Peace activists close nuclear facility, cause historic security breach update!
In the tradition of past Plowshares actions, the combination between tactical sophistication and principled motivation helps draw attention to the action in ways that just tactics or conviction couldn’t do alone. By engineering such a significant break-in, the activists were able to take advantage of public anxieties about security to spread their message to a much broader audience than, for instance, the annual, ritualized trespasses at the SOA Watch protests generally do
In the report on the incident that appeared in Reuters yesterday, the emphasis was much more on the gravity of the security breach that the action represented than on its actual intent. The writer seems to struggle with the idea that those who perpetrated the breach, including a 82-year-old nun, were neither terrorists nor citizens acting out of a sense of concern for their nation’s security apparatus:
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 15:54
In the early morning on Saturday, July 28, three gray-haired trespassers made their way into a nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee. They were armed with human blood, hammers, candles, flowers, crime-scene tape and a Bible. In the process of their break-in and after, they managed to close down operations at the facility for days on end and raise searching questions about how secure — and how justified — the United States’ vast nuclear stockpiles really are.
According to Transform Now Plowshares’ own account:
Michael R. Walli (63), Megan Rice, SHCJ (82), Greg Boertje-Obed, (57), succeeded in a disarmament action at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Nuclear facility before dawn today.
Calling themselves Transform Now Plowshares they hammered on the cornerstone of the newly built Highly-Enriched Uranium Manufacturing Facility (HEUMF), splashed human blood and left four spray painted tags on the recent construction which read: Woe to the empire of blood; The fruit of justice is peace; Work for peace not for war; and Plowshares please Isaiah.
Under the cover of darkness they intermittently passed beyond four fences in a walk for over two hours through the fatal force zone. “We feel it was a miracle; we were led directly to where we wanted to go” said Greg.
After navigating through the complex they came to a long, white, windowless building marked HEUMF. “It was built like a fortress”, Greg said describing the four guard towers.
Unimpeded by security, they attached two banners to pillars of the building. “Transform Now Plowshares” read the first with a green and black icon showing part bomb part flower. A second stated “Swords into Plowshares Spears into Pruning Hooks–Isaiah”. In addition, between the pillars they strung red crime tape.
The action was more successful than anyone could have imagined. The local paper reported on Wednesday (as part of a blog with detailed and ongoing coverage):
In an apparently unprecedented action, the government’s contractor today ordered a “security stand-down” at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. All nuclear operations are being put on hold and all nuclear materials will go into vaults while plant workers focus solely on security.
The order by B&W Y-12, and supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration, comes because of the security lapses that allowed peace protesters to penetrate the plant’s highest security area on Saturday morning.“The National Nuclear Security Administration fully supports this step which is necessary to ensure continued confidence in safe and secure operations at Y-12,” the federal agency said in a press statement.
The statement said the stand down is effective today and is expected to end sometime next week.
The activists made their anti-nuclear convictions evident in a declaration, which opens with a passage from the Book of Isaiah:
We come to the Y-12 facility because our very humanity rejects the designs of nuclearism, empire and war. Our faith in love and nonviolence encourages us to believe that our activity here is necessary; that we come to invite transformation, undo the past and present work of Y-12; disarm and end any further efforts to increase the Y-12 capacity for an economy and social structure based upon war-making and empire-building.
A loving and compassionate Creator invites us to take the urgent and decisive steps to transform the U.S. empire, and this facility, into life-giving alternatives which resolve real problems of poverty and environmental degradation for all.
Breaking ! Fury as government plans 40-year nuclear subsidies! UK
“This is a real possibility because the incentive to build new gas power plants is lost if market prices are distorted by significant nuclear capacity supported by very rich contracts for difference,” said Nigel Robinson, head of power advisory at Investec bank.
by Paddy McGuffin Home Affairs Reporter
Campaigners hit out at reports today that the government is to offer huge subsidies to energy firms building a new generation of nuclear power stations in breach of its coalition pledge.
The 2010 coalition agreement promised that there would be no public cash for new nuclear power stations but reports today indicated that ministers were proposing to guarantee firms subsidies for up to 40 years.
It is believed the U-turn is a response to a number of firms, most recently Centrica, pulling out of planned projects.
According to the Guardian ministers are planning to extend contracts from the previously proposed 20 years to 30 or 40 years in a bid to keep the guaranteed wholesale cost per unit of energy to below £100 per megawatt hour.
The paper quoted industry sources as saying that the likely price per unit from the first planned project – the building of two 1.6 gigawatt reactors at Hinckley Point by EDF – would be just under £100 per MWH, more than double the market price for electricity.
Labour MP for Newport Paul Flynn said on Twitter: “(Energy Secretary) Ed Davey says there will be nuclear subsidies – enormous ones. But it’s a secret until it is too late to change.”
Britain was “being secretly seduced into a hideous nuclear black hole that could rob us for 50 years,” he added.
China urges calm on DPRK
“..Zhang Tuosheng, a researcher at the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies, said parties including Seoul, Washington and Tokyo should also keep calm and restrained in comments because dialogue is more ideal than a war…”
“..Liu Jiangyong, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University, said history has proven that when Washington and Seoul carried out the so-called sunshine policy toward the DPRK, tensions on the Korean Peninsula would be eased, which would provide conditions for realizing denuclearization…”
Updated: 2013-02-19 00:56
China on Monday dismissed a media report stating that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had informed Beijing of plans to carry out more nuclear tests.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman warned against any actions that could worsen the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
Diplomacy is ongoing amid tensions on the peninsula. Japan will send a veteran diplomat to China for three days from Tuesday, according to Japan’s Kyodo News Agency.
Observers said averting a looming crisis requires a restrained approach, and more attention should be paid to diplomacy.
Spokesman Hong Lei said he “did not know where the Reuters report came from” when asked to confirm the report on Friday.
The story said the DPRK had told China that it is prepared to carry out one or even two more nuclear tests, or another rocket launch this year.
The current situation of the peninsula is “sensitive and complicated”, and China calls on relevant parties to exercise calm, Hong said.
China -Thyroid cancer cases continue to increase at double-digit rate
Chen Wanqing, deputy director of the National Central Cancer Registry, added: “The reasons for the increases aren’t exactly clear, but factors like increasing exposure to radiation, mounting workload and mental pressure, and irregular lifestyles could be significant.” Qoute from Chinese article,,,
“…A new study analysing National Cancer Institute data proves some unknown factor is contributing to the increasing rate of thyroid cancer.
“It’s not just improved medical surveillance and diagnosis,” Ron said….”
Image/Qoute source http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/thyroid-cancer/story/thyroid-cancer-increase-baffles-researchers/
Updated: 2013-01-26 03:47
Top cancer specialists have revealed a double-digit annual rise in the number of thyroid cancer cases in China over the past decade, especially among young and middle-aged women.
Last year, the incidence rate was 6.56 cases per 100,000 people, making it among the top 10 most common forms of cancer on the mainland, according to the latest national cancer report released by the National Central Cancer Registry under the Ministry of Health.
The report showed that women are at far higher risk than men, with an incidence rate of more than 10 per 100,000.
The thyroid is a gland in the neck which produces hormones to regulate vital body functions like the heart rate and blood pressure.
“Thyroid cancer is among the fastest growing cancers in recent years in China, and these figures might still be an underestimation,” said Liu Yuewu, a leading cancer specialist at Peking Union Medical College Hospital.
A veteran thyroid cancer oncologist, he said each year his hospital performs more than 1,100 thyroid surgeries on average, against around just 10 back in 1986.
The disease took off particularly in the 1990s on the mainland, and today at least 80 percent of those affected are young and middle-aged females.
“I have treated a 5-year-old girl with the cancer,” Liu added.
STRONTIUM-90 IN BABY TEETH AS A FACTOR IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CANCER
Sunday, 17 February 2013
h/t Mia and friends
http://fukushimaappeal.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/strontium-90-in-baby-teeth-as-factor-in.html
{Source） http://www.radiation.org/reading/ijhs/ijhs_9_2000.html
Jerry Brown, William McDonnell, Joseph J. ManganoInternational Journal of Health Services
Volume 30, Number 3, Pages 515-539, 2000
Copyright Baywood Publishing Co., Inc
Note: This is the draft of the article.
Abstract
Strontium-90 concentrations in baby teeth of 515 children born mainly after the end of worldwide atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in 1980 are found to equal the level in children born during atmospheric tests in the late 1950s. Recent concentrations in the New York-New Jersey-Long Island Metropolitan area have exceeded the expected downward trend seen in both baby teeth and adult bone after the 1963 ban on atmospheric testing.
Sharp rises and declines are also seen in Miami, Florida. In Suffolk County, Long Island, Strontium-90 concentrations in baby teeth were significantly correlated with cancer incidence for children 0 to 4 years of age. A similar correlation of childhood malignancies with the rise and decline of Strontium-90 in deciduous teeth occurred during the peak years of fallout in the 1950s and 1960s. Independent support for the relation of nuclear releases and childhood cancer is provided by a significant correlation with total alpha and beta activities in local surface water in Suffolk County. These results strongly support a major role of nuclear reactor releases in the recent increase of cancer and other immune system related disorders in young American children since the early 1980s……….
|
Sr-90 Concentration in Baby Teeth, St. Louis vs. Cancer Incidence Age 0-4, Connecticut 1954-1970
* Connecticut cancer rates represent 3-year moving averages |
|
Sr-90 Adult Dietary Uptake, New York City vs. Cancer Incidence Age 0-4, Connecticut 1954-1970
* Connecticut cancer rates represent 3-year moving averages |
Fetuses can be harmed by very low dose radiation, first demonstrated in the 1950s when exposure to pelvic X-rays in utero was linked with elevated levels of leukemia and cancer deaths before age ten. (13) (14)
Russia to spend billions on asteroid defense- megaton class nuclear warheads are our only defence! Maybe?
“…We know about 90 per cent of kilometer-class asteroids, their orbits are well known and predictable. As for the smaller 40-50 meter ones – we still have insufficient observation apparatus. The more we observe – the more of them we find,” Rykhlova acknowledged.
[…]
“Therefore our emergency aid is a rocket with a nuclear warhead,” she concluded….”
Published: 19 February, 2013, 02:22
RT
Moscow believes an operable national defense against threats from outer space can be built within 10 years’ time. The 500-kiloton explosion of a space bolide above the Urals region has sped-up allocation of some $2 billion to prevent future threats.
Russian scientists have presented a federal program designed to counteract space threats. Elaborated by the Institute of Astronomy at Russia’s Academy of Sciences and the Central Engineering Research Institute, Russia’s leading space industry enterprise, the program has already been approved by Roskosmos, the national space agency.
The program has nothing to do with Hollywood sci-fi movie scenarios; no lasers, annihilators or Bruce Willis drilling a huge peace of rock rushing towards Earth.
The system will consist of a network of robotic telescopes monitoring space around our planet, some of them delivered to orbit, others operating from the surface.
Destruction of an asteroid in emergency cases may be performed by a rocket with a powerful megaton-class thermonuclear warhead. If the threat is detected early, more advanced means of changing an asteroid’s orbit may be considered.
The program costing 58 billion rubles (over $1.9 billion) has already been handed over to the head of Russia’s defense industry, Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin who is expected to present it to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Lidia Rykhlova from the Institute of Astronomy (RAS) who presented the project, reported that Russia will need to modernize and fully computerize the 60 cm lens telescopes it already has. Several larger telescopes with 2 meter lens will have to be additionally installed.
Rykhlova announced that an analytical center will be created to collect the data from various sources and analyze it in real time mode.
Iran Leader: Having Nukes is ‘Crime Against Humanity’ – US Sanctions Actually Target Fuel Enrichment
Posted on 02/18/2013 by Juan
Juan Cole
http://www.juancole.com/2013/02/sanctions-actually-enrichment.html
Welcome to Informed Comment, where I do my best to provide an independent and informed perspective on Middle Eastern and American politics.
The USG Open Source Center translated the entirety of Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s speech in Tabriz on Saturday. In it, Khamenei for the nth time called nuclear weapons a ‘crime against humanity’ and affirmed that Iran does not want them. Although this speech was covered by US media such as the New York Times, its editors gave the article the confusing title of “Ayatollah Says Iran Will Control Nuclear Aims” instead of just saying, as The Guardian and others did, that he renounced making or having nuclear weapons.
Long-time readers know that I think Iran wants nuclear latency or ‘the Japan option,’ i.e. they don’t want to make or stockpile nuclear warheads, but do want the deterrence of invaders that comes with the known ability to put one together in short order. I believe that the US in Israel know that there is no weapons program in Iran, but don’t want that country to have latency, either, since they’d like the option, as regional hegemons, of attacking Iran and overthrowing its government.
In this speech, Khamenei also slammed president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his public attack on speaker of parliament Ali Larijani, in which he accused the 5 Larijani brothers of corruption, perhaps in a bid to derail Larijani’s possible bid for the presidency this June (Ahmadinejad can’t run this year).
He also slammed the US human rights record, instancing the global network of black prisons for torture, continual drone strikes, and the defects of US campaign financing.
I’ll start with a key excerpt and then give the text from where it starts getting interesting, after the compliments to Tabriz and the affirmation that enemies’ attempts to break up Iran along ethnic lines (Azerbaijan is a Turkic area, not a Persian one) have signally failed.
“They want to talk (with Iran) and solve their problems. This is what they say, but in practice they resort to imposing sanctions (on Iran), lying and making inappropriate statements . . . A few days ago, the American President made a statement about Iran’s nuclear issues. He spoke as if the difference between Iran and America was that Iran wanted to build nuclear weapons, and he said that as far as they (American officials) could, they would not allow Iran to build nuclear weapons. . .
We do not want to build nuclear weapons. Not because America would be upset if we do so. It is rather what we have decided. We believe that nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity and should not be built; and whatever weapons there are in the world should be destroyed. This is what we believe in; and this has got nothing to do with you (Americans).”
Khamenei went on to say that in any case the US opposition to a country building nukes has seldom stopped them from doing so (India, Pakistan, North Korea), but that Iran doesn’t in any case want such weapons.
Khamenei holds that severe US sanctions against Iran are intended to halt its fuel enrichment, whereby it is making fuel for its Bushehr reactors and its one medical reactor. Many oil countries, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are going in for nuclear reactors because in those countries, they use oil for electricity generation, and they’d rather save the oil and sell the oil on the world market. They could also use natural gas, but much of the gas in the area is relatively dirty (the UAE has this problem), and Iran in any case has been cut off from the expertise in gas development at Total and Shell by US sanctions.
The ayatollah also believes that offers of direct talks with Iran by the Obama administration are a trap, whereby the US can then allege that its severe sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table and make Iran lose face. He wants a token of good faith from the US, such as easing sanctions (which reduced Iranian oil exports by 40% last year) so as to be able to go into talks without being humiliated.
Here’s the speech:
Supreme Leader Says Iran Will Respond If US Proves Its ‘Good Will’
Speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i to a gathering of people from Tabriz, East Azarbayjan Province, in Tehran on 16 February — recorded
Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Radio 1
Sunday, February 17, 2013 …
Document Type: OSC Translated Text…
West silence fuels killing of Muslims in Myanmar: Iran MP
“….Any time terrorists, backed by Western powers, commit crimes in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the West stays put in an implicit endorsement of the crimes…..”
Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:48PM GMT
Press TV
An Iranian lawmaker has denounced the Western countries’ inaction vis-à-vis the ongoing violation of human rights in Myanmar, saying the West’s silence is intensified the killing of Muslims in the Southeast Asian country.
“The West’s double standards in its alleged struggle against violation of human rights and defense for human dignity make it react to the execution of a criminal and press charges against an independent country, but when such crimes are committed by Western-backed governments on a large scale, no reaction – even from international bodies – is seen,” a member of Iran Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Hossein Sobhani-Nia said on Monday.
The lawmaker added that the death of innocent Muslims in Myanmar is a clear example of the violation of minorities’ rights, stressing that a firm international determination is required to counter crimes against humanity.
On Saturday, the United Nations expressed concern over rights abuses by the government of Myanmar, calling for an end to discrimination against ethnic and religious groups in the country.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN special rapporteur on rights in Myanmar, said in a press conference that the use of excessive force by Myanmar’s government against local communities and ethnic groups worried the UN.
The persecuted Muslim minority has faced torture, neglect, and repression in Myanmar since the country achieved independence in 1948.
The Iranian legislator further said that the West’s dual policies have also given rise to a tragedy in the Middle East.
Any time terrorists, backed by Western powers, commit crimes in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the West stays put in an implicit endorsement of the crimes.
SF/KA/SS
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/18/289651/west-silence-fuels-myanmar-crisis/
UK government to subsidise nuclear power, backtracking on promises not to
At the same time some MPs are concerned that the energy bill, which is being scrutinised by MPs, would allow future governments to give nuclear power stations more money if it was needed, without telling parliament.
Suspicion about the clauses in the bill enabling future financial support have been fuelled by industry claims in recent weeks. Vincent de Rivas, chief executive of EDF, told MPs that he wanted the government to guarantee buying all the possible output from the new nuclear plants, not just what was needed.
“He [Davey] is saying there will be a subsidy. Perhaps an enormous subsidy. But you, parliament and the public, will not know what it is until it is too late to change.”
Nuclear power: ministers offer reactor deal until 2050 The Guardian UK Juliette Jowit, political correspondent, 18 Feb 13, Energy firms may get 40-year backing after government U-turn on subsidies. The government is launching a last-ditch attempt to sign up energy companies to build new nuclear power stations by proposing to sign contracts guaranteeing subsidies for up to 40 years.
The coalition agreement reached between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in 2010 promised that nuclear power stations would be built only if the industry got no public subsidy, but costly overruns for new reactors overseas and the exit of several major utilities from the UK programme, most recently Centrica, have driven ministers and officials to backtrack on that pledge and accept they will have to provide financial support. Continue reading
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