Image source ; http://www.techfieber.de/2013/06/26/prism-tempora-ex-bnd-chef-geheimdienst-in-deutschlan-arbeitet-wie-usa-und-uk/
22 August
Extract from statement by an encrypted email provider Riseup.net
It is a mistake to frame the recent US and European massive surveillance revelations in terms of the privacy of individuals. What is at stake is not privacy at all, but the power of the state over its citizenry.
What surveillance really is, at its root, is a highly effective form of social control. The knowledge of always being watched changes our behavior and stifles dissent. The inability to associate secretly means there is no longer any possibility for free association. The inability to whisper means there is no longer any speech that is truly free of coercion, real or implied. Most profoundly, pervasive surveillance threatens to eliminate the most vital element of both democracy and social movements: the mental space for people to form dissenting and unpopular views.
Many commentators, and Edward Snowden himself, have noted that these surveillance programs represent an existential threat to democracy. This understates the problem. The universal surveillance programs in place now are not simply a potential threat, they are certain to destroy democracy if left unchecked. Democracy, even the shadow of democracy we currently practice, rests on the bedrock foundation of free association, free speech, and dissent. The consequence of the coercive power of surveillance is to subvert this foundation and undermine everything democracy rests on.
Within social movements, there is a temptation to say that nothing is really different. After all, governments have always targeted activist groups with surveillance and disruption, especially the successful ones.
But this new surveillance is different. What the US government and European allies have built is an infrastructure for perfect social control. By automating the process of surveillance, they have created the ability to effortlessly peer into the lives of everyone, all the time, and thus create a system with unprecedented potential for controlling how we behave and think.
True, this infrastructure is not currently used in this way, but it is a technical tool-kit that can easily be used for totalitarian ends.
Those who imagine a government can be trusted to police itself when given the ominous power of precise insight into the inner workings of everyday life are betting the future on the ability of a secretive government to show proper self-restraint in the use of their ever-expanding power. If history has shown us anything, it is that the powerful will always use their full power unless they are forced to stop.
So, how exactly are we planning on stopping them? We support people working through the legal system or applying political pressure, but we feel our best hope of stopping the technology of surveillance is the technology of encryption. Why? Because the forces that have created this brave new world are unlikely to be uprooted before it is too late to halt the advance of surveillance.
Unfortunately, most existing encryption technology is counterproductive. Many people are pushing technology that is proprietary, relies on a central authority, or is hopelessly difficult for the common user. The only technology that has a chance to resist the rise of surveillance will be open source, federated, and incredibly easy to use. In the long run, decentralized peer-to-peer tools might meet this criteria, but for the foreseeable future these tools will not have the features or usability that people have grown accustomed to.
In the coming months, the Riseup birds plan to begin rolling out a series of radically new services, starting with encrypted internet, encrypted email, and encrypted chat. These services will be based on 100% open source and open protocols, will be easy to use, and will protect your data from everyone, even Riseup. This is a massive undertaking, made in concert over the last year with several other organizations, and will only work with your support. We need programmers, particularly those experienced in Python, C, Ruby, and Android development, and sysadmins interested in starting their own secure service providers.
We also need money. Donations from our amazing Riseup users keep us running on our current infrastructure. But in order to be able to graduate to a new generation of truly secure and easy to use communication technology, we are going to need a lot more money than our users are able to donate. If you have deep pockets and an interest in building this new generation of communication, then we need to hear from you. If you have friends or family who care about the future of democracy and who have deep pockets, we need to hear from them, too.
At Riseup, we have felt for the last few years that the window of opportunity to counter the rise of universal surveillance is slowly shrinking. Now is our chance to establish a new reality where mass numbers of people are using encryption on a daily basis.
If you have the skills or the money, now is the time to step up and help make this reality come true. Please contact waxwing@riseup.net
http://youtu.be/nZ-6MTuY68I http://hatrickpenryunbound.com/?p=3683
3 “serious incident,” its gravest warning since the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that sent three reactors into meltdown.
The country’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said the leak was expected to be classified as a level 3 incident on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale pending confirmation from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPT… THIS IS PURE MALICE done intentional to posture and groom the public, this is a criminal malice act fucking crime tell HIM TO PUT THIS IN HIS FUCKING BOOK
SANJAY GUPTA MD 3/26/11 right as HE GOT BACK , ( YOU READ THIS AND TELL ME)
GUPTA: Even now, I’ve just returned from Japan, as you know, and there’s a lot of misinformation out there and understandably a lot of anxiety. Do people over there, because they lived through this, do they — do they understand how bad it was or maybe how bad it really wasn’t in the long run?
GUPTA: Later in her medical training, Dr. Komaki learned that radiation could actually save lives, not just ruin them.
So, I think there are still a lot of misconceptions. And now, the thing with the area of Chernobyl, it was actually a marsh area. And as you know, a marsh works as a very natural filter. And it’s — you know, at first, they were saying the half life of the radiation was going to be centuries but in reality, it’s just taken a few decades to not completely eradicate it, because it still is a very contaminated place, but, you know, these marshes, this natural filtration of the marsh has actually cut down on the amount of radiation that is still within the zone. GUPTA: You had some very memorable moments, and like I say, we looked at some of your photographs. Can you share a couple of those with us? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y8qHf…
The following is a transcript of the statement made by Pfc. Bradley Manning as read by David Coombs at a press conference on Wednesday after Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.
In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.
Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.
Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.
…The farmers had pleaded for a less fertile land to be allotted away from residential areas…
Aditi Tandon/TNS
New Delhi, August 21
The Haryana Government is ready to open the Gorakhpur nuclear power plant in Fatehabad district for construction shortly with the Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and inviting him to lay the project stone.
In a meeting with the Prime Minister, Hooda requested him to lay the foundation stones of two important projects – Gorakhpur atomic power plant and the Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership coming up in village Jassaur Khedi in Jhajjar which falls in the Rohtak Lok Sabha constituency of his son Deepender Hooda. Hooda also requested for PM’s instructions to order speedy clearances by the related Central Government ministries. The PM is learnt to have agreed to the request though the date for the stone laying would be finalised later. The development comes close on the heels of the Supreme Court rejecting a PIL challenging the commissioning of Kudankulum nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu.
Following the SC’s rejection order, the Punjab and Haryana High Court also recently dismissed petitions from the farmers of Gorakhpur who had challenged the acquisition of land in their village to set up the nuclear plant under the understanding arrived at in the Indo-US nuclear deal. The farmers had pleaded for a less fertile land to be allotted away from residential areas.
The legal hurdle over, Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda today said the plant was ready for construction as the acquisition process had been successfully concluded and final compensation paid to almost all land owners. Once the foundation stone is laid, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) would start construction on the site.
I just posted the article that the head of Fukushima’s fisheries associations has agreed to the government/TEPCO plan of “groundwater bypass”.
However, there are two problems.
First, the drains near the H4 area where the leaking RO (reverse osmosis) waste water tank is located are general-use drains, and they go out to the ocean OUTSIDE the plant port, as I show in the black arrow in the upper right corner in the map below:
So far, the water in the drains have little radioactive materials, and no radioactive materials have been detected in the seawater in the south of the plant, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Authority in the August 21, 2013 meeting.
The second, and far more serious problem, I think, is that the location of the H4 area with at least one leaky tank is JUST TOO CLOSE to the 12 wells that TEPCO has dug for the groundwater bypass plan, to intercept and draw uncontaminated groundwater before it hits the reactor buildings.
Uh oh.
The TEPCO map with annotation, from @Kontan_Bigcat; English labels are by me:
South Korea’s largest power plant has shut down one of its reactors as concerns over safety in the country’s nuclear industry linger on, reports say
21 August 2013
South Korea’s largest power plant has shut down one of its reactors as concerns over safety in the country’s nuclear industry linger on, reports say.
The reactor, one of six in Yeonggwang nuclear complex in the southwest, was closed on Wednesday, AFP quoted a spokesman of the Korea Hydro and Power Co. as saying.
“The cause of the stoppage is as yet unknown and investigations are underway. We don’t know when it will resume operations,” the spokesman said, assuring there was no threat of radiation leak.
The developments come as the nation’s nuclear plants have been grappling with ongoing problems due to the use of substandard parts in the a number of nuclear reactors over the past decade.
In 2012, the government announced that at least eight providers were found to have fake safety tests.
Officials at the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission immediately launched a probe into the scandal, an act which led to the closure of two nuclear reactors in in the same year.
In May 2013, two other reactors went offline. The commission also deferred starting operations at two more reactors, stating that the reactors would not resume their operations until the substandard parts were replaced.
South Korea has 23 nuclear reactors which provide a third of the country’s total electricity.
…The leak, which has not been plugged, is so contaminated that a person standing 50 cm (1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.
After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells….
Japan’s nuclear watchdog is looking to upgrade the warning level over a toxic leak at the Fukushima nuclear plant, it was announced Wednesday. The action will be the most serious step taken since the plant the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
The deepening crisis at the Fukushima plant will be upgraded from a level 1 “anomaly” to a level three “serious incident” on an international scale for radiological releases, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said.
That will mark the first time Japan has issued a warning on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) since three reactor meltdowns after the massive quake in March 2011.
Water still leaking from the plant is so contaminated that a person standing close to it for an hour would receive five times the annual recommended limit for nuclear workers in a year.
A maximum level 7 was declared at the battered plant after explosions led to a loss of power and cooling two years ago, confirming Fukushima as the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.
Contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation is leaking from a storage tank at Fukushima, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday. The leak was classified as an “anomaly” earlier this week.
The NRA’s impending assessment upgrade came in a document posted on the agency’s website on Wednesday, with formal adoption to follow a meeting that is being held by the authority’s commissioners, the NRA spokesman said by telephone.
“Judging from the amount and the density of the radiation in the contaminated water that leaked … a level 3 assessment is appropriate,” the document said.
The leak, which has not been plugged, is so contaminated that a person standing 50 cm (1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.
After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells.
Each one-step INES increase represents a tenfold increase in severity, according to a factsheet on the website of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Feds grant $807K to help workers, homemakers affected by closing of Kewaunee Power Station
22 August 2013
CARLTON, Wis. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Labor is coming to the aid of workers and homemakers affected by the closing of a Wisconsin nuclear power plant last spring.
The department said Wednesday it has awarded an $807,000 National Emergency Grant to help about 220 people affected by the Kewaunee Power Station shutdown.
The grant was awarded to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. Under the grant, affected workers and eligible displaced homemakers will have access to career and skill assessments, job search assistance, support services and training.
Dominion Resources Inc. shut down the 556-megawatt plant east of Green Bay last May after it was unable to find a buyer for the plant. The plant employed about 650 people.
The Bay Area Workforce Development Board will administer the grant.
In Rouhani’s latest personnel change, Western-educated nuclear physicist Soltanieh removed from IAEA post
ENNA – Iran’s envoy to the UN’s nuclear agency says he is to be replaced as of Sept. 1
AP – August 21, 2013
Ali Asghar Soltanieh told The Associated Press Wednesday that no replacement has been announced.
The decision to relieve Soltanieh as chief Iranian representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency is the latest in a series of personnel changes by President Hasan Rouhani since he was sworn in earlier this month.
It comes less than a week after Rouhani named former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi as head of Iran’s atomic energy organization. Salehi is considered more pragmatic than his predecessor.
Since becoming chief delegate eight years ago, Soltanieh has played a leading role in arguing that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and denying allegations that Tehran is interested in possessing atomic arms.
…Da Zhigang , an expert in Japanese affairs at the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, said: “For China to say it is ‘shocked’ implies it is very frustrated with Japan. Beijing is accusing Tokyo of negligence.”…
Thursday, 22 August,
Teddy Ng and Li Jing
Beijing has expressed shock that Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is still leaking radioactive water two years after it was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami.
In a stern statement yesterday after it was revealed that 300 tonnes of toxic water had seeped from a storage tank into the ground at the crippled seaside plant, the Foreign Ministry warned Tokyo to abide by a bilateral agreement to notify Beijing about the leakage.
Japan raised its severity assessment of the latest leakage, which was discovered on Monday, from level 1 on an eight-point international nuclear event scale to level 3, defining it as a “serious incident”. That raised the gravity of the leak by a factor of 100.
It is the most serious incident at Fukushima since the meltdown of three of its six nuclear reactors when a massive tsunami generated by a magnitude-9 earthquake inundated the plant, triggering a nuclear catastrophe on the scale of the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. Meanwhile, contaminated water continues to flow into the Pacific Ocean daily.
“We find it shocking to hear that radioactive water was still leaking into the Pacific Ocean two years after the Fukushima incident,” the Foreign Ministry said. “We hope Japan can take practical and effective measures to mitigate the impact.”
The plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said workers may have failed to detect the leak. The company said it did not believe any of the water from the tank had reached the Pacific.
Da Zhigang , an expert in Japanese affairs at the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, said: “For China to say it is ‘shocked’ implies it is very frustrated with Japan. Beijing is accusing Tokyo of negligence.”
Professor Lian Degui , of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said China was shocked Tokyo had devoted so much effort to politics and territorial disputes while serious problems such as Fukushima had not been properly solved.
Hong Kong’s Centre for Food Safety said it continued to test food from Japan for radiation.
Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) is demanding safety upgrades to plans for the construction of a nuclear plant by power consortium Fennovoima. STUK says that a facility on offer from Russia’s Rosatom will need modifications in order to meet Finnish safety standards.
With progress reported in the Fennovoima-Rosatom plant project, Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) will again be scrutinizing safety factors.
STUK issued a preliminary safety assessment of the envisaged plant in 2009. That review found that the Rosatom AES-2006 pressurized water reactor facility did not meet all Finnish safety standards.
Image ; Design concept for Fennovoima’s nuclear plant at Pyhäjoki. Image: Fennovoima
The report noted that the original plans for the plant did not take into consideration internal events such as flooding and fires, or external phenomena such as unusual weather and earthquakes. It also found that provisions for external manmade events, including the impact of aircraft or industrial accidents were not up to standard.
Deficiencies were also identified in plant automation, while the plant’s primary coolant circuit pressure control – the system designed to prevent a meltdown in the event of an accident – does not meet Finnish requirements.
Multi-stage process
Fennovoima says that the plant corresponds with IAEA and EUR requirements, and for licensing purposes it will be adapted to be in accordance with Finnish national safety standards. Costs have not been released. STUK estimates that the proposed alternatives can be redesigned so as to bring them into compliance.
After the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, Finland introduced a three stage approval process for new nuclear power plants. A plant must first obtain a decision-in-principle from Parliament, then construction permission from the government and finally an operating license from the government.
In addition to the safety issues raised by STUK, an environmental impact assessment will have to be brought up to date. And, it is still undecided if Parliament will have to once again debate its decision on giving a go-ahead.
An explanatory meeting about thyroid gland by Fukushima Medical University was held at my child’s kindergarten today. Mothers that are concerned about radiation, including me, didn’t attend the meeting. We feared we might be brainwashed to accept that radiation is not dangerous, and we also realized we might get furious just by listening to them. I’ve made a decision never to attend seminars on radiation that are organized by municipalities and other authorities, to avoid the brainwashing.
This is an appeal from a mother with two children in Iwaki-shi, Fukushima prefecture. She watched the interview film of Ruri Sasaki who lives in Nihonmatsu-shi, and sent the letter (below) to a member of World Network for Saving Children from Radiation, an Iwaki native who lives in Montreal.
I would like many people to read my e-mail because it describes a present situation.
[…]
A mother who has children in the same kindergarten where my children go has lately gone for evacuation; she is very frustrated to see people living there in peace with no thought about the current situation in Fukushima. Why do people in Fukushima need to suffer so much? My family was forced to split up.
Sasaki’s description of how she had to put up with her child playing outdoors is painful “Gradually I became numb, told myself not to think about it. I must let my children play but for short times only. I really wish I could allow them to play for entire days.”
There are some people who are not concerned about the radiation and who think Iwaki-shi is safe. In reality, most of those people have simply given up, the only way for them to keep living here is to ignore their feeling about the hazards.
People who are concerned about radiation have their thyroid checks performed at sanatoriums. They cannot count on having the examinations carried out by the prefecture. Those who don’t care much about radiation feel secure, because they believe the prefecture will examine their health properly, and because the radiological dosage at Iwaki-shi is low. The attitude to thyroid problems is the one matter that divides people’s opinions most.
[…]
————
The earlier information to the public about thyroid issues has usually been given on the lines of “no health concerns”, but lately I have noticed a change of tone, and there seems to be a feeling that there are possible chances of increasing onsets of thyroid cancers. I have heard that the thyroid examinations in Iwaki, where there was massive fallout of radioactive iodine, have been getting a lot of attention. Still, most mothers seem to be unaware of this fallout and its impact.
I once had a chance to put a question to a member of the municipal assembly at community and asked, “I have heard from people in Nakadoori area that the prefecture’s manner of making thyroid examinations is not considered trustworthy.
I should like the examiners to give the mothers proper explanations, at the time when the ultrasound is being performed, and to give them copies of the ultrasound results on the examining spot.” Immediately, other mothers changed the subject to more positive topics, saying, “It is not good to be worried about it too much.” This happened in January this year.
There are many people who actually believe that no one will get thyroid cancer. They choose to believe in the news that says that the recent onset of thyroid cancer is not related to the nuclear incident. To be honest, the most troublesome at the moment is not the government and TEPCO, but the mothers who don’t want to believe the impact of the accident. There are especially many of those in Iwaki, mothers who believe this way because the air dose radiation rate is low.
People at Nakadoriare more seriously concerned, due to the fact that their screening examination is already finished. Many people there feel tired of even thinking about it.
I guess that many will not start taking action until their children are in a serious condition. However, they will have reached the point of total exhaustion by the time that they realize their kids’ problem.
I think that the reason why the thyroid examinations in Iwaki have been postponed was not merely the doing of the national prefectural and municipal government.
A part of Iwaki city is even located within the 30 km zone. Nevertheless, thyroid examinations here will not be done until after Nakadori. I guess that one of the reasons for this is that a great number of mothers, myself included, have not taken any action. A vast majority of mothers have been thinking like, “Nakadori must be prioritized due to their high radiation levels” , or “The level of health hazards in Iwaki is surely very low, due to the low radiation level”.
Mothers also think “I feel guilty about partaking in recuperation programs because the radiation level in Iwaki isn’t that high, and people at Nakadori should have a priority”. Mutual concessions are certainly important, but should we do it in this emergency situation?
How can we impose an order of priority when our own children are at stake?
Are mothers fine with the fact that their children are going to be tested later?
People in Iwaki tend to hold themselves back because of the low radiation level, feeling like “There are much worse places”.
But they are desensitized. Although the radiation dose is said to be low, most of the parks show more than 0.2 mSv/h because decontamination has not been done. On the lawns, the radiation levels are about 0.3 mSv/h .
The people who are best suited to start taking action are the mothers. However,many mothers blindly believe that their children will be fine. Some of them have been striving to take action in citizens’s groups. Nevertheless, most of them don’t even know of these activities.
I admire mothers who have the guts to raise their voices in such conditions. It takes so much energy to do so. I know that this situation won’t get better until we all stand up and do our best against it. But for my part, I haven’t been able to join any such activities because I have been busy to deal with my child. In addition to taking care of my child I recently became a member of my child’s kindergarten parents’ board.
WE ALL SHARE THE OCEANS!
Please help stop the radioactive contamination of the PacificHello, this is an urgent message from Japan.
It was revealed that, as the result of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant, 300 tons of radioactive waste water containing highly toxic substance such as cesium, strontium, tritium has been leaking in the sea every day.
It is of absolute necessity to prevent the discharge of this contaminated water.
The Japanese government says it will assign a prevention budget but it’s not until the next fiscal year. Plus the plan fails to stop groundwater from flowing into the power plant buildings and lacks fundamental preventative measures. If the present situation lingers, the contamination will continue to spread. Experts from nations throughout the world are needed to solve this problem.
Please, before the world’s beautiful oceans become contaminated,
please share this issue with people all over the world through Twitter,
Facebook, and other means.
High-energy particles called muons created by cosmic rays striking the Earth’s atmosphere could provide an X-ray-style image of the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after the 2011 tsunami-related meltdown in Japan. Credit: NSF/J. Yang
Radiation is still leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after the 2011 tsunami-related meltdown in Japan, making any damage assessment dangerous for both humans and machines. Instead, high-energy particles created by cosmic rays striking the Earth’s atmosphere could provide an X-ray-style image of the damage from a much safer distance.
Technology capable of harnessing the high-energy muon particles comes from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. Shortly after 9/11, the U.S. lab developed a muon detector that could spot uranium or plutonium nuclear weapons hidden inside cargo containers by tracking the changed paths of ghostly muons as they traveled through the nuclear materials.
nuclear-news 