12 Nobel Prize winners tell Obama to release report on torture

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Posted by War Criminals Watch –

28 October 2014

As 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners call on Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama to release the long-awaited report on torture that the Senate conducted, and the Obama administration debates codifying key aspects of Bush doctrine which allowed torture on foreign soil, it’s worthwhile to analyze why this has continued to be such a unsolvable problem for the rulers of the U.S.

Nobel Peace Prize winners — as we’ve seen lately, especially — aren’t the standard of justice in the world, but the standards of one in particular are an outrage. The Obama administration is micro-managing the release of the Senate’s report on CIA torture, already delayed for years, watered down and admittedly tampered with by CIA spying.  Obama doesn’t want the report out before the November 4 election.  In that he’s in sync with the most rabid pro-torturers from the Bush regime.

But this is not about history only, as important as setting the record straight is. Men are being tortured in Guantanamo now by indefinite detention and forced-feeding. Governments set up and bought by the U.S. in Afghanistan & Iraq are torturing with impunity in the very prisons built by the U.S. and CIA to originate the torture.

When — or if — the Senate CIA torture report becomes public, we can’t let that moment go by without mass protest.

From Rob Crawford’s piece The CIA, the President, and the Senate’s Torture Report, September 26: “Many military, security and political elites recognize that U.S. torture, approved at the highest levels of government, created an unsurpassed crisis of legitimacy for the country.  Their foremost objective is to restore that legitimacy. “

Arguably, this is the principal reason why Obama issued his executive order rejecting torture in 2009 (I believe that McCain would have likely done the same). It is why the new president counseled amnesia about torture and why he refused to initiate criminal investigations or even a commission of inquiry.  It is why he has fallen mostly silent about the issue of torture.  The U.S. relies on an image that it conducts its wars humanely and in accordance with international law. Brutality and illegality belong to the enemy.  Occasionally, however, the brutal and unlawful exercise of state violence becomes public knowledge.  The inhumanity of violence “shocks the conscience.”  Legitimacy crises follow.  For the U.S., the Abu Ghraib photos were a disaster but the disaster kept growing with a cascade of revelations that included documentation of torture of prisoners in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and CIA kidnapping, renditions, and torture in secret prisons.  The reverberations are still being felt.”

Source:

http://warisacrime.org/content/twelve-nobel-prize-winners-call-nobel-prize-winner-obama-release-report-torture

Japanese doctors threatened; health statistics must be cleared by the IAEA before release to the public

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Japanese doctors threatened — their hospital rights and medical license will be revoked if they tell patients their illness is radiation-related.

The IAEA is the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Energy Education on Radio Ecoshock, released Oct 29, 2014:

Alex Smith, host of RadioEcoshock (at 10:30 in):

We’ve heard almost nothing about the impacts [of the Fukushima catastrophe] on people in that region. There are accounts coming out of there of strange tumors, kids dying, pets dying — what have you heard? Can we ever expect an honest accounting from Japanese authorities?

Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer (emphasis added):

That’s a pretty good summary, frankly. We continue to get information from people who live there about cancer rates — and illnesses in general, not just cancer. We think of radiation as a cancer causing thing, but it also causes many other ailments. Much higher incidences of a whole range of illnesses than they had in 2010, the year before the accident…

We’re also working with doctors in Japan, and some brave doctors are saying that they’ve been threatened — that their hospital rights have been threatened — if you tell your patient this illness is radiation related you’ll lose your right to practice and things like that. So there’s enormous pressure on the medical community to tell the patients that what they’re experiencing is not at all related to radiation. The key is statistics, and the question is when will the statistics be released for mortality, morbidity, and general illnesses…

We’re not seeing the data. The medical community now has to file every report that it writes with the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, before it’s issued. So if you’re a hospital, and you’ve got mortality data, you’re not allowed to issue that to the public until those reports have been cleared by the IAEA. Well, Article II of the IAEA charter is to promote nuclear power. So even if the hospital was conscientious — there’s a lot of political pressure not to be — but even if it was conscientious, there’s another step in the process, and they’ve got to clear an IAEA hurdle before those numbers are released. It’s truly frightening, the pressure the medical community is undergoing in Japan. Very few of them are willing to tell the truth.

Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer, Oct. 20, 2014 (at 15:00 in): There’s experts out there like me – independent experts – who are saying that as many as a million cancers may result.

Sneak peek of Oct. 29 broadcast here | Watch Oct. 20 presentation here

Posted on ENE News.

http://enenews.com/frightening-doctors-being-threatened-telling-patients-illnesses-related-fukushima-radiation-strange-tumors-kids-dying-pets-dying-higher-incidences-range-health-problems-being-reported-experts

 

$355 Billion expansion of nuclear weapons proposed by Obama administration and Congress

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From the Guardian, September 29, 2014
By Cady Enders

…Congress and the Department of Defense, together with New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), are gearing up to dramatically increase production of nuclear weapons cores to numbers not seen since the cold war. In a report to Congress last month, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) outlined specific recommendations for a nuclear production plan under which as many as 80 explosive plutonium cores – 3.5in spheres that trigger an atomic bomb – would be created per year by 2030.

The Los Alamos proposal, which aims to increase plutonium core production at the nuclear facility thirtyfold from 2013 levels, leaves various environmental, fiscal, and political questions unanswered. Los Alamos, which the CRS report cites as the only plausible place for the slated nuclear expansion, happens to have a staggeringly poor history of safeguarding war-grade nuclear materials. A federal study last month found the nuclear facility unprepared to respond to emergencies; environmental violations abound; and a former employee was recently sentenced to a year in federal prison for trying to sell nuclear secrets to the Venezuelan government.

The plan, which has already been quietly adopted in broad terms by the House and Senate armed services committees as part of the 2015 Defense Authorization Act, is expected to contribute an estimated $355bn for nuclear weapons development over the next decade. The spending would seem to stand in stark contrast to President Obama’s stated position on nuclear weapons.

Obama has previously indicated a strong commitment to cutting the nuclear stockpile from 5,113 warheads in 2009 to 1,500 by the year 2016. In a 2009 speech in Prague, cited by the Nobel committee as the primary reason for awarding him the peace prize…

… James Doyle, a former scientist in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Division at LANL, said that the scale of the proposed project lacks supporting research, particularly in the quantity of cores required. “I’ve never seen the justification articulated for the 50-80 pits per year by 2030,” Doyle said.

Doyle, a 17-year veteran of Los Alamos, was dismissed on July 8 for publishing an article in support of nuclear disarmament that had been approved prior to publication by the laboratory’s classification department. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the State Department have since classified the article, despite the fact that the media review process at the lab prior to publication identified no classification breaches. (The article remains available to the public even after the classification.)

Doyle believes that the timing of his ouster was connected to the congressional push for nuclear weapons maintenance. “I think the laboratory would like to review for message, too,” he said.“I would speculate that the message of my article was in opposition to the labs’ message when searching for funding for the plutonium pit project.”

Doyle believes that the government should turn its focus from weapons component production to a strategic plan for eliminating nuclear weapons by the year 2045. “I think there are plenty of people at the lab who share my view that are now even less likely to write an article like that now this has happened to me,” Doyle said.

… Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear watchdog group, said that the reason the pit proposal has progressed, despite monumental cost to the taxpayer, comes down to the priorities of the for-profit corporations that now run all the country’s nuclear laboratories since they were privatized in 2006. That includes Los Alamos National Security, a private limited liability corporation that manages and operates Los Alamos National Laboratories.

“The business model of the nuclear weapons labs is to blackmail the government into continuing excessive appropriations,” said Mello. “The nuclear weapons labs are sized for the Cold War, and they need a Cold War to keep that size.”

For the complete article:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/congress-nuclear-weapons-new-mexico-radioactivity

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44968
Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2014 to 2023

Posted under Fair Use Rules.

Nuclear weapons deal with US renewed in secret, UK confirms

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From the Guardian, October 20, 2014
By Richard Norton-Taylor

The British government has just published amendments updating a treaty that goes to the heart of the UK’s special relationship with the US.

They relate to the Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA) first signed in 1958, which, according to the government, enables the UK and the US “nuclear warhead communities to collaborate on all aspects of nuclear deterrence including nuclear warhead design and manufacture”.

One amendment refers to potential threats from “state or non-state actors”. But the amendments are for the most part arcane and their significance cannot be understood in the absence of information which is kept secret.

The MDA does not have to be debated or voted on in parliament, as I have remarked before. Though the agreement is incorporated in US law, it has no legal status in Britain.

Yet the matters covered by the treaty, which is renewed only at 10 year intervals, are hugely important. Successive British governments have made clear a proper debate on the issues involved would not be welcome.

“A debate on the renewal of the MDA would be used by some as an opportunity to raise wider questions concerning the possible renewal of the nuclear deterrent…and our obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,” notes an internal MoD paper, dated 2004. The paper was released only earlier this year through a freedom of information act request by the independent Nuclear Information Service.

…

Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) says the UK-US agreement flew in the face Britain’s commitments as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“It is appalling that David Cameron is signing secretive nuclear deals behind Parliament’s back. In no other area of government would such a sinister sidestepping of democratic process be tolerated.”

For the full article:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/defence-and-security-blog/2014/oct/20/nuclear-weapons-uk-us

Posted under Fair Use Rules.

‘Depleted’ Uranium & Induced Radioactivity: What the Department of Defense hopes you don’t learn

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Induced radioactivity would also apply to contamination from Fukushima affecting water (and bodies of water, such as reservoirs), soil, and whatever it comes in contact with (such as roofs, playgrounds, roads, animal feed).

It would also apply to the USS Ronald Reagan that the US Navy has allowed children to board, and which it has redeployed with new crew, regardless of the contamination from Operation Tomodachi and the consequences to the health of US military personnel.

—————————————————————————————————

By Elaine Hunter
Posted on COTO Report
August 18, 2011

120mm DU Munition

Lest anyone jump to the conclusion that this article is about my opinion, let’s start out with the military definition:

“Induced radiation: (DOD, NATO) Radiation produced as a result of exposure to radioactive materials, particularly the capture of neutrons.” (From Military Dictionary:  US Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Words: Terms and concepts associated with the military. Induced-Radiation)

Induced radioactivity occurs when a previously stable material has been made radioactive by exposure to specific radiation (specific being: alpha, gamma, neutrons, x-rays).

The author recalls reading decades ago, in the context of research about the push for fusion power production, that where there is substantial neutron activity, the equipment that initially was not radioactive eventually becomes so radioactive that it must be decommissioned.  To date I’ve seen very little discussion of this aspect of the use of DU.  It is not insignificant.

Neutron activation is the main form of induced radioactivity, which happens when free neutrons are captured by nuclei. A less common form involves removing a neutron via photodisintegration. In this reaction, a high energy photon (gamma ray) strikes a nucleus with an energy greater than the binding energy of the atom, releasing a neutron.

Induced radioactivity was observed early on along the rocky road of nuclear sciences; it was first observed in 1934, by Irene Curie and Frederic Joliot. They bombarded aluminum metal with alpha particles in the following reaction:

The casings, at least for the 30mm DU munitions are aluminum! (“Al” noted in the above equation). The “He” noted in the above equation represents an alpha particle, an alpha particle is essentially a helium atom. The resulting atom is phosphorus (“P”) plus a neutron (“n”). The neutron that results can go on to induce radioactivity in other atoms of aluminum or steel or….

25mm DU munition

The resulting phosphorus atom is radioactive with a half life of approximately 14 days. This is not insignificant. I can’t help but wonder what role induced radioactive phosphorus played in causing the increases in horrid birth defects in Iraq and elsewhere. Phosphorus is an essential element in DNA, RNA, amino acids, etc., the building blocks of life.

Surely those concerned about DU munitions have learned that U-238 is an alpha emitter. It is also a neutron emitter (my article DU – You Don’t Have To Inhale Or Ingest It For It To Make You Sick gives details about this).

The A-10 Thunderbolt jet and the Apache helicopter both use 30mm munitions in their GAU Gatling gun (front mounted).

Bradley Fighting Vehicle

However what was in their linked ammo is not 100% DU rounds. The linkage was 4 DUs to 1 HEI (High Explosive Incendiary) round (Note I’ve also seen 5/1 ratio). Has anyone else noted that those HEIs and their casings had to have become radioactive? How about the region of the jets or helicopters where the ammo was loaded? Wouldn’t they also become radioactive?

From where I sit, it is too difficult to come up with a listing of what artificial radioisotopes would have been induced or what half lives they would have, but they have to be there.

While in stockpile or not yet loaded for action, the DU munitions are stored in now radioactive steel ammo cans. Troops who sat on such cans would have been cooking their behinds and “family jewels” with various radioactive emissions to their peril.

Some years ago the Navy stopped using the 20mm DU round. Was it because it was gradually making their ships radioactive; because sailors were getting sick? You’ll have to ask the higher-ups on that one. They said it was because they did not need them.

Marine Harrier Jet

How about DU armor on tanks? Did the manufacturer or the DOD give some special blessing over it to prevent the inevitable induced radioactivity it would cause to the rest of the tank and the crew?

These are not the only examples of where DU occurs. Fill in others that you know and think about it.

More and more examples of information for the horses’ mouths that show the US military has failed to consider or reveal the far reaching ramifications of using “depleted” uranium ostensibly on the enemy, yet on its own who have to have anything to do with it. Always, always more questions than answers. Obfuscation, betrayal.

Dr. Prof. Elaine Hunter is an Independent Researcher. Feel free to contact her at: uncommon.eyes at gmail.com. A late-comer to the concerns about DU munitions, was shocked when she learned she lived in the midst of the US DU “production” triangle. She grew up a pre-boomer WWII military brat.

Source:
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/%e2%80%98depleted%e2%80%99-uranium-induced-radioactivity-what-dod-hopes-you-don%e2%80%99t-learn/

Sign the petition to Tokyo: “Resign as host of 2020 Olympics”

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http://www.thepetitionsite.com/352/112/859/radioactive-tokyo-resign-as-host-of-2020-olympics/

This petition was created by Carol Wolman MD who also wrote this editorial

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Brave-Japanese-Doctors-by-carol-wolman-MD-Fukushima-140731-861.html

Please forward this information.

Petition:

We, the undersigned, join Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata in calling for “an honorable retreat” for Japan, resigning the position of Host for the 2020 Olympic Games. Since Fukushima is already contaminating Tokyo, says Mr. Murata, bringing people there in large numbers for the games (and the workers building the facilities before that event) is immoral and unethical.

Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear reactor complex that was damaged by the earthquake/tsunami of March 2011, continues to spew forth radioactivity today.  Unfortunately, the site is nowhere near “under control”, and there is no guarantee it will be by 2020. Periodic releases of radioactive material into the air spread all over northern Japan, including Tokyo.  The radiation level in Tokyo has gone from 0.036 microseverts/hour to 13 microseverts/hour, according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

The Olympic practice field is only 20 kilometers from the reactor complex.  JP gov is even considering  programing 2020 Olympic-torch relay races near Fukushima plant “to fight harmful rumor.”

If the 2020 summer games are held in Tokyo, the world’s finest young athletes will be exposed to radiation, along with the workers building the complex and the people from all over the world who attend.

We also must not forget that the country is facing the unprecedented nuclear crisis that continues to spread across its land and ocean, and even across national borders. There still is no provisions for a safe work environment at Fukushima Complex. The evacuated people still haven’t secured safe and healthy living environments, nor are they financially stable. Instead of spending resources on the Olympic Games, Japan should prioritize to restore the affected people’s livelihood as well as prevent further radioactive contamination.

 

All Tokyo districts are contaminated with radiation from Fukushima; doctor moves practice out of Tokyo to help patients

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Tokyo Contaminated & Not Fit for Habitation, Doctor Says

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Tokyo_contaminated_and_not_fit_for_habitation.php

All 23 districts of Tokyo contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima meltdown, worse than at Chernobyl after the accident, and blood cells of children under ten are showing worrying changes; the WHO, the IAEA & the Japanese government cannot be trusted
Susie Greaves

In July 2014 Dr Shigeru Mita wrote a letter to his fellow doctors to explain his decision to move his practice from Tokyo to Okayama city in the West of Japan [1]. In it, he appeals to their sense of duty to answer the anxieties of parents in Japan who do not believe the information coming from the authorities. He says “I must state that the policies of the WHO, the IAEA or the Japanese government cannot be trusted.” and “if the power to save our citizens and future generations exists somewhere, it does not lie within the government or any academic association, but in the hands of individual clinical doctors ourselves.”

Mita claims that all 23 districts of Tokyo are contaminated, with the eastern area worst affected – up to 4 000 Bq/kg. (The becquerel is a unit of radioactivity. One Bq is the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second.) These findings confirm what the nuclear physicist Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Nuclear Education found in 2012, when he picked up five random soil samples in Tokyo from between paving stones, in parks and playgrounds. The levels of contamination were up to 7 000 Bq/kg; in the US, anything registering these levels would be considered nuclear waste [2].

While practising in Tokyo, Mita also discovered changes in the white blood cells of children under 10.

Independent science & independent reporting in Japan outlawed

In December 2013, the Japanese parliament passed a bill whereby public officials and private citizens could face ten years in prison for divulging “special state secrets”, and journalists, five years, for seeking to obtain classified information. The bill is widely interpreted as a way of preventing sensitive information about Fukushima (among other topics) reaching the Japanese public and by extension the rest of the world [3].

The independent organisation Reporters without Borders has downgraded Japan in its world press freedom index from 22nd place in 2012, to 53rd in 2013 and to 59th in 2014, following the passing of the state secrets bill. Reporters without Borders say that Japan“has been affected by a lack of transparency and almost zero respect for access to information on subjects directly or indirectly related to Fukushima” [4].

Nuclear lobby put in charge

Back in December 2012, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) whose mission is to promote the peaceful uses of the atom, signed agreements with Fukushima Prefecture, Fukushima Medical University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. These “Practical Arrangements” have in effect, handed over the management of the post-accident situation at Fukushima and its health consequences to the nuclear lobby. Among other clauses regarding cooperation and funding, we read that “The Parties will ensure the confidentiality of information classified by the other Party as restricted or confidential” [5].

But this should come as no surprise. Anyone who doubts the heavy hand of the nuclear lobby in the “management” (i.e. minimisation) of nuclear accidents should read the account by the physicist Bella Belbéoch entitled “Western responsibility regarding the health consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe in Belarus, the Ukraine and Russia” [6]. The initial Soviet cover up of the accident is well known. Less well known are the “stages of submission” in which the IAEA forced the Soviets to accede to their demands to minimise estimates of the health effects of the accident. In a series of manipulations and bullying tactics, they forced the Soviet officials to divide their estimates of the health effects by a factor of 10. One Soviet delegate, Legassov, committed suicide, a few days after he capitulated to the IAEA demands, on the 26th April 1988, the second anniversary of the Chernobyl accident.

A travesty of reporting on risks and cancers

How has the nuclear lobby reacted to Fukushima?  A preliminary assessment published in 2012 by the World Health Organisation (but actually emanating from the IAEA) managed to draw optimistic conclusions, while ignoring two critical groups, the workers at the TEPCO plant, and the people who were evacuated from the immediate area (See [7]  WHO Report on Fukushima a Travesty  SiS 55).   Then in 2013, the UNSCEAR report [8] described the risks of people developing thyroid cancer, leukaemia and breast cancer as barely discernible, even though the rates of childhood thyroid cancer in Fukushima prefecture are already 40 times what would be expected [9]. The UNSCEAR report has been criticised by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War because it consistently underestimates the radiation dose received, underestimates internal radiation, ignores the vulnerability of the human embryo to radiation, ignores hereditary effects, ignores the unreliability of the dose received by workers at the stricken plant, and only considers some cancers as potential health effects, whereas the experience of Chernobyl shows that every vital organ and system of the body is affected [10].

Raising the ‘safe’ limit of radiation

The Japanese people are faced with a government whose response to the dangers of the radiation was to increase the acceptable limit from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year and who are now encouraging people to move back into areas that had previously been evacuated. (The millisievert is a unit of radiation dose. Before the Fukushima accident, Japan, like the rest of the world, respected the limit of 1 mSv/year recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP).) Meanwhile, the nuclear lobby wants to see the resumption of nuclear power in Japan as quickly as possible. This is not an atmosphere in which doctors are encouraged to report health effects that could be the result of radiation, and certainly not in Tokyo, whose residents have been led to believe that they have nothing to fear.

Changes in white blood cells in children

Mita began work as a general practitioner in Tokyo in the 1990s. In the letter to his colleagues explaining his decision to move his practice from Tokyo to Okayama City, he claims that contamination in the eastern part of Tokyo is 1000-4000 Bq/kg and in the western part, 300-1000Bq/kg. He compares these levels with Kiev, in Ukraine, after the accident at Chernobyl, of 500 Bq/kg, and with measurements taken before the 2011 Fukushima accident at Shinjuku, the site of the Tokyo municipal government of 0.5 – 1.5 Bq/kg. He says that “Tokyo should no longer be inhabited, and that those who insist on living in Tokyo must take regular breaks in safer areas”.

Mita conducts thyroid ultrasound tests for parents who are concerned about the health of their children but he is now concerned about the results of another test on children under 10, the differential white blood cell count. This test is undergone routinely by workers in the nuclear industry who are exposed to radiation. Blood is produced in bone marrow, which is one of the organs most vulnerable to radiation. The white blood cells consist of five different kinds of cells, neutrophils, lymphocytes, eosinocytes, basophils and monocytes, and it is the relative numbers of these five cell types that is examined. Mita has found a decline in neutrophils in children under 10, in areas that are not considered to be highly contaminated or even contaminated at all. His patients come from Northern Kanto, the area around Tokyo and including Tokyo itself [11].

“The pediatricians’ general textbook says that the reference value of neutrophils for healthy children (6-12 years old) is between 3000 and 5000. 3000 is considered as the threshold value.” Mita says. “But the mean value of neutrophils of the children who have visited our clinics since the accident has decreased to 2500. … It is lower than the threshold value of 3000. I think this points at a serious problem.”

Mita explains that although the decrease in neutrophil does not directly cause lowered immunity, it is “the last bastion of the immunity system” and could play a role in fatal illnesses such as septicaemia in the case of aggressive colds. “In the summer of 2011, there were many children with bloodshot eyes; and what we saw most were children with dark circles under the eyes. We also had increased occurrence of sinusitis. Previously, these patients got better soon after they were given proper treatment; however, we are seeing more cases of sinusitis accompanied with mild case of asthma continuing for longer periods. And when these children spend some time in the West, they get better.If at all possible, I would like them to move away from East Japan.”

In adults, he has found increased nosebleeds, hair loss, lack of energy, subcutaneous bleeding, visible urinary haemorrhage, skin inflammation, and coughs. He has found an increase in infectious diseases such as influenza, hand, foot and mouth diseases and shingles. “We also see more patients with diseases that had been rare before; for example, polymyalgia rheumatica is a disease common among those above age 50 and contracted by 1.7 people out of every 100,000. Before 3.11, [the date of the accident at Fukushima] we had one or less patient per year. Now, we treat more than 10 patients at the same time.” Dr Mita wonders “Could these be the same symptoms of muscle rheumatism that were recorded in Chernobyl?”

Finally, Mita says that the radioactive contamination of Tokyo is increasing because of the Japanese government’s policy of transporting radioactive waste from the Fukushima zone all over Japan for incineration or burial. The Japanese government and the nuclear authorities claimed that filters on the stacks of the incineration plants would remove most of the radioactivity, but this is not the case, and in the opinion of many, it is adding to the contamination. Arnie Gundersen, for instance says, “They are creating 100 to 1000 times more radioactive material by burning debris than keeping it in concentrated form” [12].

To conclude

Mita is talking about his perceptions of the changes in health of a population living in an area that is not considered contaminated. It will be all too easy to dismiss his findings. He himself is not optimistic. He acknowledges that to prove any of his suspicions would require teams of doctors, and expensive research projects to compare groups of people, their radioactive contamination and the illnesses from which they suffer. That’s something simply beyond the reach of any single physician. In other words, “it’s impossible under the present state to collect the kind of data that would be printed in a prestigious science magazine. Still, as long as I know that something strange is clearly happening, I can’t just sit here doing nothing.”

And here is Professor Yablokov talking about the difficulties that doctors and scientists experienced in the Chernobyl territories, to prove a correlation between radiation and illness [13]: “The demand by IAEA and WHO experts to require “significant correlation” between the imprecisely calculated levels of individual radiation […] and precisely diagnosed illnesses […] is not, in our view, scientifically valid. […]We believe it is scientifically incorrect to reject data generated by many thousands of scientists, doctors and other experts who directly observed the suffering of millions affected by radioactive fallout in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, as “mismatching scientific protocols.” It is scientifically valid to find ways to abstract the valuable information from these data.” Yablokov goes on to list the ways in which this could be done.

But it was not done in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, and, in this way, the true health consequences of the Chernobyl accident remain hidden. The 2 million people, including 500,000 children still living in the worst contaminated areas around Chernobyl suffer a myriad of illnesses. (According to the Ministry of Health and Sciences in Belarus in 2000, 85% of the children in the contaminated areas were ill, whereas that figure was 15% before the accident in 1986 [14].)

Mita has made a brave decision. The pressure on health professionals and other citizens in Japan to remain silent about the health consequences of Fukushima, will lead to a health catastrophe there – not now, but in the decades to come.

For more on Fukushima and Chernobyl see [15] Truth about Fukushima and other articles in the series (SiS 55) and [16] Fukushima Crisis Goes Global (SiS 61).

References

  1. World Network for Saving Children from Radiation (2014). A Tokyo doctor who has moved to western Japan urges fellow doctors to promote radiation protection: A message from Dr Mita to his colleagues in Kodaira, Tokyo. Accessed 25 August 2014, http://www.save-children-from-radiation.org/2014/07/16/a-tokyo-doctor-who-has-moved-to-western-japan-urges-fellow-doctors-to-promote-radiation-protection-a-message-from-dr-mita-to-his-colleagues-in-kodaira-city-t/
  2. ENENews (2012). Gunderson: Tokyo soil so hot it should be sent to nuclear waste dump – Really severe releases hit city. Accessed 25 August 2014,  http://enenews.com/gundersen-tokyo-soil-hot-be-shipped-radioactive-dump).
  3. “Japan whistleblowers face crackdown under proposed state secrets law.” Justin McMurray, Guardian, 5 December 2013. Accessed 25 August 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/05/whistleblowers-japan-crackdown-state-secrets
  4. Reporters without Borders (2013). Press freedom index 2013: Dashed hopes after spring. Accessed 25 August 2014,  http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html
  5. Practical Arrangements between Fukushima Medical University and the International Atomic Energy Agency on Cooperation in the Area of Human Health. Accessed 25 August 2014, http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/energy/fukushima_2012/pdfs/fukushima_iaea_en_06.pdf
  6. Belbéoch B. Responsabilités occidentales dans les conséquences sanitaires de la catastrophe de Tchernobyl, en Bélorussie, Ukraine et Russie. In Radioprotection et Droit nucléaire (eds. I Rens, J Jakubec, E George). Collection SEBES, 1998. English translation: Western responsibility regarding the health consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe in Belarus, the Ukraine and Russia. http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/western_responsability.html 25/8/14
  7. Greaves S.  WHO report on Fukushima a travesty. Science in Society 55 2012, 38-39.
  8. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Sources, Effects and Risks of Ionizing Radiation. United Nations, New York, 2014. Accessed 25 August 2014, http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2013/13-85418_Report_2013_Annex_A.pdf
  9. Wasserman H. Fukushima, the continuing catastrophe.  The Ecologist, June 2014.http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2433355/fukushima_the_continuing_catastrophe.html
  10. Physicians for Social Responsibility USA et al. Critical Analysis of the UNSCEAR Report “Levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East-Japan Earthquake and tsunami.” International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Berlin, 2014. Accessed 25 August 2014, http://ippnw-students.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UNSCEAR-Critique.pdf
  11. World Network for Saving Children from Radiation. Dr Shigeru Mita addresses the need of blood examination among children in the Kanto area. 2013. Accessed 25 August 2014, http://www.save-children-from-radiation.org/2013/11/11/title-dr-shigeru-mita-addresses-the-need-of-blood-examination-among-children-in-the-kanto-area/
  12. “Radioactive rubble reaction to haven in Japan.” Arnie Gundersen, Youtube.  Accessed 25 August 2014,   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIr-QcsjKxE)
  13. Yablokov AV, Nesterenko VB and Nesterenko AV. Consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe for public health and the environment 23 years later. Proceedings of the New York Academy of Sciences 1181, 2009, 318-326.
  14. UN Human Rights Council. Seventh session. Point 3. A/HRC/7/NGO/33 22 February 2008.
  15. Ho MW. Truth about Fukushima. Science in Society 55 2012,18-23.
  16. Ho MW. Fukushima crisis goes global. Science in Society 61 2014, 4-9.

Take Action Now on Fukushima and Nuclear Radiation Hazards!

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To become informed on the history of the March 2011 Fukushima disaster and spreading radiation, go to the archives of  ENE News at 
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019142635/http://enenews.com/

See this timeline of wildlife and ocean impacts through 2015. 

This situation continues to be an emergency, with increasing radioactive contamination of air, sea, water sources, and land. A news media blackout prevents vital news updates. Many actions are needed to alert the public to this active situation and solve the growing radiation which is harming all life worldwide.

Nuclear energy and nuclear power plants put the health and future of the planet at risk every day.

Get informed!

Get the word out!

Take action!

October medical conference includes presentation on nuclear reactor releases and harm to human health

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The American Academy of Environmental Medicine holds the medical conference

“Integrative Solutions for 21st Century Medicine”

October 23-26, 2014

in Albuquerque, New Mexico

http://www.aaemconference.com/

On October 23, Joseph Mangano will present “Nuclear Reactor Releases and Harm to Human Health ”. The workshop is part of an all-day workshop on “Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity as an Emerging Illness”,  designed for primary care providers, “including physicians, nurses and physicians assistants who manage complex patients.”

http://aaemconference.com/workshop1.html http://aaemconference.com/workshop1schedule.html

 October 23 EHS Workshop Schedule —

8:00 am The Treatment of EMF Radiation William J. Rea, M.D.
8:30 am Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: Fact or fiction?  Stephen Genuis, M.D., FAAEM, DIBEM
9:15 am Nuclear Reactor Releases and Harm to Human Health  Joseph Mangano, MPH
10:00 am Break
10:30 am EMFs Act Via Activation of Voltage-gated Calcium Channels: Antioxidant, Anti-inflammatory, Detoxification, Pro-Mitochondrial and Other Cytoprotective Effects Martin Pall, Ph.D.
11:15 am 21st Century Pollution — EMF Radiation’s Health Impact: Endocrine System Effects  Elizabeth Plourde, Ph.D.
12:00 pm Luncheon Presentation Loss of Expression of the Enzymes of Glutathione Production Tim Guilford, M.D.
1:00 pm Shielding of Electromagnetic Frequency in Homes  Steen Hviid, Engineer
1:45 pm 21st Century Pollution — EMF Radiation’s Health Impact: Psychological and Neurological Effects  Elizabeth Plourde, Ph.D.
2:15 pm Autism and EMF? Plausibility of Pathophysiological Link Martha Herbert, M.D.
3:15 pm Break
4:00 pm Sulfate, Electricity and the Vasculature  Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.
5:00 pm Expert Panel
6:00 pm Adjourn

The main conference schedule, covering many topics, is here http://www.aaemconference.com/program.html

Information on other workshops on October 23 is here:

Up to 26.75 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits can be earned at this conference.

The number of Americans with Multiple Chronic Conditions (MCCs) is rising (more than one in four). This problem is increasingly being addressed in Public Health forums, by the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Center for Disease Control. Clusters of diseases are occurring in the same individual and have been associated with various etiologies. The range of body systems affected is broad: immune, central nervous system, respiratory, endocrine, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal. These clusters of diseases have synergistic interactions.

This CME conference will explore the toxins, triggers and potential solutions for many of these Multiple Chronic Conditions. The etiologies are myriad: environmental influences include air; water; food and food additives; food preparation methods; ingestant chemicals; aerosolized toxins and toxicants; contact materials; electromagnetic force overload – in short, 21st century exposures affect the genome, epigenome, celluar and extracellular structures that produce the phenotype(s) of diseases we commonly see in practice. Physicians must become familiar with the complex mechanisms behind these problems, as well as how to accurately diagnose and effectively treat them.

ACCREDITATION: The American Academy of Environmental Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

US circumvented laws to help Japan accumulate tons of plutonium

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Waste and mox shipments from Europe

From National Security News Service

By Joseph Trento, April 9th, 2012

The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.

The diversion of U.S. classified technology began during the Reagan administration after it allowed a $10 billion reactor sale to China. Japan protested that sensitive technology was being sold to a potential nuclear adversary. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations permitted sensitive technology and nuclear materials to be transferred to Japan despite laws and treaties preventing such transfers. Highly sensitive technology on plutonium separation from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and Hanford nuclear weapons complex, as well as tens of billions of dollars worth of breeder reactor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safeguards against proliferation. Japanese scientist and technicians were given access to both Hanford and Savannah River as part of the transfer process.

While Japan has refrained from deploying nuclear weapons and remains under an umbrella of U.S. nuclear protection, NSNS has learned that the country has used its electrical utility companies as a cover to allow the country to amass enough nuclear weapons materials to build a nuclear arsenal larger than China, India and Pakistan combined.

This deliberate proliferation by the United States fuels arguments by countries like Iran that the original nuclear powers engage in proliferation despite treaty and internal legal obligations. Russia, France, Great Britain as well as the United States created civilian nuclear power industries around the world from their weapons complexes that amount to government-owned or subsidized industries. Israel, like Japan, has been a major beneficiary and, like Japan, has had nuclear weapons capabilities since the 1960s.

A year ago a natural disaster combined with a man-made tragedy decimated Northern Japan and came close to making Tokyo, a city of 30 million people, uninhabitable. Nuclear tragedies plague Japan’s modern history. It is the only nation in the world attacked with nuclear weapons. In March 2011, after a tsunami swept on shore, hydrogen explosions and the subsequent meltdowns of three reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant spewed radiation across the region. Like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan will face the aftermath for generations. A twelve-mile area around the site is considered uninhabitable. It is a national sacrifice zone.

How Japan ended up in this nuclear nightmare is a subject the National Security News Service has been investigating since 1991. We learned that Japan had a dual use nuclear program. The public program was to develop and provide unlimited energy for the country. But there was also a secret component, an undeclared nuclear weapons program that would allow Japan to amass enough nuclear material and technology to become a major nuclear power on short notice.

That secret effort was hidden in a nuclear power program that by March 11, 2011– the day the earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant – had amassed 70 metric tons of plutonium. Like its use of civilian nuclear power to hide a secret bomb program, Japan used peaceful space exploration as a cover for developing sophisticated nuclear weapons delivery systems.

For the rest of the article and related photos:

http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html