08 Proliferation – Page 37 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/08/192011/08/19

Chuck Spinney: Fukushima Aftermath

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

A sobering Japanese bookend to the stunning Sprey-Cockburn report which documented Fukushima's increased infant death rates in some cities in the United States (distributed on 16 Aug). Yet another nail in the claim that we can evolve a safe carbon-free economy in the near term. Given the low power density of green technologies, like wind and solar, going carbon-free or moving away from fire — i.e., the invention that launched millions of years human cultural evolution — in the next 30-100 years necessarily involves a huge expansion in nuclear power, because is the only high power-density, non-carbon solution available over the foreseeable future).

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster
Nice

Published on Thursday, August 18, 2011 by Al Jazeera

Fukushima Radiation Alarms Doctors

Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation.

by Dahr Jamail

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

“How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?” asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

Chuck Spinney: US versus Iran on Uranium-Lack of Integrity

05 Iran, 08 Proliferation, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Peace Intelligence

Spinning Iran's centrifuges

By Yousaf Butt, Asia Times, Aug 16, 2011

Yousaf Butt is a nuclear physicist and is currently serving as a scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists on global security issues. Previously, he was a fellow on the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the US National Academy of Sciences, and on the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Consider yourself warned – “[I]n the next few years Iran will be in position to detonate a nuclear device,” so writes Ray Takeyh, confidently, in a recent Washington Post OpEd [1]. Why? Because the Iranian government willingly informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it would begin installing additional centrifuges with higher capacity to enrich uranium. [2]

Just like fertilizer can be used to increase crop yields – or make bombs – uranium is a dual use material.

Read full article.

2011/08/092011/08/09

John Steiner: Celebrating Chalmers Johnson

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, History, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Best of TomDispatch: Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire

Chalmers Johnson (RIP)

TomDispatch.com, 7 August 2011

EXTRACT

Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire and Ten Steps to Take to Do So

1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism

2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us

3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases

. . . . . . . .

10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire (Abridged)

Dismantling the American empire would, of course, involve many steps. Here are ten key places to begin:

1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide. We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves.

2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the “opportunity costs” that go with them — the things we might otherwise do with our talents and resources but can't or won't.

3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. Dismantling the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture abroad.

4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters — along with their expensive medical facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and so forth — that follow our military enclaves around the world.

5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense. These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic research. Ending empire would make this happen.

6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism.

7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote militarism in our schools.

8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Ending empire would make this possible.

9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.

10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.

Read full article with many links…

The Impact Today and Tomorrow of Chalmers Johnson

Steve Clemons

The Washington Note, 21 November 2010

Read full summary….

Phi Beta Iota: The second article is a stunning review of the intellectual life of Chalmers Johnson, who was among many things a net assessments analyst for Allen Dulles. He pioneered the study of “State Capitalism” and considered the US to be a greatly under-performing economy for its failure to move away from military unilateralism and toward sustainable development.

2011/06/20

Post-Fukushima Infant Deaths in the Pacific Northwest

03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War

Each week, on a Friday, Alexander Cockburn publishes a weekly diary in the weekend edition of Counterpunch, which he co-edits with Jeffrey St. Claire. Last week’s diary included a particularly important entry that expands on earlier CP essay analyzing the possibility of increased infant deaths in the western US resulting from the poisons spewed out by the multiple meltdowns in the Fukushima nuclear power facility in Japan.

Cockburn enlisted Pierre Sprey, a recognized expert in the proper use of nonparametric statistics to extract unbiased information out limited but important data samples, to examine the data/analysis in the original CP essay and to expand or critique the analysis, if possible. (caveat: Pierre is a close friend of mine)

Attached below is Cockburn’s summary of Pierre’s findings … it makes for very important reading for two reasons: it is a good discussion of the limits implicit in in quality statistical analysis, and it is a sobering discussion of a danger that has receded from the public consciousness.

Chuck Spinney, Saint Rafael, France The Blaster

Post-Fukushima Infant Deaths in the Pacific Northwest

Weekend Edition, June 17 – 19, 2011

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN, Counterpunch

Last weekend on this site we ran a piece by Dr. Janet Sherman and Joseph Mangano, reviewing some recent figures from the Center for Disease Control: here's how they interpreted the data in the context of the disaster at Fukushima on March 11, 2011:

“The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

“4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 – 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 – 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week).

“This amounts to an increase of 35 per cent (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3 per cent ), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster…

Read full article….

2011/06/102011/06/10

Joint US-Russia Assessment Nuclear Terrorism

06 Russia, 08 Proliferation, 10 Security, Academia, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, IO Technologies, Military, Peace Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Technologies

berto small — Berto Jongman Recommends...

“First Joint U.S.-Russia Assessment of Nuclear Terror Threat”

Study Warns of Multiple Dangers, Calls for Urgent Action

June 6, 2011

Belfer Center Programs or Projects: The US-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

Phi Beta Iota: This is a good initiative, something we should have been doing for decades. However, it does not go far enough. No such study can be credible without the participation of Brazil, China, Iran, Israel, and Pakistan, as well as major “interested parties” such as South Africa and Turkey. In short, we are long over-due for a Multinational Decision-Support Centre that does M4IS2 on all topics.

2011/06/022011/06/02

Crazy, Maybe True: US/Israel Role in Japan Disaster — State Eco-Terrorism, Nuclear or HAARP Trigger, Supplementary “Camera Bombs” from Israeli Security Company — Germany Being Blackmailed Also?

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence

Phi Beta Iota: The world is in an interregnum, between “rule by secrecy” and lies from power as the norm, and a very ugly baby Web 4.0 in which bottom-up truth struggles to emerge. We will have a great deal of baby poop to deal with, but over time, public intelligence in the public interest will find its edge, and truths that shock publics into extreme action will emerge. Below is are a few extracts from a very sharp and ably illustrated story, and one expert author's evaluation of that story. Provided for information, “sharing our confusions.” WARNING NOTICE: This story should be read in conjunction with the recent Pentagon declarations that cyber-attacks will be considered a declaration of war. An Israeli virus in US nuclear control systems (attributed to Iran of course), with or without the help of the US Government, could be used to justify World War III starting with an attack on Iran and “precision” attacks on Pakistani nuclear facilities. We believe Israel is “all in” at this point; and we believe President Obama and Congress have lost all semblance of control over the U.S. military-industrial-secret intelligence complex.

Jim Stone Freeland Journalist

Did the Dimona Dozen murder the Fukushima 50?

Fukushima may in fact have been caused by an act of war under the cover of an environmental disaster.

Continue reading “Crazy, Maybe True: US/Israel Role in Japan Disaster — State Eco-Terrorism, Nuclear or HAARP Trigger, Supplementary “Camera Bombs” from Israeli Security Company — Germany Being Blackmailed Also?”

2011/05/302011/05/30

Why the U.S. Should ‘Give’ Af-Pak to China

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

Worth a look — even if only the first paragraph.

The New Rules: Why the U.S. Should ‘Give' Af-Pak to China

Thomas P.M. Barnett | Bio | 30 May 2011
Column

Nuclear Pakistan, we are often told, is the Islamic-state equivalent of a Wall Street firm: In geostrategic terms, it is too big to fail. That explains why, even as the Obama administration begins preparing for modest troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this July, it dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad last week to smooth over bilateral relations with Pakistan's paranoid regime, which were strained even before the killing of Osama bin Laden. But Clinton's trip and the Obama administration's instinctive embrace of Islamabad is a fool's errand, doomed by history, geography and globalization itself.

In fact, the U.S. should drop the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan mess in China's lap now, while the getting is good, and here are the reasons why: …

Phi Beta Iota: World Politics Review has not figured out the new world of information quite yet, and we have no desire to copy their entire article. Suffice to say that Barnett, who has gotten much more coherent since his first book, is on target here, but add to that that the US Government's foreign policy is both ideological and idiotic — apart from the huge error by Zbigniew Brzezinski giving Pakistan the nuclear bomb in the first place, the US has no business in Central Asia that is of benefit to the American people, only to the American carpet-baggers that feed at the public treasury (now much depleted and greatly in debt) while looting foreign countries.