Deomocracy teeters in India, as government cracks down on anti nuclear protest
India government responds bluntly to anti-nuclear push In response to villagers’ concerns about the Kudankulam nuclear plant project, Indian officials have deported a sympathizer and cracked down on charities they accuse of aiding anti-nuclear efforts. By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times March 18, 2012 Continue reading
Bullying of whistleblowers at Australia’s nuclear reactor
In their statement to Comcare’s investigator, Mr Howe and Mr Bourke said that while they had been reinstated, they were still being harassed.
The case follows that of David Reid, a former staff-elected health and safety officer who was suspended in June 2009 and sacked last June. He had also raised concerns about contamination in the ARI.
Lucas Heights nuclear reactor bullying exposed, BY: LEIGH DAYTON, The Australian March 16, 2012 ADMINISTRATORS at Australia’s only nuclear reactor facility used findings of an inaccurate, biased and partially fabricated in-house report as the pretext to suspend – and recommend the dismissal of – two employees who raised health and safety concerns over the mishandling of radioactive materials. Continue reading
New computer spy malaware targets U.S. military computers
New malware preys on Iran nuclear weapons tension, msnbc, 13 March 12, Researchers: China-based hackers goal is to corrupt US military computers Chinese cybercriminals have crafted a sophisticated, robust malware attack that exploits growing political tension and fear over Iran’s alleged covert nuclear weapons program to infect PCs.
The goal of the hackers is to corrupt the computers of U.S. military employees, according to researchers from the security firm Bitdefender , who detected the malware.
Calling it “the perfect firebomb,” the China-borne malware embeds itself in an email with an attached Microsoft Word document titled “Iran’s Oil and Nuclear Situation.doc.” The document, Bitdefender explained, contains an Adobe Shockwave Flash applet that attempts to get the recipients to load a fake YouTube video. While the rigged video (an .mp4 file) loads, the malware exploits an Adobe Flash flaw that sneaks an executable file into the initial Word document.
If it sounds complicated, that’s the point, Bitdefender’s Bogdan Botezatu said. “The operation is covert: the MP4 file triggering the exploit is streamed from the Web, which means the PC will be exploited by the time an anti-virus would generally scan a file,” he wrote. “Further, the malicious file delivered inside the doc file (us.exe) has multiple
layers of obfuscation to dodge detection.”
Once the malware is implanted on a victim’s computer, it communicates with a command-and-control server in China. Carefully crafted exploits aimed at military targets are nothing new; a November congressional report outlined state-sponsored cybercrime missions carried out by Chinese and Russian criminals against U.S. government agencies……
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46722543/ns/technology_and_science-security/#.T2EiZ8WPX_M
India’s democracy shrinking, as government tries to stifle anti nuclear voices
India Cancels Visa for Japanese Anti-Nuclear Activist, Voice of America, Kurt Achin | New Delhi, 10 March 12, India’s government has revoked the visa of a Japanese anti-nuclear activist who was scheduled to visit during the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster.
Nuclear energy opponents say the move fits a pattern of seeking to stifle criticism of India’s rapid push toward nuclear power…. Activists like Raina say the visa cancellation reflects a “shrinking democratic space” when it comes to discussing nuclear power in India. Continue reading
Evacuation plans last year, as Fukushima crisis occurred
Mr McLean revealed that Australia and other nations began compiling elaborate evacuation plans amid growing concern and uncertainly as the Fukushima plant began to explode.
The former ambassador confirmed Australia had evacuation plans in place but voiced the uncomfortable truth that, in reality, greater Tokyo (population 35 million) would have been almost impossible to evacuate.
Ex-ambassador frustrated by post-tsunami silence BY: RICK WALLACE, TOKYO CORRESPONDENT The Australian March 10, 2012 AUSTRALIA’S former ambassador to Japan has told of his frustrations with the Japanese government for keeping its close partners in the dark about the extent of the damage to the Fukushima nuclear plant at the height of the crisis almost one year ago. Continue reading
Cover-up of nuclear collusion between USA and Japan at Fukushima
Prime Minister Naoto Kan has yet to disclose the truth behind his more disturbing decisions: first, the absence of stenographers and voice recordings at his emergency Cabinet meetings;
The high-level cover-up and lab analysis of cesium-isotope ratios indicate the Japanese nuclear establishment was illegally involved in the reprocessing of weapons-grade uranium at Fukushima No. 1 and probably two other civilian nuclear plants in northern Japan.
The collaboration between Washington and Tokyo in a covert 
nuclear-weapons program was a violation of international law
The World is Powerless Against Fukushima Fallout, Hyphen Submitted by New America Media, March 8, 2012 by Yoichi Shimatsu “……..Public at Risk From Official Silence At the molecular level inside a biological cell, gamma-ray bombardment rewrites the genetic code contained in the chromosomes, scrambling the elegant poetry of life into gibberish.
Since leukemia, cancers and birth defects can be falsely attributed to other disorders, the governments of North America, Europe and Asia along with international agencies can be counted on to remain silent or mount campaigns of misdiagnosis to protect their nuclear power and weapons programs, along with their food and travel industries. Bureaucrats, at heart and out of self-interest, are cowards. Continue reading
India’s democracy disappearing under nuclear lobby pressure?
‘The fact that the government is going to the extent of cancelling legitimately granted visas clearly shows that they don’t want people from Japan to come to India and share their experience’ said Karuna Raina of the green group. Kobayashi helped save children from
radiation as part of a network of local mothers……
Scared India denies visa to nuclear activist and Fukushima disaster survivor Mail Online India, By DINESH C SHARMA, 7th March 2012 ‘We are a democracy, we are not like China’. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh professed while making his ‘foreign hand behind nuclear protests’ remark recently.
However, actions of his government show that India is behaving much like China when it comes to muzzling dissent. The latest example of the government’s intolerant behaviour is denying a survivor of Fukushima disaster from visiting nuclear protest hotspots in India on the eve of the first anniversary of the Japanese nuclear accident on March 11. Continue reading
Misunderstanding, wrong translation of Ahmadinejad’s supposed words “Israel must be wiped off the map”
from Wikileaks: Translation controversy Many news sources repeated the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting statement by Ahmadinejad that “Israel must be wiped off the map”,[5][6] an English idiom which means to “cause a place to stop existing”,[7] or to “obliterate totally”,[8] or “destroy completely”.[9]
Ahmadinejad’s phrase was “بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود” according to the text published on the President’s Office’s website.[10]
The translation presented by the official Islamic Republic News Agency has been challenged by Arash Norouzi, who says the statement “wiped off the map” was never made and that Ahmadinejad did not refer to the nation or land mass of Israel, but to the “regime occupying Jerusalem”. Norouzi translated the original Persian to English, with the result, “the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”[11] Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, agrees that Ahmadinejad’s statement should be translated as, “the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[12] According to Cole, “Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ because no such idiom exists in Persian.” Instead, “he did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.”[13] The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the phrase similarly, as “this regime” must be “eliminated from the pages of history.”[14]
Iranian government sources denied that Ahmadinejad issued any sort of threat. On 20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference: “How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime.”[15][16][17]
Conflict of interest in India’s nuclear regulation
In India, all Indian nuclear plants are in the public sector and so are the agencies that exercise regulatory functions and promotional responsibilities. In this situation, conflict of interest between regulation and promotion is inevitable.
How Fukushima is relevant to Kudankulam, THE HINDU, T. N. SRINIVASAN, T. S. GOPI RETHINARAJ, SURYA SETHI, 8 March 12, “……REGULATORY INDEPENDENCE The Fukushima accident highlighted the need for the independence of regulators from plant operators. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has long been criticised for being subservient to DAE, the promoting organisation for nuclear power.
After Fukushima, the establishment of a truly independent regulator has been promised.
Currently, institutional deficiencies are structurally inbuilt and hard to eliminate. If they remain, the credibility and autonomy of the regulator cannot be ensured. Historically, nuclear policymaking in India was not transparent and involved only a handful of people in the
government. Continue reading
Malaysia’s weaker environmental laws led Australian company to set up rare earths plant there
ANAWA and EDO strongly believed that Lynas had chosen to move its operations to Malaysia because of the heavy metals and radioactive waste involved in the processing. “We believe Lynas picked Malaysia to save money and enable it to operate under less stringent laws,”
“The biggest concerns about the processing are the storage and waste management issues which are made more difficult in Gebeng which we understand to be wetlands.”
“There is no way it could operate the way it is in Malaysia over here,” he said. “Australia’s laws are much more stringent.”
Aussie NGO: Gebeng not part of Lynas’ blueprint, Free Malaysia Today News, Stephanie Sta Maria | March 6, 2012 Anti Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia (ANAWA) claims that Lynas’ massive changes to its plan has resulted in its plant being built in Gebeng where laws are looser and labour is cheaper. PETALING JAYA: The Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia (ANAWA) has revealed that Lynas Corporation Ltd was supposed to build its plant in Western Australia and not Malaysia. Continue reading
Japan’s March 11 radiation forecast was too scary to be released
Ministry hid data on fallout from public,SPEEDI forecast judged too chilling to be released: internal memo, Japan Times, 5 March 12, Kyodo Former science minister Yoshiaki Takaki and other top ministry officials decided to withhold radiation forecast data from the public four days after the March 11 disasters triggered the nuclear crisis, an internal document shows.
Takaki, lawmakers serving as top ministry officials and senior bureaucrats decided March 15 to withhold data about the predicted spread of radioactivity, including an assumption that all radioactive material would be discharged from the crippled reactors’ cores at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The prediction of the spread of radioactive substances, compiled through the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI), “could by no means be released to the public,” the document, dated March 19, shows….. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120304a1.html
USA govt plans secretly to gaol Julian Assange
On Monday, WikiLeaks began releasing more than 5 million Stratfor emails which it said showed ”how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients”.
Revealed: US plans to charge Assange, SMH, Philip Dorling, February 29, 
2012 UNITED STATES prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a confidential email obtained from the private US intelligence company Stratfor.
In an internal email to Stratfor analysts on January 26 last year, the vice-president of intelligence, Fred Burton, responded to a media report concerning US investigations targeting WikiLeaks with the comment: ”We have a sealed indictment on Assange.”
He underlined the sensitivity of the information – apparently obtained from a US government source – with warnings to ”Pls [please]
protect” and ”Not for pub[lication]”. Continue reading
Hackers break into Lynas’ website, while Malaysian court case continues
Australian miner hacked, WA Today, Rania Spooner February 27, 2012 In a show of opposition to a near-complete rare earths processing plant in Malaysia, the website of Australian miner Lynas Corporation has been hacked. WAtoday.com.au understands the miner’s website was brought down on Sunday as reports emerged of more than 5000 protestors converging on the seaside city of Kuantan, near the site of the controversial facility.
The Lynas website was still down at 7.30pm (EST) Monday, with a message from the company advising: “We are currently experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
A hacker, using the name “4z1″ and claiming to be a Malaysian citizen, has taken credit for bringing the site down in a statement on a personal blog.
In a rough translation of 4z1′s statement from Chinese into English, internal Malaysian race issues and fear of radiation from the plant was the explanation for the hacking….
A group of Kuantan residents have launched court proceedings against Malaysia’s Atomic Energy Licensing Board, the Malaysian Department of Environment and Lynas Malaysia over the plant, the company reported on Thursday. The group has sought a review of the plant’s temporary operating license granted by the AELB early this month and a halt to the commencement of operations, due in the coming weeks, while such a review is undertaken….
The plant would be used to process concentrate from the Mount Weld deposit in Western Australia’s Goldfields region, believed to be the largest of its kind in the world. The company previously announced plans to transport the concentrate from Mount Weld to Malaysia via road and sea. http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/australian-miner-hacked-20120227-1tyn0.html#ixzz1o5i4ZS2d
Global anti nuclear movement opposes nuclear in all countries, not just India
The anti-nuclear movement today is a pointer to the huge crisis that India and the world is facing.
the same movement is also opposing American reactors coming up in Gujarat, French EPRs coming up in Jaitapur and indigenous reactors being constructed in places like Chutka and Fatehabad.
How ‘Foreign’ Is The Anti-Nuclear Movement In India?, Counter Currents, By P K Sundaram http://www.countercurrents.org/sundaram290212.htm 29 February, 2012 Dianuke.org The Indian Prime-Minister has started an open tirade against the movement opposing the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant. In his recent interview, he alleged that it is “foreign-hand” and NGOs with American funding that are blocking India’s progress, not only in nuclear energy but also in GMOs.
It is one occasion where we can agree with our Prime Minister. It is important to understand today that the anti-nuclear movement in the country is a voice from beyond the existing system. Entirely foreign to the Manmohan Singh’s imagination of India.
The ‘illiterate’ fisherfolk in Koodankulam today earn at least thrice more than what they would earn in the employment guarantee scheme if they become part of the Manmohan-land governed by primitive market policies. Through opposing the reactor, a sustainably-living community is basically refusing to be part of the neo-liberal India. It is not only foreign to our PM’s imagination, it is essentially opposite to what his economics stands for.
The local administration in Jaitapur, in its attempt to ‘reach out’ and ‘educate’ people after their massive protests, went to the Madban village with vehicles loaded with armed men. Nobody from the village came out to welcome them except an old women who asked: if you have come to talk, whom are you afraid of? Why all this battalion? This moral landscape of dignity of the Jaitapur women definitely has no space in the India that Manmohan Singh, Ahluwalia, Chidambaram and other ex-employees of the World Bank and IMF want to impose on us.
The compensation amount for land in Haryana, for the nuclear power plants in Gorakhpur (Fatehabad district), has been raised dramatically over last 2 years. This month, it was raised to 34 hundred thousands rupees per acre of land. This is an unthinkable amount in India for farmers. One of the main reasons to plan a reactor in Haryana, criminally overlooking other requisites of setting-up reactors, was the assumption that farmers there are more likely to agree on better compensation. But the farmers of Gorakhpur and surrounding villages have refused to accept this amount, at the cost of their health, safety and livelihoods, particularly after Fukushima. This is beyond the neo-liberal mindset of our ruling class, where nothing is more than just a commodity. Continue reading
India deports German tourist solely because of his anti nuclear opinions
German tourist’s deportation from Koodankulam: Dr. R S Mohan Lal’s Statement http://www.dianuke.org/german-tourists-deportation-from-koodankulam-dr-r-s-mohan-lals-statement/ Statement of Dr.R.S.Lal Mohan, Nagercoil regarding the News item about the German tourist Mr.Rainer.
Mr.Rainer is a tourist spending his own money. He was staying in a very low budget hotel spending Rs.200/- per day as tariff. He could not afford to pay costly accommodation. He is a very frugal man living a simple life. After working as a computer technologist he saved the money for being a tourist. He used to spend his retired life in India. Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia and Loas as life is cheap in these countries. Even he has lost weight because of Indian food which causes dysentery. He has only 2 or 3 pairs of dress. Computer is his only companion. He loves travel. He calls me sometimes to inform me about the dolphins. He is a Nature lover talks to me about nature and tree planting. He has a high degree of social consciousness and refined behavior
It is absolutely wrong to think he funded any NGOs and supported the Anti-Koodankulam agitation. He has no money to so. Any if the Govt. has proof that he supported the agitation by paying Rs.500 crores, he should have been detained in India instead of deporting him. Now he has no way to deny the charges.
It is wrong on the part of police to treat him shabbly. India is inviting tourists and many people come to Kanyakumari District as tourist. The treatment of Mr.Rainer will carry wrong impression on the tourist from Germany.
As for as I know that Mr.Rainer never gave any donation to any NGO. It is totally false that he funded the Koodankulam agitation. The Nuclear prolobby want to mislead the people that the foreigners life Rainer support the anti koodankulam agitation.
Thank You, (Dr.R.S.Lal Mohan) Conservation of Nature Trust, 43c, Water Tank Road, Nagercoil-1, 28.2.2012, Nagercoil
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