G 20 Talks Open In Turkey

The world leaders are convening in Turkey for the G20 summit. The Paris tragedy highlighted the pending problems inside the world community. In this context the world leaders are expected to step up border controls, aviation security, to curb migrant crisis and to combat ISIS. 

Dr. Ben Carson Fights Back

Dr. Ben Carson fought back against liberal media bias on Saturday.

Fukushima Daiichi Just Got Uglier

As time passes, a bona fide message emerges from within the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster scenario, and that message is that once a nuclear power plant loses it, the unraveling only gets worse and worse until it’s at its worst, and still, there’s no stopping it. Similar to opening Pandora’s box, there’s no stopping a ferocious atom-splitting insanity that knows no end.

Four years of experience with Fukushima provides considerable evidence that splitting atoms to boil water is outright unmitigated madness. After all, nuclear power plants are built to boil water; yes, to boil water; it’s as simple as that, but yet at the same time it’s also extraordinarily complex. Conversely, solar and wind do not boil water and are not complex and never deadly (Germany knows).

As it unfolds, the Fukushima story grows more convoluted and way more chilling. For example, according to The Japan Times, October 30th Edition: “Extremely high radiation levels and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for the utility to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors at the plant.”

Thereby, the bitter truth behind a major nuclear meltdown shows its true colors: “Impossible for the utility to chart the course of its planned decommissioning…” is very definitive, divulging the weak underbelly of the fission-to-heat process; only one slip-up, and it’s deadly dangerous and likely out of control!

Not only that, but the entire Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex is subject to recurring mishaps and setbacks, as well as various technical tribulations, something different going wrong on any given day. And, it’s always big, never small.

For example, according to The Japan Times, October 30thEdition: “Deadly 9.4 Sieverts Detected Outside Fukushima Reactor 2 Containment Vessel; Checks Stop.”

TEPCO also detected deadly radiation levels outside of reactor No. 1. According to a direct quote from the article: “People exposed to the maximum radiation dose for some 45 minutes will die.” Death in 45 minutes!

The potency contained within 9.4 Sieverts (Sv) is enormous. One Sievert, which is a measure of the health effect of radiation on the human body, is normally considered a massive dose, causing immediate radiation sickness. But, since levels beyond one Sievert are rarely, if ever, encountered in the normal course of everyday life, the industry standard uses millisieverts (mSv = 1/1000th) or microsieverts (uSv = one millionth of a Sievert) when measuring radiation.

Miserably, eight (8) Sieverts causes severe vomiting, severe headache, severe fever, incapacitation, and a 100% death rate over a period of time greater than 10 minutes within 48 hours (Radiation Survival Guide).

Chernobyl is a prime example of the potency of radiation. Immediately after the explosion (1986), radiation levels in the control room reached 300 Sv/hr, resulting in the deaths of the operators of the plant. Thirty years later, radiation levels in the same control room run approximately 8-10 mSv/hr.

It’s little wonder TEPCO finds it impossible to plan decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which begs the question of if, and when, decommissioning will be possible. Who knows, if ever?

Furthermore, according to The Japan Times’ article: TEPCO planned to start checking inside the containment vessel in August by use of a remote-controlled robot but “high radiation levels have stalled the examination.”

Unfortunately, not only is radiation sizzling outside of reactor No. 1, but a pipe connection at reactor No. 2 also shows extremely high radiation levels. Reactor No. 2 is where the hot melted radioactive core (corium) still has not been located. But, then again, with so much hot stuff sizzling throughout the entire Fukushima complex, how are workers expected to locate a melted nuclear core that may have already penetrated the steel-reinforced concrete containment vessel, entering the earth?

If total meltdown occurred/occurs, nobody has any idea of what to do next. There is no playbook. It’s likely impossible to do anything remedial once a melted nuclear core has burrowed into the ground because deadly isotopes uncontrollably spread erratically, ubiquitously into the surrounding underground soil and water. Then what?

In the final analysis, there is a distinct probability that Fukushima has no final analysis. Reports issued by the Japanese government even indicate that Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant cleanup and decommissioning is severely restricted by extremely high radiation levels and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel. What could be worse?

 

Counterpunch and Kyodo

The Last Fukushima Exclusion Zone Farmer

Two years since the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant went into full meltdown, and the resulting 20km evacuation zone was enforced, one farmer still remains behind braving high levels of radiation and loneliness to tend to abandoned animals.

His name is Naoto Matsumura, and he is the last man standing in the ghost town of Tomioka. Another farmer, Kenji Hasegawa's town of Iidate was also evacuated due to high levels of radiation, he sought refuge in temporary housing. Faced with a post­nuclear world both these men share brutally honest views on the state of their lives, TEPCO, government inaction and some of the hardest situations they have had to face in the midst of overwhelming radioactivity.

Japanese Government Admits Fukushima Worker Has Cancer

Health Minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki at news conference

Yesterday, the Japanese Health Ministry made its first admission that a worker at the Fukushima nuclear plant developed cancer as a decontamination worker after the 2011 disaster.

The man, unnamed by the ministry, worked at the damaged plant for over a year, during which time he was exposed to 19.8 millisieverts of radiation, four times the exposure limit the Japanese government sets as safe. The worker has contracted from leukemia.

A Fukushima Daiichi engineer, Masao Yoshida, also contracted esophageal cancer after the disaster and died in 2013 – but TEPCO refused to accept responsibility, insisting that the cancer developed too quickly.

Three other Fukushima workers have also contracted cancer but have yet to have their cases assessed.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster followed the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. Three of the reactors on the site melted down sending clouds of deadly radiation into the atmosphere following a hydrogen explosion.  Inspections have found nuclear fuel  melted through the steel reactor vessels and sunk into the concrete foundations.

Charles Gannon and Dallas Brincrest

US Still Arming ISIS

An Iraqi official shows US weapons taken from ISIS

 Documents from the US Defense Department leaked through Anonymous via Julian Assange yesterday, show U.S. military aircraft have once again dropped weapons in areas held by the Islamic State.

Iraqi volunteers fighting against IS in the Yathrib and Balad districts in Iraq’s Salahuddin Province reported the air drops as well.  Iraq's parliament is voting later today whether Iraq will ask the Russian military to take over US military duties and ask the US to leave.

Iraq claims it is losing the upper hand in the battle to regain territory from the terrorist group due to "Continual US help of the very group we are fighting."

In September an airdrop of weapons were sent Islamic State fighters outside Kobani in Syria.

Also last month, Iraqi intelligence sources said the U.S. is actively supplying ISIS with weapons.   “The Iraqi intelligence sources reiterated that the US military planes have airdropped several aid cargoes for ISIL terrorists to help them resist the siege laid by the Iraqi army, security and popular forces,” a report stated.

“What is important is that the US sends these weapons to only those that cooperate with the Pentagon and this indicates that the US plays a role in arming the ISIS.”

The UK's MI6 previously reported in July that ISIS fighters are using “significant quantities” of arms including M16 assault rifles marked “property of the US government.”

In August, Aaron Klein, writing for WorldNetDaily, reported that members of ISIS were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.

While the Obama administration does not admit arming and training ISIS terrorists, General Martin E. Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July that United States’ Arab "allies" in the Middle East fund ISIS.

General Thomas McInerney told Fox News in September that the U.S. “helped build ISIS” as a result of the group obtaining weapons from the Benghazi consulate in Libya which was attacked by jihadists in September 2012.  “We backed I believe in some cases, some of the wrong people and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army and that’s a little confusing to people, so I’ve always maintained… that we were backing the wrong types,” McInerney said.

The U.S. claims it is arming “moderate” mercenaries in Syria to fight against ISIS and the al-Assad government in Damascus despite the fact there are no longer any moderate forces active.

The CIA has shipped weapons to al-Qaeda affiliated groups in Syria since at least 2012 and continues to do so today, a fact revealed by The New York Times.

The shipments included more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara and other Turkish and Jordanian airports. An effort to arm al-Nusra – now fully merged with ISIS – and other jihadist groups has been coordinated by American intelligence.

Dallas Brincrest

Defense Department Provided ISIS With Toyotas

Recently officials in Washington DC have asked where ISIS got their Toyotas.  This is odd because it has been known for over a year that the US State and Defense Departments provided ISIS the vehicles through a known ISIS front group the Free Syrian Army.   Both President Obama and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter approved the plan in May 2014 with consultation of State Department Secretary John Kerry.

In June 2014 the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army's (an ISIS affiliated group) wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based security advisor, provided CNN, PRI, and Reuters the evidence in a September 2014 interview.

"Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground," he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups delivered troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet became battlefield weapons.  

Defense Department documents have shown the US Air Force made six weapons drops into Syria between June 10 and July 9, 2014.  Two drops show 20 and 23 Toyota Hiluxes were included respectively.  The other four drops were simply listed as "Needed tactical and conventional weapons."

"You can absolutely expect many of those trucks were mounted with crew-served machine guns or other type of equipment, military equipment, that the opposition forces have access to. I mean, that's one of the reasons why the Toyota Hilux is such an important force multiplier, because it could be used both for humanitarian purposes and for operational purposes as well."

Syria is only the latest war zone where the Hilux has been a vehicle of choice. The BBC's Kabul correspondent, David Loyn, saw the Hilux put through its paces by the Taliban in the 1990s, and credits the truck with having given Taliban forces a battlefield edge.

"They perfected very fast-moving maneuver warfare, and they did it with Hilux trucks," he says. "The Jane's Defense Weekly analysis of the seizure of Kabul in 1996 was that it was a textbook operation, from three sides, a coordinated piece of warfare using these Hilux trucks as very fast-moving troop-moving vehicles."

Loyn ranks the Hilux among the great game-changers of modern warfare. "You have seen in many wars in the past, a sort of symbolic weapon: the longbow at Agincourt, the Huey helicopter in Vietnam and, I think, the Hilux truck in Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban was [as] significant and iconic a weapon as those."

PRI

Japan To Be Downgraded

 

When markets open in Tokyo tomorrow, Standard & Poor will downgrade its rating of Japanese government debt, citing weak growth. “Despite showing initial promise,” Mr. Abe’s strategy “will not be able to reverse this deterioration in the next two to three years,” the ratings agency said. It was the third of the three major ratings firms to do so. 

On Friday, the Bank of Japan had downgraded its forecast for industrial output in the current quarter to “largely flat” as a result of growth slowdowns in China and emerging economies that are weighing on Japan’s exports.

The latest signs came as doubts over Abenomics, as the Japanese leader’s three-pronged growth strategy is called, are increasingly emerging among economists nearly three years after he took power. 

“The time is not yet ripe for us to declare Abenomics a failure, but we must say we are getting there,” said economist Takuji Okubo of Japan Macro Advisors, a Tokyo economic-analysis firm, who has been supportive of Mr. Abe.

Two figures underscore the urgency. Economists believe Japan will struggle to grow in the current quarter after shrinking 1.3% the previous quarter. And despite unprecedented easing by the Bank of Japan, the leading measure of inflation shows prices are flat, a setback for Mr. Abe’s efforts to eradicate deflation. Low energy prices, while generally good for a big energy importer like Japan, have disrupted the push to generate inflation, Bank of Japan officials say.

Some benchmarks are much improved over three years. The Nikkei stock average is 80% above where it stood when Mr. Abe took office, even after the recent global stock-market shudder, backed by a sharp rise in corporate profits. Demand for workers is stronger than it has been since the early 1990s, when Japan was entering the long period of stagnation. And the headline figure on prices probably underestimates Mr. Abe’s deflation-fighting efforts because it has been pushed down by a one-time fall in oil prices.

“Abenomics is still halfway along the road,” Mr. Abe said on Sept. 8 when he was re-elected as ruling-party leader. He said he would work to “deliver a virtuous cycle of a recovering economy to every corner of the country.” 

Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda said Friday that while China’s slowdown would affect Japan somewhat, he believed China’s leaders would soon take steps to boost the economy and restore stable growth.

Yet, none of what Mr. Abe calls the “three arrows” of Abenomics seems equipped to pierce through the barriers keeping consumers from spending and companies from investing more.

The first arrow, monetary stimulus, hasn’t been fired since Oct. 31, 2014, when the Bank of Japan jolted markets by pumping hundreds of billions of dollars in additional money into the financial system and expanding purchases of stocks and real-estate funds.

The second arrow, fiscal stimulus, has ceased to be a force for growth. After a sharp increase in government spending to stimulate the economy in Mr. Abe’s first year, the budget for the current fiscal year, which ends in March, will reduce overall government spending if it isn’t augmented with an extra budget.

The third arrow, structural change, has included a drive to improve corporate governance and bring more women into the workforce. While those changes have won praise from foreign investors, Mr. Abe hasn’t recently proposed any major additions to the agenda. There are no signs that bigger changes—such as opening the country more widely to foreign workers—are in the works.

It is a plight Japan has often faced in the quarter-century since its on-and-off doldrums began—difficulty in emerging from a negative cycle of flat or falling prices, pessimism about a declining population and slow growth. 

“It’s hard to imagine that households would increase spending or companies decide on more investment when the medium- and longer-term prospects remain dark,” said Tatsuhiko Yoshizaki, chief economist at trading company Sojitz Corp. ’s research unit.

While some economists say Mr. Abe could boost confidence by doing more to tackle Japan’s high government debt, those close to the prime minister say such painful steps should wait until the economy fully escapes the 15 years of deflation it experienced before Mr. Abe took over.

Tokyo intends to keep pressuring companies directly to invest more and give employees bigger raises. In government-business talks this fall, “I want to give companies a kick in the back,” said economy minister Akira Amari.

For much of the summer, Mr. Abe was occupied with getting parliament to approve one of his cherished ambitions: expanding Japan’s military role overseas and boosting cooperation with the U.S.

Takashi Nakamichi

UNESCO Adds Nanjing Massacre Documents

One of the added documents

 

 UNESCO on Saturday added Chinese documents on the "Nanjing Massacre" to the Memory of the World heritage, drawing an immediate protest from the Japanese government questioning whether the U.N. body was "neutral and fair" in registering them.

Beijing's dossier on the widespread killings of Chinese citizens and soldiers following the 1937 capture of Nanjing by the Japanese military is among dozens of new additions of documentary heritage, also including two sets of archives from Japan.

The Japanese materials cover the post-World War II internment and repatriation of Japanese by the Soviet Union and a Buddhist temple's extensive records of its activities from the medieval to pre-modern eras in Japan.

China had also nominated "comfort women" files. But this was not added in the biennial registration by UNESCO for the documentary version of the World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage programs, which started in 1997.

The "Documents of the Nanjing Massacre" consists of court documents from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East that convicted several Japanese as war criminals and a Chinese military tribunal, among others. They also include photos of the killings said to have been taken by the Imperial Japanese Army and film footage taken by an American missionary.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said in a press secretary's statement that "the nomination was made on the basis of unilateral arguments" and "it is extremely regrettable" that they were registered.

It "raises a question about the action of the international organization that ought to be neutral and fair" and "it is evident that there is a problem about the veracity" of the archives, it said.

Differences over history have complicated Japan's relations with China. Japanese officials may be concerned that UNESCO's registration of the documents could give Beijing ammunition against Tokyo in promoting its campaign to highlight what it calls "the crimes of Japanese militarism," including the "Nanjing Massacre", in which it claims more than 300,000 people were killed.

Japanese historians estimate the death toll at ranging between the tens of thousands to 200,000.

Last year China nominated the "Nanjing Massacre" files and the "comfort women" documents for UNESCO listing this year on the 70th anniversary of what Beijing calls its victory in a war of resistance against Japanese aggression and in the world war against fascism.

Tokyo argued that China was politicizing UNESCO and asked Beijing to withdraw the double nominations, which China refused to do, according to Japanese officials.

Japanese historian Masato Miyachi, a professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo, said, "By registering Nanjing Massacre materials as Memory of the World heritage, UNESCO is recognizing the authenticity of documents and their significance in the world."

He noted that there are other UNESCO-listed documents about dark episodes of history such as war and slavery. "If, however, the veracity of the documents submitted by China is questioned, that would undermine the credibility of the entire Memory of the World heritage," he said.

According to Japan's Foreign Ministry, the Memory of the World screening criteria concerns the necessity of the preservation and custody of documents and whether they represent historical truth is not considered.

These and other documents were selected for registration by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova following recommendations by an international advisory panel that met in Abu Dhabi from Sunday to Tuesday.

One of the two sets of documents listed from Japan is a collection of some 570 memoirs, drawings and other items composed by Japanese inmates of Siberian labor camps after World War II, and lists of those repatriated after the war to Maizuru port in Kyoto Prefecture.

Roughly 55,000 of the nearly 600,000 Japanese soldiers detained in labor camps in Siberia and Mongolia after the war died due to forced labor, the severe living conditions and malnutrition.

Before applying for the registration, the Maizuru city government investigated other documents with the help of its sister city Nakhodka, near Vladivostok, in eastern Russia. The Japanese government and Maizuru city applied to register those documents in March 2014.

The other collection is the archives at Toji Temple called the "Toji Hyakugo Monjo," or Toji Temple's 100 boxes of documents, comprised of some 25,000 documents from the years 763 to 1711. The collection -- records of the ancient temple system and social structures -- was designated a Japanese national treasure in 1997.

In the next registration phase in 2017, Japan will seek to list the records of diplomat Chiune Sugihara who issued visas to help some 6,000 Jews flee from Nazi persecution during WWII, as well as three ancient stone monuments and documents of Korean missions to Japan in the Edo period.

Kyodo

Meet Katsunobu Kato

The man PM Abe has chosen to lead the LDP's efforts to foster economic and population growth is not a household name.  Katsunobu Kato however is known in the nationalist circle of Tokyo.

Kato twice failed to get elected to the Diet in 1998 and 2000 due to his anti-Korean rhetoric.  Kato accused South Korea of conspiring with North Korea to abduct Japanese citizens.  Kato has denied the use of sex slaves and has often said that reparations to Koreans are "an insult to Japan's dignity as they help perpetuate a lie."

Kato does not stop at his disdain for Koreans and a need to revise history though.  Kato also is against Abe plans to expand the role of women in Japan.  Just last Monday, Kato noted, "I do not understand how we can grow the population and have women in the work place.  Either women care for the home or they should stay single.  It seems Abe wants to cater to the liberal I want it both ways crowd."

Kato is also openly affiliated with the Nippon Kaigi.  This nationalist and far right wing organization seeks to completely do away with Article 9 of the constitution.  Approve history textbooks for schools that portray Japan as fighting WWII to save Asia from European and American imperialism.  Revise the use of sex slaves, POW torture, Unit 723, and the invasion and slaughter in Nanjing.  PM Abe serves on the executive committee with Kato.  All of the Abe cabinet members are chosen from LDP politicians affiliated with this group.

Kato's new appointment as Minister In Charge Of Building A Society Which All Can Participate is seen as a joke among many LDP and opposition party members.  They see this as no more than another office created to bounce ideas but find no solutions.

Masato Imai, Secretary General of the second largest opposition party, Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party), questioned the necessity of creating the new post.  “I have no idea what kind of roles the minister will play. Abe is trying to appeal to the public with a catch line of creating a society where all 100 million citizens can play active roles,” Imai told reporters.

Kato, a former Finance Ministry official, will also serve as a minister in charge of female empowerment as well as abduction issues.  Ironic considering Kato's stand on these issues.

Abe - Putin Summit Will Change Little

Abe and Putin at UN Sept 28

Among the various disputes in East Asia that have garnered significant attention over the past two years, the Russia-Japanese dispute over the Kuril Islands ( or Northern Territories as they are known in Japan) has been treated as an almost afterthought. While the potential for conflict over this dispute is minimal, it has served to complicate Russia-Japan relations. Recent actions by Moscow have angered Tokyo and while both sides wish to reach a peaceful resolution, Moscow insists that the status of the islands is not up for debate. With Russian President Putin pursuing a more active foreign policy and nationalism growing in Japan under Prime Minister Abe, a resolution to this dispute does not seem likely in the short term.

Several islands in an island chain north of Hokkaido were developed by Japanese migrants from the 18^th century onward and in 1855, Russian and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimoda granting Japan the four southernmost islands in the chain. Japan maintained control of these islands until the end of World War II when they were occupied by Russia. In 1949, Russia deported all of the Japanese residents on them to Japan. Japan renounced “all right, title and claim to the Kuril Islands” in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty though this was not signed by Russia nor did the Japanese recognize the southernmost four islands as part of the Kuril chain. Since then the dispute has remained unresolved and since Japan views Russia as an occupying force, neither countries have signed a peace treaty to end their World War II hostilities.

There have been numerous attempts at settling the dispute but they have always fallen far short of what Tokyo has sought and what Moscow was willing to concede. By 2013, relations between Japan and Russia were improving and the possibility of a resolution being realized was becoming more likely. The 2014 revolution in Ukraine ended this as Russia-Japan relations suddenly thawed. Since then, Russia has taken provocative military steps in the region and has signaled its intent to retain control of the islands.

This summer marked not only the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory against Japan in World War II and the start of its occupation of the northern territories but also a worsening of the situation. In response to Abe’s June visit to Kiev, Ukraine, Moscow announced that the construction of military facilities in the Kurils would speed up. In August, Russian Prime Minister Medvedev in a widely publicized event visited the Kuril Islands on Russia’s state Flag Day. Tokyo immediately lodged a protest against this visit which was one of many made by senior Russian government officials over the summer.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov commented during the World War II anniversary celebrations that the territorial issues between Russia and Japan had been solved 70 years ago. Japan immediately protested these comments with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida calling them “unacceptable” and “unproductive and false”.  Later in September, Kishida travelled to Russia on a three-day visit to discuss the disputed islands.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov though stated that the only topic to be discussed is that of a peace deal, not the status of the territories. Lavrov said, “Moving forward on this issue is possible only after we see clearly Japan’s recognition of historic realities. The work is difficult and the difference in positions is vast”.

In the past there were indications that Russia might eventually hand over the disputed territories to Japan. Now that does not seem likely as Russia is unwilling to portray the issue as one where Japan has a legitimate claim; instead all Russia wants is to reach a peace deal without a change in territory. As far as Moscow is concerned, the islands belong to Russia and if a peace deal is to be reached, Japan must recognize them as part of Russia.

High-level talks will restart October 12 in Moscow for the first time since last January. It is uncertain though what these talks will produce given Russia’s new position on the issue. Furthermore, Russia cannot afford to suddenly backtrack since such a move would be seen as weakness at a time when Moscow is actively involved in Ukraine and Syria. Japan though will not back down either as Tokyo has nothing to lose. For these reasons, this dispute will continue to live on for years to come.

Stephen Brooker

Thyroid Cancer Rise Linked To Fukushima Radiation

Four Japanese researchers have attributed most of the thyroid cancer cases found among children and adolescents after the March 2011 nuclear power plant crisis in Fukushima Prefecture to radiation from the accident in their report published Tuesday.

Annual thyroid cancer incidence rates in Fukushima after the disaster through late last year were 20- to 50-fold higher than a pre-accident level for the whole of Japan, a team led by Toshihide Tsuda, professor of environmental epidemiology at Okayama University, said in the electronic edition of the journal of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.

The finding, based on screening some 370,000 Fukushima residents aged 18 or younger at the time of the accident, “is unlikely to be explained by a screening surge,” the researchers said, pointing to radiation exposure as a factor behind the rise in thyroid cancer cases.

But their conclusion is refuted by other epidemiology experts, including Shoichiro Tsugane of the National Cancer Center, who said the results of the researchers’ analysis are premature.

“Unless radiation exposure data are checked, any specific relationship between a cancer incidence and radiation cannot be identified,” said Tsugane, director of the Research Center for Cancer Prevention and Screening. He also referred to a global trend of overdiagnosis of thyroid cancer.

As of late August, the Fukushima prefecture government identified 104 thyroid cancer cases in the prefecture.

But the prefectural government and many experts have doubted whether these cases are related to the nuclear disaster because the radioactive iodine released from the crisis was smaller compared with the level following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Kyodo

Typhoon Nangka Heads Toward Japan

 

Typhoon Nangka remains on a collision course with Japan for later this week, posing significant dangers to lives and property.

Nangka is a powerful typhoon and is expected to continue to strengthen over the warm waters of the open Pacific Ocean through midweek.

If computer models hold true then Nangka will make landfall at Hiroshima at about 7 AM on Saturday, and directly strike Osaka and Kyoto at 9 AM.   Nangka's size means that the major urban areas of Nagoya and Kobe would also be affected by heavy rains causing flooding and high winds.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) hopes that the unusually cool waters on the Pacific coast this year would help slow the storm before making landfall.

Tsipras Chooses To Betray Greek Electorate

Merkel and Tsipras prepare to announce deal

An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide “No” vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a “bailout” that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has pushed through parliament a proposal to cut at least 13 billion euros from the public purse – 4 billion euros more than the “austerity” figure rejected overwhelmingly by the majority of the Greek population in a referendum on 5 July.

These reportedly include a 50 per cent increase in the cost of healthcare for pensioners, almost 40 per cent of whom live in poverty; deep cuts in public sector wages; the complete privatization of public facilities such as airports and ports; a rise in value added tax to 23 per cent, now applied to the Greek islands where people struggle to eke out a living. There is more to come.

“Anti-austerity party sweeps to stunning victory”, declared a Guardian headline on January 25. “Radical leftists” the paper called Tsipras and his impressively-educated comrades.  They wore open neck shirts, and the finance minister rode a motorbike and was described as a “rock star of economics”. It was a façade. They were not radical in any sense of that cliched label, neither were they “anti austerity”.

For six months Tsipras and the recently discarded finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, shuttled between Athens and Brussels, Berlin and the other centres of European money power. Instead of social justice for Greece, they achieved a new indebtedness, a deeper impoverishment that would merely replace a systemic rottenness based on the theft of tax revenue by the Greek super-wealthy – in accordance with European “neo-liberal” values — and cheap, highly profitable loans from those now seeking Greece’s scalp.

Greece’s debt, reports an audit by the Greek parliament, “is illegal, illegitimate and odious”. Proportionally, it is less than 30 per cent that of the debit of Germany, its major creditor. It is less than the debt of European banks whose “bailout” in 2007-8 was barely controversial and unpunished.

For a small country such as Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it “intolerable” and “the dung of the devil”. The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is guaranteed by their dependency.

In their travels to the court of the mighty in Brussels and Berlin, Tsipras and Varoufakis presented themselves neither as radicals nor “leftists” nor even honest social democrats, but as two slightly upstart supplicants in their pleas and demands. Without underestimating the hostility they faced, it is fair to say they displayed no political courage. More than once, the Greek people found out about their “secret austerity plans” in leaks to the media: such as a 30 June letter published in the Financial Times, in which Tsipras promised the heads of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF to accept their basic, most vicious demands – which he has now accepted.

When the Greek electorate voted “no” on 5 July to this very kind of rotten deal, Tsipras said, “Come Monday and the Greek government will be at the negotiating table after the referendum with better terms for the Greek people”. Greeks had not voted for “better terms”. They had voted for justice and for sovereignty, as they had done on January 25.

The day after the January election a truly democratic and, yes, radical government would have stopped every euro leaving the country, repudiated the “illegal and odious” debt – as Argentina did successfully — and expedited a plan to leave the crippling Eurozone. But there was no plan. There was only a willingness to be “at the table” seeking “better terms”.

The true nature of Syriza has been seldom examined and explained. To the foreign media it is no more than “leftist” or “far left” or “hardline” – the usual misleading spray. Some of Syriza’s international supporters have reached, at times, levels of cheer leading reminiscent of the rise of Barack Obama. Few have asked: Who are these “radicals”? What do they believe in?

In 2013, Yanis Varoufakis wrote: “Should we welcome this crisis of European capitalism as an opportunity to replace it with a better system? Or should we be so worried about it as to embark upon a campaign for stabilising capitalism? To me, the answer is clear. Europe’s crisis is far less likely to give birth to a better alternative to capitalism …

“I bow to the criticism that I have campaigned on an agenda founded on the assumption that the left was, and remains, squarely defeated …. Yes, I would love to put forward [a] radical agenda. But, no, I am not prepared to commit the [error of the British Labour Party following Thatcher’s victory].

“What good did we achieve in Britain in the early 1980s by promoting an agenda of socialist change that British society scorned while falling headlong into Thatcher’s neoliberal trip? Precisely none. What good will it do today to call for a dismantling of the Eurozone, of the European Union itself  …?”

Varoufakis omits all mention of the Social Democratic Party that split the Labour vote and led to Blairism. In suggesting people in Britain “scorned socialist change” – when they were given no real opportunity to bring about that change – he echoes Blair.

The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind – but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, an imperial thug. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as “liberal” or even “left”,  Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, “schooled in postmodernism”, as Alex Lantier wrote.

For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza’s luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but “better terms” of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with “identity politics” and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. “Mainstream” political life in Britain exemplifies this.

This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.

John Pilger

The Nightmare Of Hillary Clinton

By Dallas Brincrest 

Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about Sir Edmond Hillary, a person of real achievement. I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she claimed part of her foreign-policy "experience" that qualified her to be Secretary of State. 

Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim "worked" well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the former diplomat.

Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add." Oh yes, when the liar is caught it is always mommy or daddy's fault.

Perfect, the gullible and low information crowd of Democrats ate it up. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mommy. Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? 

For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overreaching ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontrollable and pathological sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. 

In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family (dynasty) drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. 

What this involved was the Clinton Strategy - a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter "Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?" in the paperback version of Christopher Hitchen's book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton "rapid response" team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues." 

One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred "experience" on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main "experience" involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency. But there was another "experience," this time a collaborative one, that is even more significant. 

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. 

Then never forget the “What does it matter?” attitude she took over the death of a US Ambassador and his staff at the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Well, gosh, I can think of a few reasons why it matters. First, it mattered enough for the Obama administration to send Susan Rice to five different Sunday talk shows to insist that the sacking was a spontaneous demonstration of anger over a months-old YouTube video, while saying that there was ‘no evidence’ that it was a terrorist attack. It also matters because Barack Obama at the time had been bragging about crippling al-Qaeda while on the campaign trail. There’s also the matter of Barack Obama’s intervention in Libya and his undeclared war against Moammar Qaddafi.

Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.

Osaka Mayor To Retire After Pet Referendum Fails

 

Osaka voters rejected a referendum on Sunday that would have dramatically reorganized the Osaka city government into a large metropolitan entity, like Tokyo.

The defeat was a stunning rejection of a pet reform project of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, an effort he started in 2010.

At a news conference in Osaka after the referendum went down to defeat, Hashimoto said he would keep his promise to retire from politics if it failed and will step down when his term as mayor ends in December.

The result means not only that the Osaka city government will remain unchanged, but that political dynamics at the national level will also move in a different direction.

If Hashimoto leaves the political stage in December, the Osaka Restoration Party, regional party of the Japan Innovation Party, that he established in 2010 with former right wing Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, would have less impact on its national counterpart, the Japan Innovation Party.

The Japan Innovation Party would likely strengthen its stance as an opposition party in the Diet, and the Abe administration may have to revise its strategy for revising the Constitution without the Japan Innovation Party as an ally.

With an Upper House election scheduled for the summer of 2016, some Japan Innovation Party lawmakers, especially those without a base in Osaka, could bolt the party and join forces with the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

AFP

Abe And Cabinet Pass Military Changes

Japan’s cabinet has approved draft laws which would trigger a dramatic shift in security policy, allowing the military to fight overseas for the first time since World War II.

The proposals would allow Japan to defend other countries under attack.

The latest move comes after a revision of US-Japan defense guidelines which expanded cooperation between the two countries as they seek to respond to China’s increasingly assertive military posturing in the region.

It could worsen ties with Beijing, already strained by feuds over the wartime past and disputed territory.

A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry responded to the news saying:

“We have repeated many times before that due to historical reasons, Asian neighbouring countries and the international community pay a high level of attention to any changes in Japan’s security policy. We hope that Japan can learn the lessons of history, uphold the path of peaceful development, do more real positive things and play a bigger constructive role in this Asian region in which we coexist for peace, stability and joint development.”

The bills are expected to pass parliamentary approval given the ruling bloc’s majority, although opinion polls show citizens are confused and divided over the changes.