UK asked to investigate spyware firm… Spying on activists and bloggers -RT
Shehabi said she welcomed the step to impose some controls on the export of surveillance software, but that stricter controls were needed. “I expect this type of treatment from the Bahrain government, which is reduced to lawlessness and doesn’t believe in human rights, but if they have been serviced by a British company that really angers me,” she said. “There shouldn’t have to be another victim like me to come along before these exports stop.”
Published: 27 December, 2012, 16:34
RT
Privacy rights activists are calling on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to investigate spyware firm Gamma International and its exports of surveillance software to repressive regimes, such as Bahrain, calling the transactions “criminal” and “illegal”.
The campaign group Privacy International (PI) confirmed in a press release that Gamma International is selling surveillance technology to regimes with horrific human rights records without a proper license.
The software being sold is powerful enough to intercept text messages, phone and Skype calls, remotely turn on cameras and microphones, log keystrokes and copy files, The Guardian reported.
The activist group sent a 186-page report to HMRC, saying that that technology sold is being used to spy on activists, who are later targeted by repressive regimes and “amounts to criminal conduct”.
In April 2011, Egyptian protesters found documents from Gamma International inside Egypt’s secret police office. One of the documents contained an offer dated June 29, 2010, which said to provide ‘FinSpy’ software, hardware,installation and training for 287,000 euro.
Gamma International denied supplying software to Egypt, but did confirm that it has demonstrated such products to the government.
Bahraini prodemocracy activists also were subjected to Gamma International’s surveillance products.
In spring and summer of 2012 activists received emails containing malware. After the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab investigated the case, it found evidence connecting the malware to FinSpy, which is part of the commercial FinFisher intrusion kit.
Citizen Lab managed to extract ‘digital DNA’, from the infected emails that matched that of FinFisher and published the results.
Activist and writer in Bahrain Ala’a Shehabi, 30, was one of the victims targeted by FinSpy malware emails.
She claims to have received the total of four emails from what looked like authentic email accounts.
She later forwarded them to her colleague Bill Marczak, a computer science doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who then connected the malware in the email to an internet address in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, which triggered the rest of the investigation.
Shebani told The Guardian that situation in Bahrain at the time was “very charged”.
“I was banned from traveling and forced to stop work,” she added. “I essentially worked on the assumption that everything I did or said was being watched.”
Facebook and Twitter accounts started disappearing, forcing the opposition to go underground.
Gamma International, on the other hand, stated that it had no knowledge of this.
Bahrain’s human rights situation remains “critical in the wake of the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that erupted in February 2011,” reports Human Rights Watch.
Police regularly use violence to disperse crowds of protesters, while Bahrainis, led by the country’s Shiite Muslim majority, are continuing to protest, demanding greater rights and freedoms from the ruling Sunni minority. More than 80 people have died in the unrest since the pro-democracy protests begun.
Gamma International’s spy software was also discovered being used in Ethiopia and Turkmenistan, PI reported.
Legal action against Japan by American Navy men over Fukushima radiation
TEPCO, “a wholly owned public benefit subsidiary of the government of Japan,” misrepresented radiation levels after the meltdown in order to lull the US Navy “into a false sense of security.”
US Navy sailors sue Japan for lying about Fukushima radiation http://rt.com/usa/news/sailors-japan-fukushima-radiation-878/ 26 December, 2012, American sailors have filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government for allegedly lying about the health risks they faced while assisting in rescue efforts after last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Crewmembers from the USS Ronald Reagan filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in San Diego, California this week in an attempt to hold Japan accountable for any long-term damage they’ll caused during “Operation Tomadachi,” the spring 2011 relief effort that sent sailors near the coast of Japan to assist in the days after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami ravaged the island nation and caused a level 7 meltdown at three reactors in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The plaintiffs, eight sailors from the 5,500 or so that were aboard the USS Reagan at the time, say Japan did not act honestly in regards to explaining the severity of the meltdown and the risks they faced in involving themselves in the relief efforts. They are asking the state-owned Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for $10 million in compensatory damages, as well as another $30 million in punitive damages for fraud, negligence, strict liability, failure to warn, public and private nuisance and defective design, Courthouse News Service reports.
Additionally, the sailors want TEPCO to set up a $100 million fund to pay for any future medical expenses they’re accrue as a result of the relief effort. Continue reading
Japanese high school students raise awareness of internal radiation emitters
“Victims of the H-bomb test and of the Fukushima nuclear plant
accident share a common problem: internal exposure to radiation,”
Fukushima high school students launch nuclear study group November 09,
2012 Asahi Shimbun, By AYAKO NAKADA
Two high school girls from Fukushima Prefecture are to launch a peace
discussion forum, inspired by the success of a similar long-running
nuclear study group run by students elsewhere in Japan.
Later this month, Sayako Ogata and Saki Nezu, both second-year high
school students, plan to invite fellow students to a screening of
“Hoshasen o Abita X-nen-go” (X years after radiation exposure), a
documentary about fishermen exposed to radiation from a U.S. hydrogen
bomb test at Bikini Atoll in 1954. Continue reading
An overview of the Fukushima nuclear plant situation
Two high school girls that were affected by the disaster are launching a peace discussion forum devoted to expanding the dialogue about nuclear power and weapons. One of the young women said, “My parents’ and grandparents’ generations may be to blame for allowing the nuclear power plants, but both adults and children are responsible for thinking together about the problem.”
Japan Continues Struggle with Aftermath from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2012/12/26/japan-continues-fukushima-struggle/
December 26th, 2012 › As 2012 draws to a close, evaluating the ongoing effects of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on the people of Japan is a difficult and depressing task. After having fled their homes due to the tsunami and resulting triple nuclear meltdown, 21 months later an estimated160,000 citizens still have not returned home.
Reports of illness in humans and livestock continue to underscore the far reaching and difficult to predict impacts that a nuclear accident can cause. In July, 36% of Japanese children screened were found to have abnormal thyroid growths. This fall, an illness dubbed the “Fukushima syndrome” was reported to be killing cattle near the Fukushima prefecture. Mutations are already observed inbutterflies and other insects, whose shorter life cycles allow genetic disruptions to display more quickly than in mammals or humans.
A Faustian bargain, uranium mining’s radioactive pollution of groundwater
A Decades-Old Deal With Uranium Miners Is Causing Trouble For The EPA Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica | Dec. 26, 2012, GILLETTE, Wyo. — On a lonely stretch at the edge of the Great Plains, rolling grassland presses up against a crowning escarpment called the Pumpkin Buttes. The land appears bountiful, but it is stingy, straining to produce enough sustenance for the herds of cattle and sheep on its arid prairies.
“It’s a tough way to make a living,” said John Christensen, whose family has worked this private expanse, called Christensen Ranch, 
for more than a century.
Christensen has made ends meet by allowing prospectors to tap into minerals and oil and gas beneath his bucolic hills. But from the start, it has been a Faustian bargain.
As dry as this land may be, underground, vast reservoirs hold billions of gallons of water suitable for drinking, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Yet every day injection wells pump more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste from uranium mining into Christensen’s aquifers. Continue reading
Slowing down- China’s nuclear power programme
deciding not to build any inland nuclear power plants through 2015
Although China has not announced new nuclear power installed capacity targets for 2020, it is expected that targets will be adjusted downward from previous expectations. ….
China moves to strengthen nuclear safety standards and moderate the pace of its nuclear power development, Switchboard, Alvin Lin This post was co-written with my colleagues Jingjing Li, Jason Portner and Christine Xu, 23 Dec 12, .”……….. Before the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, China had been undertaking the world’s largest nuclear power plant construction program, with plans to expand its then approximately 11.5 GW of nuclear power to as much as 80 GW of nuclear capacity by 2020. (Given that current reactors are about 1 GW in size, this would be equivalent to building nearly 70 reactors over a decade.)
Following Fukushima, however, Beijing immediately suspended approval of all new nuclear power projects while it undertook a comprehensive safety review of existing and under-construction nuclear power plants, as well as research reactors and fuel cycle facilities, and developed its Twelfth Five Year Plan for Nuclear Safety……
The report concluded that operating reactors “basically fulfill” China’s nuclear safety laws and regulations and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most recent standards, that they have the capacity to respond to design-basis accidents and severe accidents, and that safety risks are under control.
However, in spite of these conclusions, the inspection report and nuclear safety plan also identified areas for improvement. Continue reading
China looks to thousands of jobs and cheap electricity with home solar connected to the grid
First Home Solar Array Connected To China’s State Grid 
http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3531 27 Dec 12 For a nation that leads the world in solar panel production, China has been a little slow off the mark with grid connection in relation to home solar power – but that will change dramatically soon. China Daily reports the first residential solar power system has been connected to China’s State electricity grid in Qingdao, Shandong province. While grid connection is taken for granted in countries such as Australia, this first installation proved to be quite a task; taking 19 days to complete. However, we can expect grid connected residential solar to bypass Australia’s tally very soon. State Grid Corporation of China, the largest electricity utility in the world, only started allowing small-scale solar power systems to connect to the national grid in November.
The Qingdao installation will be the first of many millions as new policies mean the work needed to connect privately owned systems below 5 megawatts capacity to the grid will be carried out free of charge. State Grid will also purchase surplus electricity generated by these systems.
The scale of State Grid Corporation of China is staggering. It has over 1.5 million employees and in 2011, generated revenue to the tune of US$ 259.14 billion. Its service area represents 88% of the country and provides electricity to over one billion people.
There will be no shortage of work for those employees. According to RenewEconomy’s Giles Parkinson, rumour has it that China will boost their solar target to 40GW by 2015; which is an entirely achievable goal considering more than 5GW capacity has been installed in this year alone. While China’s love affair with solar is set to continue, its rapid ascent in solar manufacturing hasn’t been without its casualties; with numerous manufacturers falling by the wayside due to competition and external forces. China’s government recently announced it would carry out reforms to the industry; including promoting mergers and acquisitions and reducing government support for manufacturers.
China is often criticised; but something we can all be thankful for is the nation brought affordable solar to the world.
Long term investors wary about nuclear power’s future in Japan
Nuclear Caution Holds as Bonds Diverge With Stocks: Japan Credit
Bloomberg By Yoshiaki Nohara, Satoshi Kawano & Amina Mobley – Dec 26,
2012 Japan’s bond and stock investors are at odds as to whether Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe can speed up the restart of nuclear reactors idled
on earthquake concerns…… .
“The institutional investors at the core of the bond market are still not convinced whether nuclear power generation can resume in earnest and are considering the worst case- scenario,” said Takayuki Atake, chief credit analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. in Tokyo. “The equity markets, with their large proportion of individual investors, are more responsive to news flow and the short-term prospects.”…..
While the LDP has said Japan needs its 50 reactors working, all but two remain closed and any restart will need approval from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, which is investigating six atomic plants on concern they sit on active fault lines…….
Active Fault Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tsuruga and Tohoku Electric’s Higashidori plants may be sitting on active faults, teams of scientists working for Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said this month. Under the country’s guidelines, utilities are not allowed to construct reactor buildings and other important facilities above an active quake fault. Abe indicated he may allow utilities to build a new nuclear power plant if it meets safety standards to be set by the NRA, the Tokyo Shimbun reported Dec. 1, citing an interview with him. Former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda in September approved a policy calling for banning the construction of new atomic plants. LDP Chairman Hiroyuki Hosoda said in an interview with Bloomberg last month that Japan must restart its plants quickly after confirming they’re safe, citing increasing energy prices….. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-26/nuclear-caution-holds-as-bonds-diverge-with-stocks-japan-credit.html
Quebec’s nuclear power plant will be gone – but the radioactive problem lingers on
Non Nukes: Québec Shutters Its Only Nuclear Power Plant http://www.7dvt.com/2012non-nukes-qu-bec-shutters-its-only-nuclear-power-plant
BY KEN PICARD [12.26.12] “….. Seven Days reported in May, “G-2” is closer to northern Vermont than any American reactor, including Vermont 
Yankee. And, like the Vernon plant, G-2 got a new lease on life when its owner, Hydro-Québec, announced plans to refurbish the reactor and keep it operational for another three decades.
Canadian antinuke activists have fought for years to shut down G-2. Since going online in 1983, the plant has experienced problems eerily similar to those at Vermont Yankee — but worse. G-2 releases more radioactive tritium into the air and water each day than the tritium estimated to have leaked from Vermont Yankee in all of 2011.
Yet despite those problems and overwhelming opposition from Québécois — 320 Québec municipalities adopted resolutions calling for G-2’s closure — Canadian regulators earlier this year gave the plant approval to continue splitting atoms. In October, Hydro-Québec announced it would close G-2 at the end of this year — specifically, on December 28.
Why the change of heart? The company cited “increased production costs” — $6.3 billion compared to $1.8 billion to decommission the plant — combined with “falling market prices” for electricity.
Politicians, too, were against the plant. During last summer’s election, Québec’s newly elected premier, Pauline Marois, promised to shutter the province’s only nuke when its license expires at the end of 2012.
Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, hailed the decision, saying “Québecers are proud that ours will be the first jurisdiction in North America to phase completely out of nuclear power.”
But even after G-2’s electricity is long gone, its radiation will linger. HQ plans to leave the facility dormant for 40 years before removing its spent fuel and radioactive equipment, dismantling the facility, and restoring the site. That work won’t be completed until 2062.
Japan’s new government deliberately vague on ending nuclear power
LDP governments since the 1960s have promoted nuclear power generation
under the myth that it is safe.
if nuclear power generation resumes, radioactive waste storage facilities at nuclear power plants will be full in several years. In addition, the technology to safely store high-level radioactive waste on a permanent basis does not exist…… The LDP should not assume that its victory in the Dec. 16 election means that people have given carte blanche to its nuclear power policy.
LDP’s vague nuclear energy policy,http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ed20121226a1.html Japan Times editorial, 27 Dec 12
In their policy agreement, the Liberal Democratic Party and its
coalition partner Komeito have failed to declare that they will aim to
eventually end nuclear power generation in Japan. They have agreed
only to gradually decrease Japan’s reliance on it, without indicating
the year in which all of Japan’s nuclear power plants should stop
operating.
Komeito’s campaign pledge for the Dec. 16 Lower House election had
said that the party will endeavor to achieve “zero nuclear power” as
soon as possible.
The agreement shows that because public opinion on ending nuclear
power generation is so strong that the LDP-Komeito coalition cannot
ignore the call. But it is so vague that the coalition could be said
to be trying to postpone ending nuclear power generation indefinitely. Continue reading
Drinking water threatened as EPA allows uranium miners to inject radioactive wastes into groundwater
Environmental groups say the EPA should not be letting mining companies write their own rules.
Similar disputes are erupting across the country.
“This is a health issue as much as a water supply issue,”
A Decades-Old Deal With Uranium Miners Is Causing Trouble For The EPA Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica | Dec. 26, 2012, GILLETTE, Wyo.“…….The problems and pressures the EPA is facing at Christensen Ranch are not unique.
With uranium mining booming, the agency has received a mounting number of requests for aquifer exemptions in recent years. So far, EPA records show, the agency has issued at least 40 exemptions for uranium mines across the country and is considering several more. Two mines are expanding operations near Christensen Ranch.
In several cases, the EPA has struggled to balance imposing water protections with accommodating the industry’s needs.
In South Dakota, where Powertech Uranium is seeking permits for a new mine in the Black Hills, state regulations bar the deep injection wells typically used to dispose of mining waste. The EPA is weighing whether to allow Powertech to use what’s called a Class 5 well u2014 a virtually unregulated and unmonitored shallow dumping system normally used for non-toxic waste u2014 instead….. Continue reading
Arms firm support for University College London institution rapped
image courtesy of TokenLibertarianGirl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9dPuuBke9Q
Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at UCL, raised questions about the support provided for the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies (ISRS) by Ultra Electronics, which is set up by Labour’s former home and defence secretary John Reid, The Guardian reported.
“It does look like a bit of a throwback to the Bush years. It’s right that UCL should be a broad church, but there must be real openness to a range of views and perspectives, real transparency about funding sources, and real academic activity. Otherwise it will be seen as little more than a front offering a patina of academic respectability to one set of views,” Sands said.
This summer, as part of a $2 million contract, Ultra delivered fuel cells to the US military for its deadly drones.
The ISRS, whose inaugural conference was addressed behind closed doors last month by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has an 11-person “advisory board”, that includes arms manufacturers and politicians who are accused of promoting an illegal war against Iraq.
Earlier in November, anti-war campaigners took part in a demonstration called “War criminals & arms dealers out of our universities”, which was held against ex-UK Prime Minister’s invitation as a speaker to the conference of the UCL ISRS.
Britain’s former Labour leader is globally discredited for his war crimes, as in his 10 years as Prime Minister, hundreds of thousands were killed and injured in illegal interventions, and hundreds of thousands more were made refugees.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/26/280212/arms-firm-support-for-uks-ucl-rapped/
Independent WHO forum ”Nuclear Free Now” – December 2012 -Koriyama, Japan (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM-1bDfVfxo
Video has English introduction and then in French language
A cons-forum was organized by the group “Nuclear Free Now” in Koriyama, a city 55 km from Fukushima, from 12 to 17 December 2012, in response to the ministerial meeting on nuclear safety organized on the same dates in this city by the Japanese government and the IAEA.
Against the organizers of the forum, a member wishing to make a presentation “Independent WHO” the agreement WHO / IAEA and collective activities, Christophe Elain has participated in various events organized by “Nuclear Free Now.”
In this video Christophe Elain intervention during the press conference at the event on Friday 21 December 2012.
Thank you to Kna for mounting the video and the subtitles
WHO Report on Fukushima a Travesty
8 – DECEMBER – 2012
The World Health Organisation has failed in its obligation to protect the public and guilty of the crime of non-assistance. World Health Organisation subservient to nuclear lobby. The World Health Report (May 2012) entitled “Preliminary dose estimation from the nuclearaccident after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami” [1] is a public relations exercise to reassure the world that WHO is fulfilling its role in the area of radiation and health. Following the preliminary dose estimation, WHO will complete a health risk assessment to “support the identification of needs and priorities for public health action.” But this report [ Read More ]
Pentagon Held Secret Meeting With Nuclear Industry 2003 -Veterans Today
“Moreover, because these “smaller” tactical nuclear weapons have been reclassified by the Pentagon as “safe for the surrounding civilian population,” thereby allegedly “minimizing the risk of collateral damage,” there are no overriding, built-in restrictions to prevent their use, Chossudovsky writes. Stockpiled tactical nuclear weapons, he concludes, are now considered to be an integral part of the battlefield arsenal, “part of the tool box,” so to speak, used in conventional war theaters.”
Veterans Today
Tuesday, December 25th, 2012
Image courtesy of http://www.publicdeception.net
U.S. corporations that reap billions from making nuclear weapons have “a direct voice” as to “their use and deployment,” a distinguished political scientist warns.
On August 6, 2003, a secret meeting was held at U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Neb., that brought together more than 150 “senior executives from the nuclear industry and military-industrial complex,” writes Michel Chossudovsky, Professor Emeritus at the University of Ottawa and Founder of the Centre for Research on Globalization, of Montreal.
According to a leaked draft of the agenda, the secret session included discussions on “mini-nukes” and “bunker-buster” bombs with nuclear warheads “for possible use against rogue states,” Chossudovsky writes in his new E-book, “Towards a World War III Scenario,”(Global Research.)
The meeting was intended to set the stage for creation of a new generation of “smaller,” “safer,” and “more usable” nukes for use in “in-theater nuclear wars” of the 21st Century, Chossudovsky writes. No members of Congress representing the public were in attendance.
Barely a week prior to this meeting, the National Nuclear Security Administration(NNSA) disbanded the advisory committee that had “independent oversight” over the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the testing and/or use of new nuclear devices.
The nuclear industry—which makes both nuclear devices and their missile delivery systems—Chossudovsky writes, is controlled by a handful of defense contractors, led by Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing.
Meanwhile, “the Pentagon has unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use of nuclear weapons for the ‘defense of the American homeland,” Chossudovsky writes. He points out:
1 This Month.
Let’s keep radioactive waste away from our river!
Nuclear Power? -Never again
(Switzerland –https://www.greenpeace.ch/de/handeln/atomkraft-nie-wieder/+)
PETITION – Close Down the Monticello Nuclear Reactor on the Mississippi River!
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
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