministry and Mubarak. Secondly, top Generals in the Army (468,500 members) have buttressed Mubarak for 30 years and have been enriched by their control over very lucrative companies in a wide range of fields. They will not support any civilian ‘coalition’ that calls into question their economic privileges and power to set the political parameters of any electoral system. The supreme commander of the Egyptian military is a longtime client of the US and a willing collaborator with Israel.

Obama is resolutely in favor of collaborating with and ensuring the preservation of these coercive bodies. But he also needs to convince them to replace Mubarak and allow for a new regime which can defuse the mass movement which is increasingly opposed to US hegemony and subservience to Israel. Obama will do everything necessary to retain the cohesion of the state and avoid any splits which might lead to a mass movement – soldier alliance which could convert the uprising into a revolution.

Washington has opened talks with the most conservative liberal and clerical sectors of the anti-Mubarak movement. At first it tried to convince them to negotiate with Mubarak – a dead end position which was rejected by all sectors of the opposition, top and bottom. Then Obama tried to sell a phony “promise” from Mubarak that he would not run in the elections, nine months later.

The movement and its leaders rejected that proposal also. So Obama raised the rhetoric for ‘immediate changes’ but without any substantive measures backing it up. To convince Obama of his continued power base, Mubarak sent his formidable thug-lumpen secret police to violently seize the streets from the movement. A test of strength: the Army stood by; the assault raised the ante of a civil war, with radical consequences. Washington and the E.U. pressured the Mubarak regime to back off – for now. But the image of a pro-democracy military was tarnished, as killings and injuries multiplied in the thousands.

As the pressure of the movement intensifies, Obama cross pressured by the pro Mubarak Israel Lobby and its Congressional entourage on the one hand, and on the other by knowledgeable advisors who call on him to follow past practices and move decisively to sacrifice the regime to save the state while the liberal-clerical electoral option is still on the table.

But Obama hesitates and like a wary crustacean, he moves sideways and backwards, believing his own grandiloquent rhetoric is a substitute for action … hoping that sooner or later, the uprising will end with Mubarakism without Mubarak: a regime able to demobilize the popular movements and willing to promote elections which result in elected officials following the general line of their predecessor.

Nevertheless, there are many uncertainties in a political reshuffle: a democratic citizenry, 83% unfavorable to Washington, will possess the experience of struggle and freedom to call for a realignment of policy, especially to cease being a policeman enforcing the Israeli blockage of Gaza, and providing support for US puppets in North Africa, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Secondly free elections will open debate and increase pressure for greater social spending, the expropriation of the seventy billion dollar empire of the Mubarek clan and the crony capitalists who pillage the economy. The masses will demand a reallocation of public expenditure from the overblown coercive apparatus to productive, job generating employment. A limited political opening may lead to a second round, in which new social and political conflicts will divide the anti-Mubarak forces, a conflict between the advocates of social democracy and elite backers of neo-liberal electoralism. The anti-dictatorial moment is only the first phase of a prolonged struggle toward definitive emancipation not only in Egypt but throughout the Arab world. The outcome depends on the degree to which the masses develop their own independent organization and leaders.

- James Petras' most recent books are: What's Left in Latin America?, coauthored with Henry Veltmeyer (Ashgate Press, 2009), and Global Depression and Regional Wars (Clarity Press, 2009). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
If you like this article, please consider making a contribution to the Palestine Chronicle.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16630

*****

Egyptian military tortured, “disappeared” thousands of demonstrators
By Tom Eley
11 February 2011

Since demonstrations and strikes erupted against the Mubarak regime on January 25, the Egyptian military has arrested, tortured and “disappeared” thousands, according to reports from the Guardian newspaper and human rights organizations.

The revelations explode the claim advanced by the Obama administration that Egypt’s army is a neutral arbiter in the crisis and can lead a “transition” to human rights and democracy. They also give the lie to the claim that the military can be relied upon to protect the population from the hated state security forces, an argument advanced by both Mohammed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood. The military has, in fact, assumed the brutal role of the police and security forces, which have, at least in part, dissolved in the face of the revolution.

According to Human Rights Watch, at least 302 Egyptians have been killed in the protests, the vast majority of these at the hands of the security forces, pro-government thugs and the military. Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Cairo who participated in the count, said that the ultimate number will likely be far higher.

The number of the disappeared—those arrested by the military with no record or official acknowledgement of their fate—runs into the hundreds, possibly thousands, Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, told the Guardian. Their “crimes” include carrying political leaflets, attending demonstrations, “or even the way they look,” the newspaper reports.

“Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew, to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not,” Bahgat said. “It’s unusual and to the best of our knowledge it’s also unprecedented for the army to be doing this.”

He continued, “Detentions either go completely unreported or they are unable to inform their family members or any lawyer of their detention so they are much more difficult to assist or look for. Those held by the military police are not receiving any due process either because they are unaccounted for and they are unable to inform anyone of their detention.”

One person who has vanished after being detained by the military near Tahrir Square is Kareem Amer, a blogger and opponent of the Mubarak regime who had only recently been released from a four-year prison sentence for criticizing the regime.

As is the usual practice for the police and security forces, the military is subjecting those arrested to torture. The Guardian spoke “to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organised campaign of intimidation.” Among the documented forms of torture the newspaper uncovered is the use of electrical shocks on prisoners.

Human Rights Watch reported the military abuse of one anonymous activist who was stopped at a military checkpoint where a pro-democracy flier was found in his bag.

“They started beating me up in the street [with] their rubber batons and an electric Taser gun, shocking me,” the activist said. “Then they took me to Abdin police station. By the time I arrived, the soldiers and officers there had been informed that a ‘spy’ was coming, and so when I arrived they gave me a ‘welcome beating’ that lasted some 30 minutes.”

He was then forced to undress, at which point cables from an “electric shock machine” were attached to his body.

“He shocked me all over my body, leaving no place untouched. It wasn’t a real interrogation; he didn’t ask that many questions. He tortured me twice like this on Friday, and one more time on Saturday,” the man said.

The Guardian spoke with a 23-year-old man, Ashraf, who was detained by the military on Friday for attempting to bring medical supplies to the demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo. He described his ordeal in a makeshift prison at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square.

“I was on a sidestreet and a soldier stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told him and he accused me of working for foreign enemies and other soldiers rushed over and they all started hitting me with their guns.

“They put me in a room. An officer came and asked me who was paying me to be against the government. When I said I wanted a better government he hit me across the head and I fell to the floor. Then soldiers started kicking me. One of them kept kicking me between my legs.

“They got a bayonet and threatened to rape me with it. Then they waved it between my legs. They said I could die there or I could disappear into prison and no one would ever know. The torture was painful but the idea of disappearing in a military prison was really frightening.”

Ashraf, who did not give his last name for fear of reprisals, said that he was beaten off and on for hours, before being placed in a room with about a dozen other men who had been badly tortured.

Last week the military allowed pro-Mubarak thugs, many of them plainclothes security forces, to attack demonstrators over the space of three days with Molotov cocktails, iron rods, vehicles, horses, and even guns. An unknown number were killed and scores were injured in these assaults.

Human rights organizations say that the military did not generally detain the pro-Mubarak fighters, and when they did they have not been subject to the same abuses as the demonstrators. Instead, they have been turned over to the police and security forces—very likely their employers.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/disa-f11.shtml

*****

Concerning the Bolivarian Revolution and the Arab Revolution in Africa

2011-02-01T16:16:00.000-08:00

Concerning the contemporary Bolivarian Revolution and the current Arab
Revolution in Africa

By Franz J. T. Lee

By recalling what has happened here in Venezuela nearly nine years ago (a failed
military coup and an oil sabotage orchestrated by the USA against Venezuela) and
by focusing on the latest political developments in North Africa and the Middle
East, we could note two interesting factors which both events have in common.
Both occur in the epoch of globalization, and by surpassing normal spatial and
temporal parameters, both appear as surprise, are unique, New. They appear at
dusk on the global horizon, at a time when it seems that the experiment man,
socialist man is becoming an earthly failure.

But, in the epoch of the total collapse of the capitalist world order:

* Are these sparks sufficient to set the whole global prairie on emancipatory fire?

Corporate destructive reality is progressively diminishing the chances of
emancipatory creative possibility.

* What could be still possible for the future of humanity, for future humanity
itself? The permanent world revolution?

Concerning the species man, this is a very serious philosophical question which
merits profound thinking, thought and action. In a brief commentary this is not
possible. Nonetheless, talking about the category 'possibility' its philosophic
roots we encounter in the works of the 'Aristotelian Left', for example, in the
materialist philosophy of Avicenna and Averroes, who lived during the 'Dark
Ages' in North Africa, the Mideast and Persia.

* Like the October Revolution, like the Algerian Revolution, could the Arab and
Latin American emancipatory endeavors also fail?

* Could they lose their creating and creative sparks, their sparkling, twinkling
novelty, the anti-capitalist New?

* Could they degenerate into corrupt practice and oppotunist ideology?

Both historical events never happened before anywhere and they will never repeat
themselves again anywhere, as such, they are unique, are emancipatory.

Surely, very often we indulge in wishful thinking or are carried away by
political daydreams, by emotional masses in motion, as such, generally we are
tempted to see 'revolutions' everywhere, here an African revolution, there an
Arab Revolution, all over a Christian revolution, without ever having thought
about the possibility of emancipatory reality and about real human emancipation.
Let us just comment on a few aspects of this crucial social problem.

* Theoretically, philosophically, what is the difference between possibility and
reality? Let us say it lovingly, in ancient Greek.

Often desired things, beautiful relations or loving people that we daydream
about, that we are desperately looking for across continents, do not appear on
the spur of the moment, because they are still in the Aristotelian "process of
ta symbebekóta to kata to dynatón to dynamei on. In other words, what we look
for, the loved one, the revolution, are not born as yet.

What does this mean? It simply describes the arduous materialist process of
being, of becoming and of becoming being, the process from possibility to
reality in all walks of terrestrial life.

According to Aristotle, the materialist, cosmic process encompasses the
political process from the village to the polis, to the State. Of course, then
the State was the ideal ancient slave-owning State; once it had materialized
itself, it ended up to be the most perfect form of 'human communism'. However,
only the slave owning middle class, the ruling elite, had the social privilege
of administrating this perfect polis. (1)

In globalization, the perfect State, the most evil state ever constructed would
be the 'One World Government'.

As indicated, across the Aristotelian 'Left', across North Africa, the Mideast
and Persia, Arab and African philosophers like Avicenna, Averroes and Avicebron
were disseminating a dynamic natural materialism based on natura naturata and
natura naturans, created, creating and creative hylozoism in medieval Antiquity.

This transillumination eventually entered bourgeois philosophy in the epoch of
the Renaissance and was developed further by philosophers like Giordano Bruno.
Ironically, Africa and the Middle East did not only 'discover' America long
before Christopher Columbus, they hade a decisive contribution to bourgeois
materialist philosophy.

Later Hegel will claim that Africans do not exist within the framework of
history. Montesquieu was convinced that Africans do not possess a 'soul', not
even a 'black' one and Voltaire, who was involved in the African slave maafa,
(Swahili, concept for a great disaster, for the African Holocaust), pejoratively
will state that 'negroes' have no intellectual capacity and that they serve
neither for 'the use nor for the abuse of philosophy'. If philosophy really
should be the love (filia) for wisdom (sophia), well, then the afri peoples of
the North African region already over ten millennia ago very wisely and vividly
were in love with Mother Nature, that is, Africans were 'civilized' long before
Europe had reached the barbarous stage of accumulative, capitalist ta
symbebekóta (Aristotle), that is, had entered the state of coming-into-possibility.

What is happening currently in North Africa is that the emancipatory spirit of
the Afri peoples who had lived there ten millennia ago are now claiming their
historic truth, human dignity and emancipation.

On our minute planet Earth, on our one and only natural, cosmic space-ship en
route towards new, unknown realms of creative, living emancipation, in our
struggles, in our class struggles, scientifically and philosophically we, as
strangers to the New, have to give it welcome that "there are more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Shakespeare,
Hamlet) (2) This is the tird factor which the Bolivarian and the Arab
anticipatory processes have in common.

Philosophically expressed, In Africa, in daily life, in our perpetual 'praxical'
and theoretical class struggles, there exist a myriad of simple objective levels
and exist countless complex subjective degrees, however, these are just the
anticipatory preconditions that should enable us to pass and surpass
unimaginable, vague 'transjective mensions' of human being, human existence and
human transcendence. Only as human trinity could we ban capitalism forever.

This simply means that Mother Africa, the creator and womb of human life, has to
recapture her erotic and exotic human trinity which capitalist colonial
barbarism has wrested apart and has replaced it with divine patriarchal
monotheism. With the brutal construction of the imperialist world market, for
Africa life itself was converted into an earthly hell, into the greatest maafa
of all times.

Nonetheless, it is pertinent to note that in severe times like the current one,
the 'future' of mankind becomes truncated, opaque and vague, everywhere all
kinds of 'solutions' appear in dispersed forms; none of them seem to be able to
change the mortal route of the global, fascist Titanic. However, once upon a
time, ten million years ago, ... after three natural climatic maafa and the
destruction of 90 percent of planetary life, for example, of the dinosaurs, ...
Mother Africa gave birth to Proconsul africanus, the root stock of contemporary
women, men and primates.

So often did Mother Africa preserve her very own cosmic creations, hence, why
can Africa and Africa in Venezuela not resolve or halt the coming super maafa
caused by Lilliputian, myopic, patriarchal megalomania?

When shall we ever learn what is anti-capitalism?

After the Neanderthal Man, after Homo sapiens, who or what will come next?

Also this is 'evolution', is 'progress' towards higher forms, as explained by
Charles Darwin or Michail Bakunin. Only Rousseau warned that we are going
precisely the other way, towards involution.

Continuing with the anticipatory sublime, surely, also in Africa, emancipatory
forces permanently are being created, as a result of the sharp ongoing planetary
contradictions and relations, -- but also of the corresponding social
antagonistic forces, of material affirmations, social negations and
transvolutionary 'superations'. Internationally, in globalization, in the
collapse of the mode of destruction of capitalism, in potentiality and potency,
in latency and tendency, in embryo, the parasitic days of capitalism are
numbered. We are in the era of barbarism already. We just have Hobson's choice,
as could be witnessed by the current heinous capital and cardinal crimes against
nature and humanity, committed by the governments of the United States and the
European Union.

Apart from the current valiant African freedom struggles against global
imperialism, our emancipatory dawn, uhuru (Odinga Oginga), that is, freedom, is
not born as yet. In fact, currently for Africa it is the darkest before dawn.

Historically, determined by the tendential and latent laws of the anarchic,
productive development of world capitalism, very early appeared phantasmagorias
of the best possible State to safe-guard and foster the 'peaceful' accumulation
of capital, profits, privileges, hegemony and power. Centuries later a
transhistoric fata morgana became a concrete, cruel reality.

In Europe, for example, such was the case of Maquiavelli's 'Prince', of Thomas
Hobbes' 'Leviathan' and of George Orwell's 'Big Brother' -- these past
nightmares, these possible State monstrosities of yesterday progressively are
becoming realities in the post-Orwellian epoch of globalization or global
fascism. Now the ruling power elites are dreaming about their 'one world
government', about total control.

The tables are turning in Africa. The theocratic, feudal and neocolonial elites
are trembling, they sense their inexorable demise. It is high time to transcend
the slave maafa with liberatory ujamaa, with familyhood; to annihilate apartheid
with socialist ubuntu, with communalism, to transform 'not yet uhuru' into real
'menschliche Emanzipation', into real 'human emancipation' (Marx). Concerning
Venezuela, our comrades, to whom this commentary is dedicated, urgently we have
to accelerate our transcendence from theology to philosophy, from pro-capitalism
to anti-imperialism, practice to praxis, from ideology to theory, from
revolution to emancipation.
Footnotes:

(1) See: Aristotle, Politeia, IV, 11, 1295 b 1ff.
(2) See: Acto I, Escena 5.

franz@franzlee.org.ve

Franz J. T. Lee: Internet Access: Formidable tool to curb and control mass mobilizations!

2011-01-29T08:54:00.000-08:00

Internet Access: Formidable tool to curb and control mass mobilizations!

By Franz J.T. Lee

As we warned in our last article, (1) recent events in Northern Africa and the Middle East and as reported by the World Socialist Website today, (2) have proven how the ruling elites don´t hesitate a second to cut off the access to Internet and also cellphone communications as a means to curb and control mass mobilizations that threaten their stability, while at the same time guaranteeing continuous flow of information with regard to "business as usual", that is, financial transactions at the stock exchanges. The World Socialist Website writes:

"The Egyptian government shut down most internet traffic in the country thirty minutes past midnight Thursday morning, in an effort to block communication prior to mass demonstrations on Friday. ... The move constitutes an unprecedented restriction of internet communications. Other countries have blocked connections to specific websites, or attempted to slow down traffic, but have never succeeded in cutting off all internet access to the population."

As soon as the oppressed working people start making use of the Internet - as they should - for political or even emancipatory purposes, the ruling classes respond ever so "democratically" with the suspension of free access to free information and the corresponding possibility to freely organize, gather and take action against oppression.

It is crucial to understand, that international solidarity is the conditio sine qua non for the current popular mobilizations in North Africa and the Middle East to succeed in their endeavors, and it is also crucial to think of establishing alternative communication channels at all costs.

The global ruling classes' fear of popular organization against them is such, that we see giants like China panic and establish Internet censorship about the news coming from Egypt. Due to the nature of the capitalist system's collapse on a global scale, expect mass protests, mobilization and organization from Africa to Asia and back again to South America and the Caribbean. Expect a corresponding Internet censorship, too! And finally, perpetual social unrest will "hit home", that is, the corporate heart of North America and Europe.

(1) Venezuela: In defense of the Internet while it still lasts.
http://franzjtlee.blogspot.com/2011/01/venezuela-in-defense-of-internet-while.html

(2) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/intr-j29.shtml and also: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/egyp-j29.shtml

franz@franzlee.org.ve

(Video) Some Scenes of the Celebration of the Medal Award ... to Professor Dr. Franz J. T. Lee

2011-01-28T18:47:00.000-08:00

(Video) Some Scenes of the Celebration of the Medal Award of the University of The Andes (ULA), Mérida, Venezuela, on December 6, 2010, to Professor Dr. Franz J. T. Lee for "30 Years of Academic Service".

Together with other dedicated staff members, workers, secretaries and lecturers, Dr. Franz J. T. Lee was honored for his dedicated service in the fields of university education and extra-mural work. This act was celebrated in the main hall of the trade union of professors, APULA, and was well-attended. Franz was received with a great applause.
ENJOY THE FUN!

The Video
http://www.4shared.com/video/7FXD9QpO/reconocimiento_a_franz_lee.html

********

Venezuela: In Defense of the Internet while it still lasts

2011-01-26T16:23:00.000-08:00

Venezuela: In Defense of the Internet while it still lasts

By Franz J. T. Lee

The international attack on the Internet has begun. Also in Venezuela by law the usage of the Internet is regulated. Especially here in Venezuela, we should use the Internet for anticipatory and emancipatory purposes while it still is lasting, this won't be the case for very long anymore. If we did not have news and information sites like Aporrea, VHeadline, Venezuelanalysis, Abrebrecha, Ensartaos, and a few others, we would practically know nothing about daily political occurrences in Venezuela.

Orwellian 'Big Brother' is already launching his 'Brave New World'. Since ages, ever since the division of human society into classes, into masters and slaves, and the original accumulation of capital in the Mediterranean region, to perpetuate themselves all rulers developed ideological systems of body, mind and thought control of their 'subjects'. In fact, culture, religion, customs, norms, morals, 'information', mass media and education are still the main instruments for the eventual construction of a possible global 'Mental Holocaust', directed and carried out by a 'One World Government' economically based in total corporate concentration and monopolization.

Internet was invented by the Pentagon to serve military purposes; it has been placed at the disposal of the public not out of human love, but for achieving 'full spectrum dominance', and for globalizing 'military humanism'. Inter alia, Internet is being used in combination with other military 'toys', like HAARP, CERN, spy airplanes and satellites, and the Global Positioning System, ... hence, all are there for the sake of military reconnaissance, intelligence, vigilance, surveillance, mass manipulation and data mining.

Of course nothing is secure on the Internet, not even our computers; Big Brother has the master key to all our 'privacy'. And yet, while it still lasts, we have an international information source about which neither Marx nor Trotsky could dream about. The problem is that we are over flooded with 'disinformation' and could not so rapidly learn to differentiate truth and reality from big lies and virtual reality. An infinitesimal percent of Internet users create home pages and blogs to reveal global capitalist exploitation, domination, racism and destruction of society and our natural habitat. However, to find millions of brains to grasp the facts, which openly are hanging everywhere in the air, is a job for Sisyphus. Precisely to accomplish this is the objective of mind control, of the global 'Mental Holocaust'.
On Internet, like nowhere else, we can still get the means to develop human consciousness, a class consciousness, provided that we still have a sound intellectual capacity, above all, a sound knowledge about logic, political economy, science and philosophy, in a word, of Marxism.

Who should fear to be called a modern anti-capitalist, a socialist or a Marxist, would be already a victim of global corporate fear, a conditio qua non for establishing a 'one world state', would be already on the 'information highway' towards the Mental Holocaust.

Big Brother currently is concluding his search for 'terrorists', especially for scientific actors and philosophic thinkers, in this gigantic battle, in the 'War of Idea'.

Most of us already are loving Big Brother, but many 'fighters', who still trust in the power of the 'proles', like Winston Smith, are continuing the struggle of and for humanity in Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Greece, France, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Gaza, the Niger Delta, the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.

Without the Internet we would not even know about all these valiant global class struggles.

Exactly this corporate imperialism wants to curtail or even eliminate now ... many websites and blog spots are already, censured, blocked and eliminated by the USA. Other capitalist governments and states in the interest of hiding their Big Lies to the working masses, are rapidly following suit.

Without the Internet we would have to resort again to our African drums, indigenous smoke rings and pipes, messenger doves (which may fall dead from the intoxicated skies) and to Dracula's stagecoach to deliver our mails, speeches, articles and news. What would really serve our purposes would be galactic telepathy and teleportation.

To see our international readers who recently have visited our blogs and homepages, CLICK HERE

franz@franzlee.org.ve

From Revolution to Emancipation

While class struggle exists, Franz Lee will exist.

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Franz J. T. Lee: Internet Access: Formidable tool to curb and control mass mobilizations!

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