UniverCIA22

China tangled up neck-deep in industrial espionage, just like the French, Israelis, Brits and everyone else....

2012-02-10T02:36:00.000-08:00

China tangled up neck-deep in industrial espionage, just like the French, Israelis, Brits and everyone else....By Peter Lee

It looks like someone got their hands caught in DuPont's cookie jar. The jar in question was DuPont's closely-held knowhow in the manufacture of titanium dioxide.

According to a criminal indictment unsealed in US federal court on February 8, USA Performance Technology Inc (USAPTI), a company in Oakland, California, conspired to sell DuPont's trade secrets and a major Chinese state-run corporation, Pangang Group, conspired to acquire them.

The criminal indictment represents an escalation of DuPont's complaint from a civil suit that had been percolating through the US courts in 2011. That means 2012 will see a high-profile, election-year criminal case encapsulating a plethora of hot-button issues that can be summarized with the phrase "Chinese government engages in industrial espionage to rip off US companies".

Titanium dioxide is one of DuPont's workhorses, contributing some US$2 billion to DuPont's annual sales of $40 billion and a disproportionate amount of net income, perhaps $300 million or more per annum, to DuPont's bottom line. The chemical is a pigment that makes things white, especially paints, paper, and plastics, but also many other things, like toothpaste. It is responsible for the unnatural whiteness of the filling in Oreo cookies, for example.

Titanium dioxide is extremely dirty, unpleasant, and costly to make. Using the traditional sulfate process developed in the early 20th century, production of one ton of titanium dioxide can generate over 60 tons of acid-tainted wastewater. Or the sulfuric acid can be recovered from the wastewater - at a cost three times greater than that of virgin acid.

Through decades of experimentation and production and technology licensing, DuPont came up with a chloride process that is significantly less dirty, unpleasant, and costly than the traditional sulfate process, and became the world's biggest, lowest-cost producer of high-grade titanium dioxide.

Instead of sulfuric acid, the DuPont process employs hot chlorine gases that are highly corrosive and extremely toxic, a bad combination for productivity and safety. DuPont's unique achievement, jealously held in the form of proprietary knowhow, has been in the design, selection of components, and operation of the titanium dioxide process in a way that keeps the line functioning and the workers alive.

Meanwhile, China has emerged as a major producer of titanium dioxide, at 1.5 million tons per year (tpy), and exporter (over 350,000 tpy), by largely using the traditional sulfate method. The nameplate capacity of China's dispersed, polluting, and inefficient industry is over 2 million tons - the largest in the world. Still, China imports over 200,000 tpy of high-end titanium dioxide, known as rutile titanium dioxide, produced by DuPont and a handful of other companies using the chloride method.

The Chinese industry would appear to be ripe for restructuring and rationalization - and chloride technology. However, DuPont was unwilling to license the technology and attempts to develop it domestically were unsuccessful - with one exception.

Jinzhou Titanium Industry Company, in Liaoning Province in Northeast China, is the proud operator of two 15,000 tpy chloride process titanium dioxide lines.

In 2010, it held a seminar for the trade to advertise its achievements:

For more than two decades' persistent and dauntless struggle, Jinzhou Titanium Industry Co, Ltd, has overcome multiple technique difficulties, making the whole process operate smoothly. The company continuously optimized the process and the key equipment, obtaining high level achievement which was never reached before. With excellent application properties, the CR serial titanium dioxide products developed by the company are continuously replacing some imported products in Chinese market ... [1]

Those achievements are now under a cloud. Jinzhou Titanium Industry Co, before it was spun off in 2010, was a subsidiary of Pangang Group, the Chinese corporation named in the criminal indictment for conniving at the theft of DuPont's trade secrets.

The indictment lists three contracts involving the misappropriation of DuPont technology: a 1998 $5 million transaction with Chengde Iron & Steel Corporation, a second-tier mill in northern China whose transaction appears to have vanished into the mists of time; a $6 million deal in 2005 involving the 30,000 tons of capacity at Jinzhou; and a $17.8 million contract in 2009 for a 100,000 tpy titanium dioxide project in Chongqing for Pangang Group.

According to the indictment, about $13 million monies under the 2009 contract had been paid out. Pangang Titanium's website showed a picture of the June 8, 2010 groundbreaking and stated:

The technologies are from Jinzhou TiO2 [the chemical symbol for titanium dioxide] Pigment plant, Pangang has the certain share in this plant ... It's planned to commission the plant in the end of 2012. [2]

While embroiled in the civil suit, the principal of USAPTI labored to demonstrate that the services he provided to China had been generated without DuPont knowhow.

However, the indictment paints a picture of a relationship over 13 years between USAPTI and a retired DuPont engineer; proprietary documents - including a 407-page Basic Data document for DuPont's titanium dioxide plant in Kuan Yin, Taiwan - with various DuPont stamps and confidentiality instructions getting passed around; and the retired engineer providing photographs and technical assistance to USAPTI to scale the Kuan Yin documentation up to the capacity envisioned for the Pangang plant.

As for the question of how deeply the US government can sink the hook into the Chinese side, the final indictment did not pursue ex-Politburo Standing Committee member Luo Gan, who was named in a motion filed with the court on February 2 as the honcho who tasked USAPTI with bringing chloride technology to China. Presumably, the US government did not feel it had a chance of proving that Luo had knowingly demanded the theft of DuPont's trade secrets.

Insofar as conscious collusion on the Chinese side in the theft of DuPont trade secrets is concerned, the final indictment states (names of individuals omitted):

During … technology exchanges, PANGANG GROUP employees, including XXX and an official from PANGANG GROUP TITANIUM, asked XXX and XXX for DuPont blueprints and the names of former DuPont employees who would work on the project... .

On or about June 2, 2008, employees of PANGANG GROUP companies, including XXX, agreed that PANGANG GROUP would work with XXX and XXX if they employed former DuPont employees and possessed blueprints for DuPont's titanium dioxide plants. On or about July 15, 2008, XXX and XXX informed PANGANG GROUP TITANIUM that their drawings would replicate DuPont's DeLisle plant.

Only one Pangang Group employee, "Vice Director of the Chloride Process Project Department", is mentioned by name in the indictment.

"Vice Director of the Chloride Process Project Department", although important to the execution of the project, is presumably not an officer of Pangang and his indictment will probably not bring the Pangang edifice crashing down.

The United States may not get an opportunity to place him in legal jeopardy within the US and strengthen its case against Pangang by getting him to trade up and implicate his superiors in return for kinder treatment.

On the US side, the prosecution has a lot more levers at its disposal. The civil suit against one of USAPTI's employees has been dropped, and he is only mentioned in the criminal indictment as a victim of attempts to intimidate him into being quiet, also known as witness tampering. One can presume he is cooperating with the prosecution.

The civil suit proceedings also apparently yielded an obstruction of justice criminal indictment against the principal of USAPTI and the DuPont engineer:

After DuPont filed the federal civil complaint, XXX ... emailed materially false information about the source of the information used for USAPTI's projects in the PRC and specifically stated that no information from DuPont's Kuan Yin plant was used in the USAPTI designs, which was false and known to be false to both XXX and XXX.

The conviction for witness tampering alone can carry a sentence of 20 years, even before the government gets to the industrial espionage and theft of trade secrets counts.

One may safely assume that the principals and associates of USAPTI may have been willing to endure the wrangling of a civil suit, but are not prepared to endure 20 years of jail time under a criminal indictment for the sake of their technology business and their customers in China, and at least some of them will cooperate with the prosecution.

It would perhaps be prudent for the Chinese government to settle this case quickly and amicably, both for the sake of its battered international reputation and its peace of mind.

However, US criminal prosecutions tend to acquire a life of their own, especially when witnesses desperate to avoid jail time are involved, and there is no telling where - and with what indictments, subpoenas, and warrants - this might end up. After the criminal case come the civil cases, with the awards, injunctions, liens, seizures, etc.

In addition to possible jeopardy for Pangang Group, one of the largest resource conglomerates in China, Jinzhou Titanium is now owned by CITIC, the high-rolling investment group with major interests in Hong Kong, Australia, and other court-friendly jurisdictions.

DuPont, whose civil suit set the ball in motion, has little influence in determining the direction and destination of the criminal suit. That begs the question of why DuPont, which does upward of $3 billion of sales to China per annum, decided to blow up the cozy little world of titanium dioxide.

The answer may lie in the planned explosive growth in Chinese chloride process titanium dioxide output, and the uncertain fate of DuPont's own titanium dioxide project in China, at Dongying, Shandong Province.

In addition to the 100,000 tpy greenfield project at Pangang Chongqing cited in the indictment, Jinzhou recently announced its own plans for a 200,000 tpy chloride process expansion that would make Jinzhou the biggest producer in China and the one of the five largest titanium dioxide companies in the world - hardly music to DuPont's ears. [3]

With hundreds of thousands of tons of high quality chloride-process rutile titanium dioxide pouring out of Pangang and Jinzhou's plants, DuPont's titanium dioxide business would be under intense pressure, on both sales and profits, in the Asian markets that DuPont sees at its future. At the same time that Chinese chloride-process capacity was gearing up, DuPont was having no success in getting its 200,000 ton per year world class, $1 billion titanium dioxide plant in Dongying off the ground.

In something of an anomaly for a product and technology that China considers a national priority, the Dongying agreement, signed in 2005, has been mired in the approval process.

Quite possibly, the Chinese government, bearing in mind the remarkable strides domestic industry was apparently making on its own in perfecting the chloride process, saw no objection to slow-walking the Dupont project.

According to a 2007 report in the investigative journal Southern Weekend, there was considerable unease within the China's chemical establishment about the competitive pressure that DuPont's Dongying plant would bring to bear on the domestic Chinese titanium dioxide industry.

Much of the specialist input for the article was provided by Liu Changhe, a vice president at Jinzhou Titanium who also participated in the environmental reviews for the Dongying project.

Ironically - if ironically is the right word - Liu recommended that, when considering the DuPont project, the Chinese government give full consideration to protecting the innovations pioneered by the fledgling Chinese titanium dioxide industry.

Liu told Southern Daily:

Developed countries impose various limitations (GATT agreements, technical barriers, intellectual property, chemical products safety regulations, etc.) to protect the existence and development of their national industries. Our government should adopt similar methods ... The nation should protect and treasure the achievements of forty years of independent innovation in the domestic titanium dioxide industry. [4]

Protectionism aside, there are valid reasons for thinking twice about putting a titanium dioxide plant in one's back yard.

Despite DuPont's advances in process technology, titanium dioxide production is still a dirty, nasty business. Almost 2,000 inhabitants of DeLisle, Mississippi, lined up in an attempt to sue DuPont for illnesses caused by its plant.

The chloride process, though significantly more parsimonious than the sulfate process, still produces millions of tons of tainted wastewater that are uneconomical to treat. The problem is compounded by the fact that DuPont was apparently trying to design the Dongying plant around ilmenite, a low-grade feedstock which generates the most wastewater.

In 1985, DuPont had tried to obtain approval for a titanium dioxide plant processing low-grade ilmenite in Lu Kang, Taiwan, and handle its waste problem by dumping the wastewater into the ocean. The ensuing uproar is considered the beginning of Taiwan's environmental movement. The Lu Kang plant was discarded and, after two years of process tweaking and local outreach, the plant was built at an inland site on Taiwan, Kuan Yin.

Critics in the People's Republic of China noted that, in response to local pressure, DuPont decided to run the Kuan Yin plant on a high-grade feedstock called rutile, which produces less waste; however, it was still trying to get the low-grade (presumably lower cost) and more polluting ilmenite feed approved for the Dongying plant.

Rutile is moving into shortage while there is plenty of ilmenite around the world. It is understandable that DuPont would want to build a plant that utilized the cheaper low-grade feedstock; and maybe DuPont's Chinese competitors wanted to make sure Dongying was locked into a more expensive feedstock instead.

To deal with the immense amount of waste the plant would generate while running ilemnite, DuPont proposed to inject it 3,000 meters underground. At the cost of $20 million, according to Southern Weekend, a test well was bored near Dongying to test the feasibility of the idea.

Injection is a relatively recent technology forced upon manufacturers because dumping the waste, not only acidic but also containing a stew of heavy metals and other toxins, into a river or ocean is no longer an option anywhere in the world.

Chinese concern that deep injection technology is not a magic bullet, indeed that it is a potential mare's nest of unintended consequences, is not unfounded.

In 2009, Dr John Ayers of Vanderbilt University described the unforeseen consequences of the deep injection solution in his blog that apparently occasioned its abandonment at DuPont's Tennessee plant:

[T]he acidic solution dissolves the limestone, which results in the formation of large caves deep underground. Eventually the weight of the overlying rock layers causes them to collapse, breaking into pieces, falling, and filling the caves. This shatters the confining layer and makes it permeable, so that the wastes can rise up into the aquifers. The other problem is that, as shown in the reaction, limestone dissolution produces CO2 [carbon dioxide] gas, and the pressure of that gas can build until it shatters the overlying rock and escapes. Either way, it seemed likely that the confining layer would eventually be compromised. So, to their credit, DuPont came up with a new solution that was even more environmentally friendly but (they claimed) even more expensive. Since around the year 2000 DuPont has been reacting the ilmenite with sodium carbonate, and according to the DuPont engineers the only by-product is harmless FeCO3 (the mineral siderite), which is used to make bricks for construction. However, recently it was learned that this process produces dioxin as a by-product. Pure Dioxin is the strongest poison known to man (it is the neurotoxin in Agent Orange), and the New Johnsonville Plant is the fourth-largest producer of dioxin in the US. [5]

In fact, Dupont's three US titanium dioxide plants all rank in the top dioxin polluters in the United States.

It is possible that DuPont saw the handwriting on the wall: that it was unlikely to get approval for its Dongying plant, and it was increasingly likely that Jinzhou, Pangang, and who knows who else would try to push DuPont out of the titanium dioxide market using technology suspiciously similar to DuPont's own.

To maintain its global market leadership, DuPont is adding 350,000 metric tons of capacity at its five existing plants in the US, Mexico, and Taiwan, at a cost of approximately $1 billion. DuPont's May 2011 press release for the capacity increase contained a statement of "continued commitment to the current Dongying (China) greenfield plan," but it appears the company is placing its near-term and mid-term bets elsewhere. [6]

The calculation may be that DuPont is sufficiently entrenched and localized in its major Chinese agricultural and polymer businesses to decouple them from a confrontation with the Chinese government over its titanium dioxide policy.

With the criminal indictment and cooperating witnesses in Oakland, DuPont may have enough leverage to get the Chinese government to settle in a manner satisfactory to DuPont. However, given the prospect of metastasizing criminal and civil proceedings in multiple jurisdictions, it remains to be seen if this is a situation that either side still has the power to manage.

Notes:
1. Advanced production technique guiding the development of titanium dioxide business in China, JTC, Apr 12, 2011.
2. Click here to view the picture.
3. About Us, JTC.
4. Click here for the Chinese text.
5. Case study: DuPont Plant, New Johnsonville, TN, Sustainability Blog, May 4, 2009.
6. DuPont Expands Global titanium dioxide Production, Paint Square, May 16, 2011.

Japan earthquakes 2011 Visualization map (2012-01-01)

2012-02-07T02:30:00.001-08:00

U.S. Navy and U.K. Royal Navy F-35 unable to get aboard ship....

2012-01-16T09:21:00.000-08:00

January 8, 2012 (by Eric L. Palmer) - The U.S. Navy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) known as the F-35C is at serious risk of never being able to land aboard an aircraft carrier. This also poses a risk to the U.K. aircraft carrier program which is supposed to use the F-35C at the end of the decade.

CF-1 takes off on its first flight on June 6, 2010. Pilot for the 57 minute flight was Lockheed Martin Test Pilot Jeff Knowles.

Back in 2007, a Lockheed Martin year in review video stated that the F-35C carrier variant (CV) JSF had passed critical design review (CDR). The video and similar public statements said, "2007 saw the completion of the critical design review for the F-35C. The completion of CDR is a sign that each F-35 variant is mature and ready for production."

Yet, a November 2011 U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) quick-look report relating to engineering challenges arising from what is being called “concurrency issues” revealed that all eight run-in/rolling tests undertaken at NAS Lakehurst in August 2011 to see if the F-35C CV JSF could catch a wire with the tail hook have failed.

The report also mentions that the tail hook on the F-35C CV JSF is attached improperly to the aircraft. The distance from the hook to the main landing gear is so short that it is unlikely the aircraft will catch the landing wires on a ship's deck. This graphic from the review explains part of the problem. It illustrates the distance between the main landing gear and the tail hook of previous warplanes qualified to operate from aircraft carriers and compares these distances with that found on the F-35C CV JSF. In this regard, the report refers to the F-35C CV JSF as “an outlier”.

An industry expert who is a graduate Flight Test Engineer (FTE) of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School (USNTPS), Peter Goon, stated that, "Given the limited amount of suitable structure at the back end of the JSF variants, due primarily to the commonality that was being sought between the three variant designs and the fact that the STOVL F-35B JSF is the baseline design, there was always going to be high risk associated with meeting the carrier suitability requirements."

He also points to well known and well understood military specifications that address tail hook design requirements, such as MIL-A-81717C and MIL-D-8708C.

(update: the first one should read MIL-A-18717C not MIL-A-81717C as first reported)

When asked how such things could have been missed, Peter suggested they likely weren’t, at least by the engineers, but their concerns would have just as likely been ignored.

He said this should come as no surprise, given the level of stove-piping that had been applied to the F-35 program's engineer community and the dominance of “form over substance” and “a total indifference to what is real” being hallmarks of the program – “Affordability is the cornerstone of the JSF Program” being but one example.

It is highly probable that this design fault could be the last straw for the F-35C. The program will attempt some more rolling tests with a different hook design, but this does not address the problem of the poor location of the tail hook on the airframe.

Other F-35 program problems identified in the QLR Report included the helmet visual cueing which is seriously affected by design issues and airframe buffet in the heart of the combat envelope. Also, all F-35 variants suffer from paper-thin weight margins, unsafe fuel dumping, flight restrictions on diving, speed and proximity to lightning hazards to name a few. And, it can only be flown during the daytime.

An August 2011 DOD F-35 program briefing revealed that the engineers will have to be reorganized because they were not getting access to all the information/data they needed for design nor, it would appear, were organised and structured in an environment that was being properly managed and transparent. This reorganisation should complete in 2012.

The program's pilot training program was supposed to start at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida in 2011 after previous delays. With the design issues mentioned above, pilot training is effectively grounded due to safety concerns. There is no known date when pilot training can start. This along with the aircrafts engineering defects strongly suggest that it will be a long time until military services see any F-35 variant in a go-to-war configuration.

Related articles:

DOD report — F-35 problems will take years to fix (2011-12-13)
Warning signs to watch with the F-35 program (2011-11-14)
Carrier version of F-35 cleared for production (2007-06-23)

CIA, MOSSAD and DISINFORMATION TACTICS, AGENTS AND MUCH MORE....

2012-01-05T02:46:00.001-08:00

The CIA's Michael Scheuer and Ron Paul

CIA, MOSSAD and DISINFORMATION TACTICS, AGENTS AND MUCH MUCH MORE....

Michael Scheuer was the boss of the CIA unit which tracked 'CIA agent' Osama bin Laden.

Michael Scheuer now works at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies.
Michael Scheuer promotes the myth that the violent Islamists are not the friends and partners of the CIA.
Michael Scheuer would appear to be a disinformation agent?

On 3 January 2012, Scheuer endorsed Ron Paul e

"Iowa’s Choice: Dr. Paul or U.S. bankruptcy, more wars, and many more dead soldiers and Marines"

Scheuer says Ron Paul is the best candidate to protect America from (the CIA's) Islamic extremists.

Scheuer fails to tell us that the CIA trained Saddam Hussein, put the Ayatollahs into power in Iran, sold weapons to Iran at the time of Iran Contra, trained the 9 11 'hijackers' and put the al Qaeda linked Belhaj into power in Libya.

Scheuer fails to emphasise that the CIA trained the mujahideen in Afghanistan.
Scheuer promotes the myth that the mad Islamists, with their links to fascism and the drugs trade, are not on the same side as the CIA.
Scheuer knows that Ron Paul has little chance of being elected.

So it is safe to back him.

SCHEUER PROMOTES THE OSAMA MYTH, YET HE KNOWS THAT TERRORISTS WERE ALLOWED TO ESCAPE

Scheuer sounds plausible.

Scheuer says that America's wars are leading to bankruptcy.

Scheuer writes that Ron Paul’s non-interventionist policy will:

1. Allow foreigners to work out their political destiny in their own way and at their own pace.

2. Prevent unnecessary additions to America’s growing list of enemies.

3. Save countless young lives.

But, Scheuer wants you to think that those Islamists are the enemy of the CIA.

According to Scheuer, "electing anyone but Ron Paul will further increase the already strong chances of widespread Islamist-conducted violence inside the United States."
Scheuer prepares us for what may be about to happen; we appear to be being conditioned by Scheuer.
According to Scheuer, more wars will mean more Muslims taking up arms against America, and possibly the beginning of a 'clash of civilizations.'
According to Scheuer, acts of terrorism are not CIA false flag operations.
According to Scheuer, Moslem extremists attack American interests because of U.S. government meddling abroad.

According to Scheuer, America could become a battlefield with the government having to use the military on U.S. soil.

Scheuer wrote about a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda in his 2002 book.
Michael Scheuer "depicts bin Laden as a rational actor who is fighting to weaken the United States by weakening its economy, rather than merely combating and killing Americans.

"He challenges the common assumption that terrorism is the threat that the United States is facing in the modern era, arguing rather that Islamist insurgency (and not 'terrorism' is the core of the conflict between the U.S. and Islamist forces, who in places such as Kashmir, Xinjiang, and Chechnya are 'struggling not just for independence but against institutionalized barbarism.'"
Michael Scheuer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moslems working for the CIA to destabilise Russia?

Would the CIA and its friends use Moslems to destabilise rival countries such as Russia?

1. In the 1960s, Islamic guerrillas were being supported and used by Britain's MI6.

According to The Independent (UK):

"Cabinet papers show that British spies, including MI6, supported Islamic guerrillas in order to destabilise Sukarno."

(Revealed: Healey admits role in British dirty tricks campaign to overthrow Indonesia's President Sukarno, By Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, The Independent - 16 April 2000 (The Secret State: MI5 (Home Office/MoD), The Security Service and ...)

According to Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum (Indonesia 1957-1958):

"In the early months of 1958, rebellion began to break out in one part of the Indonesian island chain, then another."

CIA pilots took to the air to carry out bombing and strafing missions in support of the rebels.
"On 15 May, a CIA plane bombed the Ambon marketplace, killing a large number of civilians on their way to church on Ascension Thursday...
"Three days later, during another bombing run over Ambon, a CIA pilot, Allen Lawrence Pope, was shot down and captured."

2. In The Age, (We must not get back in bed with Kopassus - theage.com.au), Dr Damien Kingsbury, of Deakin University, wrote about Moslem militants in Indonesia and their links to the American-trained military.
Kingsbury points out that Komando Jihad, which became Jemaah Islamiah, was set up by (American trained) Indonesian generals.
Former Indonesian spy (BAKIN) chief A.C. Manulang was quoted by Tempo magazine as suggesting that Bali bomb mastermind Al-Farouq was a CIA-recruited agent.

3. "According to CIA agent Miles Copeland... the CIA began to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood...
"This signalled the beginning of an alliance between the traditional regimes and mass Islamic movements against Nasser and other secular forces." : The use of the Muslim Brotherhood by MI6 and the CIA in ...

According to an article entitled "The British, Muslim Terrorism and September 11":

"In Syria, in 1982, there was a major conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Syrian government at the city of Hamma that resulted in 20,000 casualties.

"In the aftermath Syria's President Asad revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood forces were armed with US-made equipment...

"Israel, forever inclined to back divisive movements, surfaced as another supporter of Islam and began to fund the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas.

"The most noteworthy success of the Islamic movement during this time was of course the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the installation of the Ayatollah Khomeini as the Islamic dictator.

"British Intelligence had used their contacts with Iran's mullahs and ayatollahs to help overthrow Mossadegh and install the Shah back in 1953, and these contacts were maintained and used again to overthrow the Shah when his regime fell out of favor."

4. The CIA and its friends must help their Moslem agents to escape custody?

Rashid Rauf, British 'terrorist mastermind' of the alleged plot to blow up at least 10 transatlantic airliners, managed to escaped from custody. (Top British terror suspect escapes)

Jamal al-Badawi was convicted in 2004 of planning and carrying out the USS Cole bombing.

He escaped from prison in 2004.

In October 2007, al-Badawi, after pledging loyalty to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, was told that he is a free man. ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21480392/ )

Omar Al-Faruq was described as being the mastermind of the Bali bomb plot.

Al-Faruq was arrested in Bogor on June 5, 2002 and handed over to the US authorities.

Former Indonesian State Intelligence Coordinating Board (BAKIN) chief A.C. Manulang was quoted by Tempo as saying that Al-Faruq was most likely a CIA-recruited agent. (Omar Al-Faruq Recruited by The CIA)
In 2005, a Pentagon official in Washington confirmed that al-Faruq escaped from a U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan. (Pakistan News Service - PakTribune)

Haroon Rashid Aswat was described as being the mastermind of the 7 July London bombings.

The authorities stated that Aswat had made mobile telephone calls to two of the 7 July bombers. ('Batley man' linked to bin Laden and bombers - Yorkshire Evening Post)

After Aswat was handed over to the UK police, Scotland Yard police headquarters said, on 7 August 2005, that detectives were not interested in speaking to Aswat about the London attacks. ( http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13913208)

Reportedly, Aswat worked for MI6. (Haroon Rashid Aswat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
This is a mujahidin training camp in 1987. Pakistan spy boss Hamid Gul (front left); CIA boss William Webster (second left). Photo: www.rawa.org

The CIA and its friends are in bed with the Islamic extremists.

Both the the CIA and the Islamists support fascism and the feudal system.

At www.voltairenet.org Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed has written about Our terrorists

(Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD) in London)

Among the points made:

1. Bin Laden and his Islamist pals received about half a billion dollars a year from the CIA, and roughly the same from the Saudis.

The CIA and its pals supported al Qaeda "as a counterweight to ... leftwing and nationalist political trends."

The CIA and its pals wanted to spread Islamist extremism to countries such as Yemen, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

2. Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence, stated: "The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army.

"The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia."
3. From 1992 to 1995, the Pentagon flew thousands of al-Qaeda mujahidin from Central Asia into Europe, to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs.

The pattern continued in Kosovo.

Bin Laden's lieutenant in the area had direct radio contact with NATO leadership.

4. Around the same time, US intelligence increased its support of al-Qaeda mujahidin in Chechnya.

Afghan heroin was supplied to the Chechen mafia.

5. In Algeria, Bin Laden's men were used to kill opponents of the government.

Hundreds of civilians were massacred by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). The GIA was formed largely of Algerian veterans of bin Laden's mujahidin forces in Afghanistan who had returned in the late 1980s.

'Yussuf-Joseph', a secret agent in Algeria's sécurité militaire, told the Guardian that civilian massacres in Algeria, blamed on the GIA, were 'the work of secret police and army death squads'.

Dr Jeremy Keenan, Director of Sahara Studies at the University of East Anglia, documents 'an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that the alleged spread of terrorist activities across much of the Sahelian Sahara, has indeed been an elaborate deception on the part of US and Algerian military intelligence services'.

6. Gust Avracotos, the CIA's Station Chief in Islamabad, says that Mossad penetrated Pakistan's ISI.

US Government and intelligence sources confirm that Israel provided direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas in the late 1970s as a counterbalance to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

7. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh cites US Government and intelligence officials' confirmation that the CIA and the Pentagon have funnelled millions of dollars via Saudi Arabia to al-CIAda affiliated Sunni extremist groups, to Lebanon [ Fath-Al-Islam, LF thugs, FM thugs, and other peripheral groups to counter Hizbullah ] , across the Middle East and Central Asia.....

More MOSSAD Shenanigans....

Prince Andrew and girl, 17, who sex offender friend flew to Britain to

In December 2000, Jeffrey Epstein, 'Prince Andrew's billionaire paedophile friend', visited Sandringham.

Epstein was given permission to land his private jet at an RAF base for the visit.
Prince Andrew's billionaire paedophile friend visited Sandringham
The flight log of Epstein's Gulfstream showed it landed at RAF Marham on 7 December 2000, before Epstein visited the Queen's Norfolk residence.

Aboard the jet were ET, thought to be Emmy Tayler, a woman called Kelly Spam and an unnamed female.
Ghislaine Maxwell looks on as Andrew put his arm around Virginia. Robert Maxwell’s daughter invited her to work as Epstein’s personal masseuse soon after her 15th birthday.
It had been alleged that the Duke's friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was on board Epstein's Gulfstream.

Epstein and Maxwell are reported to have stayed at Sandringham as Andrew's guests.

In 2008, Epstein was jailed for 18 months after admitting soliciting an under-aged girl for prostitution.

Epstein is alleged to have used his fleet of private aircraft to traffic under-aged girls around the world for sex.

Entries in the Gulfstream's flight log show he regularly flew alone with Virginia Roberts.

Virginia Roberts has claimed she was used as a 'sex slave' by Epstein from the age of 15.
JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S ALLEGED CONTACTS
Sir Evelyn de Rothschild

On 13th March 2011, the Mail on Sunday reports on Jeffrey Epstein's private Caribbean island, Little St James, and on his 'little black book' listing phone contacts. (How Prince Andrew shared a room at Epstein's Caribbean hideaway with a busty blonde.)

Among those whose names have been linked to Epstein are:

Ehud Barak

Bill Clinton

Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and his daughter Hannah
Lord Mandelson and Lord Mandelson's boyfriend Reinaldo.

Ghislaine Maxwell
Epstein and friend

Naomi Campbell

Sir Richard Branson
Lord Palumbo, the UK's former Arts Council chairman and godfather to the Duke of York’s eldest daughter Beatrice

The journalist Toby Young
Dame Gail Ronson, wife of the multi-millionaire British developer Gerald Ronson

The JCB tycoon Sir Anthony Bamford
Philippe Amon, a Swiss industrialist

Caroline Stanbury, a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew.

Ehud barak The island of Little St James was managed by Cathy and Miles Alexander.

Speaking at their home in South Africa, "the Alexanders reveal they had watched with increasing concern the beautiful girls who paraded about the house topless or naked whenever their boss was in residence."

Cathy says: 'I saw some girls who I thought were very young-looking...

'They looked like they had stepped out of an underwear catalogue.
"They walked around with very few clothes on or lounged around by the pool with nothing on... Ghislaine Maxwell helped recruit the Alexanders in 1998.

Among those who visited Little St James were Prince Andrew, Naomi Campbell, Lord Mandelson and Lord Mandelson's boyfriend Reinaldo.

"Numerous academics, architects and some of the most prominent scientific and business minds also enjoyed Epstein’s generous hospitality."

Epstein had daily massages.

"Former Epstein 'masseuse' Virginia Roberts says these were usually little more than foreplay to a sex act."
Ghislaine Maxwell and her father Robert Maxwell, 'who built himself a position of power within the crime families of eastern Europe, teaching them how to funnel their wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens'.

Duke of York faces questions over sex scandal friend's flights.‎
Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein stayed at Sandringham as guests of Prince Andrew.
Has Prince Andrew been too friendly with people disliked by the powers-that-be?
In May 2000, Prince Andrew flew with Epstein in his Gulfstream from New York to Florida.

Also on board were Maxwell, ET, Alfredo Pinto, Epstein’s French interior designer, a female named as Alexia and an unnamed male.

Prince Andrew has stayed at Epstein’s mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.

In April 1998, Epstein flew to Nassau in the Bahamas where he met the Duchess of York and her daughters, the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, then aged nine and eight.

Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of Robert Maxwell.

According to an article in the UK's Daily Mirror, by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, in 2002, British Publisher Robert Maxwell Was A Mossad Spy.

Robert Maxwell "threatened Mossad.

"He told them that unless they gave him £400million to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them.

"In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe.

"On top of that he had built himself a position of power within the crime families of eastern Europe, teaching them how to funnel their vast wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens around the globe.

"Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities and insatiable appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women.

"He told his controllers who they should target and how they should do it. He appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador to the Soviet Bloc. Mossad/CIA saw the advantages in that.....

"Having learned many of the key secrets of the Soviet empire, Maxwell was given his greatest chance to be a super spy.

"Mossad and CIA had stolen the most important piece of software in the US arsenal from a private company.....
"Maxwell was given the job of marketing the stolen software, called Promis....
"Mossad had reconstructed the software and inserted into it a device which enabled them to track the use any purchaser made of the it. Sitting in Israel, Mossad would know exactly what was going on inside all the intelligence services that bought it....

"In all, Maxwell sold it to 42 countries, including China and Soviet Bloc nations. But, with CIA duplicity his greatest triumph was selling it to Los Alamos, the very heart of the US nuclear defence system.

"The more successful Maxwell became the more risks he took and the more dangerous he was to Mossad. At the same time, the very public side of Maxwell, who then owned 400 companies, began to unwind.

"He spent lavishly and lost money on deals. The more he lost, the more he tried to claw money from the banks. Then he saw a way out of his problems....by plundering dozens of huge retirement trust funds in various companies....and he tried to outsmart his handlers at MOSSAD, so they dumped him, assassination style onboard the Lady Gislaine....

من حق المقاومة ان تنتقل من موقع الدفاع عن شبكتها الهاتفية الداخلية الى موقع الهجوم

2012-01-02T05:40:00.000-08:00

من حق المقاومة ان تنتقل من موقع الدفاع عن شبكتها الهاتفية الداخلية الى موقع الهجوم

يطالعنا البعض بين الفينة والأخرى بحملات اعلامية وسياسية يصوب من خلالها على المقاومة من بوابة ان فريقا منها يقوم بمد شبكة اتصالات هاتفية خاصة بها في تلك البلدة او المدينة او القرية، وبغض النظر عن صحة أو عدم صحة ما يدعيه هؤلاء وآخرهم السجال النيابي في مجلس النواب على خلفية إتهام المقاومة بأنها كانت تجري تمديدا لشبكتها الهاتفية في قرية ترشيش، فإن ثمة كلاما يقال بهذا الصدد، خصوصا وأن ليس من عادة المقاومة الا الصراحة والمصارحة التي اكسبتها مصداقية واحترام لدى الآخرين لاسيما وانها لم تعتد يوما اللف والدوران وتدوير الزوايا كما يفعل غيرها، ومغزى ما يمكن ان يقال بهذا الصدد انه بات من حق المقاومة ان تنتقل من موقع الدفاع عن شبكتها الهاتفية الداخلية الى موقع الهجوم وهي تمتلك بهذا الصدد الكثير من نقاط القوة التي تستطيع محاججة ومواجهة الآخرين بها مما يعتقدون أنه بامكانهم استغلال هذه المسألة اعلاميا وسياسيا خدمة لمآرب مشبوهة.
اولى نقاط القوة لدى المقاومة بهذا الصدد هي ان كل البيانات الوزارية للحكومات المتعاقبة على مدى عشرات الاعوام السابقة شرعت عمل المقاومة سواء لتحرير الارض او الدفاع عن لبنان حتى تكرست معادلة الجيش والشعب والمقاومة كاحدى المميزات والركائز الاساسية والجوهرية في النظام السياسي اللبناني، وبناء على ذلك وبما ان العدوان الاسرائيلي على لبنان شامل ولا يختص بمنطقة دون اخرى وهو ما نشهده يوميا عبر إختراق طائرات العدو للأجواء فوق مختلف الاراضي اللبنانية، وهو ما شهدناه ايضا في عدوان تموز 2006 والذي طال لبنان من اقصى جنوبه الى اقصى شماله، لذا يحق للمقاومة وفق صيغة الجيش والشعب والمقاومة ان تتخذ كافة الاجراءات الكفيلة بصد أي اعتداء اسرائيلي على لبنان في أي منطقة وعلى أي حبة تراب او نقطة ماء لبنانية، وذلك إنطلاقا من مهمتها الدفاعية التي كرسها البيان الوزاري وبالتالي يحق لها ان تمد شبكتها الهاتفية الخاصة في المناطق والقرى التي ترتأي ان حاجاتها ومهماتها الدفاعية تقتضيها ولا يحق لأحد أن يجادلها في مثل هذه الحقوق.

ثاني نقاط القوة التي يقتضي للمقاومة تحصينها وحمايتها تبرز من خلال منظومة القيادة والسيطرة لديها والتي اثبتت في حرب تموز 2006 قدرتها على إلحاق الهزيمة بالعدو، حيث شكلت شبكة الهاتف الخاصة بالمقاومة باعتراف العدو في تقرير لجنة فينوغراد نقطة القوة الرئيسية للمقاومة التي مكنت قيادتها من البقاء على اتصال دائم مع المقاومين على كافة محاور المواجهات العسكرية. وانطلاقا من ذلك، يبدو ان العدو فهم جيدا معادلة القوة التي يرسمها سلاح الاشارة التابع للمقاومة في أي حرب مستقبلية، لذا سعى ويسعى جاهدا لاختراق شبكة الهاتف الداخلية للمقاومة وتوجيه الحملات الاعلامية عليها ويصادف أن يكون هدفه هو نفسه هدف البعض في الداخل تارة بوصفها خارجة عن الشرعية وطورا بأنها تستخدم لغايات مدنية ما يحرم خزينة الدولة من مردود ضرائبي هام والغاية واحدة هي ضرب نقطة القوة والركيزة الأساسية لأي عمل مقاوم.
واذا كانت ضرورات وحاجات المقاومة الدفاعية اقتضت انشاء شبكة هاتفية خاصة، مكنتها من تسجيل انتصارات على العدو أهدتها لجميع اللبنانيين، خصوصا بعدما ثبت الى أي مدى تمكن الموساد الاسرائيلي من اختراق شبكات الهاتف الخليوية والمدنية التابعة للدولة، الا ان السؤال الجوهري الذي يطرح هو ما هي الدوافع الكامنة وراء انشاء شبكة هاتفية خاصة بشركة سوليدير، وكذلك قرصنة تجهيزات الهبة المقدمة من شركة "هواوي" الصينية لوزارة الاتصالات وانشاء شبكة خليوية ثالثة من خلالها بشكل غير شرعي في ما بات يعرف بقضية الطبقة الثانية من مبنى وزارة الاتصالات التي خرجت إلى الضوء في أيار/ مايو الماضي.

"مستقبل تلكوم" بديلا عن ليبان تلكوم

وفي التفاصيل، فقد كشف النقاب مؤخرا عن فضيحة الشبكة الهاتفية الثالثة التي كان يشغلها فريق الرئيس سعد الحريري بشكل غير شرعي وغير قانوني إنطلاقا من الطابق الثاني في مبنى وزارة الاتصالات دون أن تتضح حتى الساعة الغايات المشبوهة التي كانت تستخدم تلك الشبكة الهاتفية من أجلها سواء اكانت تجارية او امنية وتجسسية او غير ذلك، خصوصا وانه ثبت انها بدأت العمل منذ مطلع العام 2008 ، ونصبت محطات ارسال لها بلغ عددها 17 محطة غطت معظم الأراضي اللبنانية، كما ثبت ان آلاف الاتصالات اجريت منها على شبكة ام تي سي الخلوية حتى العام 2011، وان الجهة المشغلة لها وهي هيئة اوجيرو كانت تديرها بشكل مستقل عن مؤسسات الدولة بعدما قرصنت الهبة الصينية المقدمة الى وزارة الاتصالات وأنشأت بها شبكة خلوية ثالثة "مستقبل تلكوم"، بديلا عن "ليبان تلكوم" وفق الصيغة التي قدمت على اساسها الهبة اصلا.
سوليدير وزارة هاتف مصغرة
اما فيما يخص شبكة سوليدير الهاتفية الخاصة، فقد كشف عضو تكتل التغيير والاصلاح النائب نبيل نقولا في حديث لـ"الانتقاد" عن مرسوم يعطي ترخيصا لشركة سوليدير بإقامة شبكة اتصالات خاصة بها وربطها بشبكات الاتصالات المحلية والدولية ومنحها حق المرور عبر المنشآت والتمديدات العائدة للدولة اللبنانية، ما يجعل منها وزارة هاتف مصغّرة تستطيع إدارة واستثمار شبكة شرائح واسعة من الآلياف البصرية.

اما في تفاصيل المرسوم، فهو كان قد صدر في عهد رئيس الجمهورية السابق الياس الهراوي ورئيس مجلس الوزراء السابق ووزير المال والبريد والمواصلات السلكية واللاسلكية رفيق الحريري بناء على طلب مقدم بتاريخ 18 / 8 /1997 من الشركة اللبنانية لتطوير واعادة اعمار وسط مدينة بيروت ش.م.ل. وهو يحمل الرقم 12992 ويتعلق بإقامة شبكة اتصالات لشركة سوليدير واستثمارها وصيانتها في نطاق منطقة بيروت، والمبرر الذي استند اليه ذاك المرسوم هو ان الخدمات الاتصالية المتطورة والمتخصصة التي يمكن توافرها من خلال شبكة الآلياف البصرية تعد ضرورة ملحة وأساسية لمنطقة وسط بيروت، وأن هذه الخدمات غير متوافرة ولا تدخل ضمن نطاق البرامج المعدة من وزارة الاتصالات وان كلفتها كبيرة ومردودها متدن بالنسبة لعمر الاستثمارات على ما يتبين من كتاب المديرية العامة للاستثمار وصيانة المواصلات السلكية واللاسلكية تاريخ 7 /5 /1998 . وقد نص المرسوم على التالي :
م1 – يرخص لمدة خمس وعشرين سنة قابلة للتمديد أو للتجديد للشركة اللبنانية لتطوير وإعادة اعمار وسط بيروت ش.م. ل. ( سوليدير) المسماة في هذا المرسوم "الشركة" إقامة وإدارة واستثمار وصيانة شبكة لنقل وتبادل المعطيات وذلك في نطاق وسط مدينة بيروت ( سوليدير) المحدد وفقا للمرسوم رقم 4830 تاريخ 4 /3 /1994 والمرسوم رقم 5609 تاريخ 3 /9 /1994 .
نقولا ما حاجة سوليدير لشبكة اتصالات خاصة تشغل الخطوط عبرها وتتصرف فيها كما تشاء؟!
م2 - يحدد الترخيص بإقامة وإدارة واستثمار شبكة شرائح واسعة من الآلياف البصرية وتوزيع البرامج المصوّرة مع جميع التجهيزات المتعلقة بها وذلك لنقل جميع المعطيات بالإتجاهين وتبادلها وكل خدمات الاتصالات ذات القيمة المضافة ولا يجوز أن تتعدى خدمات الشركة إلى خارج نطاقها والى غير من يرغب من المشتركين في هذه الخدمات ولا يشمل الترخيص الخدمات الهاتفية.
م 3 – للشركة من أجل تحقيق خدماتها الحق بأن ترتبط بشبكات الاتصالات المحلية والدولية وفقا للقوانين المرعية الإجراء. وتعطى الشركة حق مرور عبر المنشآت والتمديدات والطرق العائدة للدولة وفقا للقوانين والانظمة المرعية الاجراء وبذلك تصبح شبكة سوليدير وفق هذه التسهيلات وزارة هاتف مصغرة.
الى ذلك، وردا على ادعاء شركة سوليدير بأن الشبكة التابعة لها ليست شبكة هاتفية وانما شبكة انترنت، اعتبر النائب نبيل نقولا في حديثه لـ"الانتقاد" ان القانون المشار اليه اعلاه والصادر عام 1998 لم يصدر من اجل شركة انترنت، مشيرا الى أن خطوط الانترنت لا تمكن الشركة المستثمرة من الدخول على الخطوط الدولية مباشرة وانما تمكنها من الدخول فقط على الخطوط التي تمنحها إياها الدولة اللبنانية.

كما لفت النائب نقولا أيضا الى أن سلطة الدولة اللبنانية موجودة على جميع شركات الأنترنت، سائلا لماذا سوليدير فقط لها الحق بأن يكون عندها شبكة من الآلياف البصرية (الفايبر أوبتيك)، ومستغربا في الوقت ذاته كيف يدعي النائب غازي يوسف أن الدولة اللبنانية ليست بحاجة لشبكة من الآلياف البصرية في الوقت الذي يستخدم فيه فريقه السياسي مثل هذه الشبكة في سوليدير، وسائلا اذا كانت الشبكة شبكة انترنت كما يدعون فما حاجتها للآلياف البصرية خصوصا وان الالياف البصرية هي تداخل محطات تلفزيونية عالمية تهدف لتحقيق السرعة في الاتصالات، وهي تستخدم لعدة امور، كالتلفزيون، والنتورك ( Network )، الداتا ( Data ) وغيرها من الاستخدامات، وبمعنى آخر ان الخدمات التي نستطيع توزيعها بالكابل العادي بمئة خط نستطيع توزيعها بالالياف البصرية بمئة ألف خط، حيث ختم نقولا حديثه سائلا عمّا هي حاجة سوليدير لذلك، بأن يكون لها محطة اتصالات خاصة تشغل الخطوط عبرها وتتصرف كما تشاء دون رقيب او حسيب؟

Myanmar holds significant strategic importance for India....

2011-11-29T04:14:00.001-08:00

Myanmar holds significant strategic importance for India....

India-Myanmar: a half-built gateway....By Bertil Lintner

US-Myanmar: Engagement as nuclear pre-emption....

IMPHAL, Manipur - When a group of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ambassadors last year traveled the road from Imphal, in eastern India, to Moreh on the Myanmar border, the trip was officially arranged to show the diplomats India's emerging land bridge to Southeast Asia. Although the envoys enthused about the land link's trade possibilities, it was hard to determine how genuinely impressed they were after hours of bumping along on the 100-kilometer, pot-holed, windy road.

Yet the torturous road reaching to Myanmar is a vital link in India's business-driven "Look East" policy, a gambit aimed at expanding the South Asian country's trade, investment and influence to the

east. For that policy to succeed, however, New Delhi needs not only to upgrade the way leading to its border, but also the highways to and from Assam in northeastern India, the country's geographical gateway to Southeast Asia. Roads and infrastructure on the Myanmar side are comparatively even more decrepit.

Before Indian policymakers can build a proper highway connecting the country through Myanmar and to mainland Southeast Asia, a lasting solution must be found to the ethnic insurgencies and other security problems in its northeastern hinterlands. Local ethnic insurgents frequently collect "taxes" on trucks and other vehicles plying not only the road to Moreh, but also on most major highways in Manipur, one of northeast India's seven states.

To India's chagrin, many of those rebels - ethnic Nagas, Manipuris and Kukis - maintain sanctuaries in remote areas on the Myanmar side of the border, beyond the reach of Indian security forces. These rebel forces are also known to have obtained weapons from various clandestine sources on the Sino-Myanmar border. Some of these weapons originate in China while others are made in secret gun factories in areas in northeastern Myanmar not controlled by the central government at Naypyidaw.

Despite these difficulties and the pitiful condition of the Moreh road, trade between India and Myanmar is booming. Before 1988, apart from smuggling activities, there was scant commercial activity along the two countries' shared border. Bilateral trade more than doubled between 2005 and 2010, expanding from US$557 million to $1.2 billion. Myanmar ships mainly agricultural goods and natural resources, while India exports chiefly machinery, industrial equipment, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods. India-Myanmar trade is beginning to rival that of the booming cross-border trade between China and Myanmar, which has been brisk for almost two decades.

At the same time, it is clear that India is still lagging far behind China when it comes to accessing Myanmar's markets and mineral resources. In 2010, trade between Myanmar and China amounted to at least $3 billion, with some economic analysts putting the figure as high as $4 billion. Some of that trade passes through Myanmar to India, witnessed in the flood of Chinese-made goods in India's northeastern region. The Paona International Market in Imphal, popularly referred to as the "Moreh market" or "Myanmar market", is flush with Chinese-produced electronics, clothes, bags, household utensils and other cheap manufactures.

Pragmatic policy shift
Immediately after the 1988 pro-democracy uprising in Myanmar, India sympathized with the Aung San Suu Kyi-led opposition. Rajiv Gandhi, India's prime minister at the time, came out in open support of the movement, and New Delhi implemented policies that gave shelter to Myanmar refugees and allowed dissidents to operate freely from Indian territory. This, of course, was not for entirely altruistic reasons: the policy was viewed widely as India's way of countering China's influence in Myanmar.

India began to re-evaluate that strategy around 1993, out of concern that its policies had achieved little except to push Myanmar closer to Beijing. Even then it was obvious to policymakers that the Suu Kyi-led opposition would not assume power anytime soon. The result was a dramatic shift in policy aimed at patching up relations with Myanmar's ruling generals. In turn, Myanmar signaled to India to take greater interest in improving bilateral relations to lessen its heavy dependence on China.

India's interests in Myanmar are obvious. Apart from serving as a link to lucrative markets and trading partners in Southeast Asia, New Delhi wants to ensure that northeastern insurgents are deprived of sanctuaries and supply lines through its eastern neighbor - and to keep Chinese influence there at bay. India's rapidly expanding economy also needs energy, and New Delhi has shown strong interest in importing more oil and gas from Myanmar.

India also has plans to build a 1,200 megawatt hydroelectric power station on the Chindwin River, across from India's northeastern region, and is involved in several other infrastructure projects inside Myanmar, including major road construction projects. In short, India is busy opening its west-east corridor through Myanmar to protect its own economic as well as strategic interests.

To open the way, India has taken a number of initiatives to rid its rebellious states in the northeast - Assam, Nagaland and Manipur - of insurgents and establish permanent peace in the region. That task was made easier when Sheikh Hasina's pro-Indian Awami League government took over in Bangladesh in December 2008. Her predecessor, Khaleda Zia and the Bangladesh National Party, provided sanctuaries for insurgents who moved about freely in the capital Dhaka and the port city of Chittagong, where Indian rebel groups had received many illicit shipments of arms.

In late November 2009, Bangladesh arrested United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and its deputy commander-in-chief Raju Barua along with eight other Assamese militants and handed them over to India. In September 2010, Rajkumar Meghen, better known as Sana Yaima, the leader of Manipur's United National Liberation Front, was arrested in Dhaka and bundled off to India. At about the same time, the main arms procurer of the Naga rebels and a frequent visitor to China, Anthony Shimray, was arrested at Kathmandu airport in Nepal and ended up in Indian custody.

While these arrests have been significant from a strategic perspective, India knows that simply detaining ethnic insurgent leaders won't be enough to achieve peace in the restive region. There are also widespread grievances among the local population that will need to be addressed before there is lasting peace and stability along India's Myanmar frontier.

New Delhi's Myanmar policy and its anti-China aspect are even clearer in the Indian Ocean. China now imports most of its oil and gas from Central Asia and the Middle East and made it clear several years ago that it intended to build a pipeline through Myanmar to avoid the clogged and potentially volatile Strait of Malacca bottleneck for its fuel transhipments.

For this purpose, and to import natural gas from the fields in the sea south of Myanmar, Beijing and Naypyidaw signed an agreement in March 2009 to also build a natural gas pipeline extending across Myanmar to China's southwestern Yunnan province. Those projects are well underway: piles of pipes can now be seen at the Jiegao border crossing between China and Myanmar, and at various sites along the highway to Kunming, Yunnan's capital.

Building such a conduit for crucial energy supplies in a foreign country would be risky without substantial political influence and an extensive signals intelligence network in the Indian Ocean sea lanes where the fuel is transported. China has large stores of both through its ties to Myanmar.

India has not taken lightly the prospect of another major player in a maritime area that it considers its own lake. This concern provides a new aspect to the age-old strategic rivalry between India and China - and another reason for India to counter China's influence over Myanmar.

New great game
Not surprisingly, the US's Barack Obama administration has expressed its support for India's "Look East" policy. On November 23, US deputy national security advisor for strategic communication Ben Rhodes said: "The President very much welcomes India's Look East approach. We believe that just as the United States, as a Pacific Ocean power, is going to be deeply engaged in the future of East Asia, so should India as an Indian Ocean power and as an Asian nation."

In January, a US naval ship visited India's Andaman Islands to conduct search and rescue operations, shipwreck salvaging and naval vessel repair exercises with their Indian counterparts. The commander of the US vessel, Derek Peterson, "lauded the cooperation" of the Indian Navy and said he was impressed with its capabilities.

That strategic exchange followed on a March 2010 visit by the USS Patriot at Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The news site of the Commander of the US 7th Fleet reported from that US naval visit that "Patriot Sailors will train with the Indian Navy; special emphasis will be put on damage-control and mine countermeasures training."

The official report also quoted Douglas Woods, one of the ship's officers, saying: "First day we pull in we got a flag football game with the Indian navy and a soccer game with the Indian navy. We also have cricket lessons for all personnel that want to go out and participate in. Indian navy personnel will provide the lessons."

Indian naval officers interviewed in Port Blair by this correspondent in January said there was nothing more to the US naval visit than basic joint training exercises. But it is hard to imagine that routine exercises were the main purpose of the US naval visits. Myanmar - and even more so China - likely watched the US-Indian naval cooperation with some trepidation.

Both Myanmar and China know that India's military has upgraded its presence on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in a bid to meet new challenges in the maritime region and to safeguard its own interests in Southeast Asia and the Malacca Strait. To be sure, there were more important issues of concern for India and the US than diving for sunken ships and teaching American sailors how to play cricket.

That said, the more recent anti-Chinese stance taken by Myanmar's new government should be music to the ears of India's security planners. India rolled out the red carpet for Myanmar President Thein Sein when he arrived in New Delhi on a three-day state visit on October 14, adding to speculation that Myanmar aims to reduce its heavy dependence on China and make more room for India. In a joint statement, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh welcomed Thein Sein's "ongoing efforts at political, economic and social reform."

In the 19th century, Arthur Conolly, an intelligence officer of the British colonial army, coined the expression "the Great Game" to describe the strategic rivalry between the then British and Russian Empires for supremacy in Central Asia. More than any other objective in the competition, the Russians sought access to the Indian Ocean.

Another "Great Game" involving India, China and the US is now playing out in Asia on the eastern fringes of the Indian subcontinent. But before the regional balance of power tilts away from China and towards India, the potholes on the road to Moreh will have to be smoothed out. Only then can China's grip on Myanmar be challenged and India able to link up more directly and strategically with Southeast Asia.

Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and author of several books on Burma/Myanmar, including the forthcoming Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia's Most Volatile Frontier.

The legend of Gondwana resurfaces....

2011-11-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

The legend of Gondwana resurfaces....By Raja Murthy

MUMBAI - Remains of the lost supercontinent of Gondwana surfaced again last week, with Australian scientists discovering bits of this gigantic land mass that once linked Asia and India with Australia and Antarctica.

Sydney University geophysicist Jo Whittaker said this "exciting discovery" could reveal how the supercontinent of Gondwana broke into present-day Australia, Antarctica and India between 60 and 130 million years ago. At that time, called the Cretaceous period, the dinosaurs were lords of the Earth roaming across a mammoth mass of land that may have connected where Tokyo, Perth, Kolkata and other Asia-Pacific cities now stand.

How different could have been the histories of India, Japan and the world if the continent of Gondwanaland had not splintered into pieces in the Indian Ocean? That all phenomena are in a constant flux of change, and that whatever happens has positive outcomes and silver linings, is truth applicable to supercontinents too.

Geologists say an even bigger monster land mass called Pangaea existed over 200 million years ago, surrounded by one universal ocean called Panthalassa. The northern half of Pangaea was the other supercontinent called Laurasia. Gondwana was the southern supercontinent.

Scientists from Sydney University, Macquarie University, University of Tasmania and from Israel were part of an expedition that found the two islands that may be bits of Gondwana on the seabed in international waters 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) west of Perth. Soil samples they collected during their deep sea expedition this October could be one billion years old, they said.

Gondwana is of particularly interest, since the chunk of land that is now India moved northwest away from the Australian continent, then drifted north and northeast, according to geologists. The eastern piece of Gondwana coast crashed into Eurasia, forming the mighty Himalayas. The Himalayas became protective guardian wall for human life and civilization to flourish in the Indian sub-continent.

Gondwana could be the motherland for most people on Earth, with this supercontinent forming half of current land mass. Besides Antarctica, Australia, India and Sri Lanka, Gondwana included what are now Africa, South America and New Zealand.

The continent of Gondwana fascinates geologists. Plate tectonics - the study of geological activity beneath the Earth's surface - is an infant science that gained wider acceptance only about 60 years ago. A German meteorologist Alfred Wegener in 1912 had first declared theory of continental drift that applies to Gondwana. Geologists are still learning the basics how continents move and collide. Continents are moving every second, as is all phenomena in constant flux.

Dr Bhaskar Rao, a leading Indian geologist and director of the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), said that understanding Gondwana and how continents were formed and broke up is very important for climatic, environment reasons, as well as in the search for mineral resources.

"Study of Gondwana is of particular significance to India since the volcanic eruptions of the Deccan Plateau in central India happened about 60 million years ago," Rao told Asia Times Online. "This is about the same timeframe of the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent."

Rao, a former postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota in the United States, convened the 8th International Symposium "Gondwana to Asia Supercontinent Dynamics: India and Gondwana" in Hyderabad this August, as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of NGRI. The International Association of Gondwana Research in Japan was the co-organizer.

"India’s Lakswadeep Islands [meaning 'hundred thousand islands' in India’s coral belt off the eastern coast] was also part of the Gondwana break-up," Rao said. "So too is Madagascar, off the southeastern coast of Africa."

The supercontinent strikes deep enough chords in India for a province to be named Gondwana - a former administrative region covering parts of what are the modern Indian states of Maharastra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and the Deccan Plateau that straddles western, eastern and southern India.

Gonds are the medieval tribal population inhabiting India’s Gondwana region. Said to be among the largest tribal groups in South Asia, the earliest recorded presence of Gonds was in the 14th century - over 60 million years after Gondwana broke up.

The 15-member expedition in October-November, aboard Australia's leading ocean exploring ship RV Southern Surveyor, aimed to find more about how Australia and India were separated, and more about the "de Gonneville Triangle" - the oceanic crust that formed junction of Australia, India and Antarctica. It could hold key to how and why Gondwana broke up into separate land masses. [1]

Besides the Himalayas, the Alps too were squeezed out upwards when Africa separated from the South American land mass and crushed against Europe. Appropriately for this universality in collision of continents, a Gondwana theme park "Gondwana - Das Praehistorium" thrives in Landsweiler-Reden, Germany, giving visitors a glimpse of what life could have been in Gondwanaland.

The Gondwana rocks that scientists discovered in the Indian Ocean last month contained fossils of creatures found in shallow waters. It meant they were once part of the continent at or above sea level rather than created by undersea volcanic activity, said expedition members.

"We have a fairly good idea where those continents were but we don't exactly know, the eastern Indian Ocean is one of the more poorly explored parts of the world's oceans in terms of tectonics," Jo Whittaker told news agency Agence France-Presse. "So it will help us figure out the plate kinematic motions that led to India moving away from Australia and heading up off to crash into Eurasia."

The rocks would be compared with the samples from Australia's west coast to see exactly where the islands broke away. What was the Indian coast to the Gondwana land mass cannot be matched as that crashed coast is now somewhere high up in the Himalayas.

Professor Whittaker, a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Geosciences in Sydney University, is studying Indian Ocean plate reconstructions and continental break-up as part of a research project on "Gondwanaland extension, breakup and continental margin evolution".

Various theories periodically emerge about why Gondwana broke up, and whether it just split into two major chunks - with the Indian sub-continent and Australia - or whether it splintered into many more bits of land that comprise other Asian countries. [2]

Other major Gondwana research efforts include those from the International Association for Gondwana Kochi University in Kochi, capital of Shikoku island of Japan. The Japanese Gondwana University focuses on research in origin and evolution of continents, particularly Gondwanaland and its crustal fragments.

The study of Gondwana, and the plate movements beneath the Earth's crust, throws light on the movement of the deadly tsunami waves. Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes that in turn are caused by continental restlessness of the plates beneath the Earth's surface.

The Australia continent is currently traveling north at seven centimeters (2.75 inches) a year, and the catastrophic 2004 earthquake and tsunami were linked to such plate movements and subterranean collisions. Getting to know better what happened to Gondwana could save thousands of lives.

Notes
1. Objectives and Voyage plan of the 15-member expedition aboard the Southern Surveyor, led by chief scientist Simon Williams: The Perth Abyssal Plain: Understanding Eastern Gondwana Break-up.
2. History of Ancient Supercontinent Detailed. Live Science, April 28, 2008.

http://www.bookdrum.com/books/blood-meridian/9780330510943/bookmarks-176-200.html

http://my-sabbatical.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

http://technology.infomine.com/articles/1/80/diamond.equipment.manufacturing/diamond.equipment.technology.aspx

Gondwana supercontinent underwent massive shift during Cambrian explosion.

The Gondwana supercontinent underwent a 60-degree rotation across Earth's surface during the Early Cambrian period, according to new evidence uncovered by a team of Yale University geologists. Gondwana made up the southern half of Pangaea, the giant supercontinent that constituted the Earth's landmass before it broke up into the separate continents we see today. The study, which appears in the August issue of the journal Geology, has implications for the environmental conditions that existed at a crucial period in Earth's evolutionary history called the Cambrian explosion, when most of the major groups of complex animals rapidly appeared.

Gondwana Shift: The paleomagnetic record from the Amadeus Basin in Australia (marked by the star) indicate a large shift in some parts of the Gondwana supercontinent relative to the South Pole....

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2002TC001444.shtml

All 6 Fukushima Reactors In Big Trouble?

2011-11-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

All 6 Fukushima Reactors In Big Trouble?

Everyone knows that Fukushima reactors 1-3 have melted down, and the fuel pool at reactor 4 is ruined.
But reactors 5 and 6 have been almost entirely ignored since the earthquake because – we were assured – the reactors were in controlled shutdown prior to the earthquake, and so all was safe.
However, there are rumors of problems.

For example, Fukushima Diary notes:

On Tepco’s press release data of 4/25/2011, Iodine-133 was measured at intake of reactor 5 and 6.
0.15 Bq/cm3 8:50 4/24/2011
0.23 Bq/cm3 14:30 4/24/2011

Also, according to press release data of 6/13/2011, the temperature of reactor 5 and 6 were hotter than 200 ºC, and data of 3/11~3/15 are concealed.
***
Even on 3/19/2011, they were still 183C and 167C.
***
5/16/2011, Tepco released data of how much contaminated water is sticked [I assume he means "stuck"] under the container vessels.
The table shows,
300 cubic meters under reactor 5,
13,500 cubic meters under reactor 6.
***

In the data on 6/13,the temperature of the water in container vessels are carefully concealed from 3/11~15

(See original for additional graphics; and see this).
Remember that reactors 5 and 6 have spent fuel pools as well as reactors. As on March 16th:

Kyodo News notes:
Edano said water temperatures in the pools at the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors at the Fukushima plant have been rising as well.
***
The agency said among the three, the situation is the severest at the No. 4 reactor because all the fuel rods are stored in the pool due to the change of the reactor’s shroud. At the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, up to one-third of the rods are being kept in the pools. The more fuel rods that are kept in a pool, the more radioactive substances could be emitted.

on May 31st:

While most of the problems have been at reactors 1, 2 and 3 (which were all operating when the earthquake hit) and reactor 4 (where spent fuel rods have been leaking), there have also been problems at reactor number 5 as well. Specifically, as
NHK writes:
The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says temperatures in the Number 5 reactor and its spent fuel storage pool have risen due to pump failure. The reactor has been in a state of cold shutdown.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it found at 9 PM on Saturday that a pump bringing seawater to cooling equipment for the reactor and pool had stopped working.
TEPCO says temperatures have been rising since then.

And as the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations’ Special Report on the Nuclear Accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, demonstrates, the whole story of a cold shutdown of reactors 5 and 6 may be questionable.
As summarized yesterday by EneNews:

“Four of the five emergency diesel generators on units 5 and 6 were inoperable after the tsunami”
“One air-cooled emergency diesel generator on Unit 6 continued to function and supplied electrical power to Unit 6, and later to Unit 5, to maintain cooling to the reactor and spent fuel pool.”
“Unit 5 had been shut down and in an outage since January 3, 2011. Fuel had been loaded into the reactor and the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) reassembled.”
“Unit 6 had been shut down and in an outage since August 14, 2010. Fuel had been loaded into the reactor and the RPV reassembled.”
“The Unit 6 air-cooled EDG and portions of the electrical distribution system survived the tsunami and were used to reestablish cold shutdown on units 5 and 6.”
“After the tsunami impacted the site, operators were able to use the 6B emergency diesel generator (EDG) to provide power to cooling systems for the Unit 6 spent fuel pool. After installing temporary cables, the 6B EDG [generator] provided power to Unit 5 spent fuel pool cooling.”

This post is not affirmatively making claims, but rather asking questions, to which we deserve answers … especially since Tepco has been covering up the scope and severity of the accident since day one....

I followed the Fukushima drama very closely for 3 months and noticed several strange readings in the Tepco-reports during this time. The pressures, water levels and temps in the various parts of the “undamaged” spent fuel pools at times signaled a beginning criticality. I checked the status daily. The reactors themselves produce neutrons (especially when they go critical) that in their turn “heat” up the spent fuel pools. So this kind of radiation aka neutron soup is very “contagious”. All reactors and all storage facilities are drowning in this soup. Even the debris is affected. In time, it will only get worse....

Fukushima: Further Away From a Stable Shutdown Than Japanese Claimed....

2011-11-03T02:12:00.000-07:00

Fukushima: Further Away From a Stable Shutdown Than Japanese Claimed....

Radioactive xenon has been detected at the Fukushima nuclear plant, indicating that nuclear reactions are still occurring.
BusinessWeek notes that the Japanese government has confirmed the existence of radioactive xenon:

The detection of xenon, which is associated with nuclear fission, was confirmed today by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, the country’s atomic regulator said.

NHK reports:

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it found in the facility’s No.2 reactor radioactive substances that could have resulted from continuous nuclear fission.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, said on Wednesday that it detected xenon-133 and xenon-135 in gas taken from the reactor’s containment vessel on the previous day. The substances were reportedly in concentrations of 6 to more than 10 parts per million becquerels per cubic centimeter.
Xenon-135 was also detected in gas samples collected on Wednesday.
Radioactive xenon is produced during nuclear fission.
The half-life of xenon-133 is 5 days, and that of xenon-135 is 9 hours.
***
The utility also says it wants to take a close look at the situation of the plant’s No.1 and 3 reactors.

Bloomberg writes:

“Given the signs, it’s certain that fission is occurring,” Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tepco who regularly talks to the media, told reporters in Tokyo today. There’s been no large-scale or sustained criticality and no increase in radiation, he said.
***
It’s possible there are similar reactions occurring in the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, the other cores damaged at the station, Matsumoto said.
“Melted fuel in the No. 2 reactor may have undergone a sustained process of nuclear fission or re-criticality,” Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute, said by phone. “The nuclear fission should be containable by injecting boron into the reactor to absorb neutrons.”

Bellona points out:

According to Bellona physicist and executive director, Nils Bøhmer, and Dr Komei Hosokawa, head of the Department of Environmental and Social Research at Japan’s Kyoto Seika University … The presence of these gasses indicated fresh nuclear fission taking place in the hot debris of the melted fuel rods at the bottom of the container….
“This clear indication that a nuclear chain reaction is going on in one the reactors is a very bad sign. TEPCO had said that the situation would be stable within nine months after the accident,” said Bøhmer.
“Any on-going uncontrolled chain-reaction is not an indication of a stable rector, and we could face a much longer period of instability until the reactors are safe,” he said.
A TEPCO official has confirmed a so-called “partial re-criticality” incident in reactor No 2, said Hosokawa in the information he forwarded to Bellona. Hosokawa said the term “partial re-criticality was “a new vague word for [TEPCO’s] spin practice.”
Other radioactive gasses detected at the reactor, said Hosokawa, included Xenon-131m and Krypton-85, which are likely remnants of the chain reactions that occurred immediately after the earthquake and tsunami.

However, Ex-SKF reports – based on a handout from Tepco – that there was a “100-Fold Increase in Krypton-85 from November 1” to November 2nd.
EneNews notes the significance of Krytpon-85:

According to a study published in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, “Krypton-85 is the best indicator for clandestine plutonium separations” when conducting wide-area atmospheric monitoring.
Also, EX-SKF writes, “According to wiki, ‘About three atoms of krypton-85 are produced for every 1000 fissions (i.e. it has a fission yield of 0.3%)’.

Bellona also writes:

Japanese nuclear authorities … say the chain reactions will not affect the projected shut-own schedule. Currently the temperature at the hot zones of the reactors is been sustained at below 100 degrees Celsius by seawater constantly being pumped in.
Hosokawa, however, strongly disagreed, citing the apparent present condition of the nuclear fuel in reactor No 2, if not others.
“TEPCO so far claimed that the melted-down uranium had formed an oval shape with a cooled-down crust. Their roadmap for the “cold shutdown, if ever, is based on this condition,” said Hosokawa. “Now that they propose a quite different view regarding the condition of nuclear fuel, the roadmap vision [for shutdown] cannot be intact.”

Indeed, we’ve been reporting for months that nuclear reactions are probably still continuing at Fukushima (as have Fairewinds, Ene and Ex-SKF.)
The New York Times points out:

The unexpected bursts — something akin to flare-ups after a major fire … threaten to increase the amount of dangerous radioactive elements leaking from the complex and complicate cleanup efforts, raising startling questions about how much remains uncertain at the plant….
The plant’s owner admitted for the first time that fuel deep inside three stricken plants was probably continuing to experience bursts of fission.
***
It is impossible to determine exactly what state the fuel is in, given that even an intact reactor can offer only limited gauges in the form of temperature, pressure readings and neutron flow, but not visual observation. That lack of clarity is one of the most resonant lessons of the Fukushima disaster, where those trying to guide the response and assess the danger operated by what amounted to educated guesswork.
In reactors of the design used at Fukushima, that chain reaction is normally stopped when the operator gives a command to insert control rods, which rise up from the bottom of the core and separate the fuel assemblies. But when the cores of three reactors at Fukushima melted, a large part of the fuel presumably formed a jumbled mass in the bottom of the vessel, and without a strict gridlike geometry, the control rods cannot be inserted. Some of the fuel has escaped the vessel, experts believe, and is in spaces underneath, where there is no way to use control rods to interrupt the flow of neutrons.
***
The three reactors — together with spent fuel rods stored at a fourth damaged reactor — have been leaking radioactive material since the initial disaster, and new episodes of fission would only increase their dangers.
“Re-criticality would produce more harmful radioactive material, and because the reactors are damaged, there would be a danger of a leak,” said Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, whose prescient warnings about nuclear safety have won him respect in Japan.
Mr. Koide holds that the nuclear fuel at the three reactors probably melted through containments and into the ground, raising the possibility of contaminated groundwater. If much of the fuel was indeed in the ground early in the crisis, the “feed and bleed” strategy initially taken by Tokyo Electric — where workers pumped cooling water into the reactors, producing hundreds of tons of radioactive runoff — would have prevented fuel still in the reactor from boiling itself dry and melting, but would not have done anything to reduce danger from fuel already in the soil — if it got that far.
***
Tokyo Electric does not deny the possibility that the fuel may have burrowed into the ground, but its officials say that “most” of the fuel likely remains within the reactor, albeit slumped at the bottom in a molten mass.
But even in their most dire assessments, some experts had not expected even bursts of re-criticality to occur, because it was unlikely that the fuel would melt in just the right way — and that another ingredient, water, would be present in just the right amounts — to allow for any nuclear reaction. If episodes of fission at Fukushima were confirmed, Mr. Koide said, “our entire understanding of nuclear safety would be turned on its head.”
Some nuclear experts have debated for months whether nuclear reactions might be continuing, either in the fuel inside the reactors, or in the spent fuel pools at the plant. They have pointed, for example, to the continued reports of short-lived iodine in the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 3.
A former nuclear engineer with three decades of experience at a major engineering firm … who has worked at all three nuclear power complexes operated by Tokyo Electric … said that tiny fuel pellets could have been carried to different parts of the plant, like the spaces under the reactor during attempts to vent them in the early days. That would explain several cases of lethally high radiation readings found outside the reactor cores.
“If the fuel is still inside the reactor core, that’s one thing,” he said. But if the fuel has been dispersed more widely, then we are far from any stable shutdown.”

Hopefully, nuclear expert Paul Gunter’s fear that we face a “China Syndrome” – where the fuel from the reactor cores at Fukushima have melted through the container vessels, into the ground, and are hitting groundwater and creating highly-radioactive steam – will turn out to be overblown (even though NHK and Tepco have allegedly confirmed that steam was escaping from underground back in June, something Fukushima workers have alleged for some time):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hFLipZWlpOs

Take a look at this - this is the web site of UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Department - reporting that Stuxnet was a factor in Fukushima!!!

Cracking Stuxnet

Excerpt: Stuxnet malware is reportedly a contributing factor to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Clue ... virtually every control system failed or reacted wrongly to emergency conditions....

Japan TV: Tepco was victim of “cyber attack” in past year

TEPCO just came around to admitting that it was cyber-attacked. Tepco runs Siemens software for nuclear reactors. Kosher Stuxnet was specifically written to attack Siemens software....

Video, Michael Rivero: "Stuxnet, Japan Division". LINK.

Two interesting updates on possible Fukushima radiation poisoning -First - The case of acute lymphocytic leukemia:No, not in a young child in a high radiation spot that is often talked about on Twitter. A 63-year-old TV newscaster has been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia and is now hospitalized, getting ready for chemo. He felt a strange lump in his neck on October 28, he says. (Various news sources including: Zakzak 11/7/2011, Yomiuri Shinbun 11/6/2011)In his morning program on Fuji TV he's been promoting Fukushima produce by eating them in the show. He also happened to be in Fukushima in March 15. Just a coincidence. Never mind that ALL is predominant in small children, and an adult case is one in 100,000 annually in Japan.Second:The case of Japan's Imperial Family getting sick:The 9-year-old daughter of the crown prince and princess was hospitalized for a few days for mycoplasma pneumonia (NHK News 11/5/2011). The empress has been ill with aches and pains in the arms and legs (Sankei Shinbun 10/12/2011). Now the emperor himself is being hospitalized for bronchitis (Mainichi Shinbun 11/6/2011).The areas surrounding the imperial household in the center of Tokyo in Chiyoda-ku has elevated radiation levels. The foodstuff that is used in the imperial household - vegetables, milk, egg, beef - comes from the imperial farm in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture (Imperial Household Agency, announcement on 7/21/2011) where the radiation is even more elevated and where the meat cow nearby was found with high level of radioactive cesium. (This link goes to my English blog post.)The daughter of the crown prince and princess spent her summer vacation in Nasu. (This link is also in English.) The Kan administration sent the emperor and empress in April and May to cheer up the quake/tsunami victims in Chiba, Ibaraki, Miyagi, Fukushima, Iwate, 7 weeks in a row. They ate food in Fukushima, and bring some home for their sons' families.Lastly, The case of radioactive rice in Yokohama City:The public park where 2770 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was found from the dried shiitake mushrooms, most of which had been fed to the public including 256 small children also grew rice in the rice paddies. The rice was found with 13 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium. Oh such a minute amount, no effect on health!More at EX-SKF - http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/

China warns India on South China Sea exploration projects...

2011-10-15T21:51:00.001-07:00

ANANTH KRISHNAN

China on Thursday indicated it was opposed to India engaging in oil and gas exploration projects in the disputed South China Sea, and warned Indian companies against entering into any agreements with Vietnam ahead of External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s visit to Hanoi this week.
“Our consistent position is that we are opposed to any country engaging in oil and gas exploration and development activities in waters under China’s jurisdiction,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said, in reply to a question on reports that the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Videsh Limited was considering exploration projects in two blocks that Vietnam claims.
While Ms. Jiang said she was not aware of reports of Indian involvement in any projects, she stressed China enjoyed “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea and its islands.
“We hope foreign countries will not get involved in the dispute,” she said. “For countries outside the region, we hope they will respect and support countries in the region to solve this dispute through bilateral channels.”
China and Vietnam are among at least ten countries that hold competing claims over the South China Sea and the islands located in its waters.
In June, tensions flared between China and Vietnam over the Spratly and Paracel Islands, following clashes between Chinese and Vietnamese boats.
External Affairs Minister Mr. Krishna will hold talks in Hanoi later this week. Among the issues slated for discussion, according to media reports, is an agreement for oil and gas exploration in two blocks over which Vietnam claims sovereignty, by ONGC Videsh.
China had reportedly voiced its objections to India about the projects, saying that any projects would be “illegal” as China claims sovereignty over the entire South China Sea.
India, however, is likely to go ahead with the projects in the two blocks, which Vietnam says it holds rights to under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
In recent weeks, India, too, has raised concerns over Chinese projects in disputed territory — in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). China has rejected Indian concerns over this issue, stating that it viewed the dispute as one for India and Pakistan to solve.
Ms. Jiang said the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea “did not give any country the right to expand their own exclusive economic zone and continental shelf to other countries’ territories”. The convention, she said, did not negate “a country’s right formed in history that has been consistently claimed”.
Disputes between China, Vietnam and other countries that hold claims to the South China Sea have flared in recent months. While China’s neighbors have blamed an increasingly assertive Chinese navy for stirring tensions, with recent clashes with both Vietnam and the Philippines, Chinese officials have pointed the finger at the United States for fanning the flames with its renewing of military alliances in the region.
Ahead of Mr. Krishna’s visit, India has also stressed its strong support for the “freedom of navigation in international waters, including in the South China Sea”, after the INS Airavat, on a recent goodwill visit to Vietnam, was asked over radio to leave “Chinese waters”....

India and Vietnam will sign several contracts on Business Strategy, Commerce, Energy and Technology....

by saohomsaomai

Despite objections or harassment of China, India plan to sign several contracts with theU.S. , including oil exploitation contracts outside the U.S. continental shelf between OVLand Petrovietnam, the contract for the engineering camp opened in Vietnam, as well as increased borrowing to fund the U.S. implementation plans will be signed when Truong Tan Sang went to India in mid-October. In the recent U.S. visit, Indian foreign minister SM Krishna spoke a lot about treaties, trade, economic and technical cooperation between the two countries.
Oil exploitation contracts between OVL and Petrovietnam is considered strategic because the contract will challenge China on the so-called “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea. Already here, India has asked China to terminate the planned game against oil on the East Coast of India OVL.
Ensure energy needs are paramount factors in the relationship between Vietnam and India, despite the Chinese threat. Part of the exploitation of oil OVL up to more than half the total amount of 400 million dollars of Indian investment in Vietnam.
Unmoved by Chinese objections, the ONGC Videsh Ltd
(OVL) and Petro Vietnam - state-owned exploration and production of Companies
India and Vietnam -are likely to sign a Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU ) on
Strategic Cooperation. Signing of the pact is expected to be one of the nhiều
outcomes in terms of Agreements khi
Truong Tan Sang Vietnam President visits India in the second week of October.
India will announce more cũng line of credit, above the existing Rs 300 crore
Besides opening and more information technology (IT) parks in Vietnam.
Many Agreements in the areas of trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological
Cooperation are likely to be Inked khi cũng Sang’s visit.
External Affairs Minister SM Krishna Discussions with Sang long held on the
Entire Facet of the bilateral ties During His visit to Vietnam.
The MoU the between OVL and Petro Vietnam in the nature of a “Strategic
Cooperation “đồng nghĩa Undertaking of more exploration projects, mà can irk
China enjoys very little with its position “undisputed Territorial Sovereignty over
South China sea . “

South China Sea: A new geopolitical node....

.....For a long time, the planet's geopolitical nodes were situated in Europe, namely the Balkans and Alsace and Lorraine. For 20 years after the dissolution of Soviet Union geopolitical node of the planet was Middle East. Now it's safe to say that the new geopolitical node is the South China Sea.

It is the South China Sea where interests intersect for the major global players: the United States, Japan - as the No.2 power, and the rising giants of Asia, China and India. On its coastline or near

it are seated many rapidly developing countries - Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore. The countries of Southeast Asia account for nearly 10% of world population, and 2.5% of global GDP.

Sea-trade is foundation of global economy: 90% of world's commerce travels by sea. It is the second most used sea lane in the world - over 50% of the annual merchant fleet tonnage passes through the Strait of Malacca, the Sunda Strait, and the Lombok Strait. The Strait of Malacca accounts for nearly 10 millions barrels of crude oil every day. There are enormous mineral and fishing resources, and the South China Sea is estimated to hold about 7 billion barrels of oil and 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

At the same time, a lot of threats to the national security of regional and out-of-the region countries are associated with those waters. These threats could be divided into three types.

The first type is socio-economic threats. Despite rapid economic growth Southeast Asia is one of the poorest regions of the world. More than a half of population lives on less than $1 a day. Illiteracy also remains among the highest. A substantial part of the population has problems with food, drinking water and medicines. The situation is only getting worse because of frequent natural disasters; the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami was the strongest among them, but not the only one.

This unpleasant socio-economic situation is a source of the second type of threats - irregular ones. The South China Sea is second most dangerous pirate-infested region of the world after the Somali coast and Horn of Africa. International terrorism menace is also obvious, especially for such states as Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Many terrorist organizations operate in region, many of them with ties to al-Qaeda - Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Sayyaf, the Maoist New People's Army and others. Southeast Asia (the Golden Triangle) is, together with Afghanistan and Central Asia (the Golden Crescent) and Latin America, one of key centers of illegal drug trafficking. Other types of illegal activity also prosper. All these facts lead to increasing of domestic instability. Almost every state has its own sources of political, ethnic or religious conflicts. The 2006 coup d'้tat and ensuing wave of political instability in Thailand is only one of many examples.

The third, and perhaps most important type of threats in the region of South China Sea is regular, traditional threats of interstate conflict, including unresolved territorial disputes between China, Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. China claims most of the South China Sea as well as the Paracel and Spratly islands. China's government uses the so-called nine-dash map, whose eligibility is fiercely disputed, primarily by Vietnam and Philippines. According to President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines: "China's 9-dash line territorial claim over the entire South China Sea is against international laws, particularly the United National Convention of the Laws of the Sea".

Authoritative Chinese newspaper Global Times said in recent article "The South China Sea is the best place for China to wage wars. Of the more than 1,000 oil rigs there, none belongs to China; of the four airfields in the Spratly Islands, none belongs to China". Chinese Navy commander Admiral Wu Shengli stated "how would you feel if I cut off your arms and legs? That's how China feels about the South China Sea".

Then there is the possibility of conflict between Taiwan and mainland China. Beijing seeks peaceful reunification according to Deng Xiaoping's "one country, two systems" doctrine, but an armed conflict cannot be excluded. Reunification with Taiwan is a task of paramount importance. It is necessary for China's national consolidation and security. Reunification will break the First island chain and question the US policy of China containment.

"As we obtain absolute security of our own maritime lifeline, it also implies absolute control over Japan's maritime lifeline", says Professor Ni Lexiong, a proponent of Chinese sea power. This is also true for South Korea and for countries in the South China Sea.

Finally, there is a possibility of conflict between China and India. Relations between the two Asia giants have always been uneasy, and in the next decade tensions could escalate. China is developing a system of diplomatic, military and political ties in Indian ocean under the "String of Pearls" doctrine and India is attempting to forge closer and deeper integration with its neighbors in South East Asia under its "Look East" policy. These two opposing doctrines clash in South China Sea.

On July 22 after sailing 45 nautical miles off the Vietnamese coast, Indian landing ship INS Airavat was called on an open radio channel by someone identifying himself as the "Chinese Navy". "You are entering Chinese waters," the radio caller said, according to the India Government. This case was likely someone's silly joke, but it is another evidence of growing tension in Indo-Chinese relations in the region, especially after Vietnam and India's launch of a joint oil project in the South China Sea brought a negative reaction from Beijing. China has begun to pay special attention to its sea power over the past decade. According to the former US Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, China has the fastest-growing navy in the world today. Chinese President Hu Jintao called China a "sea power" and advocated a ''powerful people's navy'' to ''uphold our maritime rights and interests".

The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) consists of about 200 ships excluding auxiliary and mosquito fleet. According to the US Department of Defense about 55% of submarines and 25% of surface combat ships are modern, highly capable ships. The role of China's first aircraft carrier Shi Lang and the ballistic anti-ship missile DF-21D are overestimated, but Chinese conventional submarines, destroyers and small attack craft are underestimated.

India is also increasing its sea power. It develops its own shipbuilding industry and actively buy ships and other naval technology abroad. The largest projects are building of India first indigenous nuclear submarine, purchase of Russian carrier, frigates and French conventional submarines. Other states also pay increasing attention to development of theirs navies. According to Bob Nugent, the vice-president of Ami Intrnational, the Asia-Pacific region will be the second-largest naval market after the United States in the next 20 years.
In turn, the Unites States, while remaining military and naval superpower, faces a decline in its potential in region. This is due to defense spending cuts, the heavy burden of global commitments and its naval forward presence. On top of that, the national debt is America's biggest security threat, according to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. China is largest holder of US national debt and also its largest trading partner.

This whole set of challenges and threats will largely determine world politics in the coming decades. The European Union, Russia, Brazil and other out-of-the-region powers should take this into account.

Prokhor Tebin is a PhD student at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Science.

2012 pole shift? Count on it, say US government scientists....

2011-10-08T04:43:00.000-07:00

"2012" no longer science fiction, but science fact....?

October , 2011 -- 2012 pole shift? Count on it, say US government scientists....

Although Mayan, Chinese, and Egyptian prognostications about a major global cataclysm occurring on December 21, 2012, have been relegated by many in the corporate media to the realm of science fiction and "junk science," a group of scientists from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of Energy are not so dismissive. In fact, at a conference held at the U.S. Capitol Visitor's Center on October 6, scientists not only proclaimed that the Earth is due for a major magnetic pole shift and solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) next year but stated that the nation's power grid and other critical infrastructures, including nuclear power plants, are woefully unprepared to deal with the effects of the impending global disaster. There is a real fear that the United States could be dealing with "thirty Fukushimas," a reference to the nuclear catastrophe following this year's Japanese quake and tsunami.

At the one-day Conference on Severe Space Weather Threats to the National Electric Grid, sponsored by the Energy & Environmental Security Policy Program at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University (NDU), the intelligence and military contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the Congressional EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) Caucus, and the InfraGard National Members Alliance, scientists and emergency planners called for government action on shoring up the nation's defenses.

In what is called a "solar max," meaning an increase in CMEs that will disrupt the earth's electrical grids, nuclear power plant support systems, and communication systems, government scientists and emergency planners agree that the federal government has done little to plan for such catastrophic events. Solar max, coupled with increased earthquake, volcanic, and severe weather activity, will stretch the already-depleted resources of federal, state, and local governments to the breaking point. Emergency planners stressed that families and individuals must make preparations for their own safety and recovery from the global bedlam that will result from the significant terrestrial and solar changes.

Scientists confirmed that the increase in the frequency and intensity and the more shallow depths of earthquakes over the last decade is linked to the solar max and magnetic pole shift activity. There is still some disagreement among scientists about the effect of solar max and magnetic pole shift on earth's geographical pole stability.

Some countries are already planning for worst-case scenarios. Twenty-three Indian Ocean countries are participating next week in the first ever drill of the Indian Ocean tsunami alert system, dubbed IOWAVE 11. The drill will plan for a 9.2 earthquake off the northwest coast of Sumatra, similar to the quake which struck the same area on December 26, 2004. The countries in the Indian Ocean region will plan for a destructive tsunami that will swamp the coastlines of littoral and island nations and strike the South African coast 12 hours after the quake. The Indian Ocean alert system was funded by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The critical drill comes at a time when pro-Israel members of the U.S. Congress are threatening a cut-off of U.S. financial contributions to UNESCO because of the recent decision by the body's executive committee to recommend the admission of Palestine as a full member state....

http://enenews.com/economist-enormous-spread-radiation-iitate-levels-high-hills-locals-dare-150-millisievertsyr-officials-home

Secret US-Israeli Nuke Transfers Led To Fukushima Blasts....

2011-10-03T23:22:00.000-07:00

Secret US-Israeli Nuke Transfers Led To Fukushima Blasts....

http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/fukushima.html

http://enenews.com/ge-hitachi-35-u-s-reactors-could-fail-during-quake-problem-with-control-rods

By Yoichi Shimatsu

Sixteen tons and what you get is a nuclear catastrophe. The explosions that rocked the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant were more powerful than the combustion of hydrogen gas, as claimed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. The actual cause of the blasts, according to intelligence sources in Washington, was nuclear fission of. warhead cores illegally taken from America’s sole nuclear-weapons assembly facility. Evaporation in the cooling pools used for spent fuel rods led to the detonation of stored weapons-grade plutonium and uranium.
The facts about clandestine American and Israeli support for Japan’s nuclear armament are being suppressed in the biggest official cover-up in recent history. The timeline of events indicates the theft from America’s strategic arsenal was authorized at the highest level under a three-way deal between the Bush-Cheney team, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Elhud Olmert’s government in Tel Aviv.
Tokyo’s Strangelove
In early 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney flew to Tokyo with his closest aides. Newspaper editorials noted the secrecy surrounding his visit – no press conferences, no handshakes with ordinary folks and, as diplomatic cables suggest, no briefing for U.S. Embassy staffers in Tokyo.
Cheney snubbed Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, who was shut out of confidential talks. The pretext was his criticism of President George Bush for claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The more immediate concern was that the defense minister might disclose bilateral secrets to the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were sure to oppose White House approval of Japan’s nuclear program.
An unannounced reason for Cheney’s visit was to promote a quadrilateral alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. The four cornerstones – the US, Japan, Australia and India – were being called on to contain and confront China and its allies North Korea and Russia.. From a Japanese perspective, this grand alliance was flawed by asymmetry: The three adversaries were nuclear powers, while the U.S. was the only one in the Quad group.
To further his own nuclear ambitions, Abe was playing the Russian card. As mentioned in a U.S. Embassy cable (dated 9/22), the Yomiuri Shimbun gave top play to this challenge to the White House : “It was learned yesterday that the government and domestic utility companies have entered final talks with Russia in order to relegate uranium enrichment for use at nuclear power facilities to Atomprom, the state-owned nuclear monopoly.” If Washington refused to accept a nuclear-armed Japan, Tokyo would turn to Moscow.
Since the Liberal Democratic Party selected him as prime minister in September 2006, the hawkish Abe repeatedly called for Japan to move beyond the postwar formula of a strictly defensive posture and non-nuclear principles. Advocacy of a nuclear-armed Japan arose from his family tradition. His grandfather Nobusuke Kishi nurtured the wartime atomic bomb project and, as postwar prime minister, enacted the civilian nuclear program. His father Shintaro Abe, a former foreign minister, had played the Russian card in the 1980s, sponsoring the Russo-Japan College, run by the Aum Shinrikyo sect (a front for foreign intelligence), to recruit weapons scientists from a collapsing Soviet Union.
The chief obstacle to American acceptance of a nuclear-armed Japan was the Pentagon, where Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima remain as iconic symbols justifying American military supremacy.The only feasible channel for bilateral transfers then was through the civilian-run Department of Energy (DoE), which supervises the production of nuclear weapons.
Camp David Go-Ahead
The deal was sealed on Abe’s subsequent visit to Washington. Wary of the eavesdropping that led to Richard Nixon’s fall from grace, Bush preferred the privacy afforded at Camp David. There, in a rustic lodge on April 27, Bush and Abe huddled for 45 minutes. What transpired has never been revealed, not even in vague outline.
As his Russian card suggested, Abe was shopping for enriched uranium. At 99.9 percent purity, American-made uranium and plutonium is the world’s finest nuclear material. The lack of mineral contaminants means that it cannot be traced back to its origin. In contrast, material from Chinese and Russian labs can be identified by impurities introduced during the enrichment process.
Abe has wide knowledge of esoteric technologies. His first job in the early 1980s was as a manager at Kobe Steel. One of the researchers there was astrophysicist Hideo Murai, who adapted Soviet electromagnetic technology to “cold mold” steel. Murai later became chief scientist for the Aum Shinrikyo sect, which recruited Soviet weapons technicians under the program initiated by Abe’s father. After entering government service, Abe was posted to the U.S. branch of JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization). Its New York offices hosted computers used to crack databases at the Pentagon and major defense contractors to pilfer advanced technology. The hacker team was led by Tokyo University’s top gamer, who had been recruited into Aum.
After the Tokyo subway gassing in 1995, Abe distanced himself from his father’s Frankenstein cult with a publics-relations campaign. Fast forward a dozen years and Abe is at Camp David. After the successful talks with Bush, Abe flew to India to sell Cheney’s quadrilateral pact to a Delhi skeptical about a new Cold War. Presumably, Cheney fulfilled his end of the deal. Soon thereafter Hurricane Katrina struck, wiping away the Abe visit from the public memory.
The Texas Job
BWXT Pantex, America’s nuclear warhead facility, sprawls over 16,000 acres of the Texas Panhandle outside Amarillo. Run by the DoE and Babcock & Wilson, the site also serves as a storage facility for warheads past their expiration date. The 1989 shutdown of Rocky Flats, under community pressure in Colorado, forced the removal of those nuclear stockpiles to Pantex. Security clearances are required to enter since it is an obvious target for would-be nuclear thieves.
In June 2004, a server at the Albuquerque office of the National Nuclear Security System was hacked. Personal information and security-clearance data for 11 federal employees and 177 contractors at Pantex were lifted. NNSA did not inform Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman or his deputy Clay Sell until three months after the security breach, indicating investigators suspected an inside job.
While Bush and Abe met at Camp David, 500 unionized security guards at Pantex launched a 45-day strike. Scabs were hired, but many failed to pass the entry exam, according to the Inspector General’s office at DoE. The IG report cited witnesses who said: “BWXT officials gave passing grades to some replacement guards even though they actually flunked tests,” and “contractor officials gave correct answers to those that failed the tests.” Although the scene was nearly as comical as the heist in “Ocean’s Eleven”, Pantex is not some Vegas casino. At stake was nuclear Armageddon.
At an opportune moment during the two-month strike, trucks loaded with warhead cores rolled out of the gates. Some 16 metric tons of nuclear cores packed in caskets were hauled away in refrigerated containers to prevent fission. At the port of Houston, the dangerous cargo was loaded aboard vessels operated by an Israeli state-owned shipping line. The radioactive material was detected by port inspector Roland Carnaby, a private contractor working under the federal program to interdict weapons of mass destruction.
The intelligence community is still buzzing about his shooting death. On April 29, 2008, Houston police officers pursued Carnaby on a highway chase and gunned him down. His port monitoring contract was later awarded to the Israel-based security firm NICE (Neptune Intelligence Computer Engineering), owned by former Israeli Defense Force officers.
Throughout the Pantex caper, from the data theft to smuggling operation, Bush and Cheney’s point man for nuclear issues was DoE Deputy Director Clay Sell, a lawyer born in Amarillo and former aide to Panhandle district Congressman Mac Thornberry. Sell served on the Bush-Cheney transition team and became the top adviser to the President on nuclear issues. At DoE, Sell was directly in charge of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, which includes 17 national laboratories and the Pantex plant. (Another alarm bell: Sell was also staff director for the Senate Energy subcommittee under the late Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who died in a 2010 plane crash.)
An Israeli Double-Cross
The nuclear shipments to Japan required a third-party cutout for plausible deniability by the White House. Israel acted less like an agent and more like a broker in demanding additional payment from Tokyo, according to intelligence sources. Adding injury to insult, the Israelis skimmed off the newer warhead cores for their own arsenal and delivered older ones. Since deteriorated cores require enrichment, the Japanese were furious and demanded a refund, which the Israelis refused. Tokyo had no recourse since by late 2008 principals Abe had resigned the previous autumn and Bush was a lame duck.
The Japanese nuclear developers, under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, had no choice but to enrich the uranium cores at Fukushima No.1, a location remote enough to evade detection by nonproliferation inspectors. Hitachi and GE had developed a laser extraction process for plutonium, which requires vast amounts of electrical power. This meant one reactor had to make unscheduled runs, as was the case when the March earthquake struck.
Tokyo dealt a slap on the wrist to Tel Aviv by backing Palestinian rights at the UN. Not to be bullied, the Israeli secret service launched the Stuxnet virus against Japan’s nuclear facilities.
Firewalls kept Stuxnet at bay until the Tohoku earthquake. The seismic activity felled an electricity tower behind Reactor 6. The power cut disrupted the control system, momentarily taking down the firewall. As the computer came online again, Stuxnet infiltrated to shut down the back-up generators. During the 20-minute interval between quake and tsunami, the pumps and valves at Fukushima No.1 were immobilized, exposing the turbine rooms to flood damage.
The flow of coolant water into the storage pools ceased, quickening evaporation. Fission of the overheated cores led to blasts and mushroom-clouds. Residents in mountaintop Iitate village overlooking the seaside plant saw plumes of smoke and could “taste the metal” in their throats.
Guilty as Charged
The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were powerful enough to damage
Fukushima No.1. The natural disaster, however, was vastly amplified by two external factors: release of the Stuxnet virus, which shut down control systems in the critical 20 minutes prior to the tsunami; and presence of weapons-grade nuclear materials that devastated the nuclear facility and contaminated the entire region.
Of the three parties involved, which bears the greatest guilt? All three are guilty of mass murder, injury and destruction of property on a regional scale, and as such are liable for criminal prosecution and damages under international law and in each respective jurisdiction.
The White House, specifically Bush, Cheney and their co-conspirators in the DoE, hold responsibility for ordering the illegal removal and shipment of warheads without safeguards.
The state of Israel is implicated in theft from U.S. strategic stockpiles, fraud and extortion against the Japanese government, and a computer attack against critical infrastructure with deadly consequences, tantamount to an act of war.
Prime Minister Abe and his Economy Ministry sourced weapons-grade nuclear material in violation of constitutional law and in reckless disregard of the risks of unregulated storage, enrichment and extraction. Had Abe not requested enriched uranium and plutonium in the first place, the other parties would not now be implicated. Japan, thus, bears the onus of the crime.
The International Criminal Court has sufficient grounds for taking up a case that involves the health of millions of people in Japan, Canada, the United States, Russia, the Koreas, Mongolia, China and possibly the entire Northern Hemisphere. The Fukushima disaster is more than an human-rights charge against a petty dictator, it is a crime against humanity on par with the indictments at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. Failure to prosecute is complicity.
If there is a silver lining to every dark cloud, it’s that the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami saved the world from even greater folly by halting the drive to World War III....

The American economy is so closely tied to oil, it is especially vulnerable to oil's growing scarcity, price volatility, and the relative paucity of its suppliers....

2011-09-20T03:46:00.000-07:00

The American economy is so closely tied to oil, it is especially vulnerable to oil's growing scarcity, price volatility, and the relative paucity of its suppliers.... From this perspective, the decline of America and the decline of oil appear closely connected indeed....

Utterly corrupt and Zioconned Washington is out of gas?
By Michael Klare

America and Oil. It's like bacon and eggs, Batman and Robin. As the old song lyric went, you can't have one without the other. Once upon a time, it was also a surefire formula for national greatness and global preeminence. Now, it's a guarantee of a trip to hell in a hand basket. The Chinese know it. Does Washington?
America's rise to economic and military supremacy was fueled in no small measure by its control over the world's supply of oil. Oil powered the country's first giant corporations, ensured success in World War II, and underlay the great economic boom of the postwar period. Even in an era of nuclear weapons, it was the global deployment of oil-powered ships, helicopters, planes, tanks, and missiles that sustained America's superpower status during and after the Cold War. It should come as no surprise, then, that the country's current economic and military decline

coincides with the relative decline of oil as a major source of energy.

If you want proof of that economic decline, just check out the way America's share of the world's gross domestic product has been steadily dropping, while its once-powerhouse economy now appears incapable of generating forward momentum. In its place, robust upstarts like China and India are posting annual growth rates of 8% to 10%. When combined with the growing technological prowess of those countries, the present figures are surely just precursors to a continuing erosion of America's global economic clout.

Militarily, the picture appears remarkably similar. Yes, a crack team of SEAL commandos did kill Osama bin Laden, but that single operation - greeted in the United States with a jubilation more appropriate to the ending of a major war - hardly made up for the military's lackluster performance in two recent wars against ragtag insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If anything, almost a decade after the Taliban was overthrown, it has experienced a remarkable resurgence even facing the full might of the US , while the assorted insurgent forces in Iraq appear to be holding their own. Meanwhile, Iran - that bete noire of American power in the Middle East - seem as powerful as ever. Al Qaeda may be on the run, but as recent developments in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and unstable Pakistan suggest, the United States wields far less clout and influence in the region now than it did before it invaded Iraq in 2003.

If American power is in decline, so is the relative status of oil in the global energy equation. In the 2000 edition of its International Energy Outlook, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy confidently foresaw ever-expanding oil production in Africa, Alaska, the Persian Gulf area, and the Gulf of Mexico, among other areas. It predicted, in fact, that world oil output would reach 97 million barrels per day in 2010 and a staggering 115 million barrels in 2020. EIA number-crunchers concluded as well that oil would long retain its position as the world's leading source of energy. Its 38% share of the global energy supply, they said, would remain unchanged.

What a difference a decade makes. By 2010, a new understanding about the natural limits of oil production had sunk in at the EIA and its experts were predicting a disappointingly modest petroleum future.

In that year, world oil output had reached just 82 million barrels per day, a stunning 15 million less than expected. Moreover, in the 2010 edition of its International Energy Outlook, the EIA was now projecting 2020 output at 85 million barrels per day, hardly more than the 2010 level and 30 million barrels below its projections of just a decade earlier, which were relegated to the dustbin of history. (Such projections, by the way, are for conventional, liquid petroleum and exclude "tough" and "dirty" sources that imply energy desperation - like Canadian tar sands, shale oil, and other "unconventional" fuels.)

The most recent EIA projections also show oil's share of the world total energy supply - far from remaining constant at 38% - had already dropped to 35% in 2010 and was projected to continue declining to 32% in 2020 and 30% in 2035. In its place, natural gas and renewable sources of energy are expected to assume ever more prominent roles.

So here's the question all of us should consider, in part because until now no one has: are the decline of the United States and the decline of oil connected? Careful analysis suggests that there are good reasons to believe they are.

From standard oil to the Carter Doctrine
More than 100 years ago, America's first great economic expansion abroad was spearheaded by its giant oil companies, notably John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company - a saga told with great panache in Daniel Yergin's classic book The Prize. These companies established powerful beachheads in Mexico and Venezuela, and later in parts of Asia, North Africa, and of course the Middle East. As they became ever more dependent on the extraction of oil in distant lands, American foreign policy began to be reorganized around acquiring and protecting US oil concessions in major producing areas.

With World War II and the Cold War, oil and US national security became thoroughly intertwined. After all, the United States had prevailed over the Axis powers in significant part because it possessed vast reserves of domestic petroleum while Germany and Japan lacked them, depriving their forces of vital fuel supplies in the final years of the war. As it happened, though, the United States was using up its domestic reserves so rapidly that, even before World War II was over, Washington turned its attention to finding new overseas sources of crude that could be brought under American control. As a result, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and a host of other Middle Eastern producers would become key US oil suppliers under American military protection.

There can be little question that, for a time, American domination of world oil production would prove a potent source of economic and military power. After World War II, an abundance of cheap US oil spurred the development of vast new industries, including civilian air travel, highway construction, a flood of suburban housing and commerce, mechanized agriculture, and plastics.

Abundant oil also underlay the global expansion of the country's military power, as the Pentagon garrisoned the world while becoming one of the planet's great oil guzzlers. Its global dominion came to rest on an ever-expanding array of oil-powered ships, planes, tanks, and missiles. As long as the Middle East - and especially Saudi Arabia - served essentially as an American gas station and oil remained a cheap commodity, all this was relatively painless.

In addition, thanks to its control of Middle Eastern oil, Washington had its hand on the economic jugular of Europe and Japan, both of which remain highly dependent on imports from the region. Not surprisingly, then, one president after another insisted Washington would not permit any rival to challenge American control of that oil jugular - a principle enshrined in the Carter Doctrine of January 1980, which stated that the United States would go to war if any hostile power threatened the flow of Persian Gulf oil.

The use of military force, in accordance with that doctrine, has been a staple of American foreign policy since 1987, when President Ronald Reagan first applied the "principle" by authorizing US warships to escort Kuwaiti tankers during the Iran-Iraq War. George H W Bush invoked the same principle when he authorized American military intervention during the first Gulf War of 1990-1991, as did Bill Clinton when he ordered missile attacks on Iraq in the late 1990s and George W Bush when he launched the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

At that moment, the United States and oil seemed at the pinnacle of their power. As the victor in the Cold War and then the first Gulf War, the American military was ranked supreme, with no conceivable challenger on the horizon. And nowhere were there more fervent believers in "unilateralist" America's ability to "shock and awe" the planet than in Washington....

The nation's economy still appeared relatively robust as a major housing bubble was just beginning to form. China's economy was then a paltry 15% as big as ours. Only seven years later, it would be approximately 40% as large. By invading Iraq, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld planned to demonstrate the crushing superiority of America's new high-tech weaponry, while setting the stage for further military exploits in the region, including a possible attack on Iran. (A neo-con quip caught the mood of the moment: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.")

The future of oil seemed no less robust in 2003: demand was brisk, crude prices ranged from about $25 to $30 per barrel, and the concept of "peak oil" - the notion that planetary supplies were

more limited than imagined, that in the near future production would reach its peak and subsequently contract - was still considered laughable by most industry experts. By invading Iraq and setting up permanent military bases at the very heart of the global oil heartlands, the White House expected to ensure continued control over the flow of Persian Gulf oil and gain access to Iraq's voluminous reserves, the largest in the world after those of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

From an imperial point of view, it was a beautiful dream from which Americans were destined to awaken abruptly. As a start, it quickly became apparent that American technological prowess was no panacea for urban guerrilla warfare, and so a vast occupation army was soon needed to "pacify" Iraq - and then pacify it again, and again, and again. A similar dilemma arose in Afghanistan, where a tribal-based religious insurgency proved remarkably immune to superior American firepower.

To sustain hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in those distant, often inaccessible areas, the Department of Defense became the world's single biggest consumer of oil, burning more on a daily basis than the entire nation of Sweden - this, at a time when the price of crude rose to $50, then $80, and finally soared over the $100 mark.

Procuring and delivering ever-increasing amounts of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel to American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan may not be the principal reason for the wars' spiraling costs, but it certainly ranks among the major causes. (Just the price of providing air conditioning to American troops in those two countries is now estimated at approximately $20 billion a year.)

With oil likely to prove increasingly scarce and costly, the Department of Defense is being forced to reexamine its fundamental operating principles when it comes to energy. Secretary of defense Rumsfeld's notion that troops could be replaced by growing numbers of oil-powered super-weapons no longer appears viable, even for a power already garrisoning much of the planet for which "unending" war has become the new norm.

Yes, the Pentagon is looking into the use of biofuels, solar arrays, and other green alternatives to petroleum to power its planes and tanks, but any such future still seems an almost inconceivably long way off. And yet the thought of more wars involving the commitment of vast numbers of ground troops to protracted counterinsurgency operations in distant parts of the Greater Middle East at $400 or more for every gallon of gas used appears increasingly unpalatable for the globe's former "sole superpower." (Hence, the sudden burst of enthusiasm over drone wars.) Seen from this perspective, the decline of America and the decline of oil appear closely connected indeed.

Don't bet on Washington
And this is hardly the only apparent connection. Because the American economy is so closely tied to oil, it is especially vulnerable to oil's growing scarcity, price volatility, and the relative paucity of its suppliers. Consider this: at present, the United States obtains about 40% of its total energy supply from oil, far more than any other major economic power. This means that when prices rise or oil supplies are disrupted for any reason - hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, war in the Middle East, environmental disasters of any sort - the economy is at particular risk.

While a burst housing bubble and financial shenanigans lay behind the Great Recession that began in 2008, it's worth remembering that it also coincided with the beginning of a stratospheric rise in oil prices. As anyone who has pulled into a gas station knows, at an average price of nearly $3.70 a gallon for regular gas, the staying power of high-priced oil has crippled what, until recently, was being called a "weak recovery".

Despite the great debt debate in Washington, oil is a factor seldom mentioned when American indebtedness comes up. And yet the United States imports 50% to 60% of its oil supply, and with prices averaging at least $80 to $90 per barrel, we're sending approximately $1 billion every day to foreign oil providers. These payments constitute the single biggest contribution to the country's balance-of-payments deficit and so is a major source of the nation's economic weakness.

Consider for comparison our leading economic rival: China. That country relies on oil for only about 20% of its total energy supply, about half as much as we do. Instead, the Chinese have turned to coal, which they possess in great abundance and can produce at a relatively low cost. (China, of course, pays a heavy environmental price for its coal dependency.)

The Chinese do import some petroleum, but considerably less than the US, so their import expenses are considerably smaller. Nor do its oil-import costs have the same enfeebling effect, since China enjoys a positive balance of trade (in part, at America's expense). As a result, when oil prices soared to record heights in 2008 and again in 2011, Beijing experienced none of the trauma felt in Washington.

No doubt many factors explain the startling rise of the Chinese economy, including lower costs of production and weaker environmental regulations. It is hard, however, to avoid the conclusion that our greater reliance on oil as it begins its decline has played a significant role in the changing balance of economic power between the two countries.

All this leads to a critical question: How should America respond to these developments in the years ahead?

As a start, there can be no question that the United States needs to move quickly to reduce its reliance on oil and increase the availability of other energy sources, especially renewable ones that pose no threat to the environment. This is not merely a matter of reducing our reliance on imported oil, as some have suggested. As long as oil remains our preeminent source of energy, we will be painfully vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the global oil market, wherever problems may arise.

Only by embracing forms of energy immune to international disruption and capable of promoting investment at home can the foundations be laid for future economic progress. Of course, this is easy enough to write, but with Washington in the grip of utter corruption, criminality at the TOP and near-total political paralysis, it appears that continuing American decline, possibly of a precipitous sort, could be in the cards.

And don't think that China will get away scot-free either. If it doesn't quickly embrace the new energy technologies, the environmental costs of its excessive reliance on coal will, sooner or later, cripple its development as well. Unlike Washington, however, the Chinese leadership not only recognizes this, but is acting on it by making colossal investments in green energy technologies.

If China succeeds in dominating this field - as has already begun to happen - it could leave the United States in the dust when it comes to economic growth. Ditching oil for the new energy technologies should be America's top economic priority, but if you're in a betting mood, you probably shouldn't put your money on Washington....as usual...

Massive New Radiation Releases Possible from Fukushima-Daiichi …

2011-09-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

Massive New Radiation Releases Possible from Fukushima-Daiichi …

Governments Underreported Severity of Fukushima...

As noted , the Japanese and U.S. governments have continually under-reported the severity of the nuclear crisis at Fukushima.
The Wall Street Journal points out:

The Japanese government initially underestimated radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, in part because of untimely rain, and so exposed people unnecessarily, a report released this week by a government research institute says.

PhysOrg writes:

The amount of radiation released during the Fukushima nuclear disaster was so great that the level of atmospheric radioactive aerosols in Washington state was 10,000 to 100,000 times greater than normal levels in the week following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that triggered the disaster.
***
[A] study [by University of Texas engineering professor Steven Biegalski and researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory] reports that more radioxenon was released from the Fukushima facilities than in the 1979 meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania and in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine.
Biegalski said the reason for the large release in Fukushima, when compared to the others, is that there were three nuclear reactors at the Japan facilities rather than just one.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen notes:

New TEPCO data measured on August 19 & 20 shows severe damage to the spent fuel in Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 2, and 3…. This TEPCO data clearly contradicts and refutes the July assertion by the NRC the Fukushima Daiichi spent fuel pools were not damaged in this tragic accident.

There are also several unconfirmed reports that the Japanese government is trying to keep people from buying geiger counters to measure radiation.

New, Large Radiation Releases Are Possible

Mainichi Dailly News notes:

As a radiation meteorology and nuclear safety expert at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, Hiroaki Koide [says]:
The nuclear disaster is ongoing.
***
At present, I believe that there is a possibility that massive amounts of radioactive materials will be released into the environment again.
At the No. 1 reactor, there’s a chance that melted fuel has burned through the bottom of the pressure vessel, the containment vessel and the floor of the reactor building, and has sunk into the ground. From there, radioactive materials may be seeping into the ocean and groundwater.
***
The government and plant operator TEPCO are trumpeting the operation of the circulation cooling system, as if it marks a successful resolution to the disaster. However, radiation continues to leak from the reactors. The longer the circulation cooling system keeps running, the more radioactive waste it will accumulate. It isn’t really leading us in the direction we need to go.
It’s doubtful that there’s even a need to keep pouring water into the No.1 reactor, where nuclear fuel is suspected to have burned through the pressure vessel. Meanwhile, it is necessary to keep cooling the No. 2 and 3 reactors, which are believed to still contain some fuel, but the cooling system itself is unstable. If the fuel were to become overheated again and melt, coming into contact with water and trigger a steam explosion, more radioactive materials will be released.
***
We are now head to head with a situation that mankind has never faced before.

Mainichi also reports:

The Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) and residents of the zone between 20 and 30 kilometers from the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant held an emergency evacuation drill on Sept. 12 … in preparation for any further large-scale emission of radioactive materials from the plant.
***
The scenario for the drill presupposed further meltdown of the Fukushima plant’s No. 3 reactor core, and a local accumulation of radioactive materials emitting 20 millisieverts of radiation within the next four days. …

And nuclear expert Paul Gunter says that we face a “China Syndrome”, where the fuel from the reactor cores at Fukushima have melted through the container vessels, into the ground, and are hitting groundwater and creating highly-radioactive steam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hFLipZWlpOs

Governments "Lied" About Meltdowns and Radiation, Radioactive Dust From Japan

2011-06-24T03:55:00.000-07:00

Governments "Lied" About Meltdowns and Radiation, Radioactive Dust From Japan Hit North America Days After Disaster ...

Fukushima Spews, Los Alamos Burns, Vermont Rages & We Almost Lost Nebraska

Humankind is now threatened by the simultaneous implosion, explosion, incineration, courtroom contempt and drowning of its most lethal industry.

We know only two things for certain: worse is yet to come, and those in charge are lying about it—at least to the extent of what they actually know, which is nowhere near enough.....

Mainichi Daily reports today:

Radioactive materials spewed out from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant reached North America soon after the meltdown and were carried all the way to Europe, according to a simulation by university researchers.
The computer simulation by researchers at Kyushu University and the University of Tokyo, among other institutions, calculated dispersal of radioactive dust from the Fukushima plant beginning at 9 p.m. on March 14, when radiation levels around the plant spiked.
The team found that radioactive dust was likely caught by the jet stream and carried across the Pacific Ocean, its concentration dropping as it spread. According to the computer model, radioactive materials at a concentration just one-one hundred millionth of that found around the Fukushima plant hit the west coast of North America three days later, and reached the skies over much of Europe about a week later.
According to the research team, updrafts in a low-pressure system passing over the disaster-stricken Tohoku region on March 14-15 carried some of the radioactive dust that had collected about 1.5 kilometers above the plant to an altitude of about 5 kilometers. The jet stream then caught the dust and diffused it over the Pacific Ocean and beyond.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen notes that Seattle residents breathed in an average of 5 "hot particles" a day in April:

Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo. (No, the levels of radiation are not safe.)
I also have repeatedly said that Tepco, the Japanese government and governments around the world covered up the extent of the Fukushima crisis.
Now even the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Meteorological Organization are complaining that they were unable to obtain necessary information from Japan about Fukushima, which led to difficulties projecting how radioactive materials would spread around world.

However, this is somewhat disingenuous given that the IAEA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission knew within weeks that there had been meltdowns.

Indeed, as the prestigious scientific journal Nature notes:

Shortly after a massive tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 11 March, an unmanned monitoring station on the outskirts of Takasaki, Japan, logged a rise in radiation levels. Within 72 hours, scientists had analysed samples taken from the air and transmitted their analysis to Vienna, Austria — the headquarters of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), an international body set up to monitor nuclear weapons tests.
It was just the start of a flood of data collected about the accident by the CTBTO's global network of 63 radiation monitoring stations. In the following weeks, the data were shared with governments around the world, but not with academics or the public.

The attempted cover up of the severity of the Fukushima disaster is nothing new. Governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for 50 years, and the basic design for nuclear reactors was not chosen for safety, but because it worked on Navy submarines ... and produced plutonium for the military.

Arnie Gundersen has said that Fukushima is the worst industrial accident in history, and has 20 times more radiation than Chernobyl.

Well-known physicist Michio Kaku just confirmed all of the above in a CNN interview:

In the last two weeks, everything we knew about that accident has been turned upside down. We were told three partial melt downs, don’t worry about it. Now we know it was 100 percent core melt in all three reactors. Radiation minimal that was released. Now we know it was comparable to radiation at Chernobyl. ***
We knew it was much more severe than they were saying, because radiation was coming out left and right. So in other words, they lied to us.
***

In New York City, you can actually see it in the milk. You can actually see it has iodine, 131, actually spiked a little bit in our milk in New York City, but it is very small.

***

Realize Chernobyl was one core’s worth radiation causing a $200 billion accident and it is still on- going. Here we have 20 cores worth of radiation. Three totally melted, one damaged and the [rest in] spent fuel pumps, 20 cores worth of highly radioactive materials.

They know that they will not allow clean ups that cost too much and that they will lose their nuclear bombs if the public realize how stupid and ignorant they are.

A world governed by stupid greedy thieves yet they ban Comments and other manifestations that explicitly call for violence against them, using such crooked devices as the Patriot act.....

Costs rise in 'worst industrial disaster'

The day after the disastrous level-nine earthquake that triggered the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear crisis, March 12, an Israeli expert on air quality and poisoning, Professor Menachem Luria, told Israeli Channel 2: "From what we can gather, this disaster is even more dangerous than Chernobyl."

At the time, his was a minority opinion in the scientific community; very few believed that a nuclear accident as bad as the 1986 meltdown in Ukraine would occur again. "I think that's basically impossible," said James Stubbins, an expert at the University of Illinois, and many others agreed.

Yet, as we are now slowly coming to realize, Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl. In a revealing recent feature article published by al-Jazeera, Dahr Jamail conveys the comments of Arnold Gundersen, a senior former nuclear industry executive in the United States.

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Gundersen asserts. "We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl ... The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometers being found 60 to 70 kilometers away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up." [1]

The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the operator of the crippled plant, now grudgingly acknowledge that their timeline for bringing the situation under control, by the end of the year, "may be" unrealistic. They also acknowledge that Fukushima has "probably" released more radiation than Chernobyl. Both have come under strong criticism in the past for withholding information and releasing overly optimistic estimates.

Yet even scientists working at the plant apparently have trouble comprehending the severity of the crisis. Last week, they attempted to install a filtration system to decontaminate and recycle the vast amounts of highly radioactive water accumulated as a result of the continuous efforts to cool the reactors. Fukushima is running dangerously low on storage capacities for the used water. However, the system jammed after just five hours of operation.

"The company said that the sprawling system, which is designed to siphon oil, radioactive materials and salt from the water used to cool the reactors, was shut down because of readings that indicated one of the filters had filled up with radioactive cesium," The New York Times writes. "The rapid depletion of a filter that was supposed to have lasted several weeks suggested the presence of far greater radioactive material than anticipated." [2]

According to another New York Times report, the Japanese government was initially in complete disarray over the crisis, issuing contradictory orders and finding itself unable to make use of available resources. Coordination with Tepco, which was in a state of panic itself, faltered. The plant manager likely prevented a greater calamity by disobeying an order to stop using sea water to cool the reactors.

"We found ourselves in a downward spiral, which hurt relations with the United States," a close aide to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan told The New York Times. "We lost credibility with America, and Tepco lost credibility with us." [3]

Reportedly, American pressure for more information and concerted action eventually helped jerk the Japanese authorities from their shock. This narrative carries the seeds of another narrative which most of us would very much like to believe: a story of international cooperation and the coming together of the world's finest technological achievements to combat a natural disaster.

Yet American officials were also caught unprepared. Most continue to deny outright that the radioactive pollution will have a palpable effect on the United States. Recent reports, however, indicate that infant mortality rates in eight major cities in the northwestern United States, where the fallout was greatest, jumped 35% in the four weeks following the accident. This is consistent with the biological effects of radiation. [4]

Previous reports have indicated the presence of radioactive particles in rainwater as far east as Massachusetts, and in milk and other products throughout the country. The American authorities, as indeed most authorities in the world, appear to be in denial. Many important reports continue to be classified, and there is a sense that governments are lying to their people for lack of a better response.

In all likelihood, the scope of the disaster continues to evade us. There is little doubt that "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind" will force us to learn painful lessons, and that we are only just beginning to grapple with its meaning.

Some of the consequences are fairly mundane, if hard to pinpoint very precisely yet, in that they are economic and technical. The nuclear industry will be doing some major soul-searching, and seems set for a period of decline; numerous countries are already reconsidering their reliance on nuclear plants. The global economy will face reshuffles, as will the global energy market.

It has the potential, however, to go much deeper than that, shaking the very foundations of our sense of collective security. Certainly if some of the worst-case predictions materialize, and a sizeable part of Japan turns into a nuclear desert, we'll face urgent questions about where we are heading as a species; this may happen even in a more optimistic scenario.

It is possible, for example, that people's trust in the state system will be shaken, and on many levels. This is not to say that the predominant current form of political and social organization will disappear, at least in the near future. But it has been under stress for quite some time now, and this disaster seems capable of bringing the existing stresses into public attention; so far they have been mostly confined to academic discourse.

A few leading anthropologists and political theorists have concluded that the current state system (whose origins arguably lie in the distant 1648 when the treaty of Westphalia was signed) is obsolete, and that it is incapable of adjusting to the ever more fluid borders and rapid rates of communication that come with globalization. Their argument is that new types of organizations, some criminal while others representing legitimate economic, political, and other interests, will rise up to challenge the national state; we have started to see some of this in the proliferation of multinational corporations, international political organizations, and international crime networks of the last decades.

But while these former developments draw on the positive aspects of globalization - the availability of new resources to which new types of structures are better adapted - there is also a darker side. It is visible in Fukushima. The new possibilities have led to the manufacture of technology that is too powerful to control; its effects cannot be confined to national borders - and what better example than Japan of the fact that, to paraphrase John Donne, no society is an island nowadays.

Add to this that increased global interdependence comes with increased global vulnerability to crises in distant parts of the world, and we have a situation where our sense of security is not guaranteed any more.

The concept of the state, in a sense, offers a counter-balance to all these powerful and often blind forces, a regulatory mechanism that we like to believe works well and in the public interest.

This is part of why the scale of the Fukushima disaster is so hard to grasp, both for experts and for lay people. In the face of the increased vulnerability of modern societies, we desperately need something that gives us a sense of security. What better safeguards than progress, technology, and order, exemplified by the spectacular ability of nation states, separately and in concert, to mobilize unprecedented resources to achieve an urgent goal? And where a more safe expectation for all these forces to produce the desired effect than in Japan, one of the top industrialized world economies and a paradigm of social cohesion and discipline?

In many ways, Fukushima is the perfect paradigm for the failure of our source of security at its finest. The confusion and panic of the government and industry officials in the wake of the disaster should humble us all. So should our face to face encounter with our limitations, and the contrast with how we like to imagine ourselves.

In some of our most popular science-fiction narratives, the best astronauts of the leading world powers destroy asteroids that threaten the Earth with nuclear weapons (Armageddon grossed over half a billion dollars, attesting to our eagerness to consume the images; suffice it to mention that early on in the Fukushima crisis, some observers suggested nuking the reactors). [5] Yet in reality, we can't deal with a sizeable pile of radioactive waste, even long after the chain reaction has stopped.

Gundersen's conclusions speak loudly: "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

So do those of Dr Sawada, another scientist interviewed by Dahr Jamail: "Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations."

Fukushima is worse than what we are being told. There is no doubt about that. How bad exactly it is may not become clear for years. Debates about its meaning are likely to stretch much longer. The crisis brings some fundamental questions about our system of social organization to the fore, and the answers may influence what the world looks like in the future.....

FUKUSHIMA-DAIISHI Cover-ups unravel......

The Japanese government, other governments and nuclear companies have covered up the extent of the Fukushima crisis.
Asia Pacific Journal reports:

Japan’s leading business journal Toyo Keizai has published an article by Hokkaido Cancer Center director Nishio Masamichi, a radiation treatment specialist.

***

Nishio originally called for “calm” in the days after the accident. Now, he argues, that as the gravity of the situation at the plant has become more clear, the specter of long-term radiation exposure must be reckoned with.

***

Former Minister for Internal Affairs Haraguchi Kazuhiro has alleged that radiation monitoring station data was actually three decimal places greater than the numbers released to the public. If this is true, it constitutes a “national crime”, in Nishio’s words.

The Atlantic points out:

The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious. Katsunobu Onda, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire ... who sounded the alarm about the firm in his 2007 book explains it this way: “If TEPCO and the government of Japan admit an earthquake can do direct damage to the reactor, this raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systematic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping.”

***

Oddly enough, while TEPCO later insisted that the cause of the meltdown was the tsunami knocking out emergency power systems, at the 7:47 p.m. TEPCO press conference the same day, the spokesman in response to questions from the press about the cooling systems stated that the emergency water circulation equipment and reactor core isolation time cooling systems would work even without electricity.

***

On May 15, TEPCO went some way toward admitting at least some of these claims in a report called “Reactor Core Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit One.” The report said there might have been pre-tsunami damage to key facilities including pipes. “This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart,” said Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear waste consultant. “It raises fundamental questions on all reactors in high seismic risk areas.”

***

Eyewitness testimony and TEPCO’S own data indicates that the damage [done to the plant by the quake] was significant. All of this despite the fact that shaking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s approved design specifications.

The Wall Street Journal writes:

A former nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan blasted the government’s continuing handling of the crisis, and predicted further revelations of radiation threats to the public in the coming months.

In his first media interview since resigning his post in protest in April, Toshiso Kosako, one of the country’s leading experts on radiation safety, said Mr. Kan’s government has been slow to test for possible dangers in the sea and to fish and has understated certain radiation dangers to minimize what it will have to spend to clean up contamination.

And while there have been scattered reports already of food contamination—of tea leaves and spinach, for example—Mr. Kosako said there will be broader, more disturbing discoveries later this year, especially as rice, Japan’s staple, is harvested.

“Come the harvest season in the fall, there will be a chaos,” Mr. Kosako said. “Among the rice harvested, there will certainly be some radiation contamination—though I don’t know at what levels—setting off a scandal. If people stop buying rice from Tohoku, . . . we’ll have a tricky problem.”

British Shenanigans

It's not just the Japanese. As the Guardian notes:

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse...

Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power.

***

The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who sits on the Commons environmental audit committee, condemned the extent of co-ordination between the government and nuclear companies that the emails appear to reveal.

***

The official suggested that if companies sent in their comments, they could be incorporated into briefs to ministers and government statements. "We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public.

***

The office for nuclear development invited companies to attend a meeting at the NIA's headquarters in London. The aim was "to discuss a joint communications and engagement strategy aimed at ensuring we maintain confidence among the British public on the safety of nuclear power stations and nuclear new-build policy in light of recent events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant".

Other documents released by the government's safety watchdog, the office for nuclear regulation, reveal that the text of an announcement on 5 April about the impact of Fukushima on the new nuclear programme was privately cleared with nuclear industry representatives at a meeting the previous week. According to one former regulator, who preferred not to be named, the degree of collusion was "truly shocking".

The Guardian reports in a second article:

The release of 80 emails showing that in the days after the Fukushima accident not one but two government departments were working with nuclear companies to spin one of the biggest industrial catastrophes of the last 50 years, even as people were dying and a vast area was being made uninhabitable, is shocking.

***

What the emails shows is a weak government, captured by a powerful industry colluding to at least misinform and very probably lie to the public and the media.

***

To argue that the radiation was being released deliberately and was “all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation” is Orwellian.

And - as the Guardian notes in a third article - the collusion between the British government and nuclear companies is leading to political fallout:

“This deliberate and (sadly) very effective attempt to ‘calm’ the reporting of the true story of Fukushima is a terrible betrayal of liberal values. In my view it is not acceptable that a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister presides over a department deeply involved in a blatant conspiracy designed to manipulate the truth in order to protect corporate interests”. -Andy Myles, Liberal Democrat party’s former chief executive in Scotland

“These emails corroborate my own impression that there has been a strange silence in the UK following the Fukushima disaster … in the UK, new nuclear sites have been announced before the results of the Europe-wide review of nuclear safety has been completed. Today’s news strengthens the case for the government to halt new nuclear plans until an independent and transparent review has been conducted.” -Fiona Hall, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European parliament....

"Global cataclysms" not conspiracy theory any longer....

2011-06-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

June 15, 2011 -- "Global cataclysms" not conspiracy theory any longer....
In a June 13 article in The Guardian of the UK, reporter John Vidal writes that the weather extremes our planet is now experiencing constitute a "new normal."

We have been citing planetary anomalies for a few years and now the so-called "main stream" media is beginning to take notice. Vidal calls the phenomenon "global weirding." While Vidal does not add the increase in quakes and volcanic eruptions plaguing the Earth, the suggestion that something is radically wrong is being noticed.

Although U.S. government scientists and their stenographers in the media continue to call the spate of quakes, volcanoes, and wild weather "normal," it is becoming clear that our planet is being affected by forces that have little to do with human activity. Whether the planet is flipping its axis prior to the cataclysmic event foretold by the ancient Mayan calendar is still any one's guess, but what is clear is that Earth-changing events are now affecting politics, economics, the environment, and standards of living around the planet.

Volcanic ash is even affecting the ability of U.S. leaders to travel abroad. Recently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was forced to cut off a visit to Ethiopia after the Nabro volcano in Eritrea closed air routes to and from the Horn of Africa. Just last month, President Obama was forced to cut off his trip to Ireland when Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano forced the closure of air routes in northern Europe. And last November, Obama was forced to cut short his visit to Jakarta after volcanic ash imperiled the planned air route for Air Force One.

Ash from Chile's Puyehue volcano, which is blanketing southern South America, has forced Uruguay's President Jose Mujica a visit to Argentina. Airports are closed throughout Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, contributing to travel chaos, such as that previously experienced in Europe when an eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano resulted in cancellations of European and transatlantic flights, stranding thousands of travelers at airports. Obama was forced to cancel his attendance at the Lech Kaczynski in April 2010 when ash from Eyjafjallajökull prevented Air Force One from crossing the Atlantic.

The fact remains that never in recent history has the Earth witnessed such a degree of disruption from repeated natural disasters and drastic earth changing events. Japan's economy, the world's third largest, was devastated as a result of the super-quake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear core meltdown. Haiti is still in economic paralysis from its devastating quake and New Zealand continues to be hit by a series of destructive quakes. Extreme weather in the United States and Australia has partially destroyed entire towns.

Tornadoes in the southern states of the U.S. and Missouri have devastated small businesses, contributing to pre-existing high unemployment in the states most affected by the extreme weather. The Gulf Coast of the United States is still recovering from the twin disasters of hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil blowout.

Based on The Guardian's prediction about the future of weather patterns on our planet, we should all prepare ourselves for the utter continuation of "disaster capitalism" policies that see wealthy investors thrive on natural disasters and the man-made calamities that stem from them....

COLLAPSE - IT'S COMING! http://rense.com/general94/collapse.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzxVhLcCH8w

When it comes to catastrophic events, the Uniformitarian-dominated sciences permit only consideration of those which may have happened on a timescale of millions of years, like the Cretaceous - Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs. To admit that catastrophic impact events occur on the timescale of human history would mean surrendering the comfortable notion we live in a safe and stable world that has evolved in splendid isolation, shielded from cosmic intervention. Few people, even scientists, are prepared to examine the overwhelming data indicating the reality of cyclic catastrophism. The elite of our world have gone to enormous lengths to prevent the masses from knowing this, so it's not difficult to see how today's Uniformitarianist approach serves a lot of interests.

Tomorrow is a full moon which tends to bring out quakes, also a lunar eclipse, also a round of CMEs fired from the sun will reach earth. Might be fireworks on some fault line or volcano again. We just had a 2.9 quake in Seattle minutes ago. California is up in quakes for several days again. Other regions are pretty dramatic - look over the last few days. LINK Mt. St. Helens is unhappy - realtime seismic strip here. LINK. Fresh quakes around Yellowstone, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3Eo2YTQUr8

Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through Base of Fukushima-Daichii Plant, 'Far Worse than a Core Meltdown' ...

2011-06-10T12:11:00.000-07:00

It's Official: "Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through Base of Fukushima Plant" ... “The Findings of the Report, Which has Been Given to the International Atomic Energy Agency ... Described a 'Melt-Through' as Being 'Far Worse than a Core Meltdown' and 'The Worst Possibility In a Nuclear Accident'"

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/06/07/japan-admits-worse-meltdown-nuclear-meltthrough-3-reactors-23671/

The Telegraph reports today:

The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.
The findings of the report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a "melt-through" as being "far worse than a core meltdown" and "the worst possibility in a nuclear accident."
***
The pressure vessel of the No. 1 reactor is now believed to have suffered damage just five hours after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contrary to an estimation released by Tepco, which estimated the failure at 15 hours later.
Melt-downs of the fuel in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors followed over the following days with the molten fuel collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessels before burning through and into the external steel containment vessels.
***
"The recovery effort at the plant is likely to be more difficult as they will not be able to use their previous plan to contain the fuel," Yoshiaki Oka, a professor of nuclear science at Tokyo's Waseda University told The Daily Telegraph.
"So it may take longer and be more difficult, but it is something they have to do.

Other portions of the Telegraph article underplay the severity of the crisis, such as:

The fuel appears to be stable at present as it is being cooled by water pumped into the vessels, although it will complicate the emergency recovery plan put forward by the government.
***
But we now know that this happened at the very beginning of the accident, so I see no particular additional affects on human health, he said.

Alexander Higgins notes:

The Telegraph report once again echoes statement from TEPCO that the fuel at the plant is now being cooled and that plant is stable. However, we have heard the same exact statements from TEPCO day after day for almost three months now. We heard it when there was no meltdown. and an were assured the rods were stable so the risk of meltdown was little to none. The media printed the statements.
When we were told that there was only a partial nuclear meltdown under way and there is no comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl. Again, TEPCO and the media told use there was no danger because the fuel rods were stable and being cooled.
Then were found out this was in fact a level 7 incident on par with Chernobyl and were reassured the plant and fuel rods were stable.
Then they reveal a full meltdown occurred at 3 reactors, and the media again reported the fuel rods were stable and being cooled.
Now even with news that the nuclear lava inside the reactor has melted through the base of 3 reactors they once again print the same lies again that the cool rods are being effectively cooled and are in stable condition? Should we believe them this time after 3 months of lies?
The media is also still reporting that there is no risk to human health in Japan. What a joke. Does anyone seriously believe these lies?

Indeed, as NHK reported Saturday:

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says steam was observed coming out of the floor of the No.1 reactor building, and extremely high radiation was detected in the vicinity.

***

TEPCO said it found that steam was rising from a crevice in the floor, and that extremely high radiation of 3,000 to 4,000 millisieverts per hour was measured around the area. The radiation is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant.

TEPCO says the steam is likely coming from water at a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius that has accumulated in the basement of the reactor building.

And Japan Times reports today:

The government should consider evacuating children and pregnant women from a wider area around the Fukushima No. 1 power plant because radiation levels remain high even outside the 20-km no-go zone, Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, said Thursday in Tokyo.

Naidoo's team of radiology experts found hot spots that had a maximum hourly reading of 45 microsieverts of radiation alongside a school zone.

***

During the news conference, Jan Beranek, an expert on radiology from Greenpeace International who joined Naidoo's trip to Fukushima, recommended that the government widen the evacuation zone to at least 60 or 70 km from the power plant.

He said there were parks and public spaces where the level of radiation activity hit 9 microsieverts per hour.

Even some nursery schools that have already undergone a decontamination process had a relatively high reading of 0.5 microsievert per hour, he said. That would translate into an annual exposure of 5 millisieverts, which was the evacuation threshold for Chernobyl, Beranek said.

The government recommends a maximum intake of 1 millisievert a year during normal times, but raises that to 20 millisieverts in times of a nuclear accident.

Beranek recommended that people in Fukushima residing in areas with high levels of radiation wear masks and remain inside their homes.

Radiation from some kinds of particles "is not something that goes away in weeks or months," he said, explaining that some chemical elements can be absorbed into organs and bones.

While expressing concern that the level of decontamination "hasn't been adequate" in Fukushima, Naidoo also said he fears that people there haven't received sufficient information from the central government.

Pointing out that many children living near areas with high levels of radiation are playing outdoors without proper masks, he criticized the government for being "too slow" in explaining the risks of exposure....

Ten reasons for Japan's revolving door...

2011-06-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

Ten reasons for Japan's revolving door...By Kosuke Takahashi

http://mikaobara.ideasoneurope.eu/2010/08/27/japan%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Crevolving-door%E2%80%9D-hello-mr%E2%80%A6whoever/

TOKYO - Going by the revolving door of prime ministers who keep resigning after very short tenures, the top job in Japan should be the world's hardest post.

A year since he took office, Naoto Kan has been forced to pledge to step down once the nation has recovered from the worst of a triple whammy: earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown.

Kan will be the fifth prime minister in five years, should he quit by late September. Why does Japan politics play musical chairs with a new prime minister every year? Is there any systemic problem with Japan politics? Or has the nation just had poor leaders?

Many wonder.

Here are 10 reasons for the revolving door.

1. Economic doldrums
Poorer economies weaken already vulnerable governments anytime and anywhere. This was especially true during Japan's post-bubble "lost decades" since early 1990s. The country headed into a downward deflationary spiral, which is far worse than an inflation spiral because there is no way to break the flight from borrowing and spending until it bottoms out and consumers begin to consume again.

With the national economy and budget shrinking, Japanese politicians became more and more inward-looking and began to engage in internal fighting. They always get in each other's way. Japan has had 14 prime ministers in the past 20 years of post-bubble downturn.

2. Very short primary election campaigns with no fierce battles
The Japanese political system is unique in that, unlike the United States, the party that gains a majority of seats in a general election produces the next prime minister under a parliamentary cabinet system. Thus, the majority party's presidential election is quite significant, as the outcome of that race will essentially decide Japan's next leader.

But the election time of the party presidential race tends to be very short. For example, following the former prime minister Yukio Hatoyama's resignation announcement on June 2, 2010, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had just a two-day election campaign for presidency before selecting Kan as the next party leader on June 4. This is in contrast to the US presidential campaign, which spans around one year including primary elections.

Without enough election time, voters cannot sort out any good politician from multi-candidates. Candidates also cannot be tempered by trials and tribulations such as money scandals.

3. The twisted Diet
In recent years, many prime ministers such as Yasuo Fukuda resigned because of a political deadlock called "the twisted Diet (parliament)", where the ruling party has a majority of seats in the House of Representatives (lower chamber) while opposition parties maintain a majority of parliamentary seats in the House of Councilors (upper chamber).

This makes it almost impossible for any prime minister to get key bills through. Unlike the US, Japanese political parties' headquarters order their lawmakers on whether to support or vote against bills. Lawmakers who don't follow their party's decision are punished. Cross-party voting is not permitted.

Japanese politicians act in a group, not as individuals. They form political factions and usually don't vote on the basis of personal convictions.

4. No lawmaking in the Diet
The Japanese constitution says the Diet is the only legislative authority and the cabinet is a policy-implementation organization. But in reality, Japanese lawmakers usually do not make laws. Central government bureaucrats make laws.

The misnomer is heightened by the sense that all lawmakers do is criticize the cabinet, which is evident in current attacks on the Kan administration by opposition parties and some ruling Diet members. This has sunk Japanese politics to new depths.

5. Hereditary politicians
Japanese political cycles are full of hereditary politicians. In one account, nearly 20% of lower house members are hereditary politicians, whose family members used to be national lawmakers. This hereditary ratio is especially high in the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Nearly 40% of LDP members are hereditary politicians.

This well-entrenched hereditary system works negatively, especially at the time of disaster. Preppy Japanese politicians fail to understand the public mindset and have little grasp of the tasks that disaster victims at evacuation centers most expect the government to fulfill.

Public perceptions that their politicians spinelessly relinquish the reins of government when times get tough have provoked anger. Ordinary Japanese cannot abandon their jobs and are forced to tighten their belts.

6. No civic journalism
Japanese media have exacerbated domestic problems by concentrating on what central ministries and agencies announce passively. Rather than going out into the town and pouring into the streets, many reporters heavily plump onto seats and sofas at the in-famous press club, or Kisha club in Japanese.

Central ministries and agencies, as well as local cities, prefectural polices and economic organizations, provide plenty of space for the benefits of those exclusive media clubs, along with facilities such as phone and faxes. This system causes Tokyo-oriented reporting and authority-focused journalism, rather than "man-on-the-street" journalism.

Moreover, control of the national daily newspapers, commercial television and most radio stations is in the hands of several Japanese media conglomerates. With media power so concentrated and strong, politicians who are not liked by reporters find it hard to get the air time needed to raise their popularity among voters.

7. US pressure
Japanese premiers of the post-World War II period with long tenures were those who preserved the golden era of US-Japan relations. Among them were Yasuhiro Nakasone, who was best known for his strong relationship with president Ronald Reagan, popularly called the "Ron-Yasu" friendship, and Junichiro Koizumi, who nurtured a close personal accord with George W Bush.

In sharp contrast, the late prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, who signed the Japan-China joint communique and achieved the normalization of diplomatic relations with China in 1972, was kicked out of office because of the so-called Lockheed bribery scandal. Japanese political analysts believe many allegations of bribery over Lockheed originated from the US administration, because Tanaka put relations with China ahead of the US-Japan alliance.

Most recently, former prime minister Yukio Hatoyama, who tried to move the controversial US Futenma Marine air base from Okinawa prefecture and campaigned for an East Asia community involving China, had a tenure of less than nine months.

8. National treasuries by bureaucrats
The WikiLeaks documents have shown high-ranking officials in Japan's foreign and defense ministries were very critical of the ruling DPJ-led administration, which originally called for a more equal partnership with the US.

A WikiLeaks document revealed the views of Akitaka Saiki, director general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of the Foreign Ministry at the time:

Saiki theorized that the DPJ, as an inexperienced ruling party, felt the need to project an image of power and confidence by showing it had Japan's powerful bureaucrats under control and was in charge of a new and bold foreign policy that challenged the US. Saiki called this way of thinking "stupid" and said "they will learn".

Moreover, sentiments of the then-Defense Ministry's defense policy bureau director general Nobushige Takamizawa were reported as suggesting, "The US delegation ought not to take [Akihisa] Nagashima's assessment of current realignment plans at face value" and that Takamizawa had "cautioned against premature demonstration of flexibility in adjusting the realignment package to be more palatable to the DPJ Government."

Nagashima was then vice minister of defense. Takamizawa spoke to a US delegation in a lunch meeting when Nagashima was absent.

Japanese voters last August ended the one-party domination of the LDP by giving a massive victory to the DPJ. Should national bureaucrats not follow the orders of politicians, who were chosen by historical national elections? In Washington, it is said around 3,000 bureaucrats are moved from office once voters eject a government. In Tokyo, bureaucrats stay on-site, where they neutralize nationally elected politicians.

9. The nail that sticks out gets banged down
Japanese society cherishes groupism and tends to beat those who break from traditional social rules. This social norm works negatively on such politicians as Ichiro Ozawa, who boldly try to address national problems through strong-arm tactics and risk-taking to confront and rein in the bloated bureaucracy. More than a few political analysts, along with the mainstream mass media, say that in the arrest of his aides over political donations, Ozawa is the real target.

10. Japanese people quick to catch a trend
Japanese people are prone to follow the trend of the times and to try to make sure "I'm one of the guys". Thus, once a political and economic climate changes, they tend to follow the new fashion by throwing out the old. The popularity of politicians is also usually short-lived.

Political leaders of true merit are difficult to find at any time and anywhere. This is a universal, not Japanese problem. However, as the hard times roll in Japan anyone seeking the top job needs iron-clad political mettle, extra special spiritual strength and unwavering guts.

Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. His twitter is @TakahashiKosuke

Massive Solar blast from Sun speeds toward Earth.

2011-06-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

Earth's magnetic shield to be dealt "glancing blow."

http://i.bnet.com/blogs/32955_web.jpg

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/516921main_x2flare.gif

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXzYpfLFFes&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vT7H4bakm8Y

The largest solar flare in 4 years today. It might knock out some power grids.

If we don't harden the grids and nuclear power plants against electromagnetic forces, a solar flare could eventually cause widespread nuclear disasters which make Fukushima look tame....

The Sun unleashed a medium-sized solar flare on June 7 which will hit Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th or June 9th, NASA said late Tuesday.

"The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface," it said in a statement.

NASA said the coronal mass ejection (CME) should deliver a "glancing blow" to Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th or June 9th.
High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed the flare's peak at 1:41a.m. ET (0641 UT). SDO recorded these images in extreme ultraviolet light that show a very large eruption of cool gas.
Scientists say it is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material -- at temperatures less than 80,000 K.

When viewed in Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) coronagraphs, the event shows bright plasma and high-energy particles roaring from the Sun. This not-squarely Earth-directed CME is moving at 1400 km/s according to NASA models.
The minor radiation storm and a spectacular CME was observed from sunspot complex 1226-1227.

Japan Finally Admits TOTAL Meltdown at 3 Nuclear Reactors, DOUBLES Estimate of Radiation

2011-06-07T03:04:00.000-07:00

Japan Finally Admits TOTAL Meltdown at 3 Nuclear Reactors Within Hours of Earthquake ... And More Than DOUBLES Estimate of Radiation Released After Accident....

For months, Tepco and Japanese officials refused to admit that there had been any meltdowns at Fukushima.
Then they said there were meltdowns at reactors 1, 2 and 3 ... but they might have only been partial meltdowns.
Finally, today, they admitted the obvious: there were total meltdowns at all 3 reactors. As CNN reports:

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.
The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
***
Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.
***
But Tokyo Electric [on May 24th] released a second possible scenario for reactors 2 and 3, one that estimated a full meltdown did not occur. In that scenario, the company estimated the fuel rods may have broken but may not have completely melted.
***
Temperature data showed the two reactors had cooled substantially in the more than two months since the incident, Tokyo Electric said in May.
***
Tokyo Electric avoided using the term "meltdown," and says it was keeping the remnants of the core cool. But U.S. experts interviewed by CNN after the company's announcement in May said that while it may have been containing the situation, the damage had already been done.
"On the basis of what they showed, if there's not fuel left in the core, I don't know what it is other than a complete meltdown," said Gary Was, a University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor and CNN consultant. And given the damage reported at the other units, "It's hard to imagine the scenarios can differ that much for those reactors."

As the Japan Times reports today, the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has "more than doubled its estimate of the radioactive material ejected into the air in the early days of the Fukushima nuclear crisis".

Japan Times also notes that plutonium has been found in soil outside of the nuclear complex - about 1.7 kilometers from the front gate of Fukushima. However, the plutonium probably came from the so-called "hydrogen explosions", which hopefully won't happen again. (However, nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen believes that at least some of the explosions were caused by nuclear reactions in the fuel pools.)

While it is tempting to believe that the worst of the crisis is over, some of the reactors are more radioactive than ever, and nuclear chain reactions may still be occurring.

And it's not just the reactors themselves.
Remember that - when the spent fuel rods stored onsite within the reactor buildings are included - the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.

For background, see this.

Fukushima is a constant worry, and will continue to be until they decide how to fix the problem.

2011-06-06T07:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/exclusive-arnie-gundersen-interview-dangers-fukushima-are-worse-and-longer-lived-we-think/58689

The best idea I've heard so far is to set-off a nuke underneath it causing the reactor to slide into the ocean. The water would contain the nuclear material until a submarine could come and carefully remove the radioactive material... I know it sounds insane, but what else can they/we do? Besides plutonium, there are apparently many other isotopes to be worried about according to Lauren Moret and Helen Caldicott, who know more about it than I ever will. Besides Fukushima, the DU from wars since the first Gulf War is accumulating in our atmosphere, and it only takes a tiny nano-particle of DU lodged in your body to destroy your health, and destroy your DNA. Woman in war zones are deciding not to risk getting pregnant after seeing what is coming out of other mothers in their area. Our military people face the same threat to their health, and even Israel has suffered from "blow-back" of DU they used. DU is used instead of tungsten penetrators, but tungsten is highly toxic too - they use tungsten nano-particles in DIME bombs. There are many other toxic substances commonly used during war, like white phosphorous which creates a toxic gas. DU is the most dangerous though.

If you see this - the following link is a good reference about which munitions use DU:

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR407A.html

1943 MANHATTAN PROJECT BLUEPRINT FOR DEPLETED URANIUM

In a declassified memo to General Leslie R. Groves, dated October 30, 1943, three of the top physicists in the Manhattan Project, Dr James B Conant, A H Compton, and H C Urey, made their recommendation, as members of the Subcommittee of the S-1 Executive Committee, on the ‘Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon’:

"As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small … There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty … it will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging."

As a Terrain Contaminant:

"To be used in this manner, the radioactive materials would be spread on the ground either from the air or from the ground if in enemy controlled territory. In order to deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiations … Areas so contaminated by radioactive material would be dangerous until the slow natural decay of the material took place … for average terrain no decontaminating methods are known. No effective protective clothing for personnel seems possible of development. … Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated or food poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from inhalation of dust or smoke."

Internal Exposure:

"… Particles smaller than 1µ [micron] are more likely to be deposited in the alveoli where they will either remain indefinitely or be absorbed into the lymphatic's or blood. … could get into the gastro-intestinal tract from polluted water, or food, or air. … may be absorbed from the lungs or G-I tract into the blood and so distributed throughout the body."

Both the fission products and depleted uranium waste from the Atomic Bomb Project were to be utilized under this plan. The pyrophoric nature of depleted uranium, which causes it to begin to burn at very low temperatures from friction in the gun barrel, made it an ideal radioactive gas weapon then and now. Also it was more available because the amount of depleted uranium produced was much greater than the amount of fission products produced in 1943.

Britain had thoughts of using poisoned gas on Iraq long before 1991:

"I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good... and it would spread a lively terror..." (Winston Churchill commenting on the British use of poison gas against the Iraqis after the First World War).

Imagine for a moment that everywhere was destroyed by a calamity, except for your own community, which somehow survived with only minor damage. How long would it take you to begin talking to your neighbors, and gathering your friends and family, to figure out how you're going to survive? Not long I think. When faced with the problem of managing our own local survival, we would quickly put our difference aside and begin working together creatively. That is what empowerment looks like, and it begins with a shift of consciousness, from The Spectacle, to the local. It is about unplugging from The Matrix, and facing the realities of the world of the real.

You may be here by accident, or you may have booked a place to watch the perfect storm. I'm here to witness the liberation of humanity. The fact is that 'the everywhere' (the global systems) have been destroyed by a calamity (the engineered financial collapse). We may not realize it yet, but 'the real world' (our communities) is where we need to be pursuing our survival.

The herders have corralled us into a corner, where our only remaining path of hope is the path of liberation from the herders. This is your wake up call.

http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/interesting_times.htm

Just prior to the Fukushima quake/tsunami, Japan offered to enrich uranium for Iran. Was the nuclear meltdown revenge for this? Are Nuclear Reactions Still Occurring at Fukushima?

2011-06-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

Was Fukushima Stuxnet Attack?

Just prior to the Fukushima quake/tsunami, Japan offered to enrich uranium for Iran. Was the nuclear meltdown revenge for this?

http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/fukushima.html

.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q3ljfLvHww&feature=player_embedded

You know that Fukushima reactors 1, 2 and 3 all melted down fully within hours of the Japanese earthquake.
You also know that at least some of the subsequent explosions could have been caused by small-scale nuclear reactions called "prompt moderated criticalities".
But you might not know that nuclear reactions may still be ongoing.
Specifically, it is well-known by nuclear scientists that the ratio of iodine 131 to cesium 137 tells a lot about when nuclear reactions have stopped. For example, on May 2nd, University of Tokyo physics professor Tetsuo Matsui published a scientific paper with the following summary:

We calculate the relative abundance of the radioactive isotopes Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 produced by nuclear fission in reactors and compare it with data taken at the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The ratio of radioactivities of these two isotopes can be used to obtain information about when the nuclear reactions terminated.

Technology Review summarizes Professor Matsui's findings as follows:

Nuclear reactors produce radioactive by-products that decay at different rates. One common by-product is iodine-131 which has a half life of about 8 days while another is cesium-137 with a half life of about 30 years.
When a reactor switches off, the iodine decays more quickly so the ratio between these two isotopes changes rapidly over a period of days. That's why measuring this ratio is a good way to work out when the nuclear reactions terminated.
There are some complicating factors, however. The most important of these is that the ratio of iodine-131 and cesium-137 to start with depends on how long the reactor has been operating and so is not constant.
*** Today, Tetsuo Matsui at the University of Tokyo, says the limited data from Fukushima indicates that nuclear chain reactions must have reignited at Fuksuhima up to 12 days after the accident.
Matsui says the evidence comes from measurements of the ratio of cesium-137 and iodine-131 at several points around the facility and in the seawater nearby. He has calculated what the starting ratio must have been by assuming the reactors had been operating for between 7 and 12 months.
***

The data from the drain near reactor 2 and from the cooling pond at reactor 4, where spent fuel rods are stored, indicate that the reactions must have been burning much later. "The data of the water samples from the unit-4 cooling pool and from the sub-drain near the unit-2 reactor show anomaly which may indicate, if they are correct, that some of these ﬁssion products were produced by chain nuclear reactions reignited after the earthquake," he says.
These chain reactions must have occurred a significant time after the accident. "It would be diﬃcult to understand the observed anomaly near the unit-2 reactor without assuming that a signiﬁcant amount of ﬁssion products were produced at least 10 - 15 days after X-day," says Matsui.
So things in reactor 2 must have been extremely dangerous right up to the end of March.

As Time Magazine blogger Eben Harrell pointed out on March 30th:

The IAEA has said that the Fukushima nuclear power plant may have achieved re-criticality. “There is no final assessment,” IAEA nuclear safety director Denis Flory said at a press conference on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg News. “This may happen locally and possibly increase the releases.”

On April 18th, nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen said that iodine 131 readings indicated ongoing nuclear reactions.
Indeed, Gundersen says today:

Unit 3 may not have melted through and that means that some of the fuel certainly is lying on the bottom, but it may not have melted through and some of the fuel may still look like fuel, although it is certainly brittle. And it's possible that when the fuel is in that configuration that you can get a re-criticality. It's also possible in any of the fuel pools, one, two, three, and four pools, that you could get a criticality, as well. So there’s been frequent enough high iodine indications to lead me to believe that either one of the four fuel pools or the Unit 3 reactor is in fact, every once in a while starting itself up and then it gets to a point where it gets so hot that it shuts itself down and it kind of cycles.

Similarly, a Daily Kos writer points out today:

Radiation levels in water inside the silt fence near reactor 2 are high and rising, despite large amounts of dilution. Continued very high levels of Iodine 131 with a half life of 8 days are very hard to explain for a reactor that has been "shut down". Normally Iodine levels would drop several orders of magnitude below cesium activity levels over the sixty day period shown in the graph, but instead they continue to track each other. The level of 10,000 Bq/liter I-131 is very problematic. It is much higher than would be expected for a reactor in cold shut down for 2 1/2 months.

IAEA Knew Within Weeks of Japanese Earthquake that Reactors Had Melted Down ... Public Not Told for a Month and a Half

2011-05-26T00:58:00.000-07:00

.Did the Dimona Dozen murder the Fukushima 50?

As , reactors 1, 2 and 3 all melted down within hours of the Japanese earthquake.

On Monday, Mainchi Daily News provided an important tidbit:

A meltdown occurred at one of the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant three and a half hours after its cooling system started malfunctioning, according to the result of a simulation using "severe accident" analyzing software developed by the Idaho National Laboratory.
Chris Allison [a former manager and technical leader at Idaho National Laboratory], who had actually developed the analysis and simulation software, reported the result to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in late March. It was only May 15 when Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) admitted for the first time that a meltdown had occurred at the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
According to Allison's report obtained by the Mainichi, the simulation was based on basic data on light-water nuclear reactors at the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Mexico that are about the same size as that of the No. 1, 2, and 3 reactors in Fukushima.
According to the simulation, the reactor core started melting about 50 minutes after the emergency core cooling system of the No. 1 reactor stopped functioning and the injection of water into the reactor pressure vessel came to a halt. About an hour and 20 minutes later, the control rod and pipes used to gauge neutrons started melting and falling onto the bottom of the pressure vessel. After about three hours and 20 minutes, most of the melted fuel had piled up on the bottom of the pressure vessel. At the four hour and 20 minute mark, the temperature of the bottom of the pressure vessel had risen to 1,642 degrees Celsius, close to the melting point for the stainless steel lining, probably damaging the pressure vessel.

In other words, the IAEA knew in late March that there was a meltdown. The IAEA informs all of its member states of important nuclear developments.
Government agencies sat on this information, and the world didn't learn the truth until the operator of the stricken reactors itself made the announcement a month and a half later.
This is not entirely surprising given that governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for fifty years to protect the nuclear industry.

H/t: Ex-Skf

Everyone who has any inkling of the nuclear process knew. especially after they saw the video of the explosion, with the roof of the building and the top of the containment vessel falling from the sky.only people who didn't want to know remained in denial. there seems to be a lot of that going around lately....

Two Nuclear Reactors Were Damaged by the Earthquake, BEFORE the Tsunami Hit ... and the Entire Nuclear Reactor Design Is Flawed ....

2011-05-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

Two Nuclear Reactors Were Damaged by the Earthquake, BEFORE the Tsunami Hit ... and the Entire Nuclear Reactor Design Is Flawed ....

Bloomberg reported last week:

A radiation alarm went off at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima nuclear power plant before the tsunami hit on March 11, suggesting that contrary to earlier assumptions the reactors were damaged by the earthquake that spawned the wall of water.
A monitoring post on the perimeter of the plant about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the No. 1 reactor went off at 3:29 p.m., minutes before the station was overwhelmed by the tsunami that knocked out backup power that kept reactor cooling systems running, according to documents supplied by the company. The monitor was set to go off at high levels of radiation, an official said.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen just confirmed that some of the Japanese nuclear reactors were severely damaged even before the tsunami hit.
Specifically, Gundersen reports that the containment vessel at Fukushima 1 started leaking and melting down before the tsunami hit. Similarly, Gundersen notes that the fuel pool at reactor 4 cracked and started leaking after the earthquake and before the water hit.
Remember that Japanese seismologists had warned for years that Japan's reactors were extremely vulnerable to earthquakes, with one top seismologist noting:

It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode.

Gundersen also points out that Florida's nuclear reactors are vulnerable to tidal surges from hurricanes, and California's reactors vulnerable to tidal surges caused by earthquakes.
And he notes that the attempt to release pressure at Fukushima failed 3 out of 3 times: 100% failure rate.

Gundersen notes that this shows that the entire design of these old-fashioned nuclear reactors is a failure.

Finally, Gundersen says - I've repeatedly noted - that conditions are in many ways even more precarious in the U.S. than in Japan.

The Implications of the Fukushima Accident on the World's Operating Reactors from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

TEPCO Admits Cores Damaged at Three Reactors...

2011-05-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

TEPCO Admits Cores Damaged at Three Reactors...

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/0511/Japan-s-Fukushima-crisis-drives-protests-over-world-s-largest-nuclear-plant-in-India

http://www.southasiamail.com/news.php?id=98328

By MITSURU OBE
TOKYO—Substantial damage to the fuel cores at two additional reactors of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex has taken place, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday, further complicating the already daunting task of bringing them to a safe shutdown while avoiding the release of high levels of radioactivity. The revelation followed an acknowledgment on Thursday that a similar meltdown of the core took place at unit No. 1.

Junichi Matsumoto, an official of Tokyo Electric Power Co. listens to questions during a press conference regarding the meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant at the company headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, May 13, 2011.

Workers also found that the No. 1 unit’s reactor building is flooded in the basement, reinforcing the suspicion that the containment vessel is damaged and leaking highly radioactive water.
The revelations are likely to force an overhaul of the six- to nine-month blueprint for bringing the reactors to a safe shutdown stage and end the release of radioactive materials. The original plan, announced in mid-April, was due to be revised May 17.

The operator, known as Tepco, said the No. 1 unit lost its reactor core 16 hours after the plant was struck by a magnitude-9 earthquake and a giant tsunami on the afternoon of March 11.
The pressure vessel a cylindrical steel container that holds nuclear fuel, “is likely to be damaged and leaking water at units Nos. 2 and 3,” said Junichi Matsumoto, Tepco spokesman on nuclear issues, in a news briefing Sunday.

He also said there could be far less cooling water in the pressure vessels of Nos. 2 and 3, indicating there are holes at the bottom of these vessels, with thousands of tons of water pumped into these reactors mostly leaking out.

Tepco found the basement of the unit No. 1 reactor building flooded with 4.2 meters of water. It isn’t clear where the water came from, but leaks are suspected in pipes running in and out of the containment vessel, a beaker-shaped steel structure that holds the pressure vessel.
The water flooding the basement is believed to be highly radioactive. Workers were unable to observe the flooding situation because of strong radiation coming out of the water, Tepco said.
A survey conducted by an unmanned robot Friday found radiation levels of 1,000 to 2,000 millisieverts per hour in some parts of the ground level of unit No. 1, a level that would be highly dangerous for any worker nearby. Japan has placed an annual allowable dosage limit of 250 millisieverts for workers.

The high level of radioactivity means even more challenges for Tepco’s bid to set up a continuous cooling system that won’t threaten radiation leaks into the environment.
Tepco separately released its analysis on the timeline of the meltdown at unit No. 1. According to the analysis, the reactor core, or the nuclear fuel, was exposed to the air within five hours after the plant was struck by the earthquake. The temperature inside the core reached 2,800 degrees Celsius in six hours, causing the fuel pellets to melt away rapidly.

Within 16 hours, the reactor core melted, dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and created a hole there. By then, an operation to pump water into the reactor was under way. This prevented the worst-case scenario, in which the overheating fuel would melt its way through the vessels and discharge large volumes of radiation outside.
The nuclear industry lacks a technical definition for a full meltdown, but the term is generally understood to mean that radioactive fuel has breached containment measures, resulting in a massive release of fuel.

“Without the injection of water [by fire trucks], a more disastrous event could have ensued,” said Mr. Matsumoto.
Tepco also released its analysis of a hydrogen explosion that occurred at unit No. 4, despite the fact that the unit was in maintenance and that nuclear fuel stored in the storage pool was largely intact.

According to Tepco, hyrogen produced in the overheating of the reactor core at unit 3 flowed through a gas-treatment line and entered unit No. 4 because of a breakdown of valves. Hydrogen leaked from ducts in the second, third and fourth floors of the reactor building at unit No. 4 and ignited a massive explosion.

Tepco Has Been "Going Round and Round in Circles" at Fukushima Using the Wrong Approach

2011-05-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

Reactor 1

Tepco says that the fuel rods at Fukushima reactor 1 are exposed. As Bloomberg notes:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said fuel rods are fully exposed in the No. 1 reactor at its stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, setting back the utility’s plan to resolve the crisis.
The water level is 1 meter (3.3 feet) below the base of the fuel assembly, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility known as Tepco, told reporters at a briefing in Tokyo. Melted fuel has dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is still being cooled, Matsumoto said. The company doesn’t know how long the rods have been exposed, he said.
***
It’s unlikely the situation has worsened with the discovery the rods are exposed because they’ve probably been out of the water since shortly after the crisis started, Narabayashi said.

Indian Express notes:

TEPCO today said new measurements taken this week, after workers in protective suits fixed gauges in the badly-hit reactor one building, indicated that water pumped into the pressure vessel had quickly leaked out.

The Telegraph points out:

One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did suffer a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first time today, describing a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor’s containment vessel.

***

The company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak.

Bloomberg quotes a top nuclear expert as saying that Tepco has been going about it all wrong:

“I’ve been saying from the beginning the water tomb plan won’t work,” said Tadashi Narabayashi, a professor of nuclear engineering at Hokkaido University. “Tepco must work on a water circulation cooling system as soon as possible. They’ve been going round and round in circles and now realize this is what they need to do.”

Even Tepco is admitting they must change course:

“The plan needs to be revised,” Matsumoto said. “We can’t deny the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to leak.”

Reactor 2 As discussed below, nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen has repeatedly said that nuclear reactions likely occurred long after the tsunami hit.
Now, as MIT's Technology Review notes:

Tetsuo Matsui at the University of Tokyo, says the limited data from Fukushima indicates that nuclear chain reactions must have reignited at Fuksuhima up to 12 days after the accident.

***
He says the ratios from drains at reactors 1 and 3 at Fukushima are consistent with the nuclear reactions having terminated at the time of the earthquake.
However, the data from the drain near reactor 2 and from the cooling pond at reactor 4, where spent fuel rods are stored, indicate that the reactions must have been burning much later.
***
So things in reactor 2 must have been extremely dangerous right up to the end of March.

Reactor 3
Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen suspects that the huge explosion at reactor number 3 was a nuclear explosion, where the initial hydrogen explosion triggered a "prompt criticality" which spewed radiation high into the air:

Gundersen Postulates Unit 3 Explosion May Have Been Prompt Criticality in Fuel Pool from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

As WSWS notes:

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates, who has spent 39 years working in the nuclear industry and now acts as an expert witness, has suggested that the explosion in Number 3 building at Fukushima on March 14 may have been more serious than has so far been admitted.
Gundersen argues that an initial hydrogen explosion caused a prompt criticality in the spent-fuel rod pool at the top of the Number 3 reactor building. Prompt criticality is the term used in the nuclear industry for an exponential increase in the number of fission events. That is to say a runaway nuclear chain reaction may have taken place in the spent fuel rods.
Gundersen postulates that the upward vector, the upward thrust, from the explosion in Building 3 may have been sufficient to carry radioactive isotopes from the fuel rods into the atmosphere and to disperse them over many thousands of miles. He points out that uranium has been found on Hawaii, americium has been found in New England and plutonium dust has been found on the Fukushima site. These latter elements are transuranic, i.e. heavier than uranium, and indicate that nuclear fuel was volatilized at Fukushima.

Reactor 4

The building housing reactor 4 is leaning, and Tepco is attempting to shore it up so it doesn't fall over:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxbm7iJTT8U&feature=player_embedded

Very high radiation levels were showing up in the containment vessel of reactor 4, even though that reactor was supposedly shut down before the earthquake. Since I posted that article, the Japan's nuclear agency has removed all readings for reactor 4.