Today The Internet Post brought to my attention a series of updates on Fukushima that paints a grim picture of the scope of ongoing radiation hazards (a story which gets relatively little coverage in corporate news outlets).
On this clip from 10/1, thousands of Japanese are reporting recurring nosebleeds while doctors are forced to keep quiet about suspicions of radiation sickness:
At Energy News, they highlighted these excerpts from an interview with Tetsuro Tsutsui, an engineer of industrial tanks such as the ones used in Fukushima:
[…]the latest problem was emblematic of how TEPCO runs the precarious plant. He said it was “unthinkable” to fill tanks up to the top, or build them on a tilted ground without building a level foundation.
“That’s only common sense,” Tsutsui, also a member of a citizens group of experts proposing safety measures for the plant. “But that seems to be the routine at the Fukushima Dai-ichi. I must say these are not accidents. There must be a systematic problem in the way things are run over there.” […]
There’s been another string of relevant news podcasts in the past few days so it’s time for another roundup post.
Last week Rob Kall of OpEdnews.cominterviewed Peter Ludlow a professor of linguistics and philosophy, on topics including systemic evil, whistleblowers and hacktivism:
From Traces of Reality there were two great consecutive shows. On 9/30 host Guillermo Jimenez interviewed Kevin Gallagher, director of Free Barrett Brown. Brown is the journalist who faces a 105 year sentence, the bulk of which is related to charges associated with pasting a link in a chat room. On the 10/1 episode, Guillermo is joined by Vice President of The Future of Freedom Foundation, Sheldon Richman. They cover topics including the “government shutdown”, the national debt, taxation, private property, the “social contract,” and the fallacy of the “consent of the governed.”:
Today marks the first day of the latest government shutdown due to failure of the House and Senate to agree on a spending bill. The main point of contention was Obamacare, which Republicans fought to repeal or delay. This conflict can be seen as a symptom of political polarization which, as multiple studies have shown, increases as economic inequality increases. This might seem counter-intuitive to those aware of how both parties receive money from the same corporations. Still, they get paid varying amounts from different corporations and they need to at least appear to be responsive to needs of constituents. Differences between the majority of Democrat and Republican representatives are analogous to differences between neoliberals and neoconservatives. There’s subtle differences in approach and emphasis but both ultimately serve the corporate-security state.
Many will blame the shutdown on Republicans who oppose Obamacare, but will it really increase access to affordable healthcare? It may have been better to delay implementation in order to work out glitches in the bureaucracy and computer systems. Obamacare has already had the unfortunate side-effect of businesses replacing full-time positions with part-time positions, and without any controls over the rising cost of premiums we should expect to see further rate increases. There may be minor improvements but far less than what would have been provided through single-payer and public option alternatives. If we had a Medicare-for-all system as Green Party candidate Jill Stein proposed, we’d have a system people already support providing comprehensive coverage with far less bureaucratic waste and at a fraction of the cost.
One of the many sickening aspects of the government shutdown is that government agencies that truly need to be shutdown, like the NSA, CIA, FBI, DEA, etc., remain essentially untouched. What will be shutdown or reduced are services related to health, work safety, food assistance, housing, education, parks and museums, regulatory agencies, and labor. Once again, money junkies in power have demonstrated their incompetence at doing things they care little about (ie. providing jobs and services that actually help poor and working class people). However, they have proven to be extremely good at funneling more money to themselves and their cronies while consolidating power. On the surface, the shutdown may appear self-defeating, but both parties can benefit by blaming the other side and can more easily push through questionable legislation in an atmosphere of crisis. Just like the sequestration last Spring, it’s a form of austerity which benefits big banks while screwing over average citizens.
Perhaps, if one’s definition of a “bad guy” is so broad it becomes meaningless.
Among the findings in this must-read article recently posted at Washington’s Blog, Does the Government Only Label Bad Guys As Terrorists?, the following characteristics could get you labeled as a terrorist by the government:
As you can see the list is pretty long, but sure to get longer as the government becomes even more corrupt, ineffectual, and fearful of revolt. Having such a loose definition of “terrorist” will do nothing to make anyone any safer (except perhaps the wealthy elite). In fact, it will only discourage dissent and encourage obedience to the corporate state which ultimately endangers the health of society.
In an event ripped straight of the gothic horror novel Frankenstein, a renowned embryologist was reportedly attacked by one of his cloned creations recently. The beast in this case, though, wasn’t a monster pieced together from the bodies of other animals—no, it was an 800-kilogram, black cow.
“Prof. Park Se-pill at Jeju National University had five of his ribs broken and injured his spine in the Sept. 15 attack,” reports the Korea Times. “Park was video-recording a black cow, which he cloned from species indigenous to Jeju four years ago, and all of a sudden, it charged and attacked him for 15 minutes,” a school official said. The embryologist will need eight weeks of medical treatment for his injuries.
The bovine made headlines in 2009 when Park successfully cloned it using a frozen cell taken from a deceased animal. This means the black cow is, in a sense, a “revival” of the cow that the cell was harvested from. Like a phoenix reborn after it dies—but rather than emerging from ashes, the cow originated from a test-tube.
While Park’s incident is unfortunate, it’s hard not to think of the real life allusions between the attack and Frankenstein. Perhaps if the cow could talk it would have quoted a famous line from the novel in which the monster exclaims to Dr. Frankenstein: “You are my creator, but I am your master—obey!”
Prof. Park is recovering at at Jeju National University and said he wishes to continue his study even if he has to be in a wheelchair. He reported the cow is now in a barn and no special measure will be taken despite the incident. This is some background of Park and his research from the Korea Times article that was cited:
Park has been recognized as one of the world’s leading cloning scientists since 2000 when he successfully took out human stem cell lines from embryos for the third time in history.
In particular, his team developed technologies using frozen eggs for cloning experiments _ the procedure that created the four-year-old cloned cow that gave him global recognition.
Taking advantage of his expertise, Park hoped to become the first scientist to establish stem cell batches from cloned human embryos by 2015 to help cure such degenerative diseases as diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
What Park vies to achieve is the same as what former Seoul National University Prof. Hwang Woo-suk claimed to have done in 2004 and 2005 ㅡ his feats later proved to have been falsified.
The Hwang case prompted the government to ban research with fresh human eggs in response to the ethical debate in the aftermath.
Instead, scientists have had to depend on a roundabout way of thawing frozen ova, typically leftovers after artificial insemination.
The government is unlikely to lift the restriction on the use of fresh eggs, which are deemed most suitable for therapeutic cloning research, in the near future.
Against this backdrop, Park and his team relied on their knowhow of the freeze-and-thaw process to extract stem cell lines from cloned human embryos.
Granted, most weeks are bad weeks for U.S. diplomacy, but this week was particularly rocky because it marked the 68th session of the U.N. General Assembly. On Tuesday, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff pulled no punches in a speech highlighting how the NSA violated international law through its indiscriminate collection of personal information of Brazilian citizens and economic espionage targeting the country’s industries (two days later it was revealed the NSA also planted bugs in two Indian embassies).
Following Rousseff’s address was Obama, who gave a speech which was widely panned for its hypocrisy and falsehoods. Dave Lindorff of This Can’t Be Happening! described it best:
Whether he was declaring that “together we have worked to end a decade of war” even as he was just blocked from unilaterally launching a war against Syria, or saying “we have limited the use of drones,” when his administration has upped their use from 51 strikes in Pakistan under the prior Bush administration to 323 so far under his own administration, as David Swanson has so meticulously documented in his Top 45 Lies in Obama’s Speech at the UN, it was all lies.
In contrast, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivered a speech with a more cooperative tone, calling for peaceful dialogue. But he was also blunt in calling out what he sees as the greatest threat to peace, as shown in his closing remarks:
This propagandistic discourse has assumed dangerous proportions through portrayal and inculcation of presumed imaginary threats. One such imaginary threat is the so-called “Iranian threat” -which has been employed as an excuse to justify a long catalogue of crimes and catastrophic practices over the past three decades. The arming of the Saddam Hussein regime with chemical weapons and supporting the Taliban and A1-Qaida are just two examples of such catastrophes. Let me say this in all sincerity before this august world assembly, that based on irrefutable evidence, those who harp on the so-called threat of Iran are either a threat against international peace and security themselves or promote such a threat. Iran poses absolutely no threat to the world or the region. In Fact, in ideals as well as in actual practice, my country has been a harbinger of just peace and comprehensive security.
In a recent Global Research piece by Ryan Mallett-Outtrim, it was reported that on Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro cancelled plans to attend the U.N. General Assembly. Though he did not give too many details for security reasons, he did state:
There were two serious provocations, one more serious than the other, how I understand it…When I got into Vancouver I evaluated the intelligence which we received from several sources…I decided then and there to continue back to Caracas and drop the New York trip to protect a key goal: safeguarding my physical integrity and protecting my life.
Later that day Bolivian President Evo Morales gave what will probably be the most memorable speech of this year’s UN General Assembly. Some of the highlights:
What peace can we speak of when military spending sacrifices the human rights of our peoples? How is it possible, when there are so many unemployed, for your (US) government, for your president, to spend 700 billion dollars on the military? It is not possible for these huge amounts of money to be spent on the military and on espionage when there are so many brothers and sisters in the United States without homes, without jobs, without schooling. I simply cannot understand how they can spend so much money to interfere in other countries while leaving their own unprovided for.
…You do not combat terrorism with more military spending or by training more military forces. As far as I know you fight terrorism with social policies, not with military bases, you fight it with religious tolerance, with more democracy, more equality, more justice and more education.
…Those who decide wars are large arms industries, the financial system and the oil companies. Plutocracy has replaced democracy.
…How can we be safe at a meeting of the United Nations here in New York? Some do not believe in imperialism and capitalism and feel totally unsafe…The headquarters should be in a state that has ratified all UN treaties.
…I would like you to be aware that the United States harbors terrorists and the corrupt. They take refuge here, and the United States does not help in the fight against corruption.
At the close of his address, Morales suggested “we think seriously about constituting a Tribunal of the People with international bodies and the large defenders of human rights to begin a lawsuit against the Obama government.”
You can read more about the speech and listen to the full translated version here:
