Trump official to The Grayzone: CIA’s Ratcliffe acts as ‘Mossad stenographer’ on Iran

The Gray Zone | Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil

A Trump official tells The Grayzone that Israel’s Mossad is using CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM’s Gen. Michael Kurilla to influence Trump with cooked intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. Inside the White House, dissenters have been isolated, setting the stage for a regime change war that could cost American lives.

An official in the administration of President Donald Trump has told The Grayzone that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla have become vehicles for Israel’s Mossad and military as they seek to manipulate the US into attacking Iran. The Trump official referred to Ratcliffe as “Mossad’s stenographer.”

According to the official, Ratcliffe and Kurilla have pressured Trump to join Israel’s war more directly by regurgitating overblown briefings they received from the Israeli military and Mossad director David Barnea – but without informing the president that the intelligence was derived from a foreign third party.

During the Trump administration’s meetings with Israeli intelligence officials including Barnea, the official said the Israelis have demonstrated a single-minded focus on regime change, clamoring for authorization to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Israeli officials have emphasized that the moment to take out Khamenei is now.

The issue of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity is of secondary concern in the Israelis’ presentations, which the official characterized as tactless, hyper-aggressive exercises in fear-mongering. At one point, the Trump official recalled, an Israeli intelligence briefer declared that Iran could transfer a nuclear weapon to Yemen’s Houthi militia in less than a week.

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Israel’s Secretive Nuclear Facility Leaking as Watchdog Finds Israel Has Nearly 100 Nukes

 Credit | The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook 2019

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

Israel is one of only five nations in the world that refuse to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an international treaty aimed at ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons and achieving global nuclear disarmament.

 

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) — an international watchdog organization focusing on conflicts, the arms trade and nuclear proliferation — released a new report on Monday that claimed that Israel has nearly a hundred nuclear warheads, more than previously thought.
 
The SIPRI report described Israel’s nuclear arsenal as follows: 30 gravity bombs capable of delivering nuclear weapons by fighter jets; an additional 50 warheads that can be delivered by land-based ballistic missiles; and an unknown number of nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missiles that would grant Israel a sea-based second-strike capability.

In total, the SIPRI report estimated that Israel possesses between 80 and 90 nuclear weapons, an increase over previous years. SIPRI was unable, however, to confirm those estimates with Israel’s government, which has a long-standing policy of refusing to comment on its nuclear weapons program — a policy it describes as “nuclear ambiguity.”

As a result of this “nuclear ambiguity” policy, the actual number of Israeli nuclear weapons is unknown. Some other organizations, such as the U.S.-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, have estimated that Israel has produced enough weapons-grade plutonium to arm between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads. Israel is one of only five nations in the world that refuse to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an international treaty aimed at ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons and achieving global nuclear disarmament.

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Fukushima at Eight: Ongoing Cover-Up of the Nuclear Hazards in Japan and Abroad

Michael Welch, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and Arnie Gundersen
Global Research

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

– Albert Einstein

The eight year old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster marks a critical turning point in human history. 

As of November 2018, 18,434 people are known to have died from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and the follow-up tsunami which struck the nuclear facility leading to the inundation of electric generators powering the circulation of coolant in the reactors. When the generators failed, three units experienced catastrophic meltdowns. [1]

Radioactive water has for years now been draining into the Pacific Ocean. Toxic debris spewed into the Earth’s atmosphere. More than 73,000 people remain evacuated, and fully 3,600 dies of illness from causes like illness and suicide linked to the aftermath of the event. [2]



The group Simplyinfo.org has been undertaking extensive ongoing research and analysis of the Fukushima disaster and its aftereffects. In its recently released annual report, Simplyinfo presented a number of astonishing and grim revelations.

The report estimated the threat of radioactive microparticles created by the meltdowns as possibly “the single largest ongoing risk to public health from the Fukushima disaster.” According to the research, these pieces of material from the nuclear fuel meltdowns are small enough to be inhaled or ingested and lodge in major organs of the human body where they continually irradiate cancer-causing levels of radiation, making them much more hazardous than the external sources of radiation being monitored by health authorities. [3]

The report also highlighted startling instances of negligence and cover-up. One notable example was the case of Dr. Shunichi Yamashita. He had downplayed the health risks in public meetings, but was discovered through an internal memo retrieved from an ‘off-site center’ set up as a central commend for the disaster to have warned of ‘a serious possibility of thyroid damage to children in the region.’ [4]

As the radioactive contamination continues to be a concern the Japanese government of Shinzō Abe is inviting the world to visit Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics. The authorities are maintaining that the situation has been contained. Officials have decided to have the city of Fukushima host baseball and softball games, and are even having the iconic torch run start in Fukushima. [5]

Efforts to normalize life in Fukushima 8 years after the meltdowns appear to be successful if trends in media consumption are any indication. Articles marking the anniversary were eclipsed by other breaking stories.[6]

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US "Asleep At The Wheel" – As Nuclear Industry Faces Collapse

Zero Hedge

A new, shocking report by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), Harvard University, and the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy discovered that the US nuclear power industry could be on the verge of a collapse — a reality that many have yet to realize.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), “US nuclear power: The vanishing low-carbon wedge” examined 99 nuclear power reactors in 30 states, operated by 30 different power companies. As of 2017, there are two new reactors under construction, but 34 reactors have been permanently shut down as many plants reach the end of their lifespan. 

For more than three decades, approximately 20 percent of U.S. power generation has come from light water nuclear reactors (LWRs). These plants are now aging, and the cost to service or upgrade them along with fierce competition from Trump’s economic order to prop up failing coal and heavily indebted shale oil/gas companies make nuclear power less competitive in today’s power markets.

In return, the American shale boom could trigger a significant number of US nuclear power plant closures in the years ahead, the researchers warned. The country is now at a critical crossroad that it must abandon nuclear power altogether or embrace the next generation of miniature, more cost-effective reactors.

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Fukushima: A Nuclear War Without a War

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research

Originally published in 2012, this study by Michel Chossudovsky confirms what is now unfolding: a worldwide process of nuclear radiation.

The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

 

The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.

The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami: “This time no one dropped a bomb on us… We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”

Nuclear radiation – which threatens life on planet earth – is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths, (See: New Book Concludes – Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, 2010, and The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, 2011.)

Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO’s (Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained. The reality, however, is otherwise.

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The Latest Act in Israel’s Iran Nuclear Disinformation Campaign

Gareth Porter
Washington's Blog

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy, who received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare (Just World Books, 2014). Originally published by The Consortium News. Republished with permission of author.
 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim in his theatrical 20-minute presentation of an Israeli physical seizure of Iran’s “atomic archive” in Tehran would certainly have been the “great intelligence achievement” he boasted if it had actually happened. But the claim does not hold up under careful scrutiny, and his assertion that Israel now possesses a vast documentary record of a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program is certainly fraudulent.

Netanyahu’s tale of an Israeli intelligence raid right in Tehran that carted off 55,000 paper files and another 55,000 CDs from a “highly secret location” requires that we accept a proposition that is absurd on its face: that Iranian policymakers decided to store their most sensitive military secrets in a small tin-roofed hut with nothing to protect it from heat (thus almost certainly ensuring loss of data on CDs within a few years) and no sign of any security, based on the satellite image shown in the slide show. (As Steve Simon observed in The New York Times the door did not even appear to have a lock on it.)

The laughable explanation suggested by Israeli officials to The Daily Telegraph– that the Iranian government was afraid the files might be found by international inspectors if they remained at “major bases” — merely reveals the utter contempt that Netanyahu has for Western governments and news media. Even if Iran were pursuing nuclear weapons secretly, their files on the subject would be kept at the Ministry of Defense, not at military bases. And of course the alleged but wholly implausible move to an implausible new location came just as Netanyahu needed a dramatic new story to galvanize Trump to resist the European allies’ strong insistence on preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Act (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.

In fact, there is no massive treasure trove of secret files about an Iran “Manhattan Project.” The shelves of black binders and CDs that Netanyahu revealed with such a dramatic flourish date back to 2003 (after which a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) said Iran had abandoned any nuclear weapons program) and became nothing more than stage props like the cartoon bomb that Netanyahu used at the United Nations in 2012.

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Fukushima Aborts Latest Robot Mission Inside Reactor; Radiation At "Unimaginable" Levels

Zero Hedge

Two years after sacrificing one robot, TEPCO officials have aborted their latest robot mission inside the Fukushima reactor after the 'scorpion' became unresponsive as it investigated the previously discovered hole where the core is believed to have melted.

A "scorpion" robot sent into a Japanese nuclear reactor to learn about the damage suffered in a tsunami-induced meltdown had its mission aborted after the probe ran into trouble, Tokyo Electric Power company said Thursday. As Phys.org reports, TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, sent the remote-controlled device into the No. 2 reactor where radiation levels have recently hit record highs.

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Highest Fukushima Radioactivity since 2011 and its 'Unimaginable' Consequences

Joachim Hagopian
Sott.net

As the six anniversary of perhaps the world's worst nuclear disaster in history (now rivaling Chernobyl) approaches next month, the worst radioactive conditions seen at the Fukushima nuclear power plant since the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami triple core meltdown are now dangerously spewing a record setting 530 sieverts an hour inside the reactor 2 containment vessel. To help put the enormity of this problem into perspective, the previous record was only 73 sieverts per hour. Exposure to just 10 sieverts can kill a human within weeks and levels at just .1 sievert significantly increase the risk of cancer. At the same time that peak radiation levels at Fukushima are observed, US states are also now being hit with extremely high readings, even containing significant amounts of plutonium in recent months. Radioactive plutonium isotopes are known to be among the most deadly poisons on earth. Fukushima experts can only describe this week's deteriorating situation at the Daiitchi nuclear power plant as "unimaginable."

That said, today's limited technology to decommission the global killer that's already destroyed much of the northern Pacific Ocean habitat will take another four decades to complete. At that rate we all could be radioactively fried. Significantly high levels of cesium-137 will reach every corner of the Pacific Ocean within three years. With six straight years of ongoing nonstop fuel leakage, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) still can't determine the condition nor location of the fuel seepage. In the meantime, leaking melted fuel penetrating the bottom of the vessel reactor has burned a one square meter hole into the metal grating that's now ready to collapse. Holes in other sections were also found. Photo images reveal below the reactor containment wall dark lumpy matter believed to be the melted uranium fuel rods.

Specially made, remote controlled robots designed to probe and assess underwater conditions around the reactors rapidly crumble and shut down due to the high toxic radioactive levels. Yet TEPCO is planning to insert another robot directly inside the reactor itself to examine conditions inside the containment vessel. If the water around it is so radioactive it destroys the robot, good luck on getting a reading of contamination inside the vessel.

The blind are leading the blind as never before have humans dealt with the enormity of this kind of problem. For six long years authorities have been clueless on how to stop the meltdown leakage and radioactive poisoning from spreading further, eventually to all corners of the earth. Literally hundreds if not thousands of tons of radioactive water have been leaking out daily into the Pacific Ocean (an estimated 400 from one account). And pretty much throughout the near six years, both TEPCO and the Japanese government have consistently lied to cover up the severity of the damage and danger to human health. Because they've never encountered a disaster of this sheer magnitude ever before, doctors also have no idea how to accurately measure and assess the health hazards that the soaring levels of radioactivity currently pose for the thousands of workers at the plant much less the severe threat to the nearby local populations.  

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Fukushima: 'Disaster' doesn't even begin to describe it

Robert Hunziker
Counterpunch

Disasters can be cleaned up.

Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO Chief of Decommissioning at Fukushima Diiachi Nuclear Power Plant, finally publicly "officially" announced that 600 tons of hot molten core, or corium, is missing (Fukushima Nuclear Plant Operator Says 600 Tons of Melted Fuels is Missing, Epoch Times, May 24, 2016).

Now what?

According to Gregory Jaczko, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), it is not likely the fuel will ever be recovered: "Nobody really knows where the fuel is at this point, and this fuel is still very radioactive and will be for a long time."

A big part of the problem is that nobody has experience with a Fukushima-type meltdown, which now appears to be 100% meltdown, possibly burrowed into the ground, but nobody really knows for sure.

What's next is like a trip into The Twilight Zone.

"The absolutely uncontrollable fission of the melted nuclear fuel assemblies continue somewhere under the remains of the station. 'It's important to find it as soon as possible,' acknowledged Masuda, admitting that Japan does not yet possess the technology to extract the melted uranium fuel," (600 Tons of Melted Radioactive Fukushima Fuel Still Not Found, Clean-Up Chief Reveals, RT, May 24, 2016).

Nuclear fission is when atoms split apart into smaller atoms. With nuclear bombs, fission must happen extremely quickly to charge a large explosion whereas, in a nuclear reactor, fission must happen very slowly to make heat, which, in turn, is used to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity.

Eventually, by rubbing two sticks together, one can boil water, but modern-day society doesn't have the patience, which means accepting risks leaps and bounds beyond rubbing two sticks together. Welcome to an altered world. Even if Masuda's cleanup crew find the missing 600 tons, which is so highly radioactive that workers cannot even get close enough to inspect the immediate areas, then they need to construct, out-of-midair, the technology to extract it, and then what? It's guesswork. It's what modern-day society has been reduced to, guesswork. Toss out rubbing two sticks together and build monstrous behemoths for billions to boil water, and when it goes wrong, guess what to do next. What's wrong with this picture? Well, to start with, nobody knows what to do when all hell breaks loose.

They do not have the technology to extract it!  

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Fukushima Flunks Decontamination

Robert Hunziker
Counter Punch

Japan’s Abe administration is pushing very hard to decontaminate land, roads, and buildings throughout Fukushima Prefecture, 105 cities, towns, and villages. Thousands of workers collect toxic material into enormous black one-ton bags, thereby accumulating gigantic geometric structures of bags throughout the landscape, looking evermore like the foreground of iconic ancient temples.

Here’s the big push: PM Abe committed to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which shall be a crowning achievement in the face of the Fukushima disaster. Hence, all stops are pulled to repopulate Fukushima Prefecture, especially with Olympic events held within Fukushima, where foodstuff will originate for Olympic attendees.

The Abe government is desperately trying to clean up and repopulate as if nothing happened, whereas Chernobyl (1986) determined at the outset it was an impossible task, a lost cause, declaring a 1,000 square mile no-habitation zone, resettling 350,000 people. It’ll take centuries for the land to return to normal.

Still and all, is it really truly possible to cleanse the Fukushima countryside?

Already, workers have accumulated enough one-ton black bags filled with irradiated soil and debris to stretch from Tokyo to LA. But, that only accounts for about one-half of the job yet to be done. Still, in the face of this commendable herculean effort, analysis of decontamination reveals serious missteps and problems.

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The Collapse Calendar reveals when failures likely to occur in banking, agriculture, nuclear power, pandemic disease and more

Natural Health News

In the movie Knowing, starring Nicholas Cage, the main character is faced with the burden of comprehending a written code revealing the exact dates and GPS coordinates of large-scale catastrophic events. The movie is outstanding and well worth watching, by the way, but could it ever be true?

Not at such precision, I would submit, but we can know when certain catastrophes are likely to occur based on an understanding of human behavior, historical patterns and modern-day trends. In fact, much of modern-day human behavior is pushing us directly into a long list of catastrophic, systemic failures which are mathematically inevitable. This article aims to help sort out the likely calendar years of likely emergence for such events, which include things like the irrigation aquifers running dry, the world's oil supply running dry, nuclear energy disasters, a global banking collapse and more.

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Fukushima ice wall begins construction despite skepticism over its effectivity

Japan Daily Press

The 1.5 kilometer underground ice wall at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant began construction on Monday, despite some groups’ skepticism that it can make a difference to the ongoing problems at the plant. The wall is part of operator Tokyo Electric Power Co’s (TEPCO) efforts to address the issue of the buildup of contaminated water at the plant, the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters in 2011. 

TEPCO said that on June 2, they have already started drilling a hole where the 12 centimeter frozen pipes will be inserted northwest of Reactor No. 1. The plan is to insert around 1,550 pipes around the plant at 1 meter intervals but this is not as easy as it sounds. It will take five days just to insert one pipe into the ground and so the actual freezing of the pipes to minus 30 degrees celsius will not begin until March of next year. This wall is expected to stop the flow of ground water into the building so that the storage problems of the contaminated water will be addressed.

The fisheries industry of Fukushima for one have stated they can’t really believe in the effectivity of the project unless it has been completed. But they are also praying that this will not worsen the situation, given they are one of the industries that are greatly suffering from the overflow of irradiated water into the ocean. Hiroyuki Sato, the head of the Soma-Futaba fisheries cooperative association, also admits that they are wary of TEPCO and the government, since there have been so many mistakes made during this entire decontamination process.

Residents of one of the evacuated towns in the Miyakoji district in Tamura, have also asked TEPCO to take proper safety measures in order for the people to feel like they can come home again. The evacuation order was lifted April of this year and yet only 7 or 8 households have returned since they are still unsure what will happen to the Fukushima plant until it is fully decommissioned. Even the government has some apprehension about the project. Hitoshi Watanabe, the head of the nuclear safety division of the Fukushima government said that the project needs to be carried out very carefully and that there should be some controls established by TEPCO.

The Truth About Israel's Secret Nuclear Arsenal

Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona. Photograph: Getty Images

Juilan Borger

The Guardian 

 

Israel has been stealing nuclear secrets and covertly making bombs since the 1950s. And western governments, including Britain and the US, turn a blind eye. But how can we expect Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions if the Israelis won't come clean?

 

Deep beneath desert sands, an embattled Middle Eastern state has built a covert nuclear bomb, using technology and materials provided by friendly powers or stolen by a clandestine network of agents. It is the stuff of pulp thrillers and the sort of narrative often used to characterise the worst fears about the Iranian nuclear programme. In reality, though, neither US nor British intelligence believe Tehran has decided to build a bomb, and Iran‘s atomic projects are under constant international monitoring.

The exotic tale of the bomb hidden in the desert is a true story, though. It’s just one that applies to another country. In an extraordinary feat of subterfuge, Israel managed to assemble an entire underground nuclear arsenal – now estimated at 80 warheads, on a par with India and Pakistan – and even tested a bomb nearly half a century ago, with a minimum of international outcry or even much public awareness of what it was doing.

Despite the fact that the Israel’s nuclear programme has been an open secret since a disgruntled technician, Mordechai Vanunu, blew the whistle on it in 1986, the official Israeli position is still never to confirm or deny its existence.

When the former speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, broke the taboo last month, declaring Israeli possession of both nuclear and chemical weapons and describing the official non-disclosure policy as “outdated and childish” a rightwing group formally called for a police investigation for treason.

Meanwhile, western governments have played along with the policy of “opacity” by avoiding all mention of the issue. In 2009, when a veteran Washington reporter, Helen Thomas, asked Barack Obama in the first month of his presidency if he knew of any country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, he dodged the trapdoor by saying only that he did not wish to “speculate”.

UK governments have generally followed suit. Asked in the House of Lords in November about Israeli nuclear weapons, Baroness Warsi answered tangentially. “Israel has not declared a nuclear weapons programme. We have regular discussions with the government of Israel on a range of nuclear-related issues,” the minister said. “The government of Israel is in no doubt as to our views. We encourage Israel to become a state party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT].”

But through the cracks in this stone wall, more and more details continue to emerge of how Israel built its nuclear weapons from smuggled parts and pilfered technology.

The tale serves as a historical counterpoint to today’s drawn-out struggle over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The parallels are not exact – Israel, unlike Iran, never signed up to the 1968 NPT so could not violate it. But it almost certainly broke a treaty banning nuclear tests, as well as countless national and international laws restricting the traffic in nuclear materials and technology.

The list of nations that secretly sold Israel the material and expertise to make nuclear warheads, or who turned a blind eye to its theft, include today’s staunchest campaigners against proliferation: the US, France, Germany, Britain and even Norway.

Meanwhile, Israeli agents charged with buying fissile material and state-of-the-art technology found their way into some of the most sensitive industrial establishments in the world. This daring and remarkably successful spy ring, known as Lakam, the Hebrew acronym for the innocuous-sounding Science Liaison Bureau, included such colourful figures as Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Hollywood producer behind such hits as Pretty Woman, LA Confidential and 12 Years a Slave, who finally admitted his role last month.
“Do you know what it’s like to be a twentysomething-year-old kid [and] his country lets him be James Bond? Wow! The action! That was exciting,” he said in an Israeli documentary.

Milchan’s life story is colourful, and unlikely enough to be the subject of one of the blockbusters he bankrolls. In the documentary, Robert de Niro recalls discussing Milchan’s role in the illicit purchase of nuclear-warhead triggers. “At some point I was asking something about that, being friends, but not in an accusatory way. I just wanted to know,” De Niro says. “And he said: yeah I did that. Israel’s my country.”
Milchan was not shy about using Hollywood connections to help his shadowy second career. At one point, he admits in the documentary, he used the lure of a visit to actor Richard Dreyfuss’s home to get a top US nuclear scientist, Arthur Biehl, to join the board of one of his companies.

According to Milchan’s biography, by Israeli journalists Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, he was recruited in 1965 by Israel’s current president, Shimon Peres, who he met in a Tel Aviv nightclub (called Mandy’s, named after the hostess and owner’s wife Mandy Rice-Davies, freshly notorious for her role in the Profumo sex scandal). Milchan, who then ran the family fertiliser company, never looked back, playing a central role in Israel’s clandestine acquisition programme.

He was responsible for securing vital uranium-enrichment technology, photographing centrifuge blueprints that a German executive had been bribed into temporarily “mislaying” in his kitchen. The same blueprints, belonging to the European uranium enrichment consortium, Urenco, were stolen a second time by a Pakistani employee, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who used them to found his country’s enrichment programme and to set up a global nuclear smuggling business, selling the design to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

For that reason, Israel’s centrifuges are near-identical to Iran’s, a convergence that allowed Israeli to try out a computer worm, codenamed Stuxnet, on its own centrifuges before unleashing it on Iran in 2010.
Arguably, Lakam’s exploits were even more daring than Khan’s. In 1968, it organised the disappearance of an entire freighter full of uranium ore in the middle of the Mediterranean. In what became known as the Plumbat affair, the Israelis used a web of front companies to buy a consignment of uranium oxide, known as yellowcake, in Antwerp. The yellowcake was concealed in drums labelled “plumbat”, a lead derivative, and loaded onto a freighter leased by a phony Liberian company. The sale was camouflaged as a transaction between German and Italian companies with help from German officials, reportedly in return for an Israeli offer to help the Germans with centrifuge technology.

When the ship, the Scheersberg A, docked in Rotterdam, the entire crew was dismissed on the pretext that the vessel had been sold and an Israeli crew took their place. The ship sailed into the Mediterranean where, under Israeli naval guard, the cargo was transferred to another vessel.

US and British documents declassified last year also revealed a previously unknown Israeli purchase of about 100 tons of yellowcake from Argentina in 1963 or 1964, without the safeguards typically used in nuclear transactions to prevent the material being used in weapons.

Israel had few qualms about proliferating nuclear weapons knowhow and materials, giving South Africa’s apartheid regime help in developing its own bomb in the 1970s in return for 600 tons of yellowcake.

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Why Obama Won’t Admit Fukushima Radiation is Poisoning Americans…Connecting the Dots

Fukushima-Daichi

The Daily Sheeple 

We all know that the radiation from the stricken Fukushima plant has spread around the globe and is poisoning people worldwide. We all know that the West Coast of the United States is being polluted with radioactive debris and that the oceans, the beaches that border them, and even the air is becoming more polluted by radioactivity as time goes on.

You have to ask yourself why the government won’t admit this. It’s not like a disaster half a world away is their fault is it?

Or is it? Could the United States government have done something to prevent the situation getting to this point?

Nothing in this article is a state secret, everything is in the public domain, but the information is so disseminated that it appears disconnected. 

I suggest that the United States government know only too well that the West Coast is polluted with radiation and that the situation is getting worse by the day.

I suggest that the United States government and General Electric knew that Fukushima was a disaster waiting to happen, and they did nothing to prevent it.

I suggest that they know that the many of nuclear reactors in the United States are also prone to catastrophic meltdown, and they are doing nothing about it.

I suggest that research by doctors and scientists is being suppressed, and that research by private citizens is being written off purely because they have no scientific background. 

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Fukushima Radiation a Serious Threat to North American Coast

Liberty Voice
Brent Matsalla
January 3, 2014.

The Turner Radio Network (TRN) has recently issued a report on the Fukushima radiation being a serious threat to the West Coast of North America and others in the entire northern hemisphere. The report calls for anyone residing on the west coast to immediately start preparations for another round of dangerous atmospheric radiation. The radiation is coming from Reactor 3 in Fukushima’s nuclear disaster site in Japan. The nuclear reactor was damaged in Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

Tokyo Electric and Power Company (TEPCO) have confirmed through surveillance cameras that steam has begun to rise out of the severely damaged Reactor 3. This is not the first time steam was observed escaping the facility, there were four sightings of steam rising since December 19th and other reports from back in July 2013.

TEPCO is uncertain what details surround the steam plumes or why the change occurred. They are unable to investigate further due to the lethal radiation levels in building 3.

Some nuclear experts are saying that the steam could signify the start of a spent fuel pool meltdown. Building 3 still contains 89 tons of nuclear fuel that could potentially burn up and head into the atmosphere for North America. After the earthquake, Fukushima had three reactor meltdowns roughly 60 hours after the earthquake as reactors 4, 5, and 6 were currently off-line for maintenance. 

Building 3 exploded a few days after the earthquake from a build up of hydrogen gas.

Reactor 3 is slightly different from the other Fukushima reactors. It is a mixed-core reactor containing both uranium fuel and a uranium-plutonium oxide fuel mix (MOX). Building 3 still houses 514 MOX fuel rods making up the total of 89 tons.

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U.S. Dumped Tens of Thousands of Steel Drums Containing Atomic Waste Off Coastlines

Mirror
 
More than four decades after the U.S. halted a controversial ocean dumping program, the country is facing a mostly forgotten Cold War legacy in its waters: tens of thousands of steel drums of atomic waste.

From 1946 to 1970, federal records show, 55-gallon drums and other containers of nuclear waste were pitched into the Atlantic and Pacific at dozens of sites off California, Massachusetts and a handful of other states. Much of the trash came from government-related work, ranging from mildly contaminated lab coats to waste from the country’s effort to build nuclear weapons.

Federal officials have long maintained that, despite some leakage from containers, there isn’t evidence of damage to the wider ocean environment or threats to public health through contamination of seafood. But a Wall Street Journal review of decades of federal and other records found unanswered questions about a dumping program once labeled “seriously substandard” by a senior Environmental Protection Agency official…

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Third Fukushima reactor may be melting down, homeless 'recruited' for cleanup

The entire world is threatened. (Reuters.com image) 

allvoices.com

Toyko Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Japanese energy company, has confirmed that mysterious plumes of steam have been rising from the devastated remains of Reactor Building 3 at the Fukushima nuclear plant. This means there is a better-than-even chance Fukushima could be experiencing yet another meltdown.

Also, as has been widely reported, TEPCO recently tried moving some radioactive water from one tank to another. In the process, it spilled four tons of deadly radioactive sludge onto the surrounding grounds.

That four tons of slurry, sludge and water, however, pales in comparison to the 300 tons of radioactive water that also recently leaked from a nearby tank directly into the ocean. Still, amazingly, the radiation levels in this most recently leaked/spilled water are relatively low compared to puddles that have been forming outside all tanks beginning about six weeks ago.

And if that is not bad enough, a tropical storm is headed to the area, which will cause even more radioactive leaks.

The plant's primary leak is continually worsening rather than getter smaller. That is, it has never been properly contained and continues to contaminate the surrounding area.

Recently, Japan's government agreed to fund a massive project to construct an underground ice wall to try to contain all of the leaked groundwater. Most experts seem to agree that such a wall would work, but TEPCO must first cease spilling radioactive water onto the ground. 

As for the unexplained rising steam, no one knows its precise cause since the almost total physical destruction of the plant and, more ominously, the highly lethal radiation levels have rendered investigating the stricken reactor impossible.

It is known, however, that the Reactor 3 fuel storage pond still harbors (tenuously) about 89 tons of plutonium-based mixed-oxide fuel, according to the The Ecologist. If that fuel storage pond dries out, the highly radioactive rods will melt down and precipitate uncontrollable and unimaginable devastation, engulfing and contaminating the northern half of Japan (including Tokyo). And, depending on wind and sea currents, there will be a serious potential for radioactive contamination of the entire planet. 

However, in defense of TEPCO, one of the foremost critics of nuclear energy, Fairewinds Energy Education, has posted a statement on its website assuring all that this reactor will not explode. 

Fairewinds' chief engineer, Arnie Gunderson, tried to explain why:

It is winter and it is cold throughout much of the northern hemisphere. Hot water vapor has been released daily by each of the four Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants since the accident. We believe that is one of the reasons TEPCO placed covers over Daiichi 4 and 1. Sometimes the steam [hot water vapor] is visible and sometimes it is not. If you have been outside on a cold winter day, you have personally experienced that phenomenon when you see the breath you exhale form a cloud in the cold air. The technical explanation is that hot water vapor becomes visible when it comes in contact with cold air and condenses. During the winter months in the Fukushima Prefecture, the sea air is cold and moist, thus forming the ideal conditions to see the released steam.

Fairewinds' statement continued:

These hot radioactive releases [not physically hot, but radioactive hot—meaning they contain radioactive fission products] have [been] occurring for the entire 33 months following the triple meltdown. The difference now is that the only time we visibly notice these ongoing releases is on the cold days with atmospheric conditions cold enough to condense hot vapor into steam.

(If you believe the very appropriately named Fairewinds, then I have a like-new, used nuclear reactor to sell you. Indeed, it has only been used once -- by a little old lady from a small town called Three Mile Island in Pensylvania.)

Finally, Reuters recently reported that government-paid recruiters have descended on a train station in the northern Japanese city of Sendai. They arrive in the wee hours of the morning and attempt to “persuade” the homeless "to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong."

Reuters also noted that organized crime syndicates (in Japan?) are heavily involved in the “recruiting” operation. The result has been that the homeless are being paid far less than Japan's otherwise generous minimum wage.

Opinion

There are also mounting reports and fears that the US mainstream media are not reporting that nuclear radiation from Fukushima has not only permeated most of the Pacific Ocean, but has reached our West Coast. Indeed, fish and wildlife from Alaska to South America have been affected, as well as fauna as far inland as Utah.

Also, who knew that Japan (rich, clean, homogeneous Japan) had homeless people, let alone organized crime?

I guess capitalism works the same way everywhere: Profits over people.

References:
http://www.straight.com/news/559796/homeless-recruited-clean-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-facility-and-surrounding-area
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/fukushima-ghost-towns-struggle-to-recover/article5530408.ece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/01/36-signs-media-lying-fukushima-radiation-affecting-west-coast/

See also: http://infrakshun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/japans-homeless-recruited-for-murky.html

36 Signs The Media Is Lying To You About How Radiation From Fukushima Is Affecting The West Coast

Michael Snyder
Activist Post 

The west coast of the United States is being absolutely fried by radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and the mainstream media is not telling us the truth about this. What you are about to see is a collection of evidence that is quite startling. Taken collectively, this body of evidence shows that nuclear radiation from Fukushima is affecting sea life in the Pacific Ocean and animal life along the west coast of North America in some extraordinary ways. But the mainstream media continues to insist that we don’t have a thing to worry about. The mainstream media continues to insist that radiation levels in the Pacific and along the west coast are perfectly safe. Are they lying to us?  Evaluate the evidence compiled below and come to your own conclusions…
#1 Independent researchers have measured alarmingly high levels of radiation on the beaches of the west coast.  For example, the video posted below was taken on December 23rd, 2013 at Pacifica State Beach.  As you can see in this video, radiation levels near the water are up to five times higher than normal background radiation…


Read More 

Japan's homeless recruited for murky Fukushima clean-up

Reuters
Mari Saito and Antoni Slodkowski
Dec. 31, 2013


Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.

He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.

"This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold.

It's also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.

Almost three years ago, a massive earthquake and tsunami leveled villages across Japan's northeast coast and set off multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Today, the most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted is running behind schedule. The effort is being dogged by both a lack of oversight and a shortage of workers, according to a Reuters analysis of contracts and interviews with dozens of those involved.

In January, October and November, Japanese gangsters were arrested on charges of infiltrating construction giant Obayashi Corp's network of decontamination subcontractors and illegally sending workers to the government-funded project.

In the October case, homeless men were rounded up at Sendai's train station by Sasa, then put to work clearing radioactive soil and debris in Fukushima City for less than minimum wage, according to police and accounts of those involved. The men reported up through a chain of three other companies to Obayashi, Japan's second-largest construction company.

Obayashi, which is one of more than 20 major contractors involved in government-funded radiation removal projects, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But the spate of arrests has shown that members of Japan's three largest criminal syndicates - Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai - had set up black-market recruiting agencies under Obayashi.

"We are taking it very seriously that these incidents keep happening one after another," said Junichi Ichikawa, a spokesman for Obayashi. He said the company tightened its scrutiny of its lower-tier subcontractors in order to shut out gangsters, known as the yakuza. "There were elements of what we had been doing that did not go far enough."

OVERSIGHT LEFT TO TOP CONTRACTORS

Part of the problem in monitoring taxpayer money in Fukushima is the sheer number of companies involved in decontamination, extending from the major contractors at the top to tiny subcontractors many layers below them. The total number has not been announced. But in the 10 most contaminated towns and a highway that runs north past the gates of the wrecked plant in Fukushima, Reuters found 733 companies were performing work for the Ministry of Environment, according to partial contract terms released by the ministry in August under Japan's information disclosure law.

Reuters found 56 subcontractors listed on environment ministry contracts worth a total of $2.5 billion in the most radiated areas of Fukushima that would have been barred from traditional public works because they had not been vetted by the construction ministry.

The 2011 law that regulates decontamination put control under the environment ministry, the largest spending program ever managed by the 10-year-old agency. The same law also effectively loosened controls on bidders, making it possible for firms to win radiation removal contracts without the basic disclosure and certification required for participating in public works such as road construction.

Reuters also found five firms working for the Ministry of Environment that could not be identified.

They had no construction ministry registration, no listed phone number or website, and Reuters could not find a basic corporate registration disclosing ownership. There was also no record of the firms in the database of Japan's largest credit research firm, Teikoku Databank.

"As a general matter, in cases like this, we would have to start by looking at whether a company like this is real," said Shigenobu Abe, a researcher at Teikoku Databank. "After that, it would be necessary to look at whether this is an active company and at the background of its executive and directors."

Responsibility for monitoring the hiring, safety records and suitability of hundreds of small firms involved in Fukushima's decontamination rests with the top contractors, including Kajima Corp, Taisei Corp and Shimizu Corp, officials said.

"In reality, major contractors manage each work site," said Hide Motonaga, deputy director of the radiation clean-up division of the environment ministry.

But, as a practical matter, many of the construction companies involved in the clean-up say it is impossible to monitor what is happening on the ground because of the multiple layers of contracts for each job that keep the top contractors removed from those doing the work.

"If you started looking at every single person, the project wouldn't move forward. You wouldn't get a tenth of the people you need," said Yukio Suganuma, president of Aisogo Service, a construction company that was hired in 2012 to clean up radioactive fallout from streets in the town of Tamura.
The sprawl of small firms working in Fukushima is an unintended consequence of Japan's legacy of tight labor-market regulations combined with the aging population's deepening shortage of workers. Japan's construction companies cannot afford to keep a large payroll and dispatching temporary workers to construction sites is prohibited. As a result, smaller firms step into the gap, promising workers in exchange for a cut of their wages.

Below these official subcontractors, a shadowy network of gangsters and illegal brokers who hire homeless men has also become active in Fukushima. Ministry of Environment contracts in the most radioactive areas of Fukushima prefecture are particularly lucrative because the government pays an additional $100 in hazard allowance per day for each worker.

Takayoshi Igarashi, a lawyer and professor at Hosei University, said the initial rush to find companies for decontamination was understandable in the immediate aftermath of the disaster when the priority was emergency response. But he said the government now needs to tighten its scrutiny to prevent a range of abuses, including bid rigging.

"There are many unknown entities getting involved in decontamination projects," said Igarashi, a former advisor to ex-Prime Minister Naoto Kan. "There needs to be a thorough check on what companies are working on what, and when. I think it's probably completely lawless if the top contractors are not thoroughly checking."

The Ministry of Environment announced on Thursday that work on the most contaminated sites would take two to three years longer than the original March 2014 deadline. That means many of the more than 60,000 who lived in the area before the disaster will remain unable to return home until six years after the disaster.

Earlier this month, Abe, who pledged his government would "take full responsibility for the rebirth of Fukushima" boosted the budget for decontamination to $35 billion, including funds to create a facility to store radioactive soil and other waste near the wrecked nuclear plant.

‘DON'T ASK QUESTIONS'

Japan has always had a gray market of day labor centered in Tokyo and Osaka. A small army of day laborers was employed to build the stadiums and parks for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. But over the past year, Sendai, the biggest city in the disaster zone, has emerged as a hiring hub for homeless men. Many work clearing rubble left behind by the 2011 tsunami and cleaning up radioactive hotspots by removing topsoil, cutting grass and scrubbing down houses around the destroyed nuclear plant, workers and city officials say.

Seiji Sasa, 67, a broad-shouldered former wrestling promoter, was photographed by undercover police recruiting homeless men at the Sendai train station to work in the nuclear cleanup. The workers were then handed off through a chain of companies reporting up to Obayashi, as part of a $1.4 million contract to decontaminate roads in Fukushima, police say.

"I don't ask questions; that's not my job," Sasa said in an interview with Reuters. "I just find people and send them to work. I send them and get money in exchange. That's it. I don't get involved in what happens after that."

Only a third of the money allocated for wages by Obayashi's top contractor made it to the workers Sasa had found. The rest was skimmed by middlemen, police say. After deductions for food and lodging, that left workers with an hourly rate of about $6, just below the minimum wage equal to about $6.50 per hour in Fukushima, according to wage data provided by police. Some of the homeless men ended up in debt after fees for food and housing were deducted, police say.

Sasa was arrested in November and released without being charged. Police were after his client, Mitsunori Nishimura, a local Inagawa-kai gangster. Nishimura housed workers in cramped dorms on the edge of Sendai and skimmed an estimated $10,000 of public funding intended for their wages each month, police say.

Nishimura, who could not be reached for comment, was arrested and paid a $2,500 fine. Nishimura is widely known in Sendai. Seiryu Home, a shelter funded by the city, had sent other homeless men to work for him on recovery jobs after the 2011 disaster.

"He seemed like such a nice guy," said Yota Iozawa, a shelter manager. "It was bad luck. I can't investigate everything about every company."

In the incident that prompted his arrest, Nishimura placed his workers with Shinei Clean, a company with about 15 employees based on a winding farm road south of Sendai. Police turned up there to arrest Shinei's president, Toshiaki Osada, after a search of his office, according to Tatsuya Shoji, who is both Osada's nephew and a company manager. Shinei had sent dump trucks to sort debris from the disaster. "Everyone is involved in sending workers," said Shoji. "I guess we just happened to get caught this time."

Osada, who could not be reached for comment, was fined about $5,000. Shinei was also fined about $5,000.

'RUN BY GANGS'

The trail from Shinei led police to a slightly larger neighboring company with about 30 employees, Fujisai Couken. Fujisai says it was under pressure from a larger contractor, Raito Kogyo, to provide workers for Fukushima. Kenichi Sayama, Fujisai's general manger, said his company only made about $10 per day per worker it outsourced. When the job appeared to be going too slowly, Fujisai asked Shinei for more help and they turned to Nishimura.

A Fujisai manager, Fuminori Hayashi, was arrested and paid a $5,000 fine, police said. Fujisai also paid a $5,000 fine.

"If you don't get involved (with gangs), you're not going to get enough workers," said Sayama, Fujisai's general manager. "The construction industry is 90 percent run by gangs."

Raito Kogyo, a top-tier subcontractor to Obayashi, has about 300 workers in decontamination projects around Fukushima and owns subsidiaries in both Japan and the United States. Raito agreed that the project faced a shortage of workers but said it had been deceived. Raito said it was unaware of a shadow contractor under Fujisai tied to organized crime.

"We can only check on lower-tier subcontractors if they are honest with us," said Tomoyuki Yamane, head of marketing for Raito. Raito and Obayashi were not accused of any wrongdoing and were not penalized.

Other firms receiving government contracts in the decontamination zone have hired homeless men from Sasa, including Shuto Kogyo, a firm based in Himeji, western Japan.

"He sends people in, but they don't stick around for long," said Fujiko Kaneda, 70, who runs Shuto with her son, Seiki Shuto. "He gathers people in front of the station and sends them to our dorm."

Kaneda invested about $600,000 to cash in on the reconstruction boom. Shuto converted an abandoned roadhouse north of Sendai into a dorm to house workers on reconstruction jobs such as clearing tsunami debris. The company also won two contracts awarded by the Ministry of Environment to clean up two of the most heavily contaminated townships.

Kaneda had been arrested in 2009 along with her son, Seiki, for charging illegally high interest rates on loans to pensioners. Kaneda signed an admission of guilt for police, a document she says she did not understand, and paid a fine of $8,000. Seiki was given a sentence of two years prison time suspended for four years and paid a $20,000 fine, according to police. Seiki declined to comment.
UNPAID WAGE CLAIMS
In Fukushima, Shuto has faced at least two claims with local labor regulators over unpaid wages, according to Kaneda. In a separate case, a 55-year-old homeless man reported being paid the equivalent of $10 for a full month of work at Shuto. The worker's paystub, reviewed by Reuters, showed charges for food, accommodation and laundry were docked from his monthly pay equivalent to about $1,500, leaving him with $10 at the end of the August.

The man turned up broke and homeless at Sendai Station in October after working for Shuto, but disappeared soon afterwards, according to Yasuhiro Aoki, a Baptist pastor and homeless advocate.
Kaneda confirmed the man had worked for her but said she treats her workers fairly. She said Shuto Kogyo pays workers at least $80 for a day's work while docking the equivalent of $35 for food. Many of her workers end up borrowing from her to make ends meet, she said. One of them had owed her $20,000 before beginning work in Fukushima, she says. The balance has come down recently, but then he borrowed another $2,000 for the year-end holidays.

"He will never be able to pay me back," she said.

The problem of workers running themselves into debt is widespread. "Many homeless people are just put into dormitories, and the fees for lodging and food are automatically docked from their wages," said Aoki, the pastor. "Then at the end of the month, they're left with no pay at all."

Shizuya Nishiyama, 57, says he briefly worked for Shuto clearing rubble. He now sleeps on a cardboard box in Sendai Station. He says he left after a dispute over wages, one of several he has had with construction firms, including two handling decontamination jobs.

Nishiyama's first employer in Sendai offered him $90 a day for his first job clearing tsunami debris. But he was made to pay as much as $50 a day for food and lodging. He also was not paid on the days he was unable to work. On those days, though, he would still be charged for room and board. He decided he was better off living on the street than going into debt.

"We're an easy target for recruiters," Nishiyama said. "We turn up here with all our bags, wheeling them around and we're easy to spot. They say to us, are you looking for work? Are you hungry? And if we haven't eaten, they offer to find us a job."

(Reporting by Mari Saito and Antoni Slodkowski, additional reporting by Elena Johansson, Michio Kohno, Yoko Matsudaira, Fumika Inoue, Ruairidh Villar, Sophie Knight; writing by Kevin Krolicki; editing by Bill Tarrant)