The Fukushima Prefectural Government and the Reconstruction Agency are looking to take legal action over the video over concerns it will stoke “unreasonable” fears of radiation in the Fukushima Prefecture, the Japan Times reports.
A senior official from the prefecture said they were “examining the video content”.
In the episode, Farrier is filmed taking a tour of areas affected by the 2011 meltdown of a nuclear plant in Fukushima where he suspects a meal served from a restaurant in Namie, a town in Fukushima Prefecture, has been contaminated by radiation.
It also shows the journalist enter a no-go zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant without permission from authorities, reporting from an abandoned game arcade, and tourists on a bus becoming distressed over rising radiation levels without information about the vehicle’s location.
The show has the journalist travel to different locations around the world associated with grim historical events, including the footsteps of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee, and voodoo rituals in Benin, West Africa.
Senator requests documents on Michael Cohen’s ‘pay to play’ work for nuclear developer
Illinois senator wants communications between DOE and President Trump’s former lawyer. Think Progress, MARK HAND, AUG 29, 2018 A Democratic senator wants more information about efforts by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s embattled former attorney who recently pleaded guilty to committing multiple felonies, to get the Department of Energy (DOE) to approve a huge nuclear loan application for one of his clients.
Franklin Haney, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, reportedly hired Cohen to secure a $5 billion loan guarantee from DOE. Haney agreed to pay Cohen $10 million if he succeeded in getting the department to approve the loan guarantee.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) sent a letter on Tuesday to Energy Secretary Rick Perry asking him for more information on how the agency is evaluating the loan application. She wants the department to provide a list of DOE political appointees, career employees, and contractors who had contact with Cohen or Haney — or representatives of either — in regard to the loan application for the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant project in Alabama.
Duckworth is also seeking all memorandums, meeting notes, emails, and any other records related to Haney’s loan application and communications with Cohen.
“This unseemly pay-to-play arrangement raises serious questions of conflict-of-interest, corrupt practices, and potential violations of lobbying disclosure laws,” Duckworth wrote in her letter to Perry.
Haney, a Tennessee real-estate mogul who owns the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site in Alabama, reached the agreement with Cohen just days before federal agents raided Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
The Wall Street Journal article noted that Cohen lobbied several DOE officials to support Haney’s loan application and speed up the review process, even though public records show that Cohen has never registered as a lobbyist.
Duckworth said she is requesting the documents to help her office better understand how the DOE is evaluating Haney’s loan application. In her letter, she asked Perry for a “prompt and thorough response” to the document requests.
Duckworth is a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has congressional oversight jurisdiction over DOE the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Earlier this year, Duckworth introduced legislation to protect whistleblowers who are employed by DOE and the NRC. Currently, DOE and NRC whistleblowers are at risk of retaliation, even when they report critical public safety concerns, because of administrative law rulings that allow the two agencies to dismiss any whistleblower claim brought against them under the Energy Reorganization Act’s employee protection authorities.
Earlier this month The Wall Street Journal also reported that Haney agreed to pay Cohen a monthly retainer for his work on behalf of the nuclear plant. The loan application submitted by Haney’s company, Nuclear Development LLC, is still pending at DOE.
In 2016, Nuclear Development entered into a contract to purchase the partially completed Bellefonte Nuclear Plant from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) at auction for $111 million and invest up to an additional $13 billion to complete construction of the nuclear energy facility.
The site includes two partially constructed nuclear reactors, which are 55-percent completed, two high-voltage switchyards, reinforced containment buildings, and used fuel storage pools and high capacity cranes for fuel loading……….
The government of Japan is clearly intending that the 2020 Olympics will function as a public relations win in which the image of Japan, and especially of Northern Japan and Fukushima are cleansed of images of radiological contamination. Even as the Fukushima Daiichi site itself, and the traces where the plumes of its explosions deposited fallout throughout the area remain un-remediated, the public perceptions will be remediated. This is typical of the behavior of governments in the developed world that suffer radiological disasters. The disasters themselves are so difficult to clean up, and take decades to even begin the clean up, that money is allocated for extensive public relations efforts. These become tasks that CAN be completed and CAN be considered successful. They function both to advance the public image agenda of the governments, and also deliver a sense of agency when the overall tone of nuclear disaster remediation is one of lacking effective agency.
Towards that end, the Japanese government is planning to integrate Fukushima sites and perceptions into the upcoming Olympics media fest. The journey of the Olympic torch through every prefecture of Japan will begin in Fukushima, a symbolic rebirth intended to facilitate the repopulating of the local communities that were evacuated, many of which have had few returnees since the government has declared them “safe” and cut public funds to those forcibly evacuated.
The government is also planning to hold multiple Olympic events in Fukushima prefecture including baseball and softball events. “Tokyo 2020 is a showcase for the recovery and reconstruction of Japan from the disaster of March 2011, so in many ways we would like to give encouragement to the people, especially in the affected area,”said Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori last March.
This active rebranding of Fukushima as safe involves removing physical reminders of ongoing risk. The central government has recently announced that it will be removing 80% of public radiation monitors from the region. An argument can be made that the presence of these monitors is theatrical in that they only measure external gamma radiation levels, which are not the primary risk to residents (this comes from internalizing radioactive particles that blanketed the region in the fallout of the plumes of the explosions of March 2011), and that positioning these gamma detectors in midair produces low readings since the particles are primarily on the ground. However, they are a tangible, embodied reminder that risk remains.
While there is a clearly an active campaign to rehabilitate the image of the region leading up to the 2020 Olympics, an effort that will no doubt intensify as the event draws near, there is also pushback and resistance in the local and national communities. A recent sculpture unveiled at the JR train station in prefectural capital Fukushima City (about 80km from the Daiichi nuclear site) has been stirring up controversy. A Guardianarticle explained:
“The statue, by Kenji Yanobe, depicts a child dressed in a yellow Hazmat-style suit, with a helmet in one hand and an artistic representation of the sun in the other.
Yanobe said his Sun Child, which was installed by the municipal government after appearing at art exhibitions in Japan and overseas, was intended to express his desire for a nuclear-free world.
The artist said he did not mean to give the impression that local children needed to protect themselves from radiation more than seven years after the Fukushima Daiichi plant became the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
He pointed out that the child was not wearing the helmet and that a monitor on its chest showed radiation levels at ‘000’.”
While some, including the mayor of Fukushima City, have praised the statue for emphasizing a hopeful future for local children, others have criticized the statue for suggesting that there is any danger to local children.
Regardless of how one interprets the sculpture, it does confront people with the fact that things are far from normal in the region. This, in spite of the central government’s strong efforts to implore people not to pay any attention to what is happening behind the curtains it has been raising.
The Nuclear Resister, August 13, 2018 UPDATE: August 17 – the jailed activist was released from custody today.
Among the many commemorative events all around the Peace Park in Hiroshima, Japan on August 6 was an evening memorial service for victims of both the Bomb and nuclear power by Go West, Come West. It is a civic association of evacuees from the March, 2011 Fukushima disaster and their supporters who are challenging the Japanese government’s response to the ongoing catastrophe affecting all of eastern Japan as inadequate and cruel.
This is their story about how police then arrested one of their members on trumped-up charges. [The headline of this post was corrected 8/15/18 to reflect that the jailed activist is a friend of Fukushima evacuees, and not herself an evacuee. The gender of the arrested person was also corrected from the error in the machine translation of this story.]
Emergency Statement on the Oppression at the Hands of the Local Police against the Fukushima Nuclear Evacuees’ August 6 Hiroshima Action.
Hiroshima Police Unlawfully Arrested a Citizen to Silence Evacuees Appealing about Ongoing Fukushima Disaster.
A Serious Threat to Human Right and Free Speech.
We demand that the Hiroshima police immediately release the arrested friend of the nuclear evacuees who participated in August 6 Hiroshima actions!
We, an organization of evacuees from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and their supporters, attended various peace rallies and events held in Hiroshima on August 6th 2018, commemorating the 73rd anniversary of 1945 nuclear atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Survivors of Hiroshima atomic bombing and Fukushima nuclear evacuees are both victims of nuclear disaster and radiation.
Our goal was to unite with Hiroshima and act together to end these ongoing disasters in the world.
There on the night of the 6th, in front of the great number of people coming for these peace events from all over the world, we gave speeches in both Japanese and English. Our speech was for remembrance of those killed by the nuclear atomic bombing and the endless damage caused by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
A lot of Japanese and foreign tourists who visited Hiroshima for this anniversary stopped and listened to our speeches earnestly, taking our handouts explaining what the Fukushima nuclear disaster has caused: the real health damage of residents now spreading all over the eastern Japan; and the predicaments that evacuees are faced with even today.
We were deeply moved by the amount of attentions and feedback we received from them. When one of the 2nd generation of atomic bomb victims gave a speech on how Hiroshima and Fukushima are connected with one straight line, radiation exposure, there was a round of applause from people including locals of Hiroshima. It became a great place of solidarity for sharing experiences and thoughts among those who were there with us.
However all things were changed when a suspicious passerby wearing military fashion, pointing his camera, started shouting complaints at us, and took photos of us, apparently aiming to disturb our speeches. We ignored him but when we were finishing it up and packing our stuff, he screamed saying, “Someone just broke my camera” and called the local police even though we did not go near him or made any physical contact with him or whatsoever.
The local police officers rushed to us and blocked us from going anywhere. The officers started to question us and we explained many times that we did nothing to him, it was totally a false accusation and we needed to go back home because some of us were getting very sick from the summer heat. However, the police officers still refused to let any of us leave.
The officers were talking with their supervisor by cell phone all the time. Then suddenly they said, “The police have had an eyewitness who saw your member break that man’s camera. So now we will take this person to the police station.”
We told them that none of us did such a thing, however the officers put handcuffs on one of our members, saying, “You are under suspicion of escape!! You are under arrest!! We’ll let you know the reason of arrest when you are brought to the police station.” The police officers lifted that her body violently and then threw her into their police car and took her to the main police station in Hiroshima. This is clearly illegal abduction and confinement by the police using a false accusation.
The police officers physically held us away, telling us not to approach to the suspicious camera man or “eyewitness”. Witnessing a whole situation, some citizens there shouted to the police officers, “How dare you doing such a thing on the memorial day for war dead!” and “How come? They have done nothing wrong!”
The officers withdrew to the police station right after they made the arrest as if they themselves were fugitives.
The reason for this arrest was, we suspect, that the upper-level of the police department judged our speeches and handouts politically, and they ordered those police officers at the site to arrest our member.
This fact shows how the current Japanese administration is terrified of their biggest skeleton in the closet, the actual health damage due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, coming to light. They are also making desperate efforts to hamper the voices of Fukushima nuclear victims and the concerns and resentment against atomic bombings from spreading among people in Japan and around the world. So they use whatever means to stop those real pictures being known to the public, domestically and internationally.
Prosecutors have since asked that she be held in detention at the Hiroshima prefectural police headquarters until at least August 18, or even August 28.
Individual international and organizational statements of support for Mr. A. and Go West Come West should be sent via email to danatsu8.6@gmail.com. ………
Radioactive sheep shed light on secret nuclear weapons test, https://nypost.com/2018/08/14/radioactive-sheep-shed-light-on-secret-nuclear-weapons-test/Christopher Carbone, Fox News, August 14, 2018 Newly discovered data from radioactive sheep provides strong evidence that a mysterious “double flash” detected almost 39 years ago near a remote island group was a nuclear explosion.
Ever since the flash was observed by a US Vela satellite orbiting above Earth in September 1979, there’s been speculation that it was produced by a nuclear weapon test by Israel. International researchers in the journal Science & Global Security analyzed previously unpublished results of radiation testing at a US lab of thyroid organs from sheep in southeastern Australia in order to make their determination.
The flash was located in the area of Marion and Prince Edward islands, which are in the South Indian Ocean about halfway between Africa and Antarctica.
“A new publication sheds further light on the Vela Incident of 1979,” said Professor Nick Wilson of Otago University at Wellington, who highlighted the findings but was not involved with the study itself. “[The research] adds to the evidence base that this was an illegal nuclear weapons test, very likely to have been conducted by Israel with assistance from the apartheid regime in South Africa.”
Wilson, an epidemiologist and member of the Australia-based Medical Association for the Prevention of War, said the test would have violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963, and urged the United Nations to mount a full inquiry.
The researchers conclude that iodine-131, which is an unstable radioactive form of the element iodine found in the thyroids of some Australian sheep, “would be consistent with them having grazed in the path of a potential radioactive fallout plume from a [Sept. 22, 1979] low-yield nuclear test in the Southern Indian Ocean.”
Thyroid samples from sheep killed in Melbourne were regularly sent to the US for testing — monthly in 1979 but also in the 1950s and 1980s, researchers say.
According to a report in the New Zealand Herald, the sheep had been grazing in an area hit by rain four days after the flash incident was observed, which would have been in the downwind path from the suspected explosion site.
Researchers also said the detection of a “hydroacoustic signal” from underwater listening devices at the time is another piece of evidence pointing to a nuclear test.
Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of a nuclear program, dismissed the claim that it was responsible for the 1979 incident.
srael’s ambassador to New Zealand, Itzhak Gerberg, told the Herald, when asked if Israel was responsible for the explosion: “Simply a ridiculous assumption that does not hold water.”
However, the country’s former Knesset speaker, Avrum Burg, told a conference in 2013 that “Israel has nuclear and chemical weapons” and called for public discussion.
Commenting on the findings, US nuclear weapons expert Leonard Weiss of Stanford University said in the online Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the “important” new evidence “removes virtually all doubt” that the flash was a small-yield nuclear explosion.
Weiss added that there was “growing circumstantial evidence” that it was conducted by Israel.
“Israel was the only country that had the technical ability and policy motivation to carry out such a clandestine test,” he said.
opposition in New Mexico to siting the facility there, and opposition along any potential transportation routes, would doom the idea
“It’s extremely troubling because they are going to be handling a decommissioning fund of almost a billion dollars,” Tauro said. “This really points to the need absolutely for the independent oversight board. To lend this whole deal transparency and independence, and having people on that board who have absolutely nothing to gain.”
Once a privately held company is in charge of decommissioning, she said, transparency will be lost.
A high-level nuclear waste storage facility doesn’t exist yet, since the federal government stopped its attempts in 2011 to develop the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada in the face of local and regional opposition.
So, for the foreseeable future, nuclear plants’ spent fuel must be stored on site of both operating and closed plants.
But Holtec International, which is trying to buy the Oyster Creek plant in Lacey Township for decommissioning, has an application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to open a short-term facility in New Mexico. It proposes to store high-level nuclear waste there, such as spent fuel rods from nuclear plants. A Holtec spokesperson did not respond to requests for information.
Holtec would likely try to transport Oyster Creek’s waste to the New Mexico facility. That and the fact that Holtec manufactures casks for storage of nuclear waste bring up conflicts of interest, said Clean Water Action Board Chairwoman Janet Tauro, of Brick Township. She has been fighting to get the Oyster Creek plant closed for years.
Tauro said whoever does the decommissioning should have to choose the best and safest cask and storage options, not the ones that will make the most money for them.
“How do you do that if it’s all your stuff, if Holtec is managing the decommissioning and buying their own casks and choosing to store at a Holtec-owned site in New Mexico?” asked Tauro.
Tauro is especially concerned about Holtec casks, since some of them malfunctioned at the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear plant in San Diego County, California, she said
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the problem was discovered Feb. 20 “during a mandatory pre-loading inspection of multipurpose canisters, the stainless-steel casks that hold the spent fuel.”
He said it involved a broken shim standoff bolt inside the cask. The loose bolt — about 4 inches long and 7/16th of an inch in diameter — was found in the bottom of one of the casks.
It was shipped back to Holtec, Sheehan said. Holtec inspected other canisters at its facility in Camden and found another with a broken standoff bolt.
On March 6, Southern California Edison, which owns San Onofre, halted its dry cask loading activities. The site subsequently resumed that work, using casks with a different approved shim design, Sheehan said.
Other plants that have casks with the same design are Vermont Yankee, Dresden, Grand Gulf, Hatch, Columbia, Watts Bar and Callaway.
The New Mexico storage facility is unlikely to become a reality, said New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel, since it would require moving high-level radioactive waste across the country.Sheehan said Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vermont, and Oyster Creek are the only nuclear plants ever proposed to be sold for decommissioning.
However, in 2010, Exelon transferred the license for Zion Nuclear Power Station in Zion, Illinois, to EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City to do the decommissioning, and will take the license back after the work is done. In that case, Exelon continues to be responsible for the spent fuel.
“Years ago we called them ‘mobile Chernobyls,’” said Tittel of the idea of moving such waste by truck or train. His organization has also fought to close the plant for decades. Tittel predicted opposition in New Mexico to siting the facility there, and opposition along any potential transportation routes, would doom the idea
Tauro is also concerned about Holtec’s plans to subcontract the decommissioning work to Comprehensive Decommissioning International LLC, of Camden. CDI was formed earlier this year as a joint venture company of Holtec and SNC-Lavalin.
SNC-Lavalin has been charged with corruption, fraud and bribery in Canada, according to Canadian media reports.
“It’s extremely troubling because they are going to be handling a decommissioning fund of almost a billion dollars,” Tauro said. “This really points to the need absolutely for the independent oversight board. To lend this whole deal transparency and independence, and having people on that board who have absolutely nothing to gain.”
Once a privately held company is in charge of decommissioning, she said, transparency will be lost.
“NRC staff, both in our regional offices and headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, closely monitored the actions being taken by plant owners and Holtec, the cask vendor, in response to the issue,” Sheehan said. “Holtec and the plant owners performed root-cause and extent-of-condition analyses. Those assessments determined that the heat flow inside the casks would not be adversely impacted by the problem. We are still reviewing the issue.”
How come the Australia government, which gives help to convicted murderers overseas – does nothing to help whistleblower Julian Assange? It’s a national disgrace!
Assange may finally leave Ecuadorian embassy in London as health worsens – report Julian Assange, who has spent more than 2,230 days in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, is expected to leave the building soon with his health deteriorating, sources say.
This latest information about the WikiLeaks founder, who was already expected to leave the embassy “in the coming weeks,” was Wednesday by Bloomberg which cited “two people with knowledge of the matter.” The news agency reported that the whistleblower’s health “has declined recently.”
The news comes days after Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno announced that Assange must “eventually” leave the embassy. “Yes, indeed yes, but his departure should come about through dialogue,” the Ecuadorian president said in answer to a reporter’s question on whether he will eventually have to leave.
“For a person to stay confined like that for so long is tantamount to a human rights violation,” Moreno said, stressing that Ecuador wants to make sure that nothing “poses a danger” to the whistleblower‘s life.
The whistleblower’s health is deteriorating, according to the Courage Foundation, a group that fundraises for the legal defense of whistleblowers. Assange is in “a small space” and has “no access to sunlight,” the group , adding that this has a serious impact “on his physical and mental health.”
Rape allegations, stemming from Assange’s visit to Sweden in August 2010, were the main reason that he sought refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 when a warrant was issued for his arrest. Assange maintained that he could be extradited from Sweden to the US, where he would be prosecuted for his whistleblowing and would not receive a fair trial. Swedish prosecutors dropped the investigation in 2017, but a British warrant for violating bail conditions still stands.
Washington simply “wants revenge” for the “embarrassment” WikiLeaks caused it, and wants it to serve “as a deterrent to others,” human rights activist Peter Tatchell told RT earlier in July. “Someone who’s published that information in the same way that the New York Times or the Guardian publish information, I don’t think they should face risk 30 or 40 years in jail in the United States,” Tatchell added.
Launched in 2006, the WikiLeaks project is aimed at exposing government and corporate secrets. It garnered global attention back in 2010 with its massive release of classified US military documents, which included those detailing how American military equipment was deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Assange won thousands of admirers, with many applauding his willingness to speak the truth.
Is BBC Spying on WikiLeaks Founder Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy? https://sputniknews.com/europe/201808091067081598-bbc-spy-assange/ 09.08.2018 Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno recently raised the issue of WikiLeaks’ founder leaving the country’s embassy in the UK, where he has been holed up since 2012, fearing the UK police will arrest and extradite him to the US.
On Thursday WikiLeaks Twitter account posted a screenshot of a letter received by some of the residents of no. 18 Hans Cres, London — an apartment building across from the Ecuadorian Embassy that serves as an asylum for Julian Assange. The letter, which has a BBC News logo in its top right corner, asks permission to install permanent cameras outside residents’ apartments so that they overlook the embassy.
The letter was motivated by a desire to better cover Julian Assange’s story and promised to compensate for any disturbances caused. The letter also contains Jonathan Whitney’s email as a contact for those interested in the offer. According to Whitney’s profile, he is a BBC News Deployment Editor.
WikiLeaks chief editor Julian Assange has been living in Ecuador’s UK Embassy since 2012 fearing the UK may extradite him to the US, where he could face prosecution over WikiLeaks’ publication of leaked US military and diplomatic documents. Recently Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno touched upon the issue of expelling Assange from the embassy, but noted that the UK must first guarantee the activist’s safety.
His statements followed conflicting media reports that Ecuador might revoke Assange’s asylum and that the whistleblower might leave voluntarily to due increasing health issues.
Julian Assange should ensure he’s granted immunity from prosecution before testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee, former CIA officer John Kiriakou told RT, citing previous US attempts to charge those who did testify.
“If Assange is offered immunity by the committee, he then could not be charged with the crime because anything he said before the committee could not be used against him,” Kiriakou stressed, recalling how in 1987 former marine Oliver North was granted congressional immunity in exchange for his testimony on the Iran-Contra affair.
The Department of Justice then filed multiple felony charges against North, and he was arrested. But the Supreme Court later dismissed the charges, citing his immunity. Kiriakou believes the same measure can shield Assange, who has spent the last six years living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fearing extradition to the US.
The WikiLeaks founder was earlier requested to give a closed interview to the staff of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee as part of the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election – an accusation Moscow flatly denies.
In October, 2017, WikiLeaks published the cache of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, whose account the US Intelligence Community claims was hacked by ‘Russian operatives.’
Kiriakou reminded viewers that while many view Assange as a journalist and publisher, American lawmakers generally have a much more negative perception of the whistleblower. “On the Senate Intelligence Committee almost nobody believes that,” he said, explaining why the potential trip to the US can be risky for Assange.
Over the years, US politicians and intelligence officers have branded Assange a “traitor” and an “enemy of the state” for publishing classified materials on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as leaking US diplomatic cables. Last year, the then-head of the CIA Mike Pompeo, who now serves as the secretary of state, labeled WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”
The animosity harbored towards Assange suggests that the US Senate has “ulterior motives” for summoning him, human rights activist Peter Tatchell believes.
“I believe they want to snare him into somehow admitting or implying that he got information from Russian sources. That seems to be the focus of their attention,” the activist said, adding that the US authorities might use the interview to collect new evidence to prosecute Assange in the future.
Former MI5 officer Annie Machon, meanwhile, argues that it may be “difficult” for Assange to agree to a closed interview with US officials on such a sensitive subject. She believes he “always has got to be very careful about how they approach this, how it might be perceived, and what might be the outcome.” But crucially, the very nature of the hearing goes against the principles of WikiLeaks which Assange has staunchly defended.
“The whole ethos of WikiLeaks is to be open and transparent, and to bring the information out for the public’s good,” she said.
Trump Donor Agreed to Pay Michael Cohen $10 Million for Nuclear Project Push
Consulting deal with Franklin L. Haney could have been among the most lucrative struck by president’s then-personal attorney, WSJ, ByMichael Rothfeld, Rebecca Ballhaus and Joe Palazzolo, 2 Aug 18.
A major donor to President Trump agreed to pay $10 million to the president’s then-personal attorney if he successfully helped obtain funding for a nuclear-power project, including a $5 billion loan from the U.S. government, according to people familiar with the matter.
The donor, Franklin L. Haney, gave the contract to Trump attorney Michael Cohen in early April to assist his efforts to complete a pair of unfinished nuclear reactors in Alabama, known as the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, these people said.
Authorities are investigating whether Mr. Cohen engaged in unregistered lobbying in connection with his consulting work for corporate clients after Mr. Trump went to the White House, according to people familiar with the probe.
Investigators are also examining potential campaign-finance violations and bank fraud……..
Under the contract, Mr. Haney agreed to pay Mr. Cohen a monthly retainer in addition to the $10 million success fee if he could help obtain the funding, including approval of the full amount of the project’s application under a U.S. Department of Energy loan program, the people familiar with the deal said.
Mr. Cohen’s fee would be reduced proportionally if he helped obtain less funding than the contract stipulated, according to a person familiar with the agreement.
A loan application by Mr. Haney’s company is still pending at the Energy Department. Mr. Cohen hasn’t communicated with Energy Secretary Rick Perry about Mr. Haney’s project, according to the Energy Department. Mr. Cohen made several calls to officials at the Energy Department in the spring to inquire about the loan guarantee process, including what could be done to speed it up, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine how much Mr. Haney may have paid Mr. Cohen, if anything, in monthly retainer fees…….
Mr. Cohen’s work for Mr. Haney included participating in an April 5 meeting during which he helped the donor pitch the vice chairman of the Qatar Investment Authority, Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani, on a possible investment in the nuclear plant, the Journal reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter. …..
Mr. Haney’s company, Nuclear Development, entered into a $111 million contract in November 2016 to purchase the partially completed Bellefonte Nuclear Plant from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Mr. Haney has until November to close on the purchase.
A month after the purchase agreement, in December 2016, Mr. Haney donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund through a corporate entity, Federal Election Commission records show. ….
The Hill 28th July 2018 , Intelligence officials and security analysts say Russian hackers are
devoting much more effort toward implanting malicious software in the U.S.
power grid than attempting to breach electoral systems, according to a new
report.
Several intelligence officials told The New York Times that Russian
efforts had been more focused on attacking and infiltrating U.S.
infrastructure systems, while interference in electoral systems remained
lower than the level witnessed in 2016.
Jeffrey Henderson warns against Chinese state-owned firms playing a decisive part in one of our most strategically important industries.
While we need to be concerned about China’s growing presence in Britain’s electricity generation (Nuclear power: China’s move into UK hints at scale of its wider ambitions, July 27), we should be asking searching questions of our government. They seem not to understand (or don’t care about) the nature of the companies they are dealing with.
Chinese state-owned enterprises are not like EDF or the German, Dutch and French state-owned firms that run our railways. They are dramatically different because China is governed by a Leninist state. Consequently, Chinese state firms are ultimately controlled not by the State Council’s State Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, but by the Communist party.
Furthermore, one of the two Chinese companies initially involved in the Hinkley Point plant, China National Nuclear (CNNC), while having a civil division, is mainly involved in the production of the country’s nuclear weapons. Consequently, it is almost certainly controlled by the Chinese military: the People’s Liberation Army.
With Chinese companies set to take the lead role at Bradwell and Sizewell (including building the reactors and running the stations) and, given EDF’s financial problems, a controlling stake in up to five other nuclear power plants, the British government is setting us up for a situation where the Chinese Communist party – and, assuming CNNC participation, the Chinese military – will have a decisive role in one of our most strategically important industries. To allow this borders on insanity and clearly has to be stopped.
Jeffrey Henderson Professor of international development, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol
They have thus obscured the reality that the fate of the negotiations depends not only North Korean policy but on the willingness of the United States to make changes in its policy toward the DPRK and the Korean Peninsula that past administrations have all been reluctant to make.
These stories also underscore a broader problem with media coverage of the US-North Korean negotiations: a strong underlying bias toward the view that it is futile to negotiate with North Korea. The latest stories have constructed a dark narrative of North Korean deception that is not based on verified facts. If this narrative is not rebutted or corrected, it could shift public opinion—which has been overwhelmingly favorable to negotiations with North Korea—against such a policy.
How the Media Wove a Narrative of North Korean Nuclear Deception38 North, BY: GARETH PORTER, JULY 26, 2018
Since the June 12 Singapore Summit between US President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the US media has woven a misleading narrative that both past and post-summit North Korean actions indicate an intent to deceive the US about its willingness to denuclearize. The so-called intelligence that formed the basis of these stories was fed to reporters by individuals within the administration pushing their own agenda.
The Case of theSecret Uranium Enrichment Sites
In late June and early July, a series of press stories portrayed a North Korean policy of deceiving the United States by keeping what were said to be undeclared uranium enrichment sites secret from the United States. The stories were published just as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was preparing for the first meetings with North Korean officials to begin implementing the Singapore Summit Declaration.
Addressing a room full of federal and circuit judges at the Ninth Circuit’s annual judicial conference, David McCraw, the deputy general counsel for The New York Times, explained that regardless of how one feels about Assange and traditional news outlets receiving the same kind of deference over publishing leaked materials, his prosecution would be a gut punch to free speech.
“I think the prosecution of him would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers,” McCraw said. “From that incident, from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and I think the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.”
McCraw went on to clarify that while Assange employs certain methods that he finds discomfiting and irresponsible, such as dumping unredacted documents revealing the personal information of ordinary people, Assange should be afforded the same protections as a traditional journalist.
“Do I wish journalism was practiced in a certain way, like it is with The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal? Of course. But I also think new ways of publishing have their value. Our colleagues who are not only challenging us financially but journalistically have raised an awareness that there are different ways to report,” McCraw said.
“But if someone is in the business of publishing information, I think that whatever privilege happens to apply – whatever extension of the law that would apply – should be there. Because the question isn’t whether he’s a journalist. It’s in that instance was he committing an act of journalism.”
Assange has long considered himself a journalist operating no differently than other news outlets. This has complicated matters, because if Assange can be prosecuted for publishing leaked information, why not prosecute news organizations like The New York Times?
Earlier this month, a grand jury returned an indictment against twelve Russian military spies for hacking into the servers and emails of the Democratic National Committee and state election officials, stealing documents and staging the release of those documents to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. While the indictment did not name Assange and WikiLeaks specifically, it has been widely suggested that WikiLeaks received the materials and could very well be the group referred to in the indictment as “Organization Number 1.”
Barry Pollack, who represents Assange in an ongoing criminal investigation in the Eastern District of Virginia, weighed in on the indictment Tuesday.
“If you read the indictment that just came out on Russians and you look at what Organization Number 1, which is clearly WikiLeaks, is alleged to have done in that indictment, it is doing exactly what The New York Times and The Washington Post do every day of the week,” Pollack said. “He [Assange] is communicating with a source, the source provides him with information, he publishes that information.
“There are no questions about the truthfulness or accuracy or authenticity of that information. And then he encourages the source to give him more information. He says ‘don’t give it to my competitors, give it to me. This story will have more impact if I publish it.’”
Pollack and McCraw spoke as part of a panel titled “The Law of Leaks,” a session on how the United States has ramped up efforts to prosecute people who have leaked state secrets. Thirteen people have been prosecuted under the first law against leaking state secrets, the Espionage Act of 1917, most under the Obama administration.
President Donald Trump has waged an unprecedented war against the media, taking to Twitter last year to call the media “the enemy of the American people.” Yet no publisher has ever been indicted over leaks, and both McCraw and Pollack expressed doubts about whether it will happen any time soon.
“Unlike firing off a tweet, bringing a prosecution requires a career professional prosecutor to sign off on the prosecution, so there also is a tremendous check there that doesn’t exist in some of the rhetoric we hear,” Pollack said.
“Prosecutions of journalists would be difficult,” McCraw said. “I think they’d be unpopular, I think they’d be wrong, and I think they’d be unsuccessful. I see this PR campaign against the press as almost an alternative to legal measures.”
Ken Raskin, 16 July 18 People forget about the Green run From Hanford. The Green Run occurred, when the government purposely let loose one of the largest plumes, of radionuclide poison in history, into South East Washington, using everyone there as test rats. A whole graveyard of miscarried and hopelessly deformed babies, from the aftermath of the radionuclide genocide, can be found in Walla Walla, Washington.
Since then, tons and tons more of radioactive waste have accumulated at Hanford, to be stored, or await the bogus vitiriolization-gaslighting lie. A lie that has gone on for 50 years, that will mever happen. Untold amounts of the the most toxic crud known to man, lethal at billionths of a gram, have leaked into the surrounding areas and the Columbia River.
More of the worst radionuclide waste known :cesium 137, plutonium, uranium poisons, and many more radionuclide wastes have accumutalted at hanford from the HOKEY PROMISE OF vitrification.
If one considers atrocities, like the green run, at Hanford, Hanford is far worse than Mayak.
Our ethnocentric , evil monkey nucleoapes, will not admit it. It is always Russia or chernobyl etc . That is the worst nuclear abomination on the planet. That is in spite of the fact, that the US military and govt detonated more than a thousand nuclear bombs in mureica, on its own citizens.
There is so much old highly radioactive waste, from the cold war and nuclear waste, from the reactors by Hanford, as well as the new shit constantly pouring in. There is a major radiation incident at Hanford, every few months now.
From Wikipedea The “Green Run” was a secret U.S. Government release of radioactive fission products on December 2–3, 1949, at the Hanford Site plutonium production facility, located in Eastern Washington. Radioisotopes released at that time were supposed to be detected by U.S. Air Force reconnaissance. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the U.S. Government have revealed some of the details of the experiment.[1] Sources cite 5,500 to 12,000 curies (200 to 440 TBq) of iodine-131 released,[1][2][3] and an even greater amount of xenon-133. The radiation was distributed over populated areas, and caused the cessation of intentional radioactive releases at Hanford until 1962 when more experiments commenced.[3]
There are some indications contained in the documents released by the FOIA requests that many other tests were conducted in the 1940s prior to the Green Run, although the Green Run was a particularly large test. Evidence suggests that filters to remove the iodine were disabled during the Green Run.[3][4]
The project gets its name from the processing of uranium at Hanford, WA in an open loop/water cooled nuclear reactor for the sole purpose of irradiating the Uranium-238 producing the fissile Plutonium-239. Due to other unwanted highly radioactive decay products being formed, normal batch processing would take place 83 to 101 days after reactor extraction to allow the radioactive isotopes to decay before extracting the fissile Plutonium-239 in a safe manner for the 30,000 nuclear weapons amassed and now MOX fuel during the cold war by the United States. For the Green Run test, a batch was fresh from the reactor with only a scheduled 16-day decay period and then was vented into the atmosphere prematurely. The unfiltered exhaust from the production facility was therefore much more radioactive than during a normal batch.
Oral history
Leland Fox says that his father was in the military and was bivouacked on the banks of the Wenatchee River during the Green Run:
…and people with radiation suits walked around and moved the little colored flags as the radiation was detected. The cooking was done outdoors and they slept near the beach. The Officers did not stay long except to give orders and drive away. Almost everyone that my father knew was there has died of cancer. My father had chronic lymphocytic leukemia and died from the complications of lung cancer. The Feds said that the leukemia can not be caused by iodine-131 but his doctor, Dr. Bonnie Takasugi of Burien WA, said that it most probably was.[citation needed]
Health Physicist Carl C. Gamertsfelder, Ph.D. described his recollections as to the reasons for the Green Run by attributing it to the intentions of the Air Force to be able to track Soviet releases.
Herb Parker called me to request that I, and the groups that I supervised, cooperate with the Air Force in the conduct of an experiment which became known as the Green Run… And we didn’t recommend, we wouldn’t have recommended, that they operate it. We told them that. They wanted to run anyway, and they did run.”
nuclear-news 