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Belarus Activist Freed After Clemency Request

By RFE/RL’s Belarus Service

Last updated (GMT/UTC): 27.09.2012 16:07

VITSEBSK, Belarus — Prominent Belarusian opposition activist Syarhey Kavalenka, whose health deteriorated after a lengthy hunger strike earlier this year, has been released from prison.
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Relatives told RFE/RL that Kavalenka and his wife arrived in their native city of Vitsebsk overnight.

Kavalenka’s mother says her son was freed after he had to ask for clemency.

She said Kavalenka had asked for a pardon under increasing pressure from prison authorities, who put him in solitary confinement and blackmailed him.

Kavalenka, 37, was sentenced in February to 25 months in jail for violating the terms of his parole for a conviction on charges of “illegally displaying the banned Belarusian national flag.”

Kavalenka has denied committing the offense.

Officials force-fed him before, during, and after the trial because of his lengthy hunger strike.

 
More information here
 
 

September 30, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Japan Autumn Festival and the typhoon

This blog started on 11 March 2011, the day of the Tohoku Earthquake,with a brief e-mail entitled ‘I’m OK’ dispatched to close friends and family. The e-mail became a ’round robin’ and after a week it started a new life as a blog.
I’m an English woman living in Koriyama, Fukushima prefecture, a place no one had ever heard of, but which was suddenly being mentioned in the same breath as Chernobyl. Initially, this blog was a record of those first weeks, a record of how ordinary people, me and the 100 staff who work in the corrugated box factory I inherited, coped in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Sunday, 30 September 2012

Autumn Festival

  Hi
Koriyama has a summer festival but it’s a relatively recent introduction. The autumn festival, Aki Matsuri  秋祭り is the one that’s in people’s blood. The festivities went on for four days. Last year the children didn’t get to participate as radiation was still high. But they made up for it this year. The festivities culminated last night when 33 mikoshishrines from different neighbourhoods were carried up and down the main street and finally made it to the main shrine, Hachiman-sama. They were lucky with the weather. Tonight, Sunday, as I write, a typhoon has hit the Nagoya area and here the rain is lashing down.
The excitement of the Matsuri is the sound of the drums, the pipes and the shouting. Photos are a poor substitute. But here goes ..

September 30, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

USA Nuke outages averaging above last year since June

The number of outages in 2012 has remained higher than 2011 since June, and also above the five-year average since May.

Fri Sep 28, 2012 12:29pm EDT

* Nuke outages averaging above last year since June

* Outages seen dropping below last year next month

* Four reactors down for long-term work

By Scott DiSavino

[…]

Sept 28 (Reuters) – U.S. nuclear power outages over the last few months have been averaging well above last year and the five-year average primarily due to the continued shutdown of four reactors for major, long-term maintenance, according to Reuters data.

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September 30, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Just in: Long-time UK anti-nuclear activist Crispin Aubrey has died

LONG STANDING ANTI NUCLEAR CAMPAIGNER DIES

29 September 2012

[…]

It is with huge sadness that Stop Hinkley announces the untimely death of Crispin Aubrey.

The Stop Hinkley campaign is coming to terms with the news that spokesperson Crispin Aubrey suffered a fatal heart attack on Friday afternoon in the midst of the preparations for the planned protest against Hinkley C next weekend.

Crispin played a key role in the preparations and was due to speak at the rally next Saturday. Crispin’s wife Sue, also part of the Stop Hinkley campaign, has bravelyrequested that the ‘show must go on because it’s what Crispin would have wanted’.

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The Aubreys were involved in the original protest against Hinkley C over twenty years ago. Crispin took a lead role in the public enquiry and coordinated the campaign which was heralded a success as the reactor was never built.

Crispin was a life-long campaigner and had been a journalist all his working life, starting at the Hampshire Chronicle and London’s Time Out magazine. He wrote widely on environmental issues and was committed to the promotion of renewable energy.

Crispin was well respected contributor to the Stop Hinkley campaign and to the fight against new nuclear in the UK.

[…]

http://stophinkley.org/PressReleases/pr120929.htm

Crispin Aubrey obituary

Journalist and environmental campaigner who was a defendant in the ABC secrecy case

[..]

Crispin Aubrey, the journalist, author and campaigner, who has died of a heart attack aged 66, came to national prominence when he was arrested under the Official Secrets Act in 1977. His subsequent trial and the campaign around it led to a re-examination of secrecy legislation and shone a light into some of the darker corners of the intelligence services. Continue reading →

September 30, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Poet Gunter Grass hails Israeli nuclear spy in new poem

http://news.ph.msn.com/entertainment/grass-hails-israeli-nuclear-spy-in-new-poem-1

Nobel prize-winning German author Gunter Grass, declared persona non-grata by Israel over a poem saying it threatened world peace, has published another work critical of the Jewish state.

Grass hails Israeli nuclear spy in new poem

Grass hails Israeli nuclear spy in new poem

In one of a collection of 87 new pieces, Grass hails whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years in jail for leaking Israeli nuclear secrets to a British newspaper, in a poem entitled “A Hero in Our Time”.

He describes former nuclear technician Vanunu as a “hero” and a “role model”, according to extracts published by the German news agency DPA.

Earlier this year, Grass, 84, angered Israel after publishing a piece entitled “What Must Be Said”, in which he voiced fears that a nuclear-armed Israel “could wipe out the Iranian people” with a “first strike.”

Israel has since barred him from visiting the country.

Vanunu himself said that he was pleased to be mentioned by a writer of Grass’s stature.

“I am very happy to be in the league of Gunter Grass,” he told AFP, speaking in English. He compared Israel’s ban on a Grass visit to its refusal to let Vanunu leave the country.

“Vanunu would be happy to get from the interior ministry of Israel the title ‘persona non grata’ and they can send me out of Israel,” he said, speaking of himself with his customary use of the third person.

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September 30, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Belarusian anti-nuclear activists ‘blacklisted’ by Lithuanian government

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2012/novikova_blacklist

 

Nokikova’s only arrest tied to her activist activities occurred in her home country of Belarus in July, when she and four other activists attempted to pass an open statement protesting the construction of the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant to the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Minsk.

 

She was detained on administrative charged for five days, and denied medicines she has to take for a thyroid condition.

Arrested with her was Andrei Ozharovsky, another Bellona contributor and a nuclear physicist, who was held in a Minsk jail on administrative charges for 10 days. Upon his release, he was told he could not renter Belarus for 10 years.

 

 

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Belarusian anti-nuclear campaigners Tatyana Novikova, a Bellona contributor, and Nikolai Ulasevich were on Wednesday refused entry to neighboring Lithuania on the grounds that the Baltic country’s government had declared them “personae non grata” and potential threats to the national security of that and other European Union nations.Bellona, 28/09-2012

Continue reading →

September 30, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

UNSURVIVABLE (Video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8kXQb8MkIk

Published on Sep 3, 2012 by 

A dark, gruesome, but wholly true depiction of the threat of thermonuclear war, the consequences, and Obama’s deployment of a major portion of the U.S. thermonuclear capabilities in multiple theaters threatening both Russia and China. 

Unsurvivable is available in several languages:

Spanish subtitles http://spanish.larouchepac.com/node/17397

French http://www.solidariteetprogres.org/Sans-Retour-le-film-choc-sur-le-risque-de-…

For the video bibliography: http://larouchepac.com/node/23808

For further information go to http://www.LaRouchePAC.com

Follow us on twitter @larouchepac & Facebook http://www.facebook.com/LaRouchePAC

If you support and appreciate the work of LaRouchePAC, please give your financial support https://www.fundraisingbynet.net/contribute/427

Also see the video “Obama is Not to Blame, You Are!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or2EH5ryH6U

September 30, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Toshiro Kitamura-My feelings as a disaster victim who had supported nuclear power

From the Global Energy Policy Research website

http://www.gepr.org/en/contents/20120709-01/

My feelings as a disaster victim who had supported nuclear power — It is necessary to continue to think about the reality of the disaster and its true causes

What I came to see was a precarious nuclear policy that had continually put off dealing with the root issues, the excessive leniency of those involved who simply went through the motions, the remoteness of the existence of the power plant to both the central government agencies and the company headquarters, and local governments and residents who were eager to profit yet totally unprepared for a state of emergency.

Toshiro KitamuraToshiro KitamuraFormer Senior Specialist of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, Former Board Member of Japan Atomic Power View PDF

A proponent of nuclear power who became a victim of the disaster.

For nearly half of a century, I had made it my job to promote nuclear power, but no sooner had I retired than I myself was forced to evacuate by the nuclear incident. It is quite the ironic story.

It was in 1967 that I joined Japan Atomic Power, a power company which specializes in nuclear power. Later, I alternated between working on site and at the headquarters, mainly focused on the fields of safety administration andtraining, and I also had experience with negotiations of local governments and residents, and public relations.

I had become a member of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum a few years ago, and my professional life was truly focused entirely on the promotion of nuclear power. I built a house in Tomioka in the eastern part of Fukushima Prefecture called Hamadori 13 years ago, and there I intended to spend the rest of my days.

Continue reading →

September 30, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment