The U.S. government has now admitted its troops used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon against Iraqis during the assault on Fallujah a year ago. Chemical weapons experts say such attacks are in violation of international law banning the use of chemical weapons. We speak with columnist George Monbiot and the news director of RAI TV, the Italian TV network that produced the film “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre.” [includes rush transcript]
This article may seem somewhat over the top but as I keep checking it appears to be a pretty good representation of a disaster that is getting worse and worse. In a couple of year's time we're going to truly discover the impact this is going to have on the U.S. West Coast, but things are already beginning to wash up. No one has any idea what the impact on the marine ecosystem is going to be. The effect on Japan is o! nly beginning to be understood, but its true scale is still unknown.
As if that weren't enough the American nuclear site at Hanford also has leaking tanks, and there are more sites as well. We are going to see more and more of this as the aging nuclear infrastructure breaks down. The quicker nuclear plants are closed the better. Fukushima and Chernobyl stand as warnings we must heed.
Just when it seemed things might be under control at Fukushima, we find they are worse than ever.
Immeasurably worse.
Massive quantities of radioactive liquids are now flowing through the shattered reactor site into the Pacific Ocean. And their make-up is far more lethal than the “mere” tritium that has dominated the headlines to date.
Tepco, the owner/operator–and one of the world’s biggest and most technologically advanced electric utilities–has all but admitted it cannot control the situation. Its shoddy performance has prompted former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Dale Klein to charge: “You don’t what you are doing.”
The Japanese government is stepping in. But there is no guarantee–or even likelihood–it will do any better.
In fact, there is no certainty as to what’s causing this out-of-control flow of death and destruction.
Some 16 months after three of the six reactors exploded at the Fukushima Daichi site, nobody can offer a definitive explanation of what is happening there or how to deal with it.
There is No Way to Stop Fukushima Radioactive Water Leaking into the Pacific
The rate at which contaminated water has been pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the disabled Fukushima nuclear plant is worse than previously thought, an Industry Ministry official said Wednesday as PM Shinzo Abe pledged to step up efforts to halt the crisis. The Voice of Russia contacted Arnold Gundersen, founder and president of Fairewinds Associates, to discuss the crisis and its possible solutions. The expert suggests radioactive material will continue to leak into the global seas unless the plant is surrounded with a trench filled with zeolite. Even then however, toxic material will still flow into the Pacific through underwater routes.
With a diplomatic attitude more reminiscent of a spoiled brat grabbing his toys and leaving the room, US President Obama has resorted to diplomatic snubs and childish criticisms of Russian behavior as if the Russian leaders were small children.
In a press conference Obama described the Russian President as having a “slouch…looking like that bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom.” Yet behind the childish form of the latest White House refusal to meet President Putin before the G-20 St. Petersburg Summit is a grim reality:
Washington is rapidly losing its way to impose its will in the world on multiple fronts and the Putin snub is an impotent reflection of that loss of power. The real issues in US-Russian relations go far deeper.
A CIA veteran's prescription for how the United States can get along with an ally it doesn't trust.
Milt Bearden is an author and former career CIA officer who during the 1980s managed the CIA's covert assistance to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation from neighboring Pakistan. He currently consults on resource issues in South Asia.
More than two months after the raid by U.S. Navy SEALS on the Abbottabad compound of Osama bin Laden, the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is at its lowest point in the almost six decades of a rocky, on-again-off-again alliance. The United States has suspended some $800 million in military aid, and the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, is traveling to Pakistan this week for what is certain to be a chilly meeting with his counterpart, Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Maybe these developments are not altogether bad, for amid this turmoil the leaders of both countries, if not their vocal populations, are beginning to understand that a new, interests-based regional partnership must be forged before some political point of no return is crossed. Pakistan and the United States need a new paradigm for cooperation, one that will not only guide the bilateral relationship through the endgame in Afghanistan, but also influence Pakistani and U.S. policies in an Indian Ocean region on the verge of a new Great Game for mineral resources and economic domination.
The main players in that game are India and China; the prizes are Afghan and Pakistani resources and overland trade routes to the Arabian Sea. The United States' role is important, even critical, but it is as yet undefined by American political leaders. Ultimately, the United States may have to shift part of its security and political focus from its Atlantic relationships to the Indian Ocean region.
The mineral resources of Afghanistan and Pakistan — copper, gold, rare-earth elements, iron, the list goes on — will play a major role in driving the hungry Chinese and Indian economies through the 21st century. Afghan minerals alone, valued by the U.S. Geological Survey conservatively at about $1 trillion, could follow a natural route south from Afghanistan through Pakistan's Baluchistan province, itself mineral rich, to the newly completed port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. From there, the minerals would find markets in China, India, and the West, producing along the way a greatly expanded Pakistani mining industry and transportation infrastructure, as well as tens upon tens of thousands of jobs for dangerously idle young Baluchi men.
But none of this will likely happen until Pakistan takes a bold leap into the 21st century, shedding its 1947 mindset of believing that it is just a hair trigger away from war with India and that it must at any cost be buttressed against Indian encroachment on its western flank in Afghanistan. To become a player in this new Great Game, Pakistan will first need to rework its relationship with the United States and, following that, with Afghanistan and India.
Received directly from the author — full article below the line.
Two and a half years after the Fukashima tragedy Japan does not want to admit how serious it is, but it is obvious the drastic environmental implications are to follow, Harvey Wasserman, journalist and advocate for renewable energy, told RT.
RT:Japanese officials have admitted a leak at Fukushima has been happening for two years and is worse than earlier thought. Why did it take so long to evaluate the actual repercussions of the tragedy and take decisive measures to tackle them?
HW: The Japanese authorities have been covering up the true depth of the disaster because they don’t want to embarrass themselves and the global nuclear industry and they are trying to open up another nuclear plant in Japan. When the Japanese people now find out that the accident is worse than we thought and they have been leaking many tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean for almost two and a half years, this is a catastrophe. Tokyo Electric has no idea how to control this accident. This is absolutely terrifying after two and a half years. To find out that these reactors have been out of control, now that they can’t control this they don’t know what’s going on. This is not a primitive backward country; this is Japan with advanced technology. It has very serious implications for nuclear power all over the world.
RT:Why the plant's operator failed to contain the leak?
HW: Because they don’t know what to do. This has never happened before. You have three explosions; you have four nuclear reactors that are severely compromised. No one ever planned for this. This is an apocalyptic event. This is something that could contaminate the entire Pacific Ocean. It is extremely serious. The reality is that Tokyo Electric does not know what is happening and does not know how to control what is going on. Our entire planet is at risk here. This is two and a half years after these explosions and they are still in the dark. It’s terrifying.
