PNN - WOMEN ON THE BARRICADES - Women Activists

PNN

9/15/13

WOMEN ON THE BARRICADES - Women Activists

Join News Director Rick Spisak and Special Guest Co-Host Amy Ritter

Laura Fausone, President of NOW Brevard

Vicki Impoco Essayist and Activist 

Trish Sheldon co-Founder of GMO Florida

Rachel Pienta Writer and Political Consultant

1. DIRECT PATH TO SEE

Japan Times, Sep 10, 2013: Jota Kanda, a professor at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, pointed out that densities of radioactive materials within the artificial bay have stopped falling recently, despite the huge amounts of seawater that flow in and out every day. 

This indicates a certain amount of new radioactive materials are flowing nonstop from the plant’s wrecked reactor buildings into the sea, he said. Kanda, however, also noted that the total amount of radioactive materials detected in contaminated water samples has been so low that it is unlikely to pose any danger to human health.

NHK World, May 24, 2013: Jota Kanda of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology who co-organized the excursion called the situation off Fukushima “mysterious”. “It’s very mysterious that the radioactive level in marine organisms stays high. Considering low radioactive level of water, it should be much lower.”

More from Kanda: Fukushima Mystery? TV: Japan expert says radiation levels in ocean too high to be explained by groundwater flow alone -- Must be coming from "other contamination routes" entering Pacific -- "Devastating impact" to come?

Listen

2. LIBRARY RESCUED by Activists 

 In a surprise last-minute move, Miami-Dade commissioners decided in the wee hours Wednesday morning to raid rainy-day reserves to avoid laying off 169 library workers and slashing library hours in the coming budget year.

Though the action will save the jobs of employees who turned out in force to a public hearing that began Tuesday afternoon, it will create a whopping $20 million budget hole next year to fund the county’s 49 public libraries at the same level as this year.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez warned against tapping the one-time reserves, since they would not be available again to cover recurring expenses. Unless Miami-Dade overhauls the way it funds and runs the libraries between now and next year, commissioners will have to cut services or hike the property-tax rate in 12 months.

“It’s on us,” Vice Chairwoman Lynda Bell said, acknowledging the burden the board agreed to take on. “It’s our responsibility.”

Gimenez pointedly reminded commissioners that six of them face reelection in 2014 and will almost certainly oppose a tax-rate hike — in which case they may have just delayed but not avoided the steep cuts.

“Eventually, this government is going to have to face reality. I’d rather face it now than later,” he said. “It’s pretty tough to raise taxes when you’re going to election.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/10/v-fullstory/3619272/library-advocates-dominate-first.html#storylink=cpy

But commissioners appeared thrilled and relieved to find a solution for the time being. They voted 8-4 to use $7.8 million in library reserves.

Bell and Commissioners Bruno Barreiro, Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Audrey Edmonson, Sally Heyman, Barbara Jordan, Jean Monestime and Dennis Moss voted in favor of the compromise. Chairwoman Rebeca Sosa and Commissioners Esteban “Steve” Bovo, Javier Souto and Juan C. Zapata voted against. Commissioner Xavier Suarez did not vote, though he was present at the hearing, which began at 5:01 p.m. Tuesday and ended at 1:35 a.m. Wednesday.

The commission gave serious consideration to a short-lived proposal by Heyman to raise the property-tax rate that funds libraries, in what would have been a stunning reversal of the board’s July decision to hold the rate steady. Seven of 13 commissioners appeared ready to sign off on the hike and delay the final budget hearing from Sept. 19 to October. But fearing a likely Gimenez veto they would have been unable to override without a nine-member majority, they opted for using the reserves instead.

Other cuts to the budget, including the elimination of three fire trucks and layoffs of 59 firefighters, remain. The county has applied for a federal grant to fund the positions and save the trucks.

Even before the compromise, Gimenez had said he was confident his staff would find a way to keep all libraries open for the same number of hours. About a third of the county’s 49 library branches would have otherwise scaled back their hours dramatically, opening a mere 16 hours a week, down from their current 40 hours.

But he wouldn’t have been able to save the jobs of the library employees, many of whom attended the budget hearing, asking commissioners to rethink a proposed budget they said would decimate the public library system.

Despite the deal, Gimenez said he will move forward with the creation of a working group to plan for the long-term future of the libraries. That’s especially important now because the group will have to find how to rework the system in the next year or be stuck with cuts or a significant tax-rate hike.

The mayor also said he has asked the county auditor to examine whether nearly $7.5 million moved from the library budget in 2009 to fund cultural programs inside the library tax district was improperly spent. If so, Gimenez said his administration would develop a repayment plan over several future years to put the money back in the library budget from the general fund.

Mahala Literacy Activist

Desperate to find alternative funding for libraries and other county departments, Sosa went as far as to suggest Miami-Dade establish a mechanism for residents to donate to their chosen programs. The parks department already has a foundation, and the library department also has a fundraising arm.

At one point Tuesday, a group of about 35 library staffers and supporters stood behind the microphone, some of them with their arms draped around each other. They noted that libraries serve the community’s most vulnerable, including children, the elderly and the unemployed.

And they emphasized that the taxes that fund libraries, which are separate from the county’s general fund, have been drastically reduced since Gimenez took office in 2011.

For two years, the library system operated using surplus funds from previous years. Those have now run out — so the county must raise the tax-rate to fund the system or considerably shrink its expenses.

Gimenez’s administration should have foreseen the budget gap and made a plan two years ago to sustain the system, librarian Ellen Book said. “Now the library’s financially bankrupted,” she said.

While a majority of the 100 or so people who spoke opposed service cuts, a few said they could not handle a higher tax bill.

“No more taxes. Enough already,” elderly resident Modesto Perez said in Spanish.

Despite police detecting a suspicious package just outside County Hall an hour before the meeting began, the hearing was not delayed. Miami-Dade police closed two parking lots by the Government Center Metrorail station for about two hours until a bomb-squad member blew up the abandoned duffle bag.

Inside the commission chambers, not all of the comments centered on libraries. A couple of speakers said the county shortchanges its sanitation workers. Others called for more funding for community-based organizations. One woman said Miami-Dade needs to invest more money in mental-health services for jail inmates.

Fire-union representatives dressed in matching yellow T-shirts to oppose cuts to that department. Fire Rescue Lt. Lisa Wood urged commissioners to find more dollars to keep a venom response unit in place — instead of “redeploying” its staff to other fire operations duties — as the department plans to do.

“We feel that our services that we provide are more valuable than the risk that would be presented by losing our 24-hour coverage,” Wood said.

The mayor said the department would keep its anti-venin reserve and medication-dispensing licenses and distribute the antidotes through rescue personnel.

Dressed in their signature red, proponents of the Pets’ Trust, an initiative to stop killing dogs and cats at the county shelter, repeatedly pointed to a non-binding question approved by an overwhelming majority of voters last November endorsing the animal-care project.

But most of the night was dominated by library activists in white “Save Our Libraries” shirts. Their backers included the mayors of Pinecrest and South Miami, the vice mayor of Opa-locka and the chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.

“This would be the first time in my three-and-a-half years as mayor that my residents have contacted me to raise their taxes on anything,” South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard said. “It’s an unusual situation.”

Speakers at the hearing directed much of their anger at Gimenez, who was absent from the dais for an extended period having Cuban food for dinner in a room adjacent to the chambers. His communications director said the mayor, who previously held six town-hall style meetings on the budget, was watching the hearing while he ate.

During the hearing, an automated telephone poll reached out to some voters, who were asked among other things about the tax rate and Gimenez’s job approval. The telephone recording did not identify who was behind the poll.

The mayor’s initial budget in July proposed hiking the tax rate to maintain library and fire-rescue services and fully fund the Pets’ Trust. He then backtracked, citing political pressure and a lack of commission support. On Tuesday, speaker after speaker chided Gimenez for failing to stick to his original intentions and selling a higher tax rate to commissioners and the public.

At the beginning of the night, Gimenez said his administration does not take the proposed budget’s “real and significant impacts” on residents and county employees lightly.

But he also made a point of saying county librarians, with their required master’s degrees, make an average annual base salary of $70,300 without counting benefits — suggesting their labor union should negotiate personnel costs to avoid layoffs. Activists disputed the salary number, countering that many of the library workers in line to lose their jobs are not full-fledged librarians and make less money.

Gimenez highlighted other portions of the $4.3 billion day-to-day operating budget, including that it envisions hiring four new classes of police officers.

“Striking the right balance between the services that our residents expect and doing so at a price they can afford is always a challenge,” Gimenez said. “This budget maintains the vast majority of services that we provide to our residents.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/10/v-fullstory/3619272/library-advocates-dominate-first.html#storylink=cpy

Listen

3. SE FLA Regional Climate Change Action Plan

The subject of climate change is heating up on a local level, with two items of interest to the Loxahatchee Group members: presentation of an action plan in August and our general meeting in September.

First of all, the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Action Plan (RECAP),  a regional plan that provides over 100 action items for planning and mitigating the effects of climate change, will be presented to the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday, August 27^th at 10:30 in the Commissioner’s Chambers (301 N. Olive, WPB, 6^th Floor) for a discussion and vote.  Many citizens, and organizations such as the League of Women Voters and South Florida Climate Action Partners, will attend the meeting to support RECAP and the county staff that will be presenting it.  The Loxahatchee Group urges you to become familiar with the document and to attend our September general meeting to learn more.

The general meeting for September will feature Robert Robbins, Director for Palm Beach County’s Department of Environmental Resources Management (ERM).  Mr. Robbins serves on the RECAP Land and Natural Systems Work Group and will speak about solutions and adaptive management for land and natural systems.  Recently, he was a panelist for the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation’s Sea Level Rise Symposium and a speaker for an all-day workshop sponsored by the South Florida Climate Action Partners   Mr. Robbins oversees the restoration and management of more than 31,000 acres of county-owned natural areas and nearly $100,000,000 worth of salt water and estuarine restoration projects, most located within the Lake Worth Lagoon.  He also directs manatee and sea turtle protection programs and implements the County’s regulatory programs including petroleum contamination clean-up and water quality related programs.  Kate Harmer will speak about her recent training in Chicago with the Climate Reality project.

When: Thursday, September 19, 6:30 pm.

Where: Palm Beach County Lantana Rd. Library - 4020 Lantana Road; Lake Worth, FL 33462

Directions: By Bus: Palm Tran Route 71 and Route 63.

From I-95: Take Exit #61 Lantana Road; go west to Lawrence Road and turn left at light. Library is on the southwest corner of the intersection. Parking is in the back.

From Florida’s Turnpike: Take Exit #93 (Lake Worth Road), go east to Military Trail, turn right (south) to Lantana Road; turn left and get in the right lane and turn right into the library parking lot just before the traffic light at the corner of Lawrence Road.

Sierra Club meetings are FREE and open to the public, bring a friend. Special “green book exchange,” think nature, green energy and transportation, sustainable food, anything that effects our environment.

Bring a book to exchange or be prepared to make a $5 or $10 donation for an interesting new read. (Any donation is acceptable).

Listen

4.Apple's Fingerprint ID May Mean You Can't 'Take the Fifth'

By Marcia Hofmann, Wired Magazine

15 September 13

There's a lot of talk around biometric authentication since Apple introduced its newest iPhone, which will let users unlock their device with a fingerprint. Given Apple's industry-leading position, it's probably not a far stretch to expect this kind of authentication to take off. Some even argue that Apple's move is a death knell for authenticators based on what a user knows (like passwords and PIN numbers).

While there's a great deal of discussion around the pros and cons of fingerprint authentication - from the hackability of the technique to the reliability of readers - no one's focusing on the legal effects of moving from PINs to fingerprints.

Because the constitutional protection of the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that "no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," may not apply when it comes to biometric-based fingerprints (things that reflect who we are) as opposed to memory-based passwords and PINs (things we need to know and remember).

The privilege against self-incrimination is an important check on the government's ability to collect evidence directly from a witness. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the Fifth Amendment broadly applies not only during a criminal prosecution, but also to any other proceeding "civil or criminal, formal or informal," where answers might tend to incriminate us. It's a constitutional guarantee deeply rooted in English law dating back to the 1600s, when it was used to protect people from being tortured by inquisitors to force them to divulge information that could be used against them.

For the privilege to apply, however, the government must try to compel a person to make a "testimonial" statement that would tend to incriminate him or her. When a person has a valid privilege against self-incrimination, nobody - not even a judge - can force the witness to give that information to the government.

But a communication is "testimonial" only when it reveals the contents of your mind. We can't invoke the privilege against self-incrimination to prevent the government from collecting biometrics like fingerprints, DNA samples, or voice exemplars. Why? Because the courts have decided that this evidence doesn't reveal anything you know. It's not testimonial.

Take this hypothetical example coined by the Supreme Court: If the police demand that you give them the key to a lockbox that happens to contain incriminating evidence, turning over the key wouldn't be testimonial if it's just a physical act that doesn't reveal anything you know.

However, if the police try to force you to divulge the combination to a wall safe, your response would reveal the contents of your mind - and so would implicate the Fifth Amendment. (If you've written down the combination on a piece of paper and the police demand that you give it to them, that may be a different story.)

The important feature about PINs and passwords is that they're generally something we know (unless we forget them, of course). These memory-based authenticators are the type of fact that benefit from strong Fifth Amendment protection should the government try to make us turn them over against our will. Indeed, last year a federal appeals court held that a man could not be forced by the government to decrypt data.

But if we move toward authentication systems based solely on physical tokens or biometrics - things we have or things we are, rather than things we remember - the government could demand that we produce them without implicating anything we know. Which would make it less likely that a valid privilege against self-incrimination would apply.

Biometric authentication may make it easier for normal, everyday users to protect the data on their phones. But as wonderful as technological innovation is, it sometimes creates unintended consequences - including legal ones. If Apple's move leads us to abandon knowledge-based authentication altogether, we risk inadvertently undermining the legal rights we currently enjoy under the Fifth Amendment.

Here's an easy fix: give users the option to unlock their phones with a fingerprint plus something the user knows.

5.

Rare video of the Protected & Endangered Florida Panther caught on film in the vicinity of the proposed drill site.

http://video.tampabay.com/Jeff-Klinkenberg-narrates-this-never-seen-before-video-of-Florida-panthers-in-the-wild-25116779

Video of location of home closest to the proposed drill site:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqtUvfMO44s

Petition on change.org: 

http://www.change.org/petitions/florida-department-of-environmental-protection-do-not-approve-the-permit-sought-for-oil-drilling-in-collier-county

Preserve Our Paradise - Facebook page that is local & direct action to raise awareness and offers a wealth of information:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Preserve-Our-Paradise/453901471367285

Preserve Our Paradise - A  501(c)(3) nonprofit

 group that is doing public speaking to raise awareness and raising 

funds for possible future litigation and also has a wealth of 

information: http://preserveourparadise.org/?page_id=1785

Below are all the contact address, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. Please write; please spread the word.

Thank you kindly for your support and time. If there is any other information, etc you need. please let me know.

Listen

Nick Wiley (Executive Director)

℅ Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

620 South Meridian Street

Tallahassee, FL 32399-1600

850-487-3796

email.fwc@MyFWC.com

Eric Sutton (Assistant Executive Director)

℅ Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

620 South Meridian Street

Tallahassee, FL 32399-1600

850-487-3796

Karen Ventimiglia  (Chief of Staff)

℅ Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

620 South Meridian Street

Tallahassee, FL 32399-1600

850-487-3796  

Thomas Colios

℅ South Florida Water Management District

PO BOX 24680

West Palm Beach, FL 33416-4680

tcolios@sfwmd.gov

(561) 686-8800  /   (800) 432-2045

Ed Garret, (Chief of Minerals, Mining, Oil & Gas)

℅ Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Bureau of Mining and Minerals Regulation, Oil and Gas Section

2051 East Paul Dirac Drive, MS 715

Tallahassee, FL 32310

(850) 488-8217 ext.12

Ed.garrett@dep.state.fl.us

Danielle H. Irwin, (Deputy Division Director)

℅ Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Bureau of Mining and Minerals Regulation, Oil and Gas Section

2051 East Paul Dirac Drive, MS 715

Tallahassee, FL 32310

(850) 488-7843

danielle.irwin@dep.state.fl.us

Steve Spencer ( Professional Geologist)

℅ Florida Department of Environmental Protection Oil and Gas Program 2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 3588 Tallahassee FL, 32399-2600 (850) 245-8405 steve.spencer@dep.state.fl.us

Levi Sciara (Engineer)

℅ Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Bureau of Mining and Minerals Regulation, Oil and Gas Section

2051 East Paul Dirac Drive, MS 715

Tallahassee, FL 32310

(850) 245-8406

Levi.Sciara@dep.state.fl.us

Paul Attwood, (Local Professional Geologist)

℅ Florida DEP / Mining, Mitigation and Delineation Oil & Gas Section - Fort Myers Field Office 2295 Victoria Avenue Suite 179 Ft. Myers, Florida 33901

(239)344-5721

Paul.Attwood@dep.state.fl.us

Pierre Bruno (Environmental Specialist III)

℅ Florida DEP / Mining, Mitigation and Delineation

Oil & Gas Section - Fort Myers Field Office

2295 Victoria Avenue

Suite 179

Ft. Myers, Florida 33901

(239) 344-5611

Pierre.Bruno@dep.state.fl.us

Here are a few more contacts: 

Larry Cole

Environmental Protection Agency

cole.larry@epa.gov

(404) 562-9474

James Ferreira

Environmental Protection Agency

ferreira.james@epa.gov

(404) 562-9399

Wilda Cobb 

cobb.wilda@epa.gov

Joe Haberfeld

Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection

joe.haberfeld@dep.state.fl.us

(850)245-8655

United States Army Corps Engineers Jacksonville District

Mailing Address:

P.O. Box 4970

Jacksonville, Florida 32232-001

Phone (904) 232-1177 Fax (904) 232-1904

SUBJECT LINE for email type:

Regulatory Division

email : SAJ-RD@usace.army.mil

United States Army Corp of Engineers

Fort Myers Permits Section

1520 Royal Palm Square Blvd., Suite 310

Fort Myers, FL 33919

Phone (239) 334-1975 Fax (229) 334-0797

SUBJECT LINE for email type:

Fort Myers Section

email: SAJ-RD@usace.army.mil

Listen

Recent Writing Award

Euro-Historical Political Animation

---

PNN - 9-8-13 - In Union We Are Strong

New Mercury Media Presents

PNN - In Union We are STRONG
join us as we interview:

Nick Surgey Director of Research,  Center for Media & Democracy- He will speak about his research on the working of ALEC

AFL CIO Leaders
Rick Smith, Chief of Staff , SEIU - Florida Public Services Union

Alphonso Mayfield, President, SEIU-Florida Public Services Union also member SEIU International Executive Board

Chuck Ridley, Community Leader, Northwest-Southwest Alliance of Delray Beach

Gypsy Gallardo, Organizer with Agenda 2010 and Editor in Chief Power Broker Magazine

=========================================

1. New Radiation levels reached - (LISTEN)Reuters
Radiation readings around tanks holding contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have spiked by more than a fifth to their highest levels, Japan's nuclear regulator said, heightening concerns about the clean-up of the worst atomic disaster in almost three decades.
Radiation hotspots have spread to three holding areas for hundreds of hastily built tanks storing water contaminated by being flushed over three reactors that melted down at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011.
The rising radiation levels and leaks at the plant have prompted international alarm, and the Japanese government said on Tuesday it would step in with almost $500 million of funding to fix the growing levels of contaminated water at the plant.
Readings just above the ground near a set of tanks at the plant showed radiation as high as 2,200 millisieverts (mSv), the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said on Wednesday. The previous high in areas holding the tanks was the 1,800 mSv recorded on Saturday.
Both levels would be enough to kill an unprotected person within hours. The NRA has said the recently discovered hotspots are highly concentrated and easily shielded.
The tanks sit on a hill above the Pacific Ocean at the Fukushima plant, which was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, triggering the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.
"TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE"
The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said last month water from one the tanks was leaking. Another small leak was found later and the rising number of areas of concentrated radiation are raising concerns of further leaks.
The NRA later raised the severity of the initial leak from a level 1 "anomaly" to a level 3 "serious incident" on an international scale of 1-7 for radiation releases.
"There's a strong possibility these tanks also leaked, or had leaked previously," said Hiroaki Koide, Assistant Professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. "We have to worry about the impact on nearby groundwater...These tanks are not sturdy and have been a problem since they were constructed two years ago."
It's also possible the radiation readings are increasing because of more frequent monitoring and inspections by Tepco employees, indicating the hotspots and leaks have been there for some time, Koide said.
"The government has finally said they will be involved in this problem but they are still not going to be fully involved in the decommission," he said. "It is too little, too late."
URANIUM ROD MELTDOWNS
The disaster created fuel-rod meltdowns at three reactors, radioactive contamination of the air, sea and food and resulted in the evacuation of 160,000 people in the area, north of Tokyo.
The peak release of radiation in the sea around Fukushima came about a month after the earthquake and tsunami. Ocean currents have since dispersed the plume and sent the diluted radiation in a slow drift towards the West Coast of the United States, studies have shown. The amount of radiation expected to reach Canadian and U.S. coastal waters in the years ahead is projected to be well within safety limits for drinking water as it will have been greatly diluted.
The closest towns to the stricken plant remain deserted and off-limits to the public, although some former residents have started to return to their homes, some of which are less than 20 kms away, as decontamination work progresses.
Tepco is storing enough contaminated water to fill more than 130 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The water becomes contaminated as it is flushed over the melted uranium fuel rods to keep them cool. The government has ordered Tepco to transfer all the water held in around 310 weaker, bolted tanks to more reliable welded tanks at the Fukushima site. Tepco said there are around 620 welded tanks, but these take longer to build, and an NRA official has said some of these, too, might not be safe as they are lined up on the ground rather than on a concrete foundation.
Japan's biggest utility has been criticized for a series of mishaps including its admission, after repeated denials, that contaminated water was flowing into the Pacific from another area of the plant. That was followed by the leaks from above-ground tanks.
The latest radiation readings at the plant were taken on Tuesday and were not related to a 6.9 magnitude earthquake off southern Japan earlier on Wednesday.

2. Obama Warned on Syrian Intel - (LISTEN)
By Ray McGovern
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap?
Precedence: IMMEDIATE
We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”
We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandum immediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.
The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond …  the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today.
Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you.
We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.
Intelligence Summary or Political Ploy?
That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.”
This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”
Déjà Fraud: This brings a flashback to the famous Downing Street Minutes of July 23, 2002, on Iraq, The minutes record the Richard Dearlove, then head of British intelligence, reporting to Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials that President Bush had decided to remove Saddam Hussein through military action that would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” Dearlove had gotten the word from then-CIA Director George Tenet whom he visited at CIA headquarters on July 20.
The discussion that followed centered on the ephemeral nature of the evidence, prompting Dearlove to explain: “But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” We are concerned that this is precisely what has happened with the “intelligence” on Syria.
The Intelligence
There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war.
According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured.
We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons.
In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.
Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria.
At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government
The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.
Cui bono? - (LISTEN)
That the various groups trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have ample incentive to get the U.S. more deeply involved in support of that effort is clear. Until now, it has not been quite as clear that the Netanyahu government in Israel has equally powerful incentive to get Washington more deeply engaged in yet another war in the area. But with outspoken urging coming from Israel and those Americans who lobby for Israeli interests, this priority Israeli objective is becoming crystal clear.
Reporter Judi Rudoren, writing from Jerusalem in an important article in Friday’s New York Times addresses Israeli motivation in an uncommonly candid way. Her article, titled “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria,” notes that the Israelis have argued, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no outcome. Rudoren continues:
“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.
“‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”
We think this is the way Israel’s current leaders look at the situation in Syria, and that deeper U.S. involvement – albeit, initially, by “limited” military strikes – is likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict in Syria. The longer Sunni and Shia are at each other’s throats in Syria and in the wider region, the safer Israel calculates that it is.
That Syria’s main ally is Iran, with whom it has a mutual defense treaty, also plays a role in Israeli calculations. Iran’s leaders are not likely to be able to have much military impact in Syria, and Israel can highlight that as an embarrassment for Tehran.
Iran’s Role
Iran can readily be blamed by association and charged with all manner of provocation, real and imagined. Some have seen Israel’s hand in the provenance of the most damaging charges against Assad regarding chemical weapons and our experience suggests to us that such is supremely possible.
Possible also is a false-flag attack by an interested party resulting in the sinking or damaging, say, of one of the five U.S. destroyers now on patrol just west of Syria. Our mainstream media could be counted on to milk that for all it’s worth, and you would find yourself under still more pressure to widen U.S. military involvement in Syria – and perhaps beyond, against Iran.
Iran has joined those who blame the Syrian rebels for the August 21 chemical incident, and has been quick to warn the U.S. not to get more deeply involved. According to the Iranian English-channel Press TV, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif has claimed: “The Syria crisis is a trap set by Zionist pressure groups for [the United States].”
Actually, he may be not far off the mark. But we think your advisers may be chary of entertaining this notion. Thus, we see as our continuing responsibility to try to get word to you so as to ensure that you and other decision makers are given the full picture.
Inevitable Retaliation
We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Thomas Drake, Senior Executive, NSA (former)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan
Larry Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)
W. Patrick Lang, Senior Executive and Defense Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.)
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.)
Todd Pierce, US Army Judge Advocate General (ret.)
Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army, Iraq
Coleen Rowley, Division Council & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret); Foreign Service Officer (ret.)

3. Physician: Statement by Canadian officials indicates Fukushima contamination was detected in fish at levels that are “difficult to explain without undue alarm”  - (LISTEN)
 — Huffington Post: “Sockeye Salmon Sushi: Use a Geiger Counter”
    [...] spawning sockeye salmon journey via the North Pacific Current from the top of Japan to Northern California, British Columbia and Alaska. This same current carries whatever Fukushima is in the process of vomiting forth, bathing salmon and herring all along the way in radioactive cesium. [...]
    [...] We need to test the fish. Nobody, no entity, no country tests the salmon for radiation exposure: red flag. [...]
    Professor and Canada Research Chair in Preventive Medicine and Population Health at University of British Columbia, and the former President of Physicians for Social Responsibility Dr. Erica Frank: “The bit that needs fixing here is our inevitably deadly reliance on nuclear power. Yummy tuna and salmon today, and most export products from Japan — and what happens when the same thing happens at Hanford, and any other nuclear power station?”
    Dr. Erica Frank: “In particular, this is the piece that indicates to me that they have found levels detectable-but-difficult-to-explain-without-undue-alarm:”
    To date, all results that have been produced show that no radionuclides are present above actionable levels. This means that we have not found any evidence of radioactivity in any food products at levels of concern. Once the Agency has conducted its rigorous quality control it will publish all test results on its website. (Canadian Food Inspection Agency communication provided by Dr. Frank) [...]

 Ever since Japan was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami in 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has leaked 300 tons of radioactive water per day. In an effort to protect local water, the Japanese government announced a plan Tuesday to spend 32 billion yen (approximately US$320 million) on an underground "ice wall" to prevent contaminated water from flowing out to sea. In addition to the ice wall is a 15 billion yen project to upgrade water treatment plants in the area to remove radioactive elements, placing the mission's total budget at 47 billion yen, just shy of half a billion dollars.
Bill Horak, chair of nuclear science and technology at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, said that it's not just the storage containers that are a source of water contamination. "There's an aquifer underneath the plant that runs out to the sea, like an underground river," he told ABC News. "It picks up contaminants that have leaked into the ground, and no one has a good handle on how contaminated that water is."

The so-called ice wall may conjure up images of igloos, but Horak said that it's not so much an actual wall of ice as it is a network of coils, similar to what you would find in the refrigerator or freezer. "The coils transport liquid nitrogen at 30 degrees Kelvin, which freezes the ground and builds an impenetrable wall," he said.

4. Deformed Vegetables, Fruit Reportedly Pop Up Around Japan Nuclear Plant  - (LISTEN)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the government needs to intervene in order to properly address the handling of Fukushima. "Instead of leaving this up to [Tokyo Electric Power Company], the government will step forward and take charge," he said in a statement. "The world is watching if we can properly handle the contaminated water."
Tokyo is currently one of three cities still in the running to host the 2020 summer Olympics, along with Madrid and Istanbul. Tokyo is projected to get the bid from the International Olympic Committee, but addressing these kinds of problems may be what tips the scales in the Japanese city's favor. Naoki Inose, the chairman behind Tokyo's 2020 bid for the Olympic Games, said that the situation in Fukushima will not affect Tokyo.
 Horak isn't sure whether Japan's ambitious project is the right direction to head in. "When we had a leak at Brookhaven about 13 or 14 years ago, we put a bunch of stripper wells to pump the water before it got off site," he said. The lab kept the water in a closed loop and played the waiting game for the radioactive element tritium (an isotope of hydrogen) to decay naturally. Tritium has a half life of 12.3 years. "I don't know if anyone has actually tried this frozen wall concept for this type of activity."
But there is still uncertainty as to what radioactive elements are actually being leaked in the water. "Most of the radioactive nuclei have been cesium and iodine," said Horak. "But if you have actinides, the nastier and heavier elements like uranium and plutonium, that would be a whole other thing entirely."

5. google maps it - (LISTEN)
 Two years after Japan's worst nuclear disaster displaced 21,000 residents of Namie, much of the town remains the same.
Just miles from the Fukushima nuclear plant, roofs that collapsed from the magnitude 9.0 earthquake still litter roads. Newspapers from March 12, 2011 - the day after disaster struck – are stacked high at the paper's office. There are shells of homes, but no sign of life inside.

The desolation has largely been hidden from public view, behind checkpoints set up to cordon off the government mandated nuclear exclusion zone. But Google is hoping to bring the displaced residents back home – at least virtually – using its street view technology.

The tech giant began today the process of digitally mapping neighborhoods closest to the nuclear plant, dispatching its street view car to Namie for the first time. With a specialized camera mounted atop its vehicle, Google drove through the empty town, steering around collapsed homes and cracked roads to capture a 360 view of the damage.

ABC News accompanied Google in its mapping route today. No special clothing is worn, but the crew was out of zone within three hours.
RELATED: Google Maps Releases App For iPhone
The entire process is expected to take several weeks. Google plans to unveil Namie's street view map in a few months, according to product manager Kei Kawai.
"There's nothing that compares to actually coming in and seeing [the damage] for yourself," Kawai said. "But we can at least show what these places are like, to the people who [evacuated] the city, to the world."
The street view cars have logged more than 27,000 miles, since the triple disasters first struck Japan's coast two years ago. They were immediately dispatched to areas hardest hit to capture the tsunami's aftermath.
But the idea to digitally map Namie came from town residents themselves, Kawai said.
Namie Mayor Tamotsu Baba said his town has yet to begin the process of decontamination. Recovery has not begun. He hoped the Google images would show the world the reality.
"We still have to wear hazmat suits and get government approval, just to go home," he said. "How can we even begin to rebuild under circumstances such as that."
More than half of Namie's residents have relocated to other cities in the Fukushima prefecture. Baba now works out of a temporary city hall set up in the city of Nihonmatsu, roughly 40 miles away.
He has spent the last two years trying to keep the community together, but he sees it slowly drifting apart.
Last week, he released a phone book, listing the name and contact information of displaced Namie residents, including those living outside of the region, in a desperate attempt to keep the town together.
"It's absolutely frustrating," he said. "That 'smell' of life, the smell of the kitchen, the smell of gasoline in the streets, all of that is gone now. There is just silence."
Baba says it will take at least a decade for residents to return home.
Kawai says Google plans to continue tracking the rebuilding process through its "Memories for the Future" site, which includes a unique digital archive project that gives users a virtual tour of the most devastated buildings.
"This is not over. This is not even the beginning," said Kawai.

6. measurements of radioactive tritium
in seawater - (LISTEN)

– seeping out of the nuclear complex via groundwater into the sea – show levels at 4700 becquerels per liter, the highest tritium level in the measurement history.
Reports from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), operator of the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, say that measurements of radioactive tritium in seawater – seeping out of the nuclear complex via groundwater into the sea – show levels at 4700 becquerels per liter, the highest tritium level in the measurement history. The highest tritium levels have come in the past 15 days, the same reports show.
TEPCO also revealed that the highest levels of radiation in seawater were detected near reactor 1. Previous measurements showed the levels at 3800 becquerels per liter near reactor 1, and 2600 becquerels per liter near reactor 2, but the measurements have been showing increased radiation levels in the past 2 weeks. This increase in the harbor’s seawater has been continuously rising since May, reports said.
Also on Monday, another leak of highly contaminated water was discovered from the valve of a tank dike on the premises of the nuclear plant, adding to the multiple leak issues that the plant has had since TEPCO started the cleanup job on the facility. With this leak, radiation levels at the site again increased to 100 millisieverts per hour. The safe level of radiation is 1-13 millisieverts per year. The valve was said to have been left open so that rainwater can flow through, helping the TEPCO workers spot any radioactive leaks. TEPCO has since closed the valve as soon as it was discovered that radioactive water was flowing through it, instead of just surface and rainwater.

7. Geneva II Syria Peace Process   - (LISTEN)
A friend of mine who is talking to a European government about this asked me for a memo on it. I thought others might be interested.

Memo: ensuring Syrian civil society participation in “Geneva II”
As the international community works to bring about a political solution to Syria’s civil war, many have called for efforts to ensure the participation of Syrian civil society. While it is obviously the case that ending the civil war requires the participation of people who are fighting and those who are backing the people who are fighting, the participation of Syrian civil society groups  - i.e., people who are not shooting other people - can add momentum and legitimacy to efforts to end the fighting and resolve the conflict.

There are many international precedents; crucially, there is a recent Arab precedent in Yemen, in the form of the National Dialogue Conference, which is strongly backed (including financially) by the international community, including the United Nations, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia.

How this could unfold in the Syria case is obviously something that would have to be negotiated among many players – as it was in Yemen. However, one could start floating some ideas to people who could help bring them about.

First, venue would be important. The closer the venue is to Syria, the easier it would be for Syrian civil society groups to participate, and the easier it would be for the UN and the EU to help finance their participation.

Second, composition would be crucial, obviously, and would have to be negotiated. Here the Yemen precedent would be useful – in the case of the NDC in Yemen, it was agreed that a minimum percentage of the seats would be held by women, a minimum number would be held by youth, different regions would be represented, different political parties would be represented, different religious groups would be represented. All of this would be relevant to Syria – e.g. insuring participation from Kurds, Christians, etc.

Third, how the civil society participation relates to what is already planned would have to be negotiated. But a simple, minimal means of bringing about some civil society participation would be to follow UN precedent. A parallel Syrian civil society conference could be set up to run ahead of and overlapping with the “Geneva II” process in the same city. The UN has a practice of doing this, e.g. with UNCTAD, there have been international NGO conferences that preceded UNCTAD in the same place in which the UN subsidized participation. The civil society conference could make recommendations to the “Geneva II” process.

Also, representatives of the civil society conference could be available to international media, have a forum for press conference, etc., to respond to and comment on political developments; they could also lobby officials on behalf of the civil society recommendations.

Clearly, UN/Arab League envoy for Syria would be someone key to talk to about this; also, the UN envoy to the NDC in Yemen.

Others who would be good to talk to: Lebanon and Oman. Lebanon, because it has a big stake in political accommodation in Syria, has its own history of civil war and political accommodation, contains within it the same splits that are rending Syria, and because the Lebanese government has the ability to relate to Hizbullah, a key player. Oman, because it is the only Arab country that has good relations with both sides of the Saudi/Iran divide, has been a consistent voice for dialogue, and has been willing to back things that promote dialogue with its name and its resources.    

PNN - 9/1 - Healthcare and more... but not WAR!

Guests:

RWS
Anna Vishkaee Eskamani - Women's Sufferage 2013
Linda Saenz - Healthcare Access
Rebeca Marquez - Ocean Testing
Alan Maki - War & Peace Making
Keith McHenry - Food Not Bombs
Leah Barber-Heinz - Healthcare Expansion
Leslie Stanton - Poet
Brian Stettan - Progressive Journalist
===============================================================
1. TEPCO - TOKYO –  Japan's nuclear regulator on Wednesday upgraded the rating of a leak of radiation-contaminated water from a tank at its tsunami-wrecked nuclear plant to a "serious incident" on an international scale, and it castigated the plant operator for failing to catch the problem earlier.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority's latest criticism of Tokyo Electric Power Co. came a day after the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant acknowledged that the 300-ton leak probably began nearly a month and a half before it was discovered Aug. 19.
In a meeting with agency officials Tuesday night, TEPCO said radioactivity near the leak and exposure levels among patrolling staff started to increase in early July. There is no sign that anyone tried to find the source of that radioactivity before the leak was discovered.
On Wednesday, regulatory officials said TEPCO has repeatedly ignored their instructions to improve their patrolling procedures to reduce the risk of overlooking leakages. They also said TEPCO underestimated the potential impact of the leak because underground water is shallower around the tank than the company initially told regulators.
Earlier this week, Japan's industry minister said the government will take over cleanup efforts.
The authority originally gave a Level 1 preliminary rating -- an "anomaly," to the tank leak. Last week the authority proposed raising that to Level 3 -- a "serious incident" -- and it made that change after consulting with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA's ratings are designed to inform the international community, and changing them does not affect efforts to clean up the leak by the government and TEPCO. The 2011 Fukushima disaster itself was rated the maximum of 7 on the scale, the same as the 1986 Chernobyl accident.
"What's important is not the number itself but to give a basic idea about the extent of the problem," said authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka. "I've seen reports that this is a dire situation but that's not true."
Tanaka said there is a much larger ongoing problem at the plant: massive amounts of contaminated ground water reaching the sea. But that problem cannot even be rated under the IAEA's International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale because it is unknown exactly how much ground water is escaping, how contaminated it is and what effect it is having on the sea and marine products.
TEPCO has recovered some of the water that leaked from the tank but says some of it may have reached the sea through a rainwater gutter.
TEPCO has built hundreds of tanks to hold radioactive water, some of which is ground water that made its way to the plant, but hundreds more tons of contaminated water are believed to be entering the sea each day.
The plant suffered triple meltdowns after the massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. TEPCO is putting tons of water into its reactors to cool them and is struggling to contain the resulting waste water.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/28/japanese-agency-labels-radioactive-fukushima-leak-serious/#ixzz2dGuAQybK

2. TEPCO IGNORED

On Wednesday, regulatory officials said TEPCO has repeatedly ignored their instructions to improve their patrolling procedures to reduce the risk of overlooking leakages. They said TEPCO lacked expertise and also underestimated potential impact of the leak because underground water is shallower around the tank than the company initially told regulators.

"Their instructions, written or verbal, have never been observed," Toyoshi Fuketa, a regulatory commissioner, said at the agency's weekly meeting Wednesday.

TEPCO acknowledged recently that only two workers were assigned to check all 1,000 storage tanks at the plant during their twice-daily, two-hour walk without carrying dosimeters, and their inspection results were not adequately recorded. TEPCO said it will increase patrolling staff to 50 from the current eight.

Earlier this week, Japan's industry minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, said the government will take over cleanup efforts and allocate funding for long-term contaminated water management projects.
The nuclear authority originally gave a Level 1 preliminary rating — an "anomaly," to the tank leak. Last week the authority proposed raising that to Level 3 — a "serious incident" — and it made that change after consulting with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA's ratings are designed to inform the international community, and changing them does not affect efforts to clean up the leak by the government and TEPCO. The 2011 Fukushima disaster itself was rated the maximum of 7 on the scale, the same as the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

"What's important is not the number itself but to give a basic idea about the extent of the problem," authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka said at a news conference after the agency's meeting. "I've seen reports that this is a dire situation but that's not true."

Tanaka said there is a much larger ongoing problem at the plant: massive amounts of contaminated ground water reaching the sea. But that problem cannot even be rated under the IAEA's International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale because it is unknown exactly how much ground water is escaping, how contaminated it is and what effect it is having on the sea and marine products.  Tanaka said TEPCO's handling of the water leaks was slow, illogical and lacked risk management. TEPCO has yet to determine the cause of the latest leak.
"I'm baffled," he said. "It may take time to stabilize the plant but we must put it on a right track."
TEPCO has recovered some of the water that leaked from the tank but says some of it may have reached the sea through a rainwater gutter. It says most of the leakage is believed to have seeped into the soil, triggering fresh concern of further contamination of underground water downstream.
TEPCO has built hundreds of tanks to hold radioactive water, some of which is ground water that made its way to the plant, but hundreds more tons of contaminated water are believed to be entering the sea each day.

3. NO SCRUTINY FOR U
Police forces around the world have had the problem that when their officers get a bit carried away and start pepper spraying tied captives there is someone on hand filming the event on their mobile phones.
While six police lay into prone grannies on the floor with long batons, the pictures can be on the net in seconds, meaning supervisors have to answer embarrassing questions.
But they may not need to fear scrutiny much longer - Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, whenever they like.

All the coppers have to do is decide that a public gathering or venue is deemed "sensitive", and needs to be "protected from externalities" and Apple will switch off all its gear.
The police can then get on with the very difficult task of kettling protesters without having to worry about a few beating anyone to death.
Apple insists that the affected sites are mostly cinemas, theatres, concert grounds and similar locations, but it does admit that it could be used in "covert police or government operations which may require complete 'blackout' conditions".
According to RT it could also be used to prevent whistleblowers like Edward Snowden from taking pictures and broadcasting them on the interent.
Apple said that the wireless transmission of sensitive information to a remote source is one example of a threat to security.
But it said that this sensitive information could be anything from classified government information to questions or answers to an examination administered in an academic setting.
Apple patented the means to transmit an encoded signal to all wireless devices, commanding them to disable recording functions.
The policies would be activated by GPS, and wi-fi or mobile base-stations, which would ring-fence ("geofence") around a building or a "sensitive area" to prevent phone cameras from taking pictures or recording video.
Odd that the company made famous by its 1984 Big Brother video can't really see what it is doing. Perhaps its own secretive culture and an overzealous security treatment of its staff have fostered sympathy for Big Brother after all.

Read more: http://news.techeye.net/security/apple-patents-tech-to-let-cops-switch-off-iphone-video-camera-and-wi-fi#ixzz2dJkN9S9C

4, Face the Future
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 at 7:08 am by Sumayyah Waheed

POLICE SURVEILLANCEThe New York Times recently reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is developing a 3-D facial recognition surveillance system. According to documents released through a FOIA request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the technology is intended to allow the government to collect, store, and compare images in a variety of situations in order to identify persons on federal watch lists. In a test last fall, the Biometric Optical Surveillance System (BOSS) had not achieved the level of speed and accuracy required. However, researchers are confident that the system will be ready for use in only a matter of time.

This is the latest in a steady stream of technologies employed by the government to record and monitor ever-expanding aspects of Americans’ lives. Initially intended for military use, the DHS is now developing the technology for domestic police use. It raises significant questions, as Americans become increasingly distrustful of the federal government’s surveillance practices, particularly in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s  (NSA) vast electronic surveillance programs. Perhaps most troubling, and yet unsurprising, is that privacy safeguards are not mentioned once in the documents.

Once fully optimized, a few clicks of these cameras would allow police to capture quality images of masses of people from distances of 100 meters. We already know that the FBI monitors constitutionally protected activities such as protests and religious gatherings.  And the NYPD is being sued for spying on Muslims at school, work and play. BOSS would vastly enhance law enforcement officers’ abilities to track countless residents, encompassing ever more individuals who choose to engage in their communities. Locally, it promises to add to an already spectacular level of surveillance, as frighteningly illustrated in Oakland’s forthcoming Domain Awareness Center.

Faster and more accurate surveillance technology will serve to further chill political and religious speech, as people are forced to expose themselves to scanners, cameras, and soon BOSS, whenever they leave their homes. That’s not to mention the illegal monitoring already happening in the home, of the public’s phone, email and other internet-based communications. Without adequate restrictions, this new technology will fundamentally violate Americans’ constitutional right to privacy and widen the door for federal agencies and the police to continue profiling and targeting select communities without reasonable suspicion.

Although it may be years before BOSS comes to a police department near you, now is the time for communities to demand strong safeguards for civil liberties. As the New York and Oakland examples illustrate, local law enforcement is certainly not waiting to up its surveillance efforts. The Bill of Rights Defense Committee developed the Local Civil Rights Restoration (LCRR) toolkit, which provides model legislation that cities across the country can adopt to restrict local law enforcement’s ability to surveil residents. It’s a powerful way to reverse encroaching state surveillance, and join the movement to reclaim our civil rights.

The Department of Homeland Security is currently developing new facial 3D mapping technology to make it easier for government and the police to collect, store, and compare images in a variety of situations in order to identify persons on federal watch lists. If unrestricted, the potential for millions of Americans to lose their right to privacy, be profiled, falsely targeted, detained or worse is incredibly high. This isn't a future we want for our children, selves or the nation. Read on to learn about what DHS is planning and can be done to reverse encroaching state surveillance.

5. Third-generation fisherman Fumio Suzuki sets out into the Pacific Ocean every seven weeks, not to catch fish to sell, but to catch fish that can be tested for radiation.
For the last 2½ years, fishermen from the port of Yotsukura near the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant have been mostly stuck on land with little to do. There is no commercial fishing along most of the Fukushima coast. In a nation highly sensitive to food safety, there is no market for the fish caught near the stricken plant because the meltdowns it suffered contaminated the ocean water and marine life with radiation.
The plant suffered triple meltdowns after the massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., is putting tonnes of water into its reactors to cool them and is struggling to contain the resulting waste water.
A sliver of hope emerged after recent sampling results showed a decline in radioactivity in some fish species. But a new crisis spawned by fresh leaks of radioactive water from the plant last week may have dashed those prospects.
Authorities discovered that a massive amount of partially treated, radioactive water was leaking from tanks at Fukushima, the fifth and so far the worst, breach. The water, stored in 1,000 tanks, is pumped into three damaged reactors to keep their melted fuel cool. Much of the water leaked into the ground but some may have escaped into the sea through a rain-water gutter.
On Wednesday, the Nuclear Regulation Authority upgraded its rating of the leak to a "serious incident," or level 3, up from a level 1 on the international scale of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
It remains unclear what the environmental impact from the latest contamination will be on sea life. Scientists have said contamination tends to be carried by a southward current and largely diluted as it spreads.
Fishermen like Suzuki, 47, now wonder whether they ever will be able to resume fishing, a mainstay for many small rural communities like Yotsukura, 45 kilometres south of the Fukushima plant. His son has already moved on, looking for work in construction.
"The operators [of the plant] are reacting too late every time in whatever they do," said Suzuki, who works with his father Choji, 79, after inheriting the family business from him.
"We say, 'Don't spill contaminated water,' and they spilled contaminated water. They are always a step behind so that is why we can't trust them," said Suzuki, who has little faith in the future of his trade.
"People in the fishing business have no choice but to give up," he said. "Many have mostly given up already."

6. Why Syria Intervention Plan Is Being Pushed by Oil Interests, Not Concern About Chemical Weapons
Massacres of civilians are being exploited for narrow geopolitical competition to control Mideast oil, gas pipelines

Photo taken August 21, 2013 shows an oil well near Tioga, North Dakota. New York oil rallied to the highest level for more than two years on Wednesday, with concerns about Middle East supplies intensifying as Western powers prepare for possible military a
August 30, 2013  |

On 21 August, hundreds - perhaps over a thousand - people were killed in a chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Damascus, prompting the US, UK, Israel and France to raise the spectre of military strikes against Bashir al Assad's forces.
The latest episode is merely one more horrific event in a conflict that has increasingly taken on genocidal characteristics.
The case for action at first glance is indisputable. The UN now confirms a death toll over 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom have been killed by Assad's troops. An estimated 4.5 million people have been displaced from their homes. International observers have  overwhelmingly confirmed Assad's complicity in the preponderance of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Syrian people. The illegitimacy of his regime, and the legitimacy of the uprising, is clear.

Experts are unanimous that the shocking footage of civilians, including children, suffering the effects of some sort of chemical attack, is real - but  remain divided on whether it involved  military-grade chemical weapons associated with Assad's arsenal, or were a more amateur concoction potentially linked to the rebels.
Whatever the case, few recall that US agitation against  Syria began long before recent atrocities, in the context of wider operations targeting Iranian influence across the Middle East.
In May 2007, a  presidential finding revealed that Bush had authorised CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to Seymour Hersh in the  New Yorker. A range of US government and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had "cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United States and "sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the Saudi government, with Washington's approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria," with a view to pressure him to be "more conciliatory and open to negotiations" with Israel. One faction receiving covert US "political and financial support" through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

According to former French foreign minister  Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business", he told French television:
"I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria."
The 2011 uprisings, it would seem - triggered by  a confluence of domestic energy shortages and climate-induced droughts which led to massive food price hikes - came at an opportune moment that was quickly exploited. Leaked emails from the  private intelligence firm Stratfor including notes from  a meeting with Pentagon officials confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting "collapse" of Assad's regime "from within."
So what was this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria and Iran all about? According to  retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years", starting with Iraq and moving on to "Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region's vast oil and gas resources.
Much of the strategy currently at play was candidly described in a 2008 US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War(pdf). The report noted that "the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on  oil, thus making it a strategically important resource." As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the US has "motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states":

"The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized... For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources... The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war."
In this context, the report identified several potential trajectories for regional policy focused on protecting access to Gulf oil supplies, among which the following are most salient:
"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces... the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace... US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."
Exploring different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that the US may concentrate "on shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf." Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by bogging down jihadi activity with internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the US:
"One of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda threat to US interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western operations."

The RAND document contextualised this disturbing strategy with surprisingly prescient recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the US's key allies and enemies - Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Syria, Iran - to a range of converging crises: rapidly rising populations, a 'youth bulge', internal economic inequalities, political frustrations, sectarian tensions, and environmentally-linked water shortages, all of which could destabilise these countries from within or exacerbate inter-state conflicts.

The report noted especially that Syria is among several "downstream countries that are becoming increasingly water scarce as their populations grow", increasing a risk of conflict. Thus, although the RAND document fell far short of recognising the prospect of an 'Arab Spring', it illustrates that three years before the 2011 uprisings, US defence officials were alive to the region's growing instabilities, and concerned by the potential consequences for stability of Gulf oil.

These strategic concerns, motivated by fear of expanding Iranian influence, impacted Syria primarily in relation to pipeline geopolitics. In 2009 - the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria - Assad  refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would  run a pipeline from the latter's North field, contiguous with Iran's South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets - albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad's rationale was "to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."

Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for  an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 - just as Syria's civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo - and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a " direct slap in the face" to Qatar's plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be  "completely" in Saudi Arabia's hands and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

It would seem that contradictory self-serving Saudi and Qatari oil interests are pulling the strings of an equally self-serving oil-focused US policy in Syria, if not the wider region. It is this - the problem of establishing a pliable opposition which the US and its oil allies feel confident will  play ball, pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria - that will determine the nature of any prospective intervention: not concern for Syrian life.

What is beyond doubt is that Assad is a war criminal whose government deserves to be overthrown. The question is by whom, and for what interests?

7. Radiation at a tank holding contaminated water at a crippled Japanese nuclear power plant has increased by a factor of 18, the plant's supervisor announced Sunday.
The storage tank at the Fukushima nuclear power plant contained a radiation of 1,800 millisieverts per hour near its bottom Saturday, according to the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, as it is commonly called. That amount of radiation would kill an exposed person in four hours. A spokesman for the company also said that a new leak had been detected from a pipe connecting two other tanks.  By contrast, a reading of the same tank taken on August 22 found radiation of just 100 millisieverts per hour.

The Fukushima plant suffered triple meltdowns after the massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. TEPCO must constantly cool the reactors with water, and is struggling to contain the waste.
TEPCO recently acknowledged the chronic leaking of radiation-tainted underground water into the Pacific, plus a 300-ton (300,000-liter, 80,000-gallon) seepage from one of more than 1,000 storage tanks. The leak was the firth and worst from a tank since the crisis began.

The tank leak prompted the nuclear authority to upgrade its rating Wednesday to a level-3 "serious incident," from a level 1 on the International Atomic Energy Agency radiological event scale.
"We cannot fully stop contaminated water leaks right away. That's the reality. The water is still leaking in to the sea, and we should better assess its environmental impact," Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka said in a speech in Tokyo. The agency said Thursday that TEPCO would have to monitor the situation closely.
Tanaka said his agency recently set up a team to collect data more systematically and comprehensively to assess the extent of contamination and evaluate the impact on the ocean.
Scientists have said contamination tends to be carried by a southward current and gets largely diluted as it spreads into the sea.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/01/radiation-readings-spike-at-japan-fukushima-nuclear-plant/#ixzz2deUB6IJY

8. Syria's NCB: "The Americans Have Cheated."
http://warisacrime.org/content/syrias-ncb-americans-have-cheated ;
Haytham Manna is the Paris-based foreign spokesman for the National Coordinating Body for Democratic Change in Syria.  The NCB was formed in June 2011 by 15 opposition groups and several independent figures who were leading anti-government protests in Syria. They have consistently agreed on three basic principles: non-violence, non-sectarianism and opposition to foreign intervention.
A review of the 15 parties that make up the NCB helps to explain why Western capitalist governments and their monarchist Arab allies have tried to marginalize it. It is chaired by Hassan Abdul Azim, the leader of the Democratic Arab Socialist Union, and it includes the Arab Revolutionary Workers' Party; the Communist Labor Party; the Democratic People's Party; Together for a Free Democratic Syria; the Arab Socialist Movement; and the Syrian Union Party; along with four Kurdish parties and several regional parties. 
On Tuesday, August 27th, Haytham Manna spoke to Francois Janne d'Othee of Le Vif, Belgium's largest weekly French language news magazine, about the current crisis surrounding Syria.  If you can read French, here's the original: http://www.levif.be/info/actualite/international/syrie-les-attaques-chimiques-sont-un-coup-monte/article-4000384171801.htm

If you can't read French, here's my translation:
Le Vif: The use of chemical weapons in Syria could lead the West to "punish" the regime.  What do you think about that?
Manna: I am totally against it, as is the coordinating body I run.  That will only strengthen the regime.  What's more, an intervention risks stirring up even more violence, piling destruction on top of destruction and further demolishing the capacity for political dialogue.  The regime is mainly responsible because it chose the military-security option.  But how can anyone talk about a war on terrorism and at the same time give a helping hand to extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda?
Le Vif: So is the West choosing the worst option, in your opinion?
Manna: From the beginning, it's been a succession of political errors.  The United States, France and the United Kingdom have pushed the parties to radicalize.  They didn't prevent jihadis from traveling to Syria and waited a very long time before even acknowledging that phenomenon.  Where is democracy in this whole project that aims to destroy Syria?  And do you think that it's morality that guides them?  At the time of the massacre in Halabja (in Iraq in 1988), they closed their eyes.  I'm also surprised to see that the victims of chemical weapons are given so much more consideration than the 100,000 dead we have already counted since the beginning of the conflict.
Le Vif: Who is responsible for the latest massacre with chemical weapons?
Manna: I'm still not certain, but our information doesn't match that of President Hollande.  People speak of thousands of victims, but we have a list of less than 500.  So we are into propaganda, psychological warfare, and certainly not the truth.  What's more, the chemical weapons were improvised.  Do you really think that the super-militarized loyalist army needs that?  In fact videos and photos were put out on the Internet before the attacks began.  Now this material serves as proof for the Americans!
Le Vif: Do you think one party to the conflict wanted to provoke the West to intervene?
Manna: It's a staged operation.  We know that chemical weapons have already been used by Al Qaeda.  Now the Free Syrian Army and the groups linked to Al Qaeda conduct 80% of their operations jointly in the North.  A month ago, Ahmad Jarba (armed opposition leader) claimed he was going to change the balance of forces on the ground.  Now it's the opposite that's happened, the loyalist army has regained ground.  Only a direct intervention could help the rebels to get out of this… So, let's wait.  If Al Qaeda is responsible, we should say so loud and clear.  If it's the regime, we'll need a UN resolution.  And we mustn't let two or three countries organize an alliance of their otherwise not so reputable friends.
Le Vif: Between the West and the Russians, which position seems the most coherent to you?
Manna: The Russians are the most coherent because they are working seriously on the Geneva II negotiations.  The Americans have cheated.  Two or three times they have withdrawn at the very moment that an agreement was in the works.
Le Vif: Is a political solution still possible?
Manna: Everything is possible but that will depend mainly on the Americans.  The French are content to follow.  A political solution is the only one that could save Syria.  But the armed opposition can't agree on a delegation.
Le Vif: What will become of Bashar al Assad?
Manna: He's not going to stay.  If negotiations succeed, they will lead to a de facto parliamentary regime.  If one at least accepts the basic text of Geneva 2, which is the best text, backed up by an international compromise.  But let me say this: when we talk about massacres of minorities, and that the president is from a minority, how do we ask him to withdraw or not withdraw?  Today Western politics has strengthened his position as the defender of Syrian unity and minorities.  Having said that, nobody will be able to claim victory: the violence has become so blind that it will take a broadened front of the opposition and the regime to reach that goal.  

9. Atlantic Fish showing Fuke Contamination
Fillet samples of marine fish collected from the East/West Greenland current (GC) and from the Baltic Sea (BS), have been investigated by gamma-ray spectrometry within the regular German monitoring program. In samples of the second half of 2011 134Cs traces have been detected, suggested to originate from the Fukushima fallout being deposited in March/April 2011 over the northern North Atlantic and accumulated by fish. The radionuclide 134Cs (half-live 2 yr) was indeed detected with quite small activities at about 0.0036 Bq kg−1 w.w. [...] Model results confirmed the level of 134Cs measured in BS fish and showed its maximum to have occurred in winter 2011/2012 followed by a continuous decrease. It was also determined that 134Cs activity, but not that of 134Cs, showed a significant negative correlation with sampling depth (150–400 m) of GC fish; this strengthens our Fukushima fallout assumption. [...]

[...] the aims of our study were (i) to determine the activity concentration of caesium isotopes in cod and redfish as economically relevant fish species 5 in the North Atlantic Ocean and its marginal seas, (ii) separate the FD-NPP input from that from Chernobyl and Global Fallout, and (iii) validate the determinations and estimate the future behaviour of caesium isotopes in fish of the Baltic Sea [...]

The sea is boiling off of the coast of Fukushima, Japan, and the picture of this devastating phenomenon has recently been called the photo of the day by Coolbuster. While it certainly can’t be good for any plant or animal life left off of the coast of Japan, it might have even worse consequences for the North American continent. If Fukushima radiation keeps leaking, the boiling seas are likely to spread all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the West Coast of the US causing massive environmental catastrophe.

Contamination levels skyrocket at Fukushima plant, up nearly 2,000% — NHK: Quadrillions of becquerels already released;
Kyodo News, September 1, 2013: Very high radiation levels were observed Saturday at three tanks and one of the pipes connecting them at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, pointing to the possibility that radioactive water may have newly leaked, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. The radiation readings were from 70 to 1,800 millisieverts per hour [...]

Shunichi Tanaka, Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman (Aug. 28, 2013)

JIJI PRESS, Aug. 31, 2013: Saturday’s highest reading [of 1,800 millisieverts per hour] was measured at one of the two tanks, with the radiation level jumping from 100 millisieverts.
CBS News, Aug. 28, 2013 (Emphasis Added): “What’s important is not the number itself but to give a basic idea about the extent of the problem,” authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka said [...] Tanaka said there is a much larger ongoing problem at the plant: massive amounts of contaminated ground water reaching the sea. But that problem cannot even be rated under the IAEA’s International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale because it is unknown exactly how much ground water is escaping, how contaminated it is and what effect it is having on the sea and marine products. [...] “I’m baffled,” he said.
WSJ, Aug. 28, 2013: “It could be much more or much less,” [Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority] added, saying that Tepco calculated the amount based on the assumption that the tank had been full. [...] A Tepco spokeswoman said “it’s true that we calculated 300 tons. We cannot say whether we will or we won’t change it later.”

NHK, Aug. 30, 2013: Major leak [...] releasing several quadrillion becquerels of radioactive particles [...] the government needs to take charge entirely.

From last week: 'Growing Alarm': 25 trillion becquerels of Fukushima radioactive material leaks into ground -- Kyodo News Advisory: Exact source of extreme contamination unknown; Tank missing 300,000 liters (VIDEO)

Bloomberg, Aug 28, 2013: “This is becoming rapidly an international issue, so I think there is some pressure from countries in the region, including China Korea and others,” said Tom O’Sullivan, founder of Tokyo-based energy consultant Mathyos. [...]

The Japan Times (Professor Andrew Dewit and Dr. Chrisopher Hobson), Aug 29, 2013: Tepco’s abysmal track record is characterized by repeated blunders. Even now there are few signs that Tepco fully understands the magnitude of the situation they — and we — collectively face. It is therefore vital, literally a matter of national security, that Fukushima No. 1′s decommissioning be taken over by the government with the assistance of an international task force of experts.

CNBC, Aug. 29, 2013: Peter Storey, a professor in Nuclear Policy and Regulation at a the University of Central Lancashire in the U.K., who was part of an international mission to advise Japan after the Fukushima disaster, told CNBC that the Japanese regulators and operators have waited “weeks and weeks” to attempt to solve the plant’s waste water problem. “It does their credibility no good and will have a massive impact on public confidence. Something must be failing if they’re not on top of these problems – removing waste water is not rocket science,” he told CNBC on Wednesday.