PNN - The Immigration Show - 8/18/13

PNN - 8/18/13

RWS ………………………….    7:00 pm
Luis Cuevas………..…….       7:16 pm
Edwin Enciso ……….….        7:32 pm
Daisy Baez ……………..         8:01 pm
Annette Taddeo-Goldstein   8:17 pm
Isabel Vincent …………..       8:46 pm

1. John Kerry hammers democracy and takes a poke at "We The People" who are thoroughly fed up.

Speaking to State Department personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil, on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that "this little thing called the Internet makes it much harder to govern." 

What is interesting is that most of the media has not even so much as questioned Kerry or insisted he go into more detail about this remark which is a direct attack on democracy.

Obviously, Kerry and Obama and the Democrats and the Republicans are arrogantly insisting that they have the right to run the government according to Wall Street's dictate without any input into the decision-making process from "we the people."

If we look at how the Democrats and Republicans run their own political parties we get a clue about how they want to run the government--- by manipulation and scheming in order to control people and movements completely free from any form of real citizen participation, transparency and oversight and without any consideration for democracy, the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights or the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It is the epitome of hypocrisy that we have the United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, trotting the globe "on our dime" lamenting efforts of citizens to participate in their governments as all these other Wall Street bribed politicians, the mainstream corporate controlled media and the over-paid capitalist Sooth-sayers/pundits along with the muddle-headed middle class "intellectual" supporters of Obama all boasting to the world that the United States is the world's greatest bastion of democracy.

Talk about "irony." 

2. These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.


3. The spotlight on animal rights in CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) is typically focused on cramped spaces and blatantly inhumane treatment. But some scientists, farmers and veterinarians are talking about another form of animal abuse: stuffing animals with feed grown from genetically engineered crops drenched in glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's RoundUp.

What they've uncovered should give us all pause. Because the symptoms veterinarians and researchers have observed in animals are not unlike many of the chronic, and increasingly prevalent, health problems plaguing humans today. Digestive disorders. Damaged organs. Infertility. Weak immune systems. Chronic depression.

"We've got a real mess," says Dr. Art Dunham, an Iowa veterinarian who has treated farm animals for several decades. Dunham is a staunch believer that GMO crops are wreaking havoc with the health of animals and humans. His daughter, Leah Dunham, who tagged along with her father on many a farm visit over the years, recently wrote America's Two-Headed Pig. Drawing on her father's clinical notes, and the work of scientists like Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus in plant pathology at Purdue University, Leah Dunham outlines some of the ways in which humans are adding to the suffering of farm animals by feeding them a glyphosate-tainted, GMO diet.

Leah Dunham would like to see the CAFO model drastically overhauled or abandoned. Her father believes it's more realistic to tackle the issue of GMO feed without attacking CAFOs. But father and daughter agree that the problems associated with today's industrial agriculture model extend beyond the health and well-being of animals. Leah Dunham wrote:

My father has pored over thousands of research papers in attempts to remedy the underlying causes of the illnesses described in this book. His work has embodied a commitment to healthy lands, creatures, and farms, as well as the hard work necessary to sustain them. After years of listening to him talk about his attempts to solve reoccurring health problems, I realized that most people don't have a clue as to how modern disease complexities affect farm animals. We both hope that this book will help all medical professionals, farmers, and consumers better address the true roots of various medical conditions, including nutrient deficiencies, clostridial infections, diabetes, and Parkinsons disease.

Leah Dunham says consumers are alarmed by news reports that focus on outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. But most are unaware that industrial GMO crops are "damaging our health in other, far more insidious ways - among them, by damaging the health of animals raised for food."

Here are a few examples, from America's Two-Headed Pig, of how Art and Leah Dunham believe genetically modified feeds, and particularly glyphosate, inflict suffering on farm animals.

Skeletal Deformities

In his many years of practice, Art Dunham hadn't seen a single case of manganese deficiency in the herds he treated. But that changed in about 2000, when he started seeing more and more calves being born with skeletal deformities - a symptom of a manganese-deficient diet. Initially skeptical, Dunham experimented by adding manganese to the calves' diets. Their health improved. His hunch was confirmed when lab results on some of the dead calves' livers revealed little or no manganese.

Dunham was confused. A diet of corn, soybean meal and hay should contain enough manganese for hogs, dairy and beef cattle. But it started to make more sense when he came across a study conducted in 2007 by Dr. Huber. Huber found that by spraying manganese on soybeans 10-14 days after the soybeans were sprayed with glyphosate, farmers could increase crop yields. Why? Huber postulated that the glyphosate caused some crops to become manganese-deficient because it was binding to nutrients in the soil and plants. Crops sprayed with glyphosate were less able to metabolize the nutrients needed for proper plant function, which made the plants susceptible to disease.

4. Two US senators on the intelligence committee said on Friday that thousands of annual violations by the National Security Agency on its own restrictions were "the tip of the iceberg."

"The executive branch has now confirmed that the rules, regulations and court-imposed standards for protecting the privacy of Americans' have been violated thousands of times each year," said senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, two leading critics of bulk surveillance, who responded Friday to a Washington Post story based on documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"We have previously said that the violations of these laws and rules were more serious than had been acknowledged, and we believe Americans should know that this confirmation is just the tip of a larger iceberg."

On July 31, Wyden, backed by Udall, vaguely warned other senators in a floor speech that the NSA and the director of national intelligence were substantively misleading legislators by describing improperly collected data as a matter of innocent and anodyne human or technical errors.

In keeping with their typically cautious pattern when discussing classified information, Wyden and Udall did not provide details about their claimed "iceberg" of surveillance malfeasance. But they hinted that the public still lacks an adequate understanding of the NSA's powers to collect data on Americans under its controversial interpretation of the Patriot Act.

"We believe the public deserves to know more about the violations of the secret court orders that have authorized the bulk collection of Americans' phone and email records under the Patriot Act," Wyden and Udall said.

"The public should also be told more about why the Fisa court has said that the executive branch's implementation of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has circumvented the spirit of the law, particularly since the executive branch has declined to address this concern."

In October 2011, the Fisa court secretly ruled that an NSA collection effort violated the fourth amendment, a fact first disclosed last year by Wyden. The Post disclosed the effort involved diverting international communications via fiberoptic cables inside the US into a "repository."

Shortly before Wyden and Udall hinted at even broader NSA violations of its surveillance authorities, the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee came to the NSA's defense.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said the majority of "compliance incidents" are "unintentional and do not involve any inappropriate surveillance of Americans."

"The large majority of NSA's so-called 'compliance incidents' are called 'roaming' incidents, in which the NSA is collecting the phone or electronic communications of a non-American outside the United States, and that person then enters the United States," Feinstein said.

"The NSA generally won't know that the person has traveled to the United States. As the laws and rules governing NSA surveillance require different procedures once someone enters the U.S.—generally to require a specific FISA court order—NSA will cite this as a 'compliance incident,' and either cease the surveillance or obtain the required FISA court order."

Feinstein's counterpart in the House of Representatives, Mike Rogers of Michigan, issued a similar defense of the NSA.

"The disclosed documents demonstrate that there was no intentional and willful violation of the law and that the NSA is not collecting the email and telephone traffic of all Americans, as previously reported," Rogers said.

"Congress and the court have put in place auditing, reporting, and compliance requirements to help ensure that the executive branch, the Congress, and the court each have insight into how the authorities granted to the NSA are used. As a result, even the inadvertent and unintentional errors are documented.

"We demand these reviews so the NSA can constantly improve and correct any technical missteps that may impact Americans. The committee has been apprised of previous incidents, takes seriously each one, and uses the oversight and compliance regime to provide us insight into these operations and whether further adjustments must be made.

5. After months of in-fighting, the beleaguered Oregon Republican Party elected a new chairman last weekend. His name is Art Robinson, and he wants to sprinkle radioactive waste from airplanes to build up our resistance to degenerative illnesses. Robinson, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress against progressive Rep. Peter DeFazio in 2010 and 2012, took over after the previous chair resigned in advance of a recall campaign over her alleged financial mismanagement.

Robinson, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry, has marketed himself for the last three decades as an expert on everything from nuclear fallout to AIDS to climate science in the pages of a monthly newsletter, Access to Energy, which he published from his compound in the small town of Cave Junction. A quick glance at his writings, which were publicized during his ill-fated challenges to DeFazio, suggest that whatever the failings of the previous party leadership—Democrats now hold all statewide elected offices and control both houses of the state Legislature—Robinson brings with him a new set of challenges entirely.

On nuclear waste: "All we need do with nuclear waste is dilute it to a low radiation level and sprinkle it over the ocean—or even over America after hormesis is better understood and verified with respect to more diseases." And: "If we could use it to enhance our own drinking water here in Oregon, where background radiation is low, it would hormetically enhance our resistance to degenerative diseases. Alas, this would be against the law."

On climate change: "[T]here is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

On diversity: The white-male imbalance at his alma mater, Cal Tech, Robinson argued, was due to the fact that "its applicants are weighted toward those who seek severe, difficult, total-immersion training in science—an experience few women and blacks desire."

6. Justin's Joke

According to his dad, while Justin was playing a video game "[S]omeone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head. To which [Justin] replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were 'lol and jk' [all sic]."

Even though it was a clear joke -- underscored by the shorthand for "laugh out loud" and "just kidding" -- a woman who saw the post reported Justin to the police.  Now he's in jail for making "terroristic threats" and faces $500,000 for bail and up to 8 years in prison!

7. Marching to Scotts's House
MARCH TO GOVERNOR RICK SCOTT’S HOME
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 5:00 PM

Meet on the beach at Naples Fishing Pier, 25 12th Ave. S., Naples, FL 34102

March to 3150 Gordon Drive in Old Naples, Gulf of Mexico beach front

Let’s turn up the heat in a march to Governor Rick Scott’s home to stop new oil drilling in South Florida. Collier leased 115,000 acres for oil exploration to Hughes Oil, who applied for permits to set up a drill site in Golden Gate Estates — 1000 feet from family homes and adjacent to the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and Western Everglades. We say, NO oil drilling in our backyards, in our panther habitats, and in our protected wetlands. If it’s legal, it shouldn’t be. New oil drilling will endanger residents, water, wetlands, and wildlife as well as contribute to environmentally damaging climate change.

By land and by sea, we’ll march and paddle from the Naples Pier to the Governor’s beachfront home. Banners and flags will spell out concerns. In the Governor’s backyard, we’ll build an oil rig to make visible why residents don’t want to live in an emergency evacuation zone, only feet from a hazardous drill site, with a 145’ oil rig. We’re calling on the Governor to tell the state to deny the permit. Closing with a candlelight vigil, we’ll invite everyone, from legislators to land barons, to partner with us in preserving South Florida. Bring a windproof candle, light stick, or cell phone set to candle mode.

Details: Facebook Preserve our Paradise, event page https://www.facebook.com/events/581706661871668/
Contact: Karen Dwyer, Ph.D. dwyerka@gmail.com
Thank you for your support.
Looking forward to seeing you there,
Jen


8. NSA Backdoor - says Wyden

The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole potentially allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans".

The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs.

The intelligence data is being gathered under Section 702 of the of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the NSA authority to target without warrant the communications of foreign targets, who must be non-US citizens and outside the US at the point of collection.

The communications of Americans in direct contact with foreign targets can also be collected without a warrant, and the intelligence agencies acknowledge that purely domestic communications can also be inadvertently swept into its databases. That process is known as "incidental collection" in surveillance parlance.

But this is the first evidence that the NSA has permission to search those databases for specific US individuals' communications.

A secret glossary document provided to operatives in the NSA's Special Source Operations division - which runs the Prism program and large-scale cable intercepts through corporate partnerships with technology companies - details an update to the "minimization" procedures that govern how the agency must handle the communications of US persons. That group is defined as both American citizens and foreigners located in the US.

"While the FAA 702 minimization procedures approved on 3 October 2011 now allow for use of certain United States person names and identifiers as query terms when reviewing collected FAA 702 data," the glossary states, "analysts may NOT/NOT [not repeat not] implement any USP [US persons] queries until an effective oversight process has been developed by NSA and agreed to by DOJ/ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]."

The term "identifiers" is NSA jargon for information relating to an individual, such as telephone number, email address, IP address and username as well as their name.

The document - which is undated, though metadata suggests this version was last updated in June 2012 - does not say whether the oversight process it mentions has been established or whether any searches against US person names have taken place.

Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has obliquely warned for months that the NSA's retention of Americans' communications incidentally collected and its ability to search through it has been far more extensive than intelligence officials have stated publicly. Speaking this week, Wyden told the Guardian it amounts to a "backdoor search" through Americans' communications data.

"Section 702 was intended to give the government new authorities to collect the communications of individuals believed to be foreigners outside the US, but the intelligence community has been unable to tell Congress how many Americans have had their communications swept up in that collection," he said.

9. Fukushima News

Fukushima Worker: I’m worried about pressure forcing water up through cracked ground at nuclear plant — Level now rising on mountain side

Groundwater level is rising on the mountain side at last. It may be safe where they improved the ground, but the rest of the areas and the crippled roads may have the groundwater welling up.

Normally thinking, groundwater goes somewhere else if it’s stopped on the coastal line. If water has less places to go to, it makes the path through the weakened ground by the water pressure. There are a lot of cracks on the ground in Fukushima nuclear plant. That’s what I’m worried about.

* * * *

    Folks desperate to beat the summer’s record heat have taken to beaches far too close to the Fukushima nuclear power plant [...]

    Children warned to stay off jungle gyms or risk serious burns from super heated metal. [...]

    The specter of contamination haunts would be beach goers.

    Father: I do worry about radiation [...] but the data says it’s safe to go in the water again [...]

    Disturbing revelations about contamination draining into the sea just 22 miles south [...]

10. News coming out of Japan these days is not good.

First, the Japanese government confirmed that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been leaking an estimated 300 tonnes of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean each day. The leaks have apparently been going on since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused three reactors in the plant to melt down.

Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) called the situation an emergency and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called it “an urgent problem.” The consensus among independent scientists is that Tepco, the plant’s operator, is incapable of stopping the discharge into the sea, which it has kept secret for more than two years.

It was discovered after the NRA detected strontium and tritium in a monitoring well at the plant site. When found out, the company apologized.

But it gets worse.

On Aug. 14, Reuters reported that Tepco was preparing to remove 400 tonnes of “highly irradiated” spent fuel from the severely damaged Reactor Four building.

The operation, set to start in November and expected to take one year, has never been attempted on this scale and, according to nuclear experts, “is fraught with danger, including the possibility of a large release of radiation if a fuel assembly breaks, gets stuck or gets too close to an adjacent bundle,” the news agency reported.

The radiation contained in the fuel pools in Reactor Four is equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, the Reuters report said.

In their World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013, independent scientists Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggat wrote: “Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date.”

In other words, the devastation would be worse than Chernobyl, worse than the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns, although no one can say how much worse.

The operation is necessary, however, because the chance of Fukushima being hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake was estimated last year at 98 per cent within three years. And that, according to the experts, could cause the fuel pool structure to collapse and start another chain reaction.

The seriousness of the situation cannot be overstated. It is truly a global crisis. A host of observers have called for a team of the world’s top scientists to take over the entire clean-up, especially in light of Tepco’s miserable track record of missteps and misinformation.

This week, however, Japan’s nuclear regulator approved a plan for Tepco to carry out the clean-up, expected to take 40 years and cost billions that the company said it doesn’t have.

Health officials in B.C. assure us that there is nothing to worry about from radioactive water pouring daily into the Pacific. It is, after all, a big ocean.

But the danger of “radiological disaster” from Reactor Four is real. For the Japanese it’s a living nightmare, and for the west coast of North America, it is a legitimate threat.

If we had a responsible government, we would be told about the risks from Reactor Four. People could take measures to protect themselves and their families in the event that an earthquake or blunder by Tepco caused the unspeakable to occur.

But as far as our government is concerned, Canadians just can’t handle the truth.

11. WEST COAST PETITION
 TO:
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)     Senator Dianne Feinstein (D- CA) 
Senator Ron Wyden (D- OR)             Senator Jeff Merkley (D- OR)
Senator Maria Cantwell (D - WA)       Senator Patty Murray (D- WA)
Senator Mark Begich (D- AK)       Senator Lisa Murkowski (R- AK)
Senator Mazie Hirono (D- HI)        Senator Brian Schatz (D- HI
 US Senate switchboard: 
1-866-220-0044
Dear West Coast Senators:
We the undersigned are deeply concerned about the radiation danger from the ongoing disaster at the Japanese nuclear complex at Fukushima-Daiichi. We are asking you to conduct a thorough investigation of the continuing damage to West Coast states, and the potential danger of another catastrophe.
This would include a detailed inspection of the facility by a team of experts who are independent of the nuclear industry, as well as ongoing monitoring of West Coast and Hawaii  water, air and food for radiation.  We are especially concerned about making sure the site is safe in case of another huge earthquake, which is not unlikely.
Another big concern is pollution of the Pacific Ocean from ongoing discharge of radioactive water from the plant.  Already, radioactive fish are migrating to the West Coast.  Mammals at the top of the oceanic food chain are exhibiting strange symptoms, such as the epidemic of sea lion strandings in California.
We appreciate Senator Wyden's visit to the site in April 2012, and his subsequent letter of concern to appropriate officials. Evidently there has been no followup. The danger is being ignored. Your investigation would bring much needed attention.
Although the initial meltdown of three reactors, from the earthquake/tsunami of March 11, 2011, occurred over 2 years ago, the complex is still highly unstable, and leaking radiation constantly into the air and water. The Pacific Ocean is more and more contaminated. West Coast marine mammals are dying by the thousands, and West Coast babies are sick. The FDA is not testing food for radiation, although many fish are contaminated, and there have been reports of milk, mushrooms, seaweed being radioactive. Nor is the air along the coast being checked by official agencies.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the facility, has admitted that the disaster was caused by negligence on their part, yet they continue to be in charge of the containment/cleanup process. There are serious mishaps almost daily: pipes break, rats chew through wires and cause power outages, pumps break, containment tanks leak radioactive water into the environment, huge beams fall into fuel pools, etc.
So far, they have been handled, but if any of these problems gets out of control, there will be another nuclear explosion, the facility will have to be abandoned altogether, and the reactor cores and spent fuel pools will emit so much radiation that the West Coast might have to be evacuated. Another 8.0-9.0 earthquake could have the same result, and there are many earthquakes in the region of magnitude 6.0 -7.0.
Meanwhile, TEPCO is secretive, severely limiting access to the complex by journalists and by any experts who are not beholden to the nuclear industry. TEPCO has been accused of doctoring photos and videos to hide cracks in the aging concrete buildings and containment tanks. The workers are overexposed to radiation, underpaid, and must be rotated out after a few months, to be replaced by others with little experience of the facility.
The Japanese government has been accused of lying about the radiation in the area and health problems, and seems more concerned with declaring “normalcy” and safeguarding the nuclear industry than with safeguarding the health and safety of the people.
The financial drain on TEPCO and the Japanese is huge. They are responding to emergencies, dealing with health problems, coping with radioactive fisheries and produce, compensating victims, and working on the daunting task of dismantling the spent fuel pools, which are the most vulnerable to radioactive fire and explosions.
This is an international problem. Many say it is THE most dangerous situation on the planet at this time. It especially affects the residents of West Coast states. Your investigation is urgently needed, to shed light, bring attention, and help find technical and financial solutions.
Thank you.

PNN - Presents the Progressive Press

PNN 8-11-13
===========

7:11 - 7:21pm - Hans Meyer + World Bank
Steve Malagodi
Gwen Barry
Rob Abston - founder PLAN
Susan Nilon
====================
1. Fukushima drainage has 20,000 tons of water with radioactive substance – TEPCO

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) said on Tuesday that the drainage system of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant contains more than 20,000 tons of water with high levels of radioactive substances.
Tepco said that it detected 2.35 billion becquerels of cesium per liter in water located in underground passages at Fukushima which is leaking into the groundwater through cracks in the drainage tunnels - a radiation level roughly the same as that measured in April 2011. The normal level is 150 becquerels of cesium per liter. 

Japan’s nuclear watchdog said on Monday that the highly radioactive water building up inside the plant vaults is creating an “emergency.” 

Tepco, which is responsible for decommissioning the wrecked plant, estimated that contaminated groundwater could reach the surface within three weeks. The company is currently failing to prevent the drainage from seeping into the seawater near the plant. 

As a result, Tepco has decided that it is necessary to strengthen barriers as well as increase the speed with which water is pumped from the drainage area of the facility. 

For the past two years, Tepco has claimed that it managed to siphon off the excess water into specially built storage tanks. However, the company admitted late last month that toxic water was not contained.
As of March 2013, the station has accumulated more than 360,000 tons of water containing different degrees of radioactive concentration.
The Tepco plant suffered a meltdown in March 2011 after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami which caused the nuclear disaster. Almost 90,000 people within a 20km radius of the plant were forced to evacuate their homes due to the possibility of radiation poisoning.
Decisions to shut down all of the country's reactors were made following the disaster. The final reactor was made idle in May 2012. However, since then two reactors were restarted, though both of them will need to be put out of action for routine checks before September. 

Japanese experts predicted that as many as four are likely to come back into service by March 2015. The country may restart further reactors in July, Reuters cited a government-affiliated institute as saying on Tuesday.

2. Worse than admitted!
TOKYO, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Highly radioactive water from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 tonnes a day, officials said on Wednesday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up.
The revelation amounted to an acknowledgement that plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) has yet to come to grips with the scale of the catastrophe, 2 1/2 years after the plant was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami. Tepco only recently admitted water had leaked at all.
Calling water containment at the Fukushima Daiichi station an "urgent issue," Abe ordered the government for the first time to get involved to help struggling Tepco handle the crisis.
The leak from the plant 220 km (130 miles) northeast of Tokyo is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool in a week. The water is spilling into the Pacific Ocean, but it was not immediately clear how much of a threat it poses.

As early as January this year, Tepco found fish contaminated with high levels of radiation inside a port at the plant. Local fishermen and independent researchers had already suspected a leak of radioactive water, but Tepco denied the claims.
Tetsu Nozaki, the chairman of the Fukushima fisheries federation said he had only heard of the latest estimates of the magnitude of the seepage from media reports.
Environmental group Greenpeace said Tepco had "anxiously hid the leaks" and urged Japan to seek international expertise.
"Greenpeace calls for the Japanese authorities to do all in their power to solve this situation, and that includes increased transparancy...and getting international expertise in to help find solutions," Dr. Rianne Teule of Greenpeace International said in an e-mailed statement.
Fukushima is on Japan's northeastern coast and faces the Pacific. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not believe the seepage will have any effect on the West Coast.
"Even 300 tonnes - that's still going to be diluted to an almost undetectable level before it would get to any U.S. territory," said Scott Burnell, public information officer for the commission. "The scale of what's occurring at Fukushima is nowhere near the scale of the releases we saw during the actual accident."
In the weeks after the disaster, the government allowed Tepco to dump tens of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific in an emergency move.
But the escalation of the crisis raises the risk of an even longer and more expensive clean-up, already forecast to take more than 40 years and cost $11 billion.
The admission further dents the credibility of Tepco, criticised for its failure to prepare for the tsunami and earthquake, for a confused response to the disaster and for covering up shortcomings.
"We think that the volume of water (leaking into the Pacific) is about 300 tonnes a day," said Yushi Yoneyama, an official with the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees energy policy.
Tatsuya Shinkawa, a director in METI's Nuclear Accident Response Office, told reporters the government believed water had been leaking for two years, but Yoneyama told Reuters it was unclear how long the water had been leaking at the current rate.
Shinkawa described the water as "highly" contaminated.
The water is from the area between the crippled reactors and the ocean, where Tepco has sought to block the flow of contaminated water by chemically hardening the soil.
Tetsu Nozaki, head of the Fukushima fisheries federation called for action to end the spillage.
"If the water was indeed leaking out at 300 tonnes a day for more than two years, the radiation readings should be far worse," Nozaki told Reuters. "Either way, we have asked Tepco to stop leaking contaminated water into the ocean."
ABE STEPS IN
Abe ordered his government into action. The contaminated water was "an urgent issue to deal with", he told reporters after a meeting of a government task force on the disaster.
"Rather than relying on Tokyo Electric, the government will take measures," he said after instructing METI Minister Toshimitsu Motegi to ensure Tepco takes appropriate action.
The prime minister stopped short of pledging funds to address the issue, but the ministry has requested a budget allocation, an official told Reuters.
The Nikkei newspaper said the funds would be used to freeze the soil to keep groundwater out of reactor buildings - a project estimated to cost up to 40 billion yen ($410 million).
Tepco's handling of the clean-up has complicated Japan's efforts to restart its 50 nuclear power plants. All but two remain shut since the disaster because of safety concerns.
That has made Japan dependent on expensive imported fuels.
An official from the newly created nuclear watchdog told Reuters on Monday that the highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Fukushima was creating an "emergency" that Tepco was not containing on its own.
Abe on Wednesday asked the regulator's head to "do his best to find out the cause and come up with effective measures".
Tepco pumps out some 400 tonnes a day of groundwater flowing from the hills above the nuclear plant into the basements of the destroyed buildings, which mixes with highly irradiated water used to cool the fuel that melted down in three reactors.
Tepco is trying to prevent groundwater from reaching the plant by building a "bypass", but recent spikes of radioactive elements in sea water prompted the utility to reverse denials and acknowledge that tainted water is reaching the sea.
Tepco and the industry ministry have been working since May on a proposal to freeze the soil to prevent groundwater from leaking into the reactor buildings.
Similar technology is used in subway construction, but Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the vast scale of Tepco's attempt was "unprecedented in the world."
The technology was proposed by Kajima Corp,, a construction company already heavily involved in the clean-up.
Experts say maintaining the ground temperatures for months or years would be costly. The plan is to freeze a 1.4 km (nearly one mile) perimeter around the four damaged reactors by drilling shafts into the ground and pumping coolant through them.
"Right now there are no details (of the project yet). There's no blueprint, no nothing yet, so there's no way we can scrutinise it," said Shinji Kinjo, head of the task force set up by the nuclear regulator to deal with the water issue.

3. TRANSPARENCY… We don't need no stinking TRANSPARENCY
Former NSA Director General Michael Hayden has made a stunning declaration sure to further poison relations between the so-called intelligence community and the public. Hayden has claimed that transparency activists are the equivalent of Al Qaeda – mocking both the victims of 9/11 and the First Amendment.
The former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA speculated on Tuesday that hackers and transparency groups were likely to respond with cyber-terror attacks if the United States government apprehends whistleblower Edward Snowden…
“They may want to come after the US government, but frankly, you know, the dot-mil stuff is about the hardest target in the United States,” Hayden said, using a shorthand for US military networks. “So if they can’t create great harm to dot-mil, who are they going after? Who for them are the World Trade Centers? The World Trade Centers, as they were for al-Qaida.”

Hayden provided his speculation during a speech on cybersecurity to a Washington group, the Bipartisan Policy Center, in which he confessed to being deliberately provocative.
Under Hayden, the NSA began to collect, among other things, the phone records and internet data of Americans without warrants after 9/11, a drastic departure from its traditional mission of collecting foreign intelligence. A variety of technically sophisticated collection and analysis programs, codenamed Stellar Wind, were the genesis of several of the NSA efforts that Snowden disclosed to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

4. LavaBit Shuts Down

Today, Lavabit announced that it would shut down its encrypted email service rather than “become complicit in crimes against the American people.” Lavabit did not say what it had been asked to do, only that it was legally prohibited from sharing the events leading to its decision.
Lavabit was an email provider, apparently used by Edward Snowden along with other privacy sensitive users, with an avowed mission to offer an “e-mail service that never sacrifices privacy for profits” and promised to “only release private information if legally compelled by the courts in accordance with the United States Constitution.” It backed up this claim by encrypting all emails on Lavabit servers such that Lavabit did not have the ability to access a user's email (Lavabit’s white paper), at least without that user's passphrase, which the email provider did not store.
Given the impressive powers of the government to obtain emails and records from service providers, both with and without legal authority, it is encouraging to see service providers take steps to limit their ability to access user data, as Lavabit had done.

TOR hacked

startpage - not impacted

5. President Carter, General Powell Plead For Russian Aid To Overthrow Obama
A stunning Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that two of the United States highest ranking military generals delivered a “personal plea” to President Putin from retired four-star general and former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the 65th United States Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, and former President Jimmy Carter for “specific military telecommunications assistance” intended to aid them in overthrowing the Obama regime that these Americans claim is “run by blackmail” and is destroying their nation.

And during a televised interview with the American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) [see video HERE], Tice further noted that NSA-CSS spying orders were issued for US Supreme Court Justices and top US business leaders and that the “word to word” cell, telephone and email communications of all Americans were being recorded and saved too.

Important to note about Tice’s claims of the unprecedented NSA/CSS spying now taking place in the US, is that in 2008, the popular American actor Shia LaBeouf, while being interviewed on a television programme called the Tonight Show [see video HERE] told of his experience having a high level FBI agent play back for him phone conversations he, LaBeouf, had made a few years earlier as a demonstration about how much the American government knew about the private lives of their citizens.

To how the NSA-CSS have used the stolen communications of their nations top political, business, news media, military and other such peoples, this report says, has been to establish the most “convoluted blackmail scheme” the world has ever seen, where at one moment political enemies become political allies (left wing Obama and right wing Congressman Michelle Bachman on same side against NSA/CSS whistleblower Edward Snowden) and where news media giants refuse to investigate any story they’re forbidden to comment on.

Curious to note is that even we here at WhatDoesItMean.Com have been caught up in this NSA/CSS “convoluted blackmail scheme” after being attacked by the famous right wing media giant Glenn Beck, whose main website The Blaze.com, in their 5 August article titled Blaze Debunk: Obama ‘Regime’ Rumored to Shoot Down F-16s Sent to White House in Retaliation for Emails Exposing Colin Powell’s Alleged Affair, written by their technology and science editor Liz Klimas, and extensively commented on by their editor in chief Scott Baker [see video HERE], refuses to acknowledge the Obama regimes actions in shooting down two of their own military planes, while at the same (extremely contradictory) time saying the Obama regime is covering up the Boston Marathon Bombing.

Even worse, in their attack on our previous report, the minions of Glenn Beck failed at even the most rudimentary level to explain to either their readers or listeners (said to be in the millions) even the most basic truths of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal, our mission, or even our purpose for being.

To how the United States can survive such hypocrisy coming from such influential media figures like Glenn Beck, and from too many left-leaning other such media types to even mention, is readily apparent in the appeal made by these two American generals pleading for Russian help to overthrow their present regime.

Should the Powell-Carter coup-plotters be successful in their overthrowing of the Obama regime, however, it remains to be seen. But, and perhaps, even more important is that should they fail, their efforts will be kept from the American people (especially by the Glenn Beck types) like was done in 1933 when the Business Plot Coup nearly overthrew the Franklin Roosevelt regime, but which to this day no American school child or college student is allowed to know about.

6. Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, announced he will propose UNASUR to bring the US before an international tribunal for human rights violations after his plane was denied airspace in Europe in the beginning of July. Speaking yesterday to local newspaper La Razón, Morales announced that 'I'm going to propose in the next UNASUR meeting with all the other presidents to bring the United States before an international court in respect to human rights and international diplomacy treaties. This action is fundamental so that other presidents in the world will not have to go through what I went.'

The diplomatic scandal in question took place on 2nd July when Morales’ plane was re-routed on its return journey from a conference in Moscow as several European countries denied him airspace mistakenly believing that former US Intelligence Agent, Edward Snowden, was smuggled on board. The Bolivian President has since accepted the apologies from the European states involved, but has attributed the incident to Europe cow-tailing to the “repressive policies” of the US.

In addition, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) -an organisation that brings together South American and Caribbean countries- has “commissioned a legal and technical study to find out what legal arguments exist” in order to prosecute the US for espionage. The diplomatic violation came to light when Snowdon leaked the extent of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance of energy, military, politics, and terror, activity across Latin America.

While Morales has stated the importance of restoring US ambassadors in Bolivia, which have not been present since Ambassador Philip Goldberg and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were expelled in 2008, he also claimed that there would always be mistrust.

He asserted that “there is a look about the US, of pride, of submission, of using geopolitics for monopolistic purposes… It is never going to change…We must re-establish ambassadors, formalities, but we are not going to be trustful.”

Speaking of his disappointment with the US President, Morales declared that “I used to have confidence in Obama, who himself comes from a discriminated sector. But I cannot understand it when one who was discriminated against then discriminates against another.”

7. New Study Finds High Levels of Arsenic in Groundwater Near Fracking Sites

A recently published study by researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington found elevated levels of arsenic and other heavy metals in groundwater near natural gas fracking sites in Texas’ Barnett Shale.

While the findings are far from conclusive, the study provides further evidence tying fracking to arsenic contamination. An internal Environmental Protection Agency PowerPoint presentation recently obtained by the Los Angeles Times warned that wells near Dimock, Pa., showed elevated levels of arsenic in the groundwater. The EPA also found arsenic in groundwater near fracking sites in Pavillion, Wyo., in 2009 — a study the agency later abandoned.

ProPublica talked with Brian Fontenot, the paper’s lead author, about how his team carried out the study and why it matters. (Fontenot and another author, Laura Hunt, work for the EPA in Dallas, but they conducted the study on their own time in collaboration with several UT Arlington researchers.) Here’s an edited version of our interview:

What led you guys to do the study?

We were sort of talking around lunch one day, and came up with the idea of actually going out and testing water in the Barnett Shale. We’d heard all the things that you see in the media, all the sort of really left-wing stuff and right-wing stuff, but there weren’t a whole lot of answers out there in terms of an actual scientific study of water in the Barnett Shale. Our main intent was to bring an unbiased viewpoint here — to just look at the water, see if we could find anything, and report what we found.

What kind of previous studies had been done in this vein?

The closest analog that I could find to our type of study are the things that have been done in the Marcellus Shale, with Rob Jackson’s group out at Duke University. Ours is set up very similarly to theirs in that we went out to private landowners’ wells and sampled their water wells and assayed them for various things. We decided to go with a list of chemicals thought to be included in hydraulic fracturing that was actually released in a congressional report. Our plan was to sample everyone’s water that we could, and then go through that list of these potential chemical compounds within the congressional list.

How did you do it?

We were able to get a press release put out from UT Arlington that went into the local newspapers that essentially called for volunteers to be participants in the study. For being a participant, you would get free water testing, and we would tell them our results. We were upfront with everyone about, you know, we don’t have a bias, we’re not anti-industry, we’re not pro-industry. We’re just here to finally get some scientific data on this subject. And we had a pretty overwhelming response.

From there we chose folks that we would be able to get to. We had to work on nights and weekends, because we had an agreement with EPA to work on this study outside of work hours. So we spent quite a few weekend days going out to folks who had responded to our call and sampling their water. But that wasn’t quite enough. We also had to get samples from within the Barnett Shale in areas where fracking was not going on, and samples from outside the Barnett Shale where there’s no fracking going on, because we wanted to have those for reference samples. For those samples we went door to door and explained to folks what our study was about.

We have people that were pro-industry that wanted to participate in this study to help out — saying, you know, ‘You’re not going to find anything and I’m going to help you prove it.’ And we also had folks that were determined to find problems. We have the whole gamut of folks represented in our study. 

We would take a water well, and we would go directly to the head, the closest we could get to the actual water source coming out of the ground, and we would purge that well for about 20 minutes. That ensures that you’re getting fresh water from within the aquifer. So we didn’t take anything from the tap, and nothing that had been through any kind of filtration system. This was as close to the actual groundwater as we could get. We took some measurements, and then we took several samples back to UT Arlington for a battery of chemistry analyses. That’s where we went through and looked for the various volatile organic compounds and heavy metals and methanols and alcohols and things like that.

What did you find?

We found that there were actually quite a few examples of elevated constituents, such as heavy metals, the main players being arsenic, selenium and strontium. And we found each of those metals at levels that are above EPA’s maximum contaminate limit for drinking water.

These heavy metals do naturally occur in the groundwater in this region. But we have a historical dataset that points to the fact that the levels we found are sort of unusual and not natural. These really high levels differ from what the groundwater used to be like before fracking came in. And when you look at the location of the natural gas wells, you find that any time you have water wells that exceed the maximum contaminate limit for any of these heavy metals, they are within about three kilometers of a natural gas well. Once you get a private water well that’s not very close to a natural gas well, all of these heavy metals come down. But just because you’re close to a natural gas well does not mean you’re guaranteed to have elevated contaminate levels. We had quite a few samples that were very close to natural gas wells that had no problems with their water at all.

We also found a few samples that had measureable levels of methanol and ethanol, and these are two substances that don’t naturally occur in groundwater. They can actually be created by bacterial interactions underwater, but whenever methanol or ethanol occur in the environment, they’re very fleeting and transient. So for us to be able to actually randomly take a grab sample and detect detectable methanol and ethanol — that implies that there may be a continuous source of this.

You found levels of arsenic in areas with fracking that were almost 18 times higher than in areas without fracking or in the historical data. What would happen to someone who drank that water?

Arsenic is a pretty well-known poison. If you experience a lot of long-term exposure to arsenic, you get a lot of different risks, like skin damage, problems with the circulatory system or even an increased risk of cancer. The levels that we found would not be a lethal dose, but they’re certainly levels that you would not want to be exposed to for any extended period of time.

What about the other stuff you found?

The heavy metals are a little bit different because they are known to be included in some fracking recipes. But they’re also naturally occurring compounds. We think the problem is that they’re becoming concentrated at levels that aren’t normal as a result of some aspect of natural gas extraction.

It’s not necessarily that we’re saying fracking fluid getting out. We don’t have any evidence of that. But there are many other steps involved, from drilling the hole to getting the water back out. A lot of these can actually cause different scenarios whereby the naturally occurring heavy metals will become concentrated in ways they normally wouldn’t. For example, if you have a private water well that’s not kept up well, you’ll have a scale of rust on the inside. And if someone were to do a lot of drilling nearby, you may find some pressure waves or vibrations that would cause those rust particles to flake out into the water. Arsenic is bound up inside that rust, and that can actually mobilize arsenic that would never be in the water otherwise.

Methanol and ethanol are substances that should not be very easy to find in the groundwater naturally. We definitely know that those are on the list of things that are known to be in hydraulic fracturing fluid. But we were unable to actually sample any hydraulic fracturing fluid, so we can’t make any claims that we have evidence fluids got into the water.

Have you talked with the homeowners whose wells you sampled?

We have shown those homeowners the results. I think most of the folks that had high levels of heavy metals were not necessarily surprised.  You hear so much I think maybe they were expecting it to come back with something even more extreme than that. I don’t want to say they were relieved, but I think they all sort of took the news in stride and realized, OK, well, as a private well owner there’s no state or federal agency that provides any kind of oversight or regulation, so it’s incumbent on that well owner to get testing done and get any kind of remediation.


Do you think fracking is responsible for what you found?

Well, I can’t say we have a smoking gun. We don’t want the public to take away from this that we have pegged fracking as the cause of these issues. But we have shown that these issues do occur in close relation, geographically, to natural gas extraction. And we have this historical database from pretty much the same exact areas that we sampled that never had these issues until the onset of all the fracking. We have about 16,000 active wells here in the Barnett Shale, and that’s all popped up in about the last decade, so it’s been a pretty dramatic increase.

We noticed that when you’re closer to a well, you’re more likely to have a problem, and that today’s samples have problems, while yesterday’s samples before the fracking showed up did not. So we think that the strongest argument we can say is that this needs more research.

8. Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction to Protect Free Speech after EFF Challenge
Court Blocks Enforcement of Dangerous New Jersey Law

Newark, NJ - A New Jersey federal district court judge granted motions for a preliminary injunction today, blocking the enforcement of a dangerous state law that would put online service providers at risk by, among other things, creating liability based on "indirect" publication of content by speech platforms.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued for the injunction in court on behalf of the Internet Archive, as the statute conflicts directly with federal law and threatens service providers who enable third party speech online.

"The Constitution does not permit states to pass overbroad and vague statutes that threaten protected speech. The New Jersey statute created that threat and the court was right to block it," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "Similarly, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act prohibits the state from threatening to throw online providers in jail for what their users do and the statute violated that rule as well. We are grateful that the court recognized the importance of these bedrock principles to online libraries and other platforms that make the Internet the vital and robust tool it is today."

The New Jersey law at issue is an almost carbon-copy of a Washington state law successfully blocked by EFF and the Internet Archive last year. While aimed at combatting online ads for underage sex workers, it instead imposes stiff criminal penalties on ISPs, Internet cafes, and libraries that "indirectly" cause the publication or display of content that might contain even an "implicit" offer of a commercial sex act if the content includes an image of a minor. The penalties – up to 20 years in prison and steep fines – would put enormous pressure on service providers to block access to broad swaths of otherwise protected material in order to avoid the vague threat of prosecution.

"Within the past month, we've seen a coalition of state attorneys general ask Congress to gut CDA 230 to make way for harmful laws like New Jersey's," said Zimmerman. "This misguided proposal puts speech platforms at risk, which in turn threatens online speech itself. Law enforcement can and must pursue criminals vigorously, but attacking the platforms where people exercise their right to free speech is the wrong strategy."

Backpage.com separately filed suit against this law, represented by the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, who also joined today's argument.

For more on this case:
https://www.eff.org/cases/internet-archive-v-hoffman

9. EFF - Why Sen. Feinstein Is Wrong About Who’s a “Real Reporter”

During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s August 1 mark-up of the shield law bill aimed at protecting journalists’ sources, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) reportedly objected to the definition of journalist provided in the bill as introduced, seeking to restrict the definition’s scope to apply only to “real reporters.” To achieve her misguided goal, Sen. Feinstein has put forward an amendment to S. 987 that would greatly exacerbate the problems with the definition of who’s a journalist that existed in the bill as introduced.

Her amendment, to be submitted for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il.) as well, not only retains the problematic requirement that a person “regularly” engage in journalism to enjoy shield law protections, but moreover adds new requirements that would make it especially difficult for self-publishers such as independent bloggers and citizen journalists to be protected under the law. Indeed, her new requirements for being either salaried or at least affiliated with a news “entity” seem to purposefully target these self-publishers.

These problems are rooted in the vagueness of many key terms in her definition of journalist. Indeed, most essential terms are not defined. While vagueness provides an interpretative battleground, self-publishing bloggers and citizen journalists are disadvantaged in this fight.

Three Roads to “Journalist” that All Go Nowhere

Feinstein’s amendment effectively advances a traditional vision of journalism through the three definitions of journalist that it provides, each of which requires that a person be affiliated with a journalistic “entity” or institution (including news websites and other digital news services, and other periodicals distributed digitally).

Specifically, the amendment requires that a journalist meet one of the following definitions:

    working as a “salaried employee, independent contractor, or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information;”
    either (a) meeting the prior definition “for any continuous three-month period within the two years prior to the relevant date” or (b) having “substantially contributed, as an author, editor, photographer, or producer, to a significant number of articles, stories, programs, or publications by an entity . . . within two years prior to the relevant date;” or
    working as a student journalist “participating in a journalistic publication at an institution of higher education.” (emphases added)1

There are problems with each of these three definitions. First, as we pointed out in our critique of the House’s bill, requiring that an individual is “salaried” is problematic because many people do journalism but do not do it as their primary source of income. Further, it is entirely unclear who or what an “agent” or “entity” is.

Second, for an individual to fall under the second, seemingly looser criteria, that individual must have distributed the news “by means of an entity.” (emphasis added)2 While this definition may cover freelancers, it is again unclear what it means to have “substantially contributed” to a “significant” amount of work of an “entity.” Indeed, for both the first and second definitions, essential terms are not defined—vagueness that, as we’ll see later, ultimately hurts independent bloggers and citizen journalists.

While the amendment’s inclusion of student journalists is laudable, it does nothing for those students who do not work for a “journalistic publication” at their college or university—or for those students the moment they graduate.

Still Requiring that Journalists “Regularly” Engage in Journalism

Additionally, Sen. Feinstein’s amendment retains the original Senate shield bill’s problematic requirement that individuals “regularly” do journalism to count as a journalist. Specifically, the amendment requires either:

    that individuals “engage[] in . . . the regular gathering, preparation, collection, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing on” matters of public interest; or
    that individuals “regularly conducted interviews, reviewed documents, captured images of events, or directly observed events.” (emphases added)3

As in the original Senate bill, the amendment fails to define what “regularly” means, vagueness that cuts against non-institutional journalists.

Vague Language Is Bad for Independent Bloggers, Citizen Journalists

Sen. Feinstein’s amendment is riddled with vague language, failing to define key terms including “agent,” entity,” “substantially contributed,” and “regularly”—on which the definition of who’s a journalist turns. Non-traditional journalists are at a disadvantage when the interpretative waters are muddy. Why? Because such vagueness invites interpretations that exclude those who are on the margins of status quo journalism, and who are often in a more vulnerable position and unable to hire legal counsel to sort through the law’s ambiguities. As a result, independent bloggers and citizen journalists would likely be interpreted out of Feinstein’s definition of journalist. 

The very fact that developing a crisp, clear definition of journalist is difficult should signal to Congress that it might not be equipped to wade into the uncharted waters of deciding who is a journalist. But it’s a problem that Congress can easily avoid by linking shield law protections to the act of journalism, not the definition of who is journalist.

10. More Bad Apples
Apple’s growth and reputation for innovation have long been built on the shaky foundation of rock-bottom wages and poor labor conditions in Chinese factories. Now, a new investigation by the New York-based advocacy group China Labor Watch has further revealed the abuses, including wage violations and chemical exposures, at the warped core of Apple’s corporate empire. The report focused on Apple supplier the Pegatron Group, which has become a major producer of an upcoming new model for a scaled-back “cheap iPhone” for lower-end markets.

The most infamous of Apple’s labor problems were the widely reported the Foxconn suicides of 2010–when several workers at the Taiwanese-owned Apple contractor’s mega-compounds in China threw themselves from buildings in despair over their working conditions. Apple has since waged a highly publicized campaign to raise labor standards and wages at supplier factories.

Pegatron—a smaller company, with a mere 70,000 employees, though it counts among its clients not only Apple but also Dell, HP and Microsoft—has avoided the kind of negative publicity that Foxconn garnered. But CLW’s research on three Pegatron workplaces, two in Shanghai and one in nearby Suzhou, suggests that labor exploitation is hardwired into the entire production model for brand-name electronics manufacturing in China.

The report, based on field investigations and interviews with employees, found that workers at Pegatron still facing grueling conditions. Work shifts typically run about 11 hours, with an hourly wage of about $1.50. At the three factories investigated, according to the report, “average weekly working hours… are approximately 66 hours, 67 hours, and 69 hours.” At the same time, Apple has claimed “its suppliers had achieved 99 percent compliance with Apple’s 60-hour work week rule.” (In fact, China’s standard workweek is technically just 49 hours, but workers are typically pressured to work excessive overtime.)

The dormitories examined were often filthy and crowded, cramming eight to 12 workers in a room, sometimes with inadequate sanitation facilities. Workers reported being denied adequate safety training and gear, even when their job exposed them to chemical hazards.

Some categories of workers are especially marginalized, according to the report. Student “interns” are effectively shorted on wages due to deductions taken by their schools. Meanwhile, precarious “dispatch” workers, lacking the benefits and protections of regular employees, may be hit with sharp wage cuts if they do not complete their temporary contract terms.

Regulating behavior is key to maintaining “discipline” on the assembly line. Managers reportedly fined workers for activities such as “failing to tuck in one’s chair after eating, failing to eat at predetermined times, and absence from unpaid meetings.” Pregnancy can drive women out of the job due to the stressful conditions, or because the management determines that under China’s strict family planning regulations, “a woman does not have a birth permission document or became pregnant out of wedlock.”

The report charges that the harsh conditions at Pegatron are “violating a great number of international and Chinese laws and standards as well as the standards of Apple’s own social responsibility code of conduct.”

In a public response to CLW’s research, Apple expressed surprise, while Pegatron vowed to investigate the charges and stated, “We strive to make each day at Pegatron better than the last for our employees.”

Apparently many Pegatron workers decide that the way to make tomorrow better is just not to return to work. Noting the frequent turnover at the Suzhou Pegatron facility AVY Precision Electroplating, CLW found, “In a period of two weeks, 80 of 110 new recruits at AVY left, presumably unwilling to accept the work intensity, low pay, living conditions, and harsh management style characterizing the facility.”

The pressure to produce nonstop is linked directly to Apple’s dictates and massive orders. At Pegatron’s Riteng factory, workers were “expected to assemble 2,600 Apple laptop covers per day. Workers responsible for the placement of Apple logos on computer covers have a quota of 100 per hour per worker. Workers in the laser facility are expected to press 600 computer covers every hour.” Missing a quota means adding more overtime or risking reprimand. Beyond Apple, CLW has observed this pattern of labor exploitation in various high-profile brands, including Samsung and Motorola.

While Apple boasts that it monitors its suppliers closely, investigators say bosses at Riteng are adept at evading labor auditors: “The factory will prepare for these visits, telling workers to be neat and orderly, not to speak to the visitors, and to work a bit slower in order to ensure the quality of the products during the inspections.”

Since China lacks an independent labor organizing infrastructure, workers also faced heavy obstacles to challenging abuse grievances individually. At Riteng, many appeared unaware they were supposed to be represented by the official state union. The management “does not post or distribute any information about mechanisms that workers can use to protect their interest or make complaints,” according to the report. CLW Program Coordinator Kevin Slaten tells In These Times in a follow-up correspondence, “At Pegatron Shanghai, workers do not even know the location of the union office, let alone knowing how to seek help from it.”

CLW argues that with Apple’s enormous global corporate power, comes a special responsibility for the conditions workers suffer every day–not just extreme suicide cases. Slaten explains:

    One of the most troubling trends is that Apple is letting suppliers making Apple products, such as Foxconn and Pegatron, compete for Apple orders without ensuring that these suppliers’ conditions first meet legal and Apple’s own standards. Unless Apple places labor conditions on par with production price and speed, then it will continue to give large orders to abusive factories.

The chain of abuses that investigators traces through China’s electronics industry rests upon two powerful silences. In factories, workers are silenced by wilful neglect of managers as well as the failure of international regulations. And for Western enthusiasts of Apple products, the hollow promises of “social responsibility” issuing from Apple’s marketing headquarters and the seductive hum of a digital universe mute our consumer consciences.

11. America's Main Enemy Is Nameless, Shapeless "Associated Forces"
That leaves "their associated forces," in the president's phrase that exercises presumably purposeful threat inflation by using "forces" to refer to what we have no reason to believe are more than assorted gangs of malcontents with a range of grievances, many of which are legitimate and long-standing.
And who are these "associated forces?" The government won't say. The country may be at war, but most of the names of our enemies are classified, and subject to change without notice.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on May 16, a week before the president's speech, the committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, questioned Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, about designating enemies with no more Congressional authority than the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress three days after the 9/11 attacks, which gave the president effectively unlimited discretion to wage the war on terrorism, wherever he might imagine it to be.
Senator Levin Asks Questions, the Pentagon Takes Evasive Action
At the May 16 hearing, senators were making an effort to develop a more firm, reliable basis in fact and law for killing foreigners (mostly), a basis that has been absent from the AUMF since it became law in September 2001. One of those questions of fact and law was the determination of who decides who is an enemy:
Chairman LEVIN. Now, under the definition of ''enemy,'' do you agree that mere sympathy with al Qaeda is not sufficient to be an associated force for purposes of the AUMF?
Mr. SHEEHAN. Yes, Senator. Sympathy is not enough. As Jay Johnson and others have mentioned in public, it has to be an organized group and that group has to be in co-belligerent status with al Qaeda operating against the United States.
Chairman LEVIN. Is there any good reason why both Congress and the public should not be informed of which organizations and entities the administration has determined to be co-belligerents of al Qaeda and to promptly be informed of any additions or deletions from that list?
Pentagon Says: Congress Has Oversight Role, but No Right to Know Facts
Mr. SHEEHAN. Senator, I think that the appropriate role for the Congress is in its oversight regarding the designation of groups. A lot of these groups, as you know, Senator, have very murky membership and they also have very murky alliances and shifting alliances. And they change their name and they lie and obfuscate their activities. So I think it would be difficult for the Congress to get involved in trying to track the designation of which are the affiliate forces. We know when we evaluate these forces what they are up to, and we make that determination based on their co-belligerent status with al Qaeda and make our targeting decisions based on that criteria rather than on the shifting nature of different groups and their affiliations.
Chairman LEVIN. Is there a list now? Is there an existing list of groups that are affiliated with al Qaeda?
Mr. SHEEHAN. Senator, I am not sure there is a list per se. I am very familiar with the organizations that we do consider right now are affiliated with al Qaeda, and I could provide you that list of organizations. [emphasis added]
Chairman LEVIN. Would you give us that list?
Mr. SHEEHAN. Yes, sir. We can do that.
Guess What Happened When Pro Publica Asked to See the List?
Pro Publica defines itself as "an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with 'moral force.'" Pro Publica reported on July 26 that it had requested the Pentagon list of America's "enemies" from Senator Levin's office, "but Levin's office told Pro Publica they aren't allowed to share it."
Pro Publica reported that it then asked the Pentagon for the American enemies list, only to have Lt. Col. Jim Gregory say that revealing the list could cause "serious damage to national security." How is it that people suffering drone strikes can threaten national security by having their purported identities revealed to the public half a world away?
Lt. Col. Gregory explained: "Because elements that might be considered 'associated forces' can build credibility by being listed as such by the United States, we have classified the list. We cannot afford to inflate these organizations that rely on violent extremist ideology to strengthen their ranks."

The American Enemies List Is Decided Anonymously and Secretly
So who, exactly, is deciding who the enemy is? Not the president, according to Sheehan's testimony in May: "The issue of affiliated force has not gone to the presidential level, Senator. That issue is managed at a much lower level."
So according to the public record, the president decides whether or not to kill people with drone strikes, but he has no direct role in deciding who those people might actually be.
Although Sheehan's testimony (above) equivocates regarding Congressional oversight, he was later more direct about the determination of who's an enemy: "I would think that that is a decision better for the executive branch. As I mentioned to the chairman, these organizations right now are quite savvy in regards to how they are perceived overseas, and so they are always shifting their rhetoric, their names and affiliations. And I think that is better left to the executive branch."
So that's where the United States stands today, officially, a country at war with people whose names can't be shared with the American people, and whose enemy status is determined by someone other than the Congress, or even the president, and that secrecy is necessary because these people might not know we think they are co-belligerents and that might inflate their egos or their numbers, or both, and besides they're "murky" and change their names and lie and obfuscate - national security is at stake, trust us. Isn't that about it?

Sent from my iPhone

12. Livestock Falling Ill in Fracking Regions, Raising Concerns About Food

By Elizabeth Royte for the Food and Environment Reporting Network

In the midst of the domestic energy boom, livestock on farms near oil-and-gas drilling operations nationwide have been quietly falling sick and dying. While scientists have yet to isolate cause and effect, many suspect chemicals used in drilling and hydrofracking (or “fracking”) operations are poisoning animals through the air, water, or soil.

Earlier this year, Michelle Bamberger, an Ithaca, New York, veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, published the first and only peer-reviewed report to suggest a link between fracking and illness in food animals.

The authors compiled 24 case studies of farmers in six shale-gas states whose livestock experienced neurological, reproductive, and acute gastrointestinal problems after being exposed—either accidentally or incidentally—to fracking chemicals in the water or air. The article, published in New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, describes how scores of animals died over the course of several years.

The death toll is insignificant when measured against the nation’s livestock population (some 97 million beef cattle go to market each year), but environmental advocates believe these animals constitute an early warning.

Exposed livestock “are making their way into the food system, and it’s very worrisome to us,” Bamberger says. “They live in areas that have tested positive for air, water, and soil contamination. Some of these chemicals could appear in milk and meat products made from these animals.”

    In Louisiana, 17 cows died after an hour’s exposure to spilled fracking fluid, which is injected miles underground to crack open and release pockets of natural gas. The most likely cause of death: respiratory failure.
    In New Mexico, hair testing of sick cattle that grazed near well pads found petroleum residues in 54 of 56 animals.
    In northern central Pennsylvania, 140 cattle were exposed to fracking wastewater when an impoundment was breached. Approximately 70 cows died, and the remainder produced only 11 calves, of which three survived.
    In western Pennsylvania, an overflowing wastewater pit sent fracking chemicals into a pond and a pasture where pregnant cows grazed: Half their calves were born dead. Dairy operators in shale-gas areas of Colorado, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Texas have also reported the death of goats.

Drilling and fracking a single well requires up to 7 million gallons of water, plus an additional 400,000 gallons of additives, including lubricants, biocides, scale- and rust-inhibitors, solvents, foaming and defoaming agents, emulsifiers and de-emulsifiers, stabilizers and breakers. At almost every stage of developing and operating an oil or gas well, chemicals and compounds can be introduced into the environment.

Cows Lose Weight, Die

After drilling began just over the property line of Jacki Schilke’s ranch in the northwestern corner of North Dakota, in the heart of the state’s booming Bakken Shale, cattle began limping, with swollen legs and infections. Cows quit producing milk for their calves, and they lost from 60 to 80 pounds in a week and their tails mysteriously dropped off. Eventually, five animals died, according to Schilke.

Ambient air testing by a certified environmental consultant detected elevated levels of benzene, methane, chloroform, butane, propane, toluene, and xylene—and well testing revealed high levels of sulfates, chromium, chloride, and strontium. Schilke says she moved her herd upwind and upstream from the nearest drill pad.

Although her steers currently look healthy, she says, “I won’t sell them because I don’t know if they’re okay.”

Nor does anyone else. Energy companies are exempt from key provisions of environmental laws, which makes it difficult for scientists and citizens to learn precisely what is in drilling and fracking fluids or airborne emissions. And without information on the interactions between these chemicals and pre-existing environmental chemicals, veterinarians can’t hope to pinpoint an animal’s cause of death.

The risks to food safety may be even more difficult to parse, since different plants and animals take up different chemicals through different pathways.

“There are a variety of organic compounds, metals, and radioactive material [released in the fracking process] that are of human health concern when livestock meat or milk is ingested,” Motoko Mukai, a veterinary toxicologist at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, says. These “compounds accumulate in the fat and are excreted into milk. Some compounds are persistent and do not get metabolized easily.”

Veterinarians don’t know how long chemicals may remain in animals, farmers aren’t required to prove their livestock are free of contamination before middlemen purchase them, and the Food Safety Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture isn’t looking for these compounds in carcasses at slaughterhouses.

Documenting the scope of the problem is difficult: Scientists lack funding to study the matter, and rural vets remain silent for fear of retaliation. Farmers who receive royalty checks from energy companies are reluctant to complain, and those who have settled with gas companies following a spill or other accident are forbidden to disclose information to investigators. Some food producers would rather not know what’s going on, say ranchers and veterinarians.

“It takes a long time to build up a herd’s reputation,” rancher Dennis Bauste of Trenton Lake, North Dakota, says. “I’m gonna sell my calves and I don’t want them to be labeled as tainted. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to test for. Until there’s a big wipe-out, a major problem, we’re not gonna hear much about this.”

Fracking proponents criticize Bamberger and Oswald’s paper as a political, not a scientific, document. “They used anonymous sources, so no one can verify what they said,” says Steve Everley, of the industry lobby group Energy In Depth. The authors didn’t provide a scientific assessment of impacts—testing what specific chemicals might do to cows that ingest them, for example—so treating their findings as scientific, he continues, “is laughable at best, and dangerous for public debate at worst.”

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the main lobbying group for ranchers, takes no position on fracking, but some ranchers are beginning to speak out. “These are industry-supporting conservatives, not radicals,” says Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with the environmental group, Natural Resources Defense Council. “They are the experts in their animals’ health, and they are very concerned.”

Last March, Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called for studies of oil and gas production’s impact on food plants and animals. None are currently planned by the federal government.

As Local Food Booms, Consumers Wary

But consumers intensely interested in where and how their food is grown aren’t waiting for hard data to tell them their meat or milk is safe. For them, the perception of pollution is just as bad as the real thing.

“My beef sells itself. My farm is pristine. But a restaurant doesn’t want to visit and see a drill pad on the horizon,” Ken Jaffe, who raises grass-fed cattle in upstate New York, says. Only recently has the local foods movement, in regions across the country, reached a critical mass. But the movement’s lofty ideals could turn out to be, in shale gas areas, a double-edged sword.

Should the moratorium on hydrofracking in New York State be lifted, the 16,200-member Park Slope Food Co-op, in Brooklyn, will no longer buy food from farms anywhere near drilling operations—a $4 million loss for upstate producers. The livelihood of organic goat farmer Steven Cleghorn, who’s surrounded by active wells in Pennsylvania, is already in jeopardy.

“People at the farmers market are starting to ask exactly where this food comes from,” he says.

13. Obama EPA Censored Key Pennsylvania Fracking Water Contamination Study
By: Steve Horn Monday July 29, 2013 8:05 am

A must-read Los Angeles Times story by Neela Banerjee demonstrates that – once again – the Obama administration put the kibosh on a key Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) groundwater contamination, this time in Dimock, Pennsylvania.

Though EPA said Dimock’s water wasn’t contaminated by fracking in a 2012 election year desk statement, internal documents obtained by LA Times reporter Neela Banerjee show regional EPA staff members saying the exact opposite among friends.

“In an internal EPA PowerPoint presentation…staff members warned their superiors that several wells had been contaminated with methane and substances such as manganese and arsenic, most likely because of local natural gas production,” writes Banerjee.

“The presentation, based on data collected over 4 1/2 years at 11 wells around Dimock, concluded that ‘methane and other gases released during drilling (including air from the drilling) apparently cause significant damage to the water quality.’ The presentation also concluded that ‘methane is at significantly higher concentrations in the aquifers after gas drilling and perhaps as a result of fracking [hydraulic fracturing] and other gas well work,” Banerjee further explained.

It’s essentially a repeat of Steve Lipsky’s water contamination by Range Resources in late-2010 in Weatherford, Texas. In that case, EPA conducted a taxpayer funded study, determined Range had contaminated his water, sued Range – and then proceeded to drop the suit and censor the study in March 2012.

EPA also recently kicked the can down the road on a high-profile fracking groundwater contamination study in Pavillion, Wyoming, originally set to come out in 2014. That release is now expected in 2016, another election year. Just days after EPA’s decision, a Duke University study again linked fracking to groundwater contamination in the Marcellus Shale.

“We don’t know what’s going on, but certainly the fact that there’s been such a distinct withdrawal from three high-profile cases raises questions about whether the EPA is caving to pressure from industry or antagonistic members of Congress,” Kate Sinding of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) told the LA Times.

Ed Rendell and Friends At Work Again?

Located in the heart of the Marcellus Shale basin, Dimock was featured prominently in both Gasland documentaries, as well as in FrackNation, the industry-funded film created to counter Josh Fox’s films, produced and directed by climate change deniers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.

In the case of FrackNation, McAleer used EPA’s desk statement for propaganda purposes. He portrayed Craig and Julie Sautner – whose water was contaminated by Cabot Oil and Gas – as “crying wolf” for expressing anger that EPA privately told them their water was contaminated, then publicly stated that it wasn’t.

The Sautners aren’t alone in their frustration, however, and they’re in good company.

“What’s surprising is to see this data set and then to see EPA walk away from Dimock,” Robert Jackson, co-author of the June 2013 Duke study that included Dimock water samples, told the LA Times. “The issue here is, why wasn’t EPA interested in following up on this to understand it better?”

Jackson raises the million dollar question: Who from the industry pressured USEPA to censor the actual results of the Dimock study? In Steve Lipsky’s case it was former head of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell.

Rendell – tied to the shale gas industry via Ballard Spahr LLP law firm and venture capital firms Element Partners and Greenhill & Co. - privately lobbied EPA to shut down its study and lawsuit centered on Lipsky’s groundwater contaminated by the Pennsylvania-headquartered Range Resources. His lobbying proved successful, likely in part due to three of his former aides now working as industry lobbyists.

One of those lobbyists is K. Scott Roy, Rendell’s former “top advisor.” Roy not only lobbies for Range Resources, but also sits on the Executive Board of the Marcellus Shale Coalition. Prior to serving in the Rendell administration and becoming a fracking lobbyist, Roy worked in the office of former PA Republican Governor Tom Ridge, who went on to serve as “strategic advisor” to the Marcellus Shale Coalition in 2012.

Did Roy contact his old boss Ed Rendell and request the Obama Administration step away from the Dimock study? That’s a question for a follow-up investigation.

Dereliction of Duty, or Par For The Course?

By law, the EPA is tasked to investigate groundwater contamination cases and punish violators of the law with criminal sentences. Instead, the industry has run roughshod over communities nationwide, letting polluters go free with no EPA accountability.

“Our federal government has a responsibility to protect the citizens in communities that are suffering consequences from fracking and to give them the full facts,” wrote the NRDC’s Kate Sinding in a blog post.

“It owes it to the American people to fully and fairly investigate every case that can help to answer some of the vexing scientific questions as to whether, and if so how, fracking and related activities contaminate drinking water. Sadly, EPA’s recent pattern of activity suggests neither has been happening.”

In the military, dereliction of duty is a serious crime, but for upper-level EPA staffers, it seems to just be business as usual.

14. Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys

Whether the FBI and NSA have the legal authority to obtain the master keys that companies use for Web encryption remains an open question, but it hasn't stopped the U.S. government from trying.

 The U.S. government has attempted to obtain the master encryption keys that Internet companies use to shield millions of users' private Web communications from eavesdropping.

These demands for master encryption keys, which have not been disclosed previously, represent a technological escalation in the clandestine methods that the FBI and the National Security Agency employ when conducting electronic surveillance against Internet users.

If the government obtains a company's master encryption key, agents could decrypt the contents of communications intercepted through a wiretap or by invoking the potent surveillance authorities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Web encryption -- which often appears in a browser with a HTTPS lock icon when enabled -- uses a technique called SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer.

"The government is definitely demanding SSL keys from providers," said one person who has responded to government attempts to obtain encryption keys. The source spoke with CNET on condition of anonymity.

The person said that large Internet companies have resisted the requests on the grounds that they go beyond what the law permits, but voiced concern that smaller companies without well-staffed legal departments might be less willing to put up a fight. "I believe the government is beating up on the little guys," the person said. "The government's view is that anything we can think of, we can compel you to do."

A Microsoft spokesperson would not say whether the company has received such requests from the government. But when asked whether Microsoft would turn over a master key used for Web encryption or server-to-server e-mail encryption, the spokesperson replied: "No, we don't, and we can't see a circumstance in which we would provide it."

Google also declined to disclose whether it had received requests for encryption keys. But a spokesperson said the company has "never handed over keys" to the government, and that it carefully reviews each and every request. "We're sticklers for details -- frequently pushing back when the requests appear to be fishing expeditions or don't follow the correct process," the spokesperson said.

Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for Facebook, said that her employer has not received requests for encryption keys from the U.S. government or other governments. In response to a question about divulging encryption keys, Feinberg said: "We have not, and we would fight aggressively against any request for such information."

Apple, Yahoo, AOL, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast declined to respond to queries about whether they would divulge encryption keys to government agencies.

Richard Lovejoy, a director of the Opera Software subsidiary that operates FastMail, said: "Our interpretation is that we are prohibited by law from releasing our SSL key. In the event that we received such a request, we would refuse, for both legal and ethical reasons." Releasing the SSL key would be nearly "equivalent to allowing interception on all our users, which is clearly illegal," Lovejoy said.

Encryption used to armor Web communications was largely adopted not because of fears of NSA surveillance -- but because of the popularity of open, insecure Wi-Fi networks. The "Wall of Sheep," which highlights passwords transmitted over networks through unencrypted links, has become a fixture of computer security conventions, and Internet companies began adopting SSL in earnest about three years ago.

"The requests are coming because the Internet is very rapidly changing to an encrypted model," a former Justice Department official said. "SSL has really impacted the capability of U.S. law enforcement. They're now going to the ultimate application layer provider."

An FBI spokesman declined to comment, saying the bureau does not "discuss specific strategies, techniques and tools that we may use."


RIVER RALLY PART 2

RESIGNATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL SECRETARY

THE PRESIDENT SAID THE TRANSPARENCY WAS ALREADY ON THE WAY

nan rich house party 8/18

Where is Bill Nelson?





RIVER RALLY PART 2

RESIGNATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL SECRETARY

THE PRESIDENT SAID THE TRANSPARENCY WAS ALREADY ON THE WAY

nan rich house party 8/18

Where is Bill Nelson?

Whither OBOMBA CARE?

PNN - the Summer Art's Show

PNN 8/4/13

 Vicki Richards  - Classical Indian  / Jazz  Violinist
 Carol Stricht - Prisoner Art
 Samia Halaby - Palestinian Artist
 Ellen Christi - Jazz Singer
 Dianne Lininger - Writer, Blogger


1. Foreign nuclear experts late last month blasted TEPCO's lack of transparency over radioactive leaks.
 The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has given its first public estimate of the size of the leakage of radioactive tritium into the Pacific Ocean since the disaster.
Between 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of the substance is estimated to have leaked into the sea since May 2011, said Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO).
It was the first such figure TEPCO has released since a massive tsunami led to the accident in March 2011, a spokesman said Sunday.
The disaster sent reactors into meltdown and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents in the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
It was only last month that the embattled operator confirmed long-held suspicions of ocean contamination from the shattered reactors, as Japan's nuclear watchdog cast doubt on the utility's earlier claims that the toxic water was contained in the facility.
But TEPCO said the scale of the radioactive tritium leak, from May 2011 to July 2013, was around the level which had been allowed under safety regulations before the accident -- 22 trillion becquerels annually at the six-reactor plant.
The utility said it would also estimate the amount of cancer-causing strontium which may have leaked over the years.
The operator has also said the levels of underground water have risen as workers built shields to prevent groundwater seeping out into the ocean.
The company -- which faces huge clean-up and compensation costs -- has struggled with a massive amount of radioactive water accumulating as a result of continuing water injections to cool reactors.
A series of problems at the reactor site, including TEPCO's secretiveness, has drawn blunt criticism at home and abroad.
Foreign nuclear experts late last month blasted TEPCO's lack of transparency over radioactive leaks.
"These actions indicate that you (TEPCO) don't know what you are doing... you do not have a plan and that you are not doing all you can to protect the environment and the people," Dale Klein, former head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a panel in Tokyo.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/04/fukushima-operator-discloses-extent-nuclear-leak/#ixzz2b0c5zLaN


2. Renewed 'scrub' of Florida voter list has elections officials on edge
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott will soon launch a new hunt for noncitizens on Florida's voter roll, a move that's sure to provoke new cries of a voter "purge" as Scott ramps up his own re-election effort.
Similar searches a year ago were rife with errors, found few ineligible voters and led to lawsuits by advocacy groups who said it disproportionately targeted Hispanics, Haitians and other minority groups. Those searches were handled clumsily and angered county election supervisors, who lost confidence in the state's list of names.
"It was sloppy, it was slapdash and it was inaccurate," said Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards. "They were sending us names of people to remove because they were born in Puerto Rico. It was disgusting."
Over time, the state's initial list of suspected non-U.S. citizens shrank from 182,000 to 2,600 to 198 before election supervisors suspended their searches as the presidential election drew near.
"That was embarrassing," said elections chief Jerry Holland in Jacksonville's Duval County. "It has to be a better scrub of names than we had before."
Election supervisors remain wary of a new removal effort, which the U.S. Supreme Court effectively authorized in June when it struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act. That ruling nullified a federal lawsuit in Tampa that sought to stop new searches for noncitizen voters, and Scott quickly renewed his call for action.
"If there's anybody that we think isn't voting properly, from the standpoint that they didn't have a right to vote, I think we need to do an investigation," Scott said the day of the high court decision. Last fall, Scott joined the Republican Party in a fundraising appeal that accused Democrats of defending the right of noncitizens to vote.
Scott's top elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, is now creating a new list of suspected noncitizen voters by cross-checking state voter data with a federal database managed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Detzner's director of elections, Maria Matthews, sent a letter to election supervisors Friday, promising "responsible measures that ensure due process and the integrity of Florida's voter rolls" and vowing to include them "in the planning and decision-making."
Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, chairman of the Florida Hispanic Legislative Caucus, said Detzner told him that the state would resume its purge of potential noncitizens within 60 days.
"I've been told that they will go slow," Garcia said. "I'm completely confident that the process will work."
Hillsborough County halted its purge last year after several voters on a list of 72 flagged by the state proved their citizenship.
A voter whose citizenship is questioned has the right to provide proof of citizenship in a due process system that includes certified letters and legal notices.
If the next list is anything like the last one, its burden will fall most heavily on urban counties with large Hispanic populations, notably Miami-Dade.
"Ineligible voters will be removed when their ineligibility is substantiated by credible and reliable data," said Miami-Dade Election Supervisor Penelope Townsley.
Townsley and a half-dozen county election supervisors interviewed across the state were emphatic that anyone who's not a U.S. citizen should not be able to cast a ballot. But they also say the state must meticulously document any case of a suspected ineligible voter and share all data with the counties — including access to the federal database known as SAVE.
Some supervisors remain irked that Detzner's office still has not granted them access to the database after promising to do so last fall.
Okaloosa County Election Supervisor Paul Lux said the state's questionable data damaged relations between the state and counties last year.
"We said then, 'If you can't give us good data, why should we kill ourselves vetting it?' " Lux said.
Relations have improved, but Lux said he's not hopeful that the SAVE database will be much better.
"If the federal government is as good at collecting data as they are with doing other things, then I've got to wonder about the quality of this data," Lux said. "If we get the information sooner, we can get started and have plenty of time to do our own due diligence."
Maria Rodriguez, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, which opposed previous removal efforts, said the state's motive is to remove poor and minority voters who are less likely to vote Republican.
"For every voter they purge, we will nationalize and register many, many more," she said.
Voter purges aren't necessarily a bad thing, said Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school.
She said many states require voter list maintenance efforts to prune the rolls of voters who are no longer eligible or who have died, but purges close to an election should be avoided.
"They offer lots of opportunities for eligible voters to get improperly removed because they frequently happen in a rushed, haphazard manner behind closed doors," Pérez said. "And the data is usually flawed."
On Twitter, Pasco County's Election Supervisor Brian Corley said: "Info from FL SOS (Secretary of State) must be credible & reliable! Integrity of voter rolls is paramount!"
Contact Steve Bousquet at bousquet@tampabay.com or (850) 224-7263.

3. Japan’s First Astronaut: Gov’t lies about Fukushima disaster — Vital info on radiation risks kept from public to “maintain law and order”
Former TBS reporter and Japan’s first-ever astronaut Toyohiro Akiyama's] home was only 32 km from [Fukushima Daiichi] [...] On March 12, he packed a few valuables, hung a portable radiation detector around his neck and drove his truck to the city of Koriyama [...]
As a former newsman, Akiyama was well aware not only of official reactions to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and other nuclear accidents in the past, but also of the workings of Japan’s “nuclear village” [...] Consequently, he knew that the Tokyo government would withhold vital information on radiation risks to “maintain law and order,” he says.
[...] I had reported on the fifth anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the Three Mile Island accident, so I knew all too well what the governments of the U.S. and Russia had done.
I had read books on how the Japanese government has dealt with nuclear accidents in the past. When there’s an emergency, what the authorities try to do is to maintain “law and order.” What is order? It’s protecting the system presiding at the time. [...]
The government was bound to lie. [...]

4. Title: The Plutonium Gang: CH2M Hill Dismantles the Hanford Nuclear Site
Source: Businessweek    Author: Steve Featherstone  Date: August 1, 2013
Before entering the shuttered Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site, Jerry Long hangs his identification badge on a board outside the entrance, so rescue crews can easily figure out who’s inside, should it come to that. “This is a no-kidding hazardous category 2 nuclear facility,” says Long [...] The U.S. Department of Energy reserves that category for sites that might blow up, or, as they like to call it, experience a “criticality event.” [...]
[There's] enough residual plutonium to build 10 bombs the size of the one that destroyed Nagasaki.
[...] the plant is highly contaminated with not only plutonium but also byproducts such as hexavalent chromium, made infamous by Erin Brockovich. The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that over the years some 450 billion gallons of industrial and radiological contaminants were dumped directly into the soil. Some of it was stored, and Hanford’s aging complex of 177 underground tanks contain 53 million gallons of chemicals and radioactive liquids; 67 of the tanks have together leaked more than a million gallons. The DOE recently identified six more tanks that have sprung leaks, further threatening water supplies for millions across the Northwest. [...]

5. Obama’s Campaign Manager to Help Elect Conservatives
President Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, is now going to spend his time working to get conservatives elected, but it will only be conservatives in the United Kingdom. From the BBC:
    The Conservative Party has hired Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina for its general election campaign team, BBC Newsnight has learned.
    Sources confirmed that he would act as a campaign strategy adviser to the Conservative party.
    A lifelong Democrat, Mr Messina masterminded the US president’s successful 2012 re-election campaign.
    The political parties in Westminster are readying themselves for the general election, now under two years away.

While the Conservative Party (aka Tories) in the UK is arguably not as right wing as Republicans, they are clearly on the right edge of the political spectrum in the UK. The Tories are responsible for implementing a misguided strict austerity policies which has devastated the economy and seriously hurt regular people in the country.

The fact that a top Obama adviser would feel comfortable in this party is telling.


6. Frack Gag’ Bans Children From Talking About Fracking, Forever
By Andrew Breiner on August 2, 2013 at 12:23 pm

When drilling company Range Resources offered the Hallowich family a $750,000 settlement to relocate from their fracking-polluted home in Washington County, Pennsylvania, it came with a common restriction. Chris and Stephanie Hallowich would be forbidden from ever speaking about fracking or the Marcellus Shale. But one element of the gag order was all new. The Hallowichs’ two young children, ages 7 and 10, would be subject to the same restrictions, banned from speaking about their family’s experience for the rest of their lives.

The Hallowich family’s gag order is only the most extreme example of a tactic that critics say effectively silences anyone hurt by fracking. It’s a choice between receiving compensation for damage done to one’s health and property, or publicizing the abuses that caused the harm. Virtually no one can forgo compensation, so their stories go untold.

Bruce Baizel, Energy Program Director at Earthworks, an environmental group focusing on mineral and energy development, said in a phone interview that the companies’ motives are clear. “The refrain in the industry is, this is a safe process. There’s no record of contamination. That whole claim would be undermined if these things were public.” There have been attempts to measure the number of settlements with non-disclosure agreements, Baizel said, but to no avail. “They don’t have to be registered, they don’t have to be filed. It’s kind of a black hole.”

The Hallowich case shows how drilling companies can use victims’ silence to rewrite their story. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that before their settlement, the Hallowichs complained that drilling caused “burning eyes, sore throats, headaches and earaches, and contaminated their water supply.” But after the family was gagged, gas exploration company Range Resources’ spokesman Matt Pitzarella insisted “they never produced evidence of any health impacts,” and that the family wanted to move because “they had an unusual amount of activity around them.” Public records will show, once again, that fracking did not cause health problems.

It’s not the only time gas exploration companies have gone to great lengths to keep the health problems caused by fracking under wraps. A 2012 Pennsylvania law requires companies to tell doctors the chemical contents of fracking fluids, so long as doctors don’t reveal that information, even to patients they are treating for fracking-related illness.
Credit: Earthworks

Sharon Wilson, and organizer with Earthworks, said that was the point. “These gag orders are the reason [drillers] can give testimony to Congress and say there are no documented cases of contamination. And then elected officials can repeat that.” She makes it clear she doesn’t blame the families who take the settlements. “They do what they have to do to protect themselves and their children.”

Wilson witnessed the very beginning of fracking in her own backyard. Some of the first experiments in combining horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing took place around her 42 acres of land in Wise County, Texas, on the Barnett Shale, and everyone was cashing in. But she saw the negatives first-hand. “I thought they were digging a stock pond, but it was actually a waste pit,” she said on the phone. “I caught them illegally dumping in streams and creeks.”

That led Wilson to start the work she continues to this day with Earthworks – helping landowners prove damage to their health and property from fracking, for eventual settlement. But as soon as the settlement comes, she said, “they get gagged. And then they can never talk about it again.” Wilson knew the Hallowichs, but now rarely talks to them, afraid she could cause them to run afoul of the gag order.

But even she was shocked that the Hallowich children would be gagged too. “How can you even do that?” she asked. “Is there a list of words the kids aren’t allowed to say?”

Peter Vallari, the Hallowichs’ lawyer, said that in decades of legal work, he had never seen such a thing, and could find no example of a similar gag order. “It’s not typical, and it was imposed on my clients, put in the way of an ultimatum,” he said by phone.

Wary of the bad press for putting a lifetime gag order on two minors, Pizzarella told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that “we don’t believe the [Hallowich] settlement applies to children.” This, despite ready availability of the settlement transcript, in which the company’s lawyer states “I guess our position is it does apply to the whole family. We would certainly enforce it.”

Vallari, the Hallowichs’ attorney, doesn’t buy Pizzarella’s retraction via press. “Their lawyers insisted on that language, and they said they wanted it enforced,” he said when reached by phone. “Until they write me a letter or sign a stipulation saying [it doesn't apply to the children], I don’t believe it.” Pizzarella did not respond to requests for interview.

Wilson, the organizer, said that even beyond making political action more difficult, gag orders are causing people direct harm. “When you get a settlement and get gagged, you can’t warn your neighbors,” she said. “Then your neighbors drink the very same water, and have health issues that are probably permanent.”

7. The Corporate Strategy to Win The War Against Grassroots Activists: Stratfor’s Strategies

Divide activists into four groups: Radicals, Idealists, Realists and Opportunists. The Opportunists are in it for themselves and can be pulled away for their own self-interest. The Realists can be convinced that transformative change is not possible and we must settle for what is possible.  Idealists can be convinced they have the facts wrong and pulled to the Realist camp.  Radicals, who see the system as corrupt and needing transformation, need to be isolated and discredited, using false charges to assassinate their character is a common tactic.

Part 1 of this exclusive Mint Press News investigation examined the strategies employed by Stratfor precursor Pagan International. So named for its founder Rafael Pagan, corporate clients hired the company with the aim of defusing grassroots movements mobilized against them around the world.

Part 2 takes a closer look at how Pagan International’s successor, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (MBD), revised and refined these strategies — and how what began as a corporate public-relations firm evolved into the private intelligence agency Stratfor, which wages information warfare against today’s activists and organizers.

Rafael Pagan — who died in 1993 — was not invited to be a part of his former associate’s new firm, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin. His tactic of conquering and dividing activist movements and isolating the “fanatic activist leaders” lived on, though, through his former business partner, Jack Mongoven.

Mongoven teamed up with Alvin Biscoe and Ronald Duchin to create MBD in 1988. While “Biscoe appears to have been a largely silent partner at MBD,” according to the Center for Media and Democracy, Mongoven and Duchin played public-facing starring roles for the firm.

Duchin, like Pagan, had a military background. A graduate of the U.S. Army War College and “one of the original members of [Army] DELTA” — part of the broader Joint Special Operations Command that killed Osama Bin Laden — Duchin had jobs as a special assistant to the secretary of defense and as spokesman for Veterans for Foreign Wars prior to coming to Pagan.

Duchin served as head of the Pentagon’s news division during “Operation Eagle Claw,” President Jimmy Carter’s failed 1980 mission to use special forces to capture the hostages held in Iran.

Referred to by The Atlantic as the “Desert One Debacle” in a story Duchin served as a key confidential source for — as revealed in an email in the “Global Intelligence Files” announcing Duchin’s 2010 death — “Eagle Claw” ended with eight U.S. troops dying, four wounded, one helicopter destroyed, and President Carter’s reputation in the tank. The failed and lethal mission served as the impetus for the creation of the U.S. Special Operations.

Largely avoiding the limelight while working as Pagan’s vice president for Issue management and strategy — the brains of the operation — Duchin became a notorious figure among dedicated critical observers of the public relations industry while co-heading MBD. During MBD’s 15 years of existence, its clients included Big Tobacco, the chemical industry, Big Agriculture and probably many other industries never identified due to MBD’s secretive nature.

MBD worked on behalf of Big Tobacco to fend off any and all regulatory efforts aimed in its direction. Philip Morris paid Jack Mongoven $85,000 for his intelligence-gathering prowess in 1993.

“Get Government Off Our Back,” an RJ Reynolds front group created in 1994 by MBD for the price of $14,000 per month, serves as a case in point of the type of work MBD was hired to do by Big Tobacco.

“The firm has developed initiatives for RJ Reynolds that advocate pro-tobacco goals through outside organizations; among other projects, the firm organized veterans organizations to oppose the workplace smoking regulation proposed by OSHA,” explains a 2007 study appearing in the American Journal of Public Health. “[It] was created to combat increasing numbers of proposed federal and state regulations on the use and sale of tobacco products.”

Paralleling the Koch Family Foundations-funded Americans for Prosperity groups of today, “Get Government Off Our Back” held rallies nationwide in March 1995 as part of “Regulatory Revolt Month.”

“Get Government Off Our Back” dovetailed perfectly with the Republican Party’s 1994 “Contract with America” that froze new federal regulations. The text of the “Contract” matched “Get Government Off Our Back” “nearly verbatim,” according to the American Journal of Public Health study.
‘Radicals, Idealists, Realists, Opportunists’

While its client work was noteworthy, the formula Duchin created to divide and conquer activist movements — a regurgitation of what he learned while working under the mentorship of Rafael Pagan — has stood the test of time. It is still employed to this day by Stratfor.

Duchin replaced Pagan’s “fanatic activist leaders” with “radicals” and created a three-step formula to divide and conquer activists by breaking them up into four subtypes, as described in a 1991 speech delivered to the National Cattleman’s Association titled, “Take an Activist Apart and What Do You Have? And How Do You Deal with Him/Her?”

The subtypes: “radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists.”

Radical activists “want to change the system; have underlying socio/political motives’ and see multinational corporations as ‘inherently evil,’” explained Duchin. “These organizations do not trust the … federal, state and local governments to protect them and to safeguard the environment. They believe, rather, that individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry … I would categorize their principal aims … as social justice and political empowerment.”

The “idealist” is easier to deal with, according to Duchin’s analysis.

“Idealists…want a perfect world…Because of their intrinsic altruism, however, … [they] have a vulnerable point,” he told the audience. “If they can be shown that their position is in opposition to an industry … and cannot be ethically justified, they [will] change their position.”

The two easiest subtypes to join the corporate side of the fight are the “realists” and the “opportunists.” By definition, an “opportunist” takes the opportunity to side with the powerful for career gain, Duchin explained, and has skin in the game for “visibility, power [and] followers.”

The realist, by contrast, is more complex but the most important piece of the puzzle, says Duchin.

“[Realists are able to] live with trade-offs; willing to work within the system; not interested in radical change; pragmatic. The realists should always receive the highest priority in any strategy dealing with a public policy issue.”

Duchin outlined a corresponding three-step strategy to “deal with” these four activist subtypes. First, isolate the radicals. Second, “cultivate” the idealists and “educate” them into becoming realists. And finally, co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.

“If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution,” Duchin outlined in closing his speech.
Bringing the ‘Duchin Formula’ to Stratfor

Alvin Biscoe passed away in 1998 and Jack Mongoven passed away in 2000. Just a few years later, MBD — now only Ronald Duchin and Jack’s son, Bartholomew or “Bart” — merged with Stratfor in 2003.

A book by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton — “Trust Us, We’re Experts!” — explains that MBD promotional literature boasted that the firm kept “extensive files [on] forces for change [which] can often include activist and public interest groups, churches, unions and/or academia.”

“A typical dossier includes an organization’s historical background, biographical information on key personnel, funding sources, organizational structure and affiliations, and a ‘characterization’ of the organization aimed at identifying potential ways to co-opt or marginalize the organization’s impact on public policy debates,” the authors proceeded to explain.

MBD’s “extensive files” on “forces for change” soon would morph into Stratfor’s “Global Intelligence Files” after the merger.

What’s clear in sifting through the “Global Intelligence Files” documents, which were obtained by WikiLeaks as a result of Jeremy Hammond’s December 2011 hack of Stratfor, is that it was a marriage made in heaven for MBD and Stratfor.

The “Duchin formula” has become a Stratfor mainstay, carried on by Bart Mongoven. Duchin passed away in 2010.

In a December 2010 PowerPoint presentation to the oil company Suncor on how best to “deal with” anti-Alberta tar sands activists, Bart Mongoven explains how to do so explicitly utilizing the “radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists” framework. In that presentation, he places the various environmental groups fighting against the tar sands in each category and concludes the presentation by explaining how Suncor can win the war against them.

Bart Mongoven described the American Petroleum Institute as his “biggest client” in a January 2010 email exchange, lending explanation to his interest in environmental and energy issues.

Mongoven also appears to have realized something was off about Chesapeake Energy’s financial support for the Sierra Club, judging by November 2009 email exchanges. It took “idealists” in the environmental movement a full 2 ½ years to realize the same thing, after Time magazine wrote a major investigation revealing the fiduciary relationship between one of the biggest shale gas “fracking” companies in the U.S. and one of the country’s biggest environmental groups.

“The clearest evidence of a financial relationship is the note in the Sierra Club 2008 annual report that American Clean Skies Foundation was a financial supporter that year,” wrote Mongoven in an email to the National Manufacturing Association’s vice president of communications, Luke Popovich. “According to McClendon, American Clean Skies Foundation was created by Chesapeake and others in 2007.”

Bart Mongoven also used the “realist/idealist” paradigm to discuss climate change legislation’s chances for passage in a 2007 article on Stratfor’s website.

“Realists who support a strong federal regime are drawn to the idea that with most in industry calling for action on climate change, there is no time like the present,” Mongoven wrote. “Idealists, on the other hand, argue that with momentum on their side, there is little that industry could do in the face of a Democratic president and Congress, and therefore time is on the environmentalists’ side. The idealists argue that they have not gone this far only to pass a half-measure, particularly one that does not contain a hard carbon cap.”

And how best to deal with “radicals” like Julian Assange, founder and executive director of WikiLeaks, and whistleblower Bradley Manning, who gave WikiLeaks the U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the “Collateral Murder” video? Bart Mongoven has a simple solution to “isolate” them, as suggested by Duchin’s formula.

“I’m in favor of using whatever trumped up charge is available to get [Assange] and his servers off the streets. And I’d feed that shit head soldier [Bradley Manning] to the first pack of wild dogs I could find,” Mongoven wrote in one email exchange revealed by the “Global Intelligence Files.” “Or perhaps just do to him whatever the Iranians are doing to our sources there.”

Indeed, the use of “trumped up charges” is often a way the U.S. government deals with radical activists, as demonstrated clearly during the days of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program during the 1960s, as well as in modern-day Occupy movement-related cases in Cleveland and Chicago.
‘Information economy’s equivalent of guns’

Just days after the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, The Austin Chronicle published an article on Stratfor that posed the rhetorical question as its title, “Is Knowledge Power?”

The answer, simply put: yes.

“What Stratfor produces is the information economy’s equivalent of guns: knowledge about the world that can change the world, quickly and irrevocably,” wrote Michael Erard for The Chronicle. “So if Stratfor succeeds, it’s because more individuals and corporations want access to information that helps them dissect an unstable world — and are willing to pay steady bucks for it.”

When it comes down to it, Stauber concurs with the “guns” metaphor and Duchin’s “war” metaphors.

“Corporations wage war upon activists to ensure that corporate activities, power, profits and control are not diminished or significantly reformed,” said Stauber. “The burden is on the activists to make fundamental social change in a political environment where the corporate interests dominate both politically and through the corporate media.”

Stauber also believes activists have a steep learning curve and are currently being left in the dust by Pagan, MBD, Stratfor and others.

“The Pagan/MBD/Stratfor operatives are much more sophisticated about social change than the activists they oppose, they have limitless resources at their disposal, and their goal is relatively simple: make sure that ultimately the activists fail to win fundamental reforms,” he said. “Duchin and Mongoven were ruthless, and I think they were often amused by the naivete, egotism, antics and failures of activists they routinely fooled and defeated. Ultimately, this is war, and the best warriors will win.”

One thing’s for certain: Duchin’s legacy lives on through his “formula.”

“The 4-step formula is brilliant and has certainly proven itself effective in preventing the democratic reforms we need,” Stauber remarked, bringing us back to where we started in 1982 with Rafael Pagan’s remarks about isolating the “fanatic activist leaders.”

This article is the second part of a two-part series on Stratfor. Check out the first part, “Divide And Conquer: Unpacking Stratfor’s Rise To Power.”

8. Tunnels under Fukushima plant suspected to have quake damage — Allows radioactive water to ‘move’ into ground — Still holding over 15,000 tons — High-level contamination flowing in from turbine buildings — Tepco “couldn’t afford to work on tunnels”

    [...] On the sea side of Nos. 1 to 4 reactors, there are two types of tunnels [...] and more than 15,000 tons of contaminated water remains there.

    Two years ago, the company did not conduct any work at locations other than the exit of test wells to prevent water leakage. It even failed to make any effort to remove the water from the tunnels at that time.

    A source close to the matter said, “As problems occurred one after another at that time, [the company] couldn’t afford to work on the tunnels.”

    As tunnels for electric cables are less resistant to earthquakes than reactors and other key equipment at the plant, they may have been damaged by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The bottom of the tunnels is lined with gravel, and leaked contaminated water may have moved to other spots where groundwater is located.

    Some tunnels are connected to turbine buildings where huge amounts of radioactive water are concentrated. TEPCO plans to launch work to drain the tainted water but is likely to face many challenges, including how to close the connections to the turbine buildings. [...]