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Mort keeps wanting to talk about "the supernatural." (What does he
mean by it? If he tells me, I'll tell him if I believe in it.)<br>
<br>
I want to talk about the corporate media's misleading us on the
Japanese nuclear catastrophe, to the benefit of he corporate
interests that want to expand nuclear energy. If the facts are
honestly presented, I think there will be a large national revulsion
against the corporations, and they can be curbed.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 3/27/11 1:20 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:F27DDA01-54DD-48F0-BF56-F4DDD87F1DB2@illinois.edu"
type="cite">Great needling, but not even wrong. Coming from
someone who believes in the supernatural, it says a lot. --mkb
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>On Mar 27, 2011, at 12:28 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> I'm (not really)
surprised to hear Mort testify to his religious faith in
the tenets of AGW: but I thought it was a question (like
most real religious questions) involving evidence and
arguments - of the sort Alex Cockburn had raised. (It's
true that George Monbiot too - supposedly engaged in the
same question - has called for the casting out of
unbelievers.) And in fact the evidence is quite
interesting - such as that in a piece I posted the other
day, for the possibility of prehistoric (= before 5000
years ago) AGW.<br>
<br>
The subject of my post was different: it was the (likely)
possibility that the news of the Japanese nuclear disaster
was being manipullated by the corporate media becasue of
the vast amonunt of corporate money to be made in the
promotion of nuclear energy. "A week ago, Fukushima
abruptly dropped out of the news headlines" - just as we
were beginning to hear of "TEPCO’s crimes and cover-ups
[and how] 'corporations had deliberately ignored the
lessons of Chernobyl' in the pursuit of profit" ...
"leading news media might have been in receipt of informal
government advisories to stop creating panic..."<br>
<br>
<br>
On 3/27/11 11:31 AM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:0C268152-0C83-4FB8-AEB9-7EABA27E36C1@illinois.edu"
type="cite">Correction: The radiation was down not by
about a million, but by over a thousand… Still, the
point is the same.
<div>--mkb</div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>On Mar 27, 2011, at 12:23 AM, Morton K. Brussel
wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word;">
<div> the radiation level of 400 mSv/hour was
recorded one day early on [See <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents]">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents]</a>
and close to the reactor, and in subsequent
days the level had decreased by a factor of
about a million.
<div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>On Mar 25, 2011, at 5:03 PM, C. G.
Estabrook wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<u>Fukushima: It’s Getting Worse</u><br>
<br>
A week ago, Fukushima abruptly
dropped out of the news headlines.
The NATO onslaught on Qaddafi took
over. This came after an initial
week – following the earthquake and
tsunami on March 11, of steadily
escalating alarums about what the EU
energy commissioner tactlessly
called “apocalypse.” Suddenly the
down-column stories about the
situation at the Fukushima nuclear
plant took on a tone of cautious
reassurance: there were
“improvements” in effort to keep
units 5 and 6 at the Daiichi plant
cool; “progress” in efforts to
reconnect the stricken plant to the
electrical power grid were
proceeding; hydrogen explosions
should be no cause for alarm; why,
TEPCO workers could even switch on
lights in a control room in Unit 1.
Reports stressed the restraint and
dignity of beleaguered Japanese
citizens, thus implying that
spreading alarmist reports was
pretty much the equivalent of
robbing refugees. Speaking
personally, news of lynch parties of
outraged Japanese prodding TEPCO
executives into clean-up duty in the
plant alongside George Monbiot and
the 50 Japanese worker-martyrs would
have been most welcome.<br>
<br>
TEPCO’s crimes and cover-ups go back
to the dawn of Japan’s nuclear power
industry. A Russian, Iouli Andreev
who once ran the Soviet Spetsatom
agency involved in the Chernobyl
clean-up told Reuters that
“corporations had deliberately
ignored the lessons of Chernobyl” in
the pursuit of profit and had been
abetted by the negligence of of the
IAEA and that “in order to cut
costs, spent fuel rods at Fukushima
had been too closely stacked in
pools near the nuclear reactors. One
of those pools caught fire,
dispersing radioactivity into the
atmosphere. The Japanese were very
greedy and they used every square
inch of the space. But when you have
a dense placing of spent fuel in the
basin, you have a high possibility
of fire if the water is removed from
the basin.”<br>
<br>
Amid reasonable suspicions that
leading news media might have been
in receipt of informal government
advisories to stop creating panic,
it became much harder to find
credible bulletins on what was
actually happening. In fact careful
perusal of the daily briefings at
the Vienna hq of the UN’s
International Atomic Energy Agency
in Vienna disclosed absolutely no
substantive progress and indeed
discreet admissions that “[this was
on March 23) the “Agency still
lacks data on water levels and
temperatures in the spent fuel pools
at Units 1, 2, 3 and 4.”<br>
<br>
The IAEA emphasized each day that
the situation at Fukushima’s Daiichi
plant remained “extremely serious.”
Bulletins from other bodies such as
France’s Autorité de sûreté
nucléaire retained a similarly grave
tone.<br>
<br>
Meanwhile bulletins about hazardous
fallout and poisoning of air, earth
and sea were similarly cast in a
reassuring frame, even as the
Japanese government issued warnings
about eating spinach and other
greens from Japan’s north east, and
by the end of the week putting out
an advisory for parents not to let
small children drink tap water in
Tokyo. On our own website, by
contrast, several articles and
interviews stressed what Hirose
Takashi said:<br>
<br>
“All of the information media are at
fault here I think. They are saying
stupid things like, why, we are
exposed to radiation all the time in
our daily life, we get radiation
from outer space. But that’s one
millisievert per year. A year has
365 days, a day has 24 hours;
multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.
Multiply the 400 millisieverts by
that, you get 3,500,000 the normal
dose. You call that safe? And what
media have reported this? None.
They compare it to a CT scan, which
is over in an instant; that has
nothing to do with it. The reason
radioactivity can be measured is
that radioactive material is
escaping. What is dangerous is when
that material enters your body and
irradiates it from inside. These
industry-mouthpiece scholars come on
TV and what to they say? They say
as you move away the radiation is
reduced in inverse ratio to the
square of the distance. I want to
say the reverse. Internal
irradiation happens when radioactive
material is ingested into the body.
What happens? Say there is a
nuclear particle one meter away from
you. You breathe it in, it sticks
inside your body; the distance
between you and it is now at the
micron level. One meter is 1000
millimeters, one micron is one
thousandth of a millimeter. That’s
a thousand times a thousand: a
thousand squared. That’s the real
meaning of “inverse ratio of the
square of the distance.” Radiation
exposure is increased by a factor of
a trillion. Inhaling even the
tiniest particle, that’s the
danger.”<br>
<br>
Both Arjun Makhijani and Robert
Alvarez stressed that a Worst Case
explosion at Fukushima Daiichi could
be worse than Chernobyl. As
Makhijani, president of the
Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research in Maryland,
wrote:<br>
<br>
“The mechanisms of the accident
would be very different than
Chernobyl, 4 where there was also a
fire, and the mix of radionuclides
would be very different. While the
quantity of short-lived
radionuclides, notably iodine-131,
would be much smaller, the
consequences for the long term could
be more dire due to long-lived
radionuclides such as cesium- 137,
strontium-90, iodine-129, and
plutonium-239. These radionuclides
are generally present in much larger
quantities in spent fuel pools than
in the reactor itself. In light of
that, it is remarkable how little
has been said by the Japanese
authorities about this problem.”<br>
<br>
Now, by March 25 TEPCO and the
Japanese government can’t keep the
lid on any longer. They are
admitting that the containment
vessel in unit 3 is ruptured.
Radiated water sloshing into
workers’ boots is 10,000 times above
safety levels. Hidehiko Nishiyama,
deputy director-general of the Japan
Nuclear and Industrial Safety
Agency, announced that radiation
from the mox fuel in reactor 3 — a
combination of uranium and plutonium
— could be escaping into the
atmosphere.<br>
<br>
In other words, Japan and the rest
of the world indeed face “the worst
case”, as we have since March 11.
There’s been no let up.<br>
<br>
What the nuclear industry and the
nuclear agencies have been aiming
for is a kind of Mithridatization of
the crisis. Mithridates was the king
who took poison every day to
immunize himself against poisoners.
Crisis becomes normalcy. Sure,
radiation levels are way above the
redline; the dirt around Fukushima
and huge slabs of north east Japan
is poisoned; the ground around
Fukushima is radiated sludge; the
seas show significant contamination,
not least because the seawater
being sprayed on the units itself
become poisoned and sinks into the
dirt and back into the ocean after
its detour to pick up toxicity.<br>
<br>
Sure, this is all true, but “there’s
no cause for alarm.” Never believe
anything till it’s officially
denied! The industry’s flacks lie
steadily, as they have always done,
about impacts on humans and the
environment.<br>
<br>
The fiercest defenders of nuclear
power these days are greens like
George Monbiot who wrote yet another
insane hosanna to nuclear power in
The Guardian (“Why Fukushima Made Me
Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Power
… Atomic energy has just been
subjected to one of the harshest
possible tests, and the impact on
people and the planet has been
small. The crisis at Fukushima has
converted me to nuclear power.” It
was written on the 21st of March.)
Greens like Monbiot, fixated on
their increasingly discredited
anthropogenic – humanly caused --
global warming (AGW) models, clamber
even further out in their assertions
that the nuclear industry’s official
spokesmen. <br>
<br>
On the recruitment of Greens to the
cause of the nuclear industry,
Martin Kokus sent us the following
very interesting letter:<br>
<br>
“Instead of saying that global
warming rescued the nuclear lobby, I
would say the nuclear complex
invented global warming. I was
working on man-made climate change
during the 70's and I think that
even the biggest conspiracy theorist
is underestimating the role that the
nuclear complex played in shaping
the debate on AGW. When I say
nuclear complex, I am not just
referring to the power lobby, but
also the weapons manufacturers, the
military, the nuclear labs, the
academics who are funded by nuclear
labs, and those who think that there
is some huge geopolitical advantage
for the west to go nuclear.<br>
<br>
“The nukes were pushing AGW from my
earliest political memory. In
1973-74, the Hoover Institute funded
a tour by Edward Teller where he
described co2 as the real
environmental problem and nuclear
power was its only solution. (I am
sure that you are aware that the
Hoover Institute is now espousing
AGW as a liberal conspiracy.)
During the same time period Bernard
Cohen, head of U of Pitt's Nuke
Labs, self-appointed expert on
safety, and proponent of nuclear
power was funded by Americans for
Energy Independence (AEI) to do the
same thing. One of the organizers
of AEI was longtime Cohen associate
Zalman Shapiro who was the subject
of a series of Counterpunch essays
by Grant Smith in regards to the
Israeli nuke program. These
speakers were not sponsored by
climatology departments but by
nuclear engineering departments.<br>
<br>
“I was in the first US seminar on
man-made climate change at UVA. We
were worried about particulates,
land use, deforestation, and most of
all the introduction of agribusiness
into the third world. My profs
dismissed AGW in about 15 minutes.
But even then, one of our contract
monitors from Oak Ridge AEC was
pushing me to get interested in the
greenhouse effect. I also remember
Outside magazine (which I always
considered right wing and phony
environmentalist) doing a series
that considered AGW to be the most
serious environmental threat. I
always found this interesting
because there were absolutely no
data behind it.<br>
<br>
“The real money came into AGW after
Thatcher got elected. I am sure
that you are familiar with the
Centre for Policy Studies, a
conservative British think tank,
decision to hype AGW. Well, the
Reagan administration more than
matched that money. We funded half
the Hadley Centre and the University
of East Anglia’s climate group. The
UEA was the scene of the recent
Climategate scandal. The Hadley
Centre and the UEA were the
incubators for the IPCC. The money
was monitored by what used to be the
AEC lab at Oakridge which is now
under DOE. The older climatologists
were ignored in this funding
buildup. In fact, existing funding
for non co2 climate change research
disappeared.”<br>
<br>
One more email from CounterPuncher
James Cronin:<br>
<br>
“One important aspect of the current
nuclear catastrophe is not being
discussed in progressive media: the
fact that radiation-induced cancers
do not simply arise immediately
following exposure. It's not as
though it will be like the Black
Plague, where one would see one's
neighbors being hauled out of their
houses, dead. This damage to human
life, these murders, will only be
visible -- if they are allowed to
be visible -- in statistical data
collected long years after the
exposure event.<br>
<br>
“In other words, there will be no
evident epidemic that would
stimulate citizen action. So we may
well be exposed to enough radiation,
such as with Iodine-131, to give us
thyroid cancer, but the distribution
of these cancers will be over the
entire population in the exposed
areas, manifesting only as a
statistic years after the fact.
Even if we know someone who develops
thyroid cancer, we will be unable to
identify the Japan catastrophe (at
least at this point) as the cause.
Thus the nuclear industry has a
clear escape path at this point.<br>
<br>
“I think we can be assured that the
research exists. If we know the
exposures or potential exposures,
the number of cancers (and deaths)
that will result can be estimated.
I think this estimate should be
found or done ASAP. A table could
be generated, if it does not already
exist in the scientific literature
somewhere.<br>
<br>
“I have long distrusted many
so-called progressive websites for
their obvious promotion of Obama,
and how they report this catastrophe
should be looked at, as you have
with Monbiot.”<br>
<br>
“Keep up the good work,
Counterpunchers.”<br>
<br>
As I wrote last week, the New York
Academy of Sciences report on
Chernobyl, published in 2009 has a
wealth of data on lethal health
consequences surfacing years after
the disaster. The report by Yablokov
and the Nesterenkos, had as its
consulting editor Janette
Sherman-Nevinger whose commentary,
on this site last week, is well
worth reading.<br>
<br>
From <a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03252011.html"><http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03252011.html></a>.<br>
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