All posts by alternativefreepress

Health/Environment, Tyranny

Government shows no intention of disclosing Fukushima disaster interviews

Shinichi Sekine
The Asahi Shimbun : May 24, 2014

Successive Cabinets have refused to release details of firsthand accounts of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, despite an understanding by a government investigation committee that the information from 772 interviewees could be made public.

The media and other third parties have been denied access to the testimonies about Japan’s worst-ever nuclear accident. The government is still showing reluctance even after The Asahi Shimbun started reporting excerpts from interviews involving Masao Yoshida, who was the manager of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant when it was hit by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

When pressed on the issue, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said May 23 the government could only release the records if it receives permission from the interviewees.

“There will be no problem if (they) make requests (to disclose their testimonies),” the government’s top spokesman said at a news conference.

But The Asahi Shimbun learned that the government’s Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations had agreed on July 8, 2011, before it started the investigation, that those interviewed could disclose the content of their interviews, such videotaped testimonies to the media.

The panel agreed that the interviews would be closed sessions.

It also said it would disclose testimonies “to the extent necessary” and withhold contents that might reveal identities and information that the interviewees do not want released.

Questions remain over the exact cause of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and conflicting reports have been released on what occurred in the early stages of the disaster.

A copy of Yoshida’s testimony to the committee obtained by The Asahi Shimbun revealed that 90 percent of the approximately 720 workers defied Yoshida’s orders and fled the plant at a critical juncture.

The records of the investigation have been transferred to the Cabinet Secretariat’s office for the preparation of nuclear safety regulatory organization reform.

The office says the records should not be made public in principle, and it has not confirmed the interviewees’ intentions on whether to disclose their hearings.

One interviewee related to the Democratic Party of Japan said he told the government committee that he did not care if the records were made public. He added that the committee has never approached him to confirm his intention on the matter.

(read the full article and Yoshida’s testimony to the committee at The Asahi Shimbun)

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Health/Environment

Officials now admit over 500 barrels of nuclear waste at risk of bursting open

KOAT, May 20, 2014: 500 WIPP barrels of questionable nuclear waste packed with kitty litter — New Mexico environment officials said more than 500 barrels of waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory were packed with the kitty litter suspected of causing a chemical reaction and radiation release […] In addition to 369 containers at the dump, environment officials said 57 more are still at Los Alamos and more than 100 are in storage in West Texas.

AP, May 20, 2014: New Mexico: 500 barrels of questionable nuke waste […] packed with the kitty litter suspected of causing a chemical reaction and radiation release at the nation’s underground nuclear waste dump. Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn Tuesday gave the U.S. Department of Energy and the contractor that runs [WIPP] until Friday to detail plans for permanently sealing the underground rooms where more than 300 barrels of the potentially dangerous containers of waste are stored.

KRQE, May 21, 2014: New Mexico Environment Department issued a new order to WIPP to make sure material suspected of causing February’s radiation leak is secure and not causing a health or environmental threat. The same order was issued to Los Alamos National Lab […] Tuesday’s order also calls for the feds to come up with an action plan to close the rooms that contain nitrate salt-bearing containers […]

National Journal, May 20, 2014: New Mexico Sees ‘Imminent’ Danger From Nuclear-Waste Barrels […] New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn gave Los Alamos National Laboratory until Wednesday to propose steps for locking down the […] barrels, which it packed using materials tied to a burst container in an underground area of [WIPP].

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Geopolitics/War, Original

Ukrainian Helicopters Fire On Own Checkpoint (video)

In Donetsk Region, Ukrainian helicopter gunships shot at a Ukrainian military checkpoint, a video presumably shot by one of the Ukrainian soldiers seems to show. Shot near the town of Volnovakha, the video shows Ukrainian soldiers fearing for their lives as they are attacked by their own.

“Who are they shooting at?” a man says. “There are civilians and our soldiers there. Do you have a line to the army aviation, what the fuck is happening?”

One soldier asks “What are their doing?… Are they ours?” Another man replies “Who the fuck else?”

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Alternative Free Press

Corporate Welfare, Music, Privacy

RAP NEWS 25: NET NEUTRALITY [S02:E05]

RAP NEWS 25: NET NEUTRALITY [S02:E05]. Having covered conflicts in distant lands, we now turn our attention to our own native homeland, the Internet; where the battle for the hypersphere has reached new heights, as netizens take up arms against Telcoms and the FCC, to preserve the fundamental ethos that made the Internet what it is today: Net Neutrality. What is Net Neutrality, and why is it so important to the future of the Internet? Find out by joining Robert Foster as he takes a whimsical trip into the World Wide Web, with its founder Tim Berners-Lee. Let’s just hope no shady mega-corporatist, elite oligarchic malefactors pop up to mess with us on the way…

(source : The Juice Media)

Geopolitics/War, Privacy

Pentagon report shows no evidence Snowden put US personnel at risk

No evidence has surfaced to support persistent claims from pundits and lawmakers that Snowden has provided any of the NSA documents he obtained to a “foreign adversary”. The DIA report has been cited numerous times by lawmakers who claimed Snowden’s leaks have put US personnel at risk. But details to back up such claims are not included in the declassified material.

Pentagon report: scope of intelligence compromised by Snowden ‘staggering’

Jason Leopold
The Guardian: May 22, 2014

A top-secret Pentagon report to assess the damage to national security from the leak of classified National Security Agency documents by Edward Snowden concluded that “the scope of the compromised knowledge related to US intelligence capabilities is staggering”.

The Guardian has obtained a copy of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s classified damage assessment in response to a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) lawsuit filed against the Defense Department earlier this year. The heavily redacted 39-page report was prepared in December and is titled “DoD Information Review Task Force-2: Initial Assessment, Impacts Resulting from the Compromise of Classified Material by a Former NSA Contractor.”

But while the DIA report describes the damage to US intelligence capabilities as “grave”, the government still refuses to release any specific details to support this conclusion. The entire impact assessment was redacted from the material released to the Guardian under a presidential order that protects classified information and several other Foia exemptions.

Only 12 pages of the report were declassified by DIA and released. A Justice Department attorney said DIA would continue to process other internal documents that refer to the DIA report for possible release later this year.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, questioned the decision to withhold specific details.

“The essence of the report is contained in the statement that ‘the scope of the compromised knowledge related to US intelligence capabilities is staggering’. But all elaboration of what this striking statement means has been withheld,” he said.

The assessment excluded NSA-related information and dealt exclusively with non-NSA defense materials. The report was distributed to multiple US military commands around the world and all four military branches.

“This report presents the Information Review Task Force-2’s (IRTF-2s’) initial assessment of impact to the Department of Defense (DoD) from the compromise of [redacted] classified files by a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor,” the report’s executive summary states.

“The IRTF-2 and Defense component partners continue triaging and reviewing compromised information for Defense equities and will update this report as additional assessments are completed. Combatant Commands (CCMDs) and Services have produced separate reports that provide greater details concerning the potential impact of the compromise on their respective equities … It should be noted that SIGINT [Signals Intelligence]-specific equities are not addressed in this report; NSA is reviewing those separately.”

The classified damage assessment was first cited in a news report published by Foreign Policy on January 9. The Foreign Policy report attributed details of the DIA assessment to House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers and its ranking Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger. The lawmakers said the White House had authorized them to discuss the document in order to undercut the narrative of Snowden being portrayed as a heroic whistleblower.

The DIA report has been cited numerous times by Rogers and Rusppersberger and other lawmakers who claimed Snowden’s leaks have put US personnel at risk.
[…]
But details to back up Rogers’ claims are not included in the declassified material released to the Guardian.

Neither he nor any other lawmaker has disclosed specific details from the DIA report but they have continued to push the “damage” narrative in interviews with journalists and during appearances on Sunday talk shows.

The declassified portion of the report obtained by the Guardian says only that DIA “assesses with high confidence that the information compromise by a former NSA contractor [redacted] and will have a GRAVE impact on US national defense”.

The declassified material does not state the number of documents Snowden is alleged to have taken, which Rogers and Ruppersberger have claimed, again citing the DIA’s assessment, was 1.7m. Nor does the declassified portion of the report identify Snowden by name.

“[Redacted] a former NSA contractor compromised [redacted] from NSA Net and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS),” the report says. “On 6 June 2013, media groups published the first stories based on this material, and on 9 June 2013 they identified the source as an NSA contractor who had worked in Hawaii.”

JWICS is identified as a “24 hour a day network designed to meet the requirements for secure [top-secret/sensitive compartmented information] multi-media intelligence communications worldwide. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has directed that all Special Security Offices (SSOs) will install the JWICS.”

The Washington Post, quoting anonymous sources, reported last October that Snowden “lifted the documents from a top-secret network run by the Defense Intelligence Agency and used by intelligence arms of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines.” The Post further claimed that Snowden “took 30,000 documents that involve the intelligence work of one of the services” and that he gained access to the documents through JWICS.

The report says that on 11 July 2013, about a month after the Guardian’s first report on the NSA’s metadata program was published, DIA chief Lieutenant General Michael Flynn “directed establishment of the Information Review Task Force 2 (IRTF-2) to acquire, triage, analyze, and assess all DIA and DoD compromised information”.

“Since 11 July 2013, IRTF-2 has led a coordinated DoD effort to discover, triage, and assess the impact of non-NSA Defense material from NSA holdings of compromised data,” according to the DIA report. “As of 18 December 2013, the federated IRTF-2 assessment includes: [redacted]”

Flynn was recently forced out of his position at DIA as part of a “leadership shakeup,” according to a report published in the Washington Post.

A partially declassified annex of the report contains various “terms of reference” that provide some clues as to what the impact assessment contains. For example, the report defines “compromised” as “out of government control”, while “disclosed” is defined as “made available to the public via the media, or to a foreign adversary”.

No evidence has surfaced to support persistent claims from pundits and lawmakers that Snowden has provided any of the NSA documents he obtained to a “foreign adversary”.

Ben Wizner, Snowden’s attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “This report, which makes unsubstantiated claims about alleged harm to national security, is from December of 2013. Just this month, Keith Alexander admitted in an interview that he doesn’t ‘think anybody really knows what he [Snowden] actually took with him, because the way he did it, we don’t have an accurate way of counting’. In other words, the government’s so-called damage assessment is based entirely on guesses, not on facts or evidence.”

(read the full article and read the full declassified report at The Guardian)

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Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

White House hosts senators for ‘bizarre’ secret foreign policy meeting

Olivier Knox
Yahoo News: May 21, 2014

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and National Security Adviser Susan Rice met with a bipartisan delegation of senators late Tuesday for secret talks focused on foreign policy, several sources with knowledge of the discussion told Yahoo News.

Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, alluded to the meeting on Wednesday, as the panel held a hearing on whether and how to overhaul the signature law of the global war on terrorism.

“I know we both attended sort of a discussion last night that I found to be one of the most bizarre I’ve attended on Foreign Relations on foreign policy in our country,” Corker said at one point, referring to himself and Sen. Bob Menendez (D.-New Jersey), the committee’s chairman.

“I know several of us were involved in a very bizarre discussion last night. This continues a very bizarre discussion,” Corker said at another point.

The Tennessee Republican did not say where or with whom the meeting took place (or why it was bizarre).

The White House later confirmed the meeting. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said McDonough hosted “an informal discussion on national security issues,” and that Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken attended.

“This session was part of our ongoing efforts to consult with the Congress on issues important to the president,” she said.

In addition to Corker and Menendez, Senators Susan Collins (R.-Maine), Carl Levin (D-Michigan), Jon Tester (D.-Montana) and John Walsh (D.-Montana) also attended the meeting, according to the sources, who requested anonymity.

Aides to most of those senators declined to discuss the meeting on the record. The lone exception was Tester. His communications director, Marnee Banks, confirmed the meeting and directed Yahoo News to the senator’s public schedule, which lists the meeting.

The White House had not announced the gathering before it happened.

The secret meeting came at a time of increasing bipartisan frustration with the White House over the 2001 law that authorized the war in Afghanistan and underpins policies like indefinite detention without charge and drone strikes.

In a speech almost exactly one year ago, President Obama declared that it was time to overhaul the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), and “determine how we can continue to fight terrorism without keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.”
[…]

But one year later, the administration has yet to provide Congress with suggested specific changes to the law, much less with legislative language for rewriting it.

Senators including Corker let their frustration bubble over at Wednesday’s hearing.

“Has the administration proposed any refinement or any redefinition of the AUMF? I mean, have they provided us language in terms of what they think they need to handle the current situation?” Senator Ron Johnson (R.-Wisconsin) asked the State Department’s principal deputy legal adviser, Mary McLeod.

“No, senator, we have not, “ she replied.

(read the full article at Yahoo)

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WTF

Bus attack: Woman kicks toddler & attacks baby

Matthew Claxton
Langley Advance : May 21, 2014

A woman allegedly attacked a baby, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old after the children’s mother asked her to stop swearing on a bus in Langley Tuesday.

At about 10:20 a.m., a woman boarded the bus and began arguing with the bus driver when she failed to pay the fare.

The woman’s profane language led to several other passengers asking her to stop swearing around children, said Cpl. Holly Marks, spokesperson for the Langley RCMP.

The suspect then threatened to kill one of the other passengers, and her three children, Marks said.

She threw a drink at the youngest child, a boy not yet a year old.

A fight began between the two women, who both then were apparently ordered off the bus by the driver. A video taken by another passenger and posted online shows the mother punching the suspect after the drink-throwing.

The victim tried to walk away towards the Willowbrook Shopping Centre with her children.

The suspect pulled a knife, chased after the victim, knocked over the four-year-old girl and kicked the two-year-old girl in the back, police say.

[…]

The suspect was held in custody overnight and has been taken to Surrey Provincial Court for a hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

On Thursday, police announced that Leah Susan MacKay has been charged with two counts of assault wit a weapon, one count of assault, and one count of uttering threats. She was ordered kept in custody, with her next court appearance scheduled for May 23.

(read the full article at Langley Advance)

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Corporate Welfare

Air Canada outsourcing union work to temporary foreign workers

Union objects to Air Canada outsourcing three routes

Tim Alamenciak
The Star: May 19, 2014

Airline trying to set a “dangerous precedent” by using foreign workers instead of union employees.

As Air Canada celebrates the arrival of its much-anticipated Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the union that represents some of its employees is speaking out against the decision to outsource two jets and staff to a foreign airline because of manufacturing delays with the new planes.

A note from management sent to staff Friday outlined the company’s plans to replace flights to Madrid, Lima and Bogota with so-called “wet leases” — airplanes from EuroAtlantic Airways that come with foreign flight attendants and pilots — to make up for the delay in manufacturing Boeing 787 planes.

[…]
The planes are being purchased to replace the airline’s Boeing 767s. The new 251-seat aircraft will allow Air Canada to open up a route between Toronto and Tokyo’s Haneda airport starting in July. The initial delivery was delayed more than three years and the upcoming deliveries are delayed by approximately six weeks.

The company weighed several options before deciding to wet-lease planes, including diverting jets from its low-cost Rouge service and renting planes that could be staffed by Canadian crew members.

“We looked at using Rouge aircraft, but the Rouge aircraft are all full. There’s a big demand for where they’re going this summer, so we couldn’t use those. We also looked at using different airplanes with our own crews. Unfortunately that wouldn’t work either because there was nothing available. This really was the best option,” said Peter Fitzpatrick to a Star reporter at the landing event for the 787. “It is just a very short term thing. I think it’s only going to be six weeks for the summer.”

The note was sent by executive vice-president and chief operating officer Klaus Goersch to all flight attendants late Friday afternoon, according to the union. The Star obtained a copy of the email.

“This is not a decision we came to lightly but our first priority must be to our customers who have placed their faith in us to get them reliably and safely to the destinations of their choice,” reads the memo.

The union is currently exploring options with its legal team to fight the move. Cournoyer said the decision to outsource the operations of two aircraft sets a “dangerous precedent” for the future.

“It’s a shame that Air Canada, our national carrier, is outsourcing to foreign workers. Jobs should rightfully belong to Canadians. Now it’s a very slippery slope. What’s going to happen in the future?” said Cournoyer.

(read the full article at The Star)

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Drugs, Health/Environment, Original

High CBD Medical Marijuana To Be Grown In Colorado & Exported As Industrial Hemp

AlternativeFreePress.com

Charlotte’s Web is a high CBD strain of medicinal cannabis with less than .03% THC, enabling it’s breeder to classify the plants with the state of Colorado as hemp instead of medical cannabis. This allows The Stanley Brothers to grow at a much larger scale and apparently opens up the possibility of exporting Charlotte’s Web.

Research into CBD has shown 84% success in reducing a child’s seizure frequency while taking cannabidiol-enriched cannabis. Of these, two (11%) reported complete seizure freedom, eight (42%) reported a greater than 80% reduction in seizure frequency, and six (32%) reported a 25-60% seizure reduction. Other beneficial effects included increased alertness, better mood, and improved sleep. Side effects included drowsiness and fatigue.

Written by Alternative Free Press
Creative Commons License
High CBD Medical Marijuana To Be Grown In Colorado & Exported As Industrial Hemp by AlternativeFreePress.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sources:

1. Charlotte’s Web medical cannabis soon to be widely available to Colorado children http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/charlottes-web-medical-cannabis-soon-to-be-widely-available-to-colorado-children

2. Report of a parent survey of cannabidiol-enriched cannabis use in pediatric treatment-resistant epilepsy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24237632

Drugs, Health/Environment

The three deadliest drugs in America are all totally legal

German Lopez
Vox: May 19, 2014

As the US debates drug policy and marijuana legalization, there’s one aspect of the war on drugs that remains perplexingly contradictory: some of the most dangerous drugs in the US are perfectly legal.

[…] with a big qualification: it’s not a perfect comparison across the board. One driver of absolute tobacco and alcohol deaths is that both substances are legal and easily available. Other substances would most likely be far deadlier if they were as available as tobacco and alcohol.

[Editor’s Note: Other substances are currently cut with random filler ingredients, replaced with unknown drugs and sold by criminal organizations without safety warnings to people of all ages including children. Currently illegal substances would almost certainly be far less deadly if they were regulated as tobacco and alcohol.]

But it’s already established that it takes less relative doses to die from alcohol than it does to die from marijuana and even cocaine. An American Scientist analysis gauged the toxicity of drugs by comparing a drug’s effective dose — the amount it takes to get a desired effect — to its deadly dose. The analysis found alcohol is deadly at 10 times its effective dose, while heroin is deadly at five times, cocaine is deadly at 15 times, and ingested marijuana is deadly at more than 1,000 times. (In practical terms, it’s nearly impossible to overdose to death on marijuana because a user would most likely pass out before reaching a fatal dose.)

The direct death and overdose rates, however, leave out other factors that could lead to health and socioeconomic issues. Alcohol in particular is widely associated with various issues — more crime and traffic accidents, for example — that harm both users and society as a whole.

On top of the nearly 26,000 deaths brought on by detrimental health effects, alcohol caused more than 10,000 traffic fatalities in 2010.

In the latest year of data available for drugged driving (2009), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found alcohol in 32 percent of deadly traffic accidents. Other drugs, in comparison, were present in about 18 percent of deadly traffic accidents. (About 37 percent of drivers killed in an accident weren’t tested for drugs, though.)

Again, some of this is a matter of access. If other drugs were as easily available as alcohol, they could cause more deadly traffic accidents than they do today.

But it’s not really disputed that alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs on the road. Columbia University researchers previously found alcohol increases the risk of a traffic accident 13 times over, while other drugs double to triple the risk and the detection of marijuana in particular less than doubles the risk.

One point of caution with all of these numbers: it’s much more difficult to measure how marijuana impairs drivers than it is to measure how alcohol impairs drivers, since marijuana stays in the system for much longer.

Even when accounting for other factors, alcohol and tobacco are still more harmful than marijuana

A previous report published in The Lancet took a comprehensive look at 20 of the world’s most popular drugs and the risks they pose in the UK. A conference of drug experts measured all the factors involved — mortality, other physical damage, chance of developing dependence, impairment on mental functioning, effect on crime, and so on — and assigned each drug a score. What they concluded: alcohol is by far the world’s most dangerous drug to society as a whole.

What makes alcohol so dangerous? The health effects and drunk driving are two obvious problems. But there are other major issues rooted in alcohol-induced aggression and erratic behavior: injuries, economic productivity costs, family adversities, and even crime. (Alcohol is a factor in 40 percent of violent crimes, according to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.)

(read the full article on Vox)

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