Japanese Govt rams state secrets bill through lower house to cover up Nuclear Disasters at Fukushima

UPDATED: 2013 Nov 27th

 

 

Fukushiro Nukaga (top R), chairman of the lower house special committee, is surrounded by opposition lawmakers during a vote on a state secrets act at the parliament in Tokyo November 26, 2013. (Reuters/Toru Hanai)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/japan-state-secrets-law-334/

Japan’s lower house has passed a heavy-handed state secrets act despite fears that it will have severe repercussions for state freedoms. Officials will now face a maximum punishment of ten years in prison if they are found to have leaked to the press.

Japan’s Diet (parliament) passed the bill, which is aimed at expanding the definition of a state secret and place increasing penalties upon anyone deemed a leaker. The move will apparently prevent media accessing information on four sensitive areas: defense, diplomacy, counter-terrorism and counter-espionage.

The information will be further divided into 23 types. Top officials from all departments would have the power to declare issues ‘secret’. The ‘secrets’ could then be kept classified for up to 60 years.

Journalists and other private sector parties could also receive up to five years imprisonment if they are found to be using ‘grossly inappropriate’ means to acquire information.

Such restrictions could spill over into the nuclear industry. The topic is particularly sensitive in the face of March 2011’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, which drove over 160,000 residents from their homes.

“Information on the vulnerability of nuclear power plants could be classified as special secrets, along with plans on how to guard the plants,”Yutaka Saito, a lawyer and a member of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations' task force on the bill, told Reuters

 

Protesters raise their fists as they shout slogans during a rally against the government's planned state secrets act in front of the parliament building in Tokyo November 26, 2013. (Reuters/Toru Hanai)

“If so, anyone who has blown the whistle from the inside to warn of the danger of nuclear power plants will be punished,”Saito said.

The bill was adopted through majority vote by the ruling coalition after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), New Komeito, and the Opposition Your Party all agreed to revisions last week to gain the votes of small conservative opposition parties.

The move comes despite overwhelming public opposition, and after members of opposition parties - including the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Japan Restoration Party, the Japanese Communist Party and the People's Life Party – said that insufficient debate had been conducted prior to the vote. Critics allege that changes to the bill were merely cosmetic, and requested that it not be brought to vote. Regardless, the legislation was approved after only a few hours worth of delay

 

Protesters raise their fists as they shout slogans during a rally against the government's planned state secrets act in front of the parliament building in Tokyo November 26, 2013. (Reuters/Toru Hanai)

Nearly 63 percent of respondents to a Kyodo news agency survey expressed concerns about the bill last week, and its discussion triggered protests by hundreds of people outside of parliament on Tuesday. Thousands gathered in a Tokyo park the previous week to rally against the bill.

“We revised the proposal as much as possible to address the concerns held by the public,” Gen Nakatani, an LDP director, said following the vote, while Atsushi Oshima, a DPJ director declared that it had been a “defeat for the legislative branch.”

The bill has now been sent to the Diet’s Upper House for consideration, where it will likely pass without any difficulty. The LDP and its junior partner hold a solid majority in both houses.

“Clearly, there will be a chilling effect on access to a wide range of information,” said Meiji University law professor, Lawrence Repeta, said. “It is clearly aimed at news media to block reporting in a way that may be critical of the government on a wide range of sensitive issues,” he added.

Abe has stated that the law is vital in the development of a US-style National Security Council to coordinate foreign policy and security while negotiating with allies such as the US over the possible sharing of information.

“My biggest concern is that it would be more difficult for the people to see the government's decision-making process,” said Kyouji Yanagisawa, a former defense official who was in charge of national security in the Prime Minister's Office in 2004-2009. “That means we can't check how or where the government made mistakes, or help the government make a wise decision.”

 

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks during a lower house special committee on a state secrets act at the parliament in Tokyo November 26, 2013. (Reuters/Toru Hanai)

Close up Footage of Fukushima Ruins – March 21 – 2011

Video Source: Russia Today

http://youtu.be/aprycG9mlZc

UPDATE: 2013 Nov 27th

Analysis on Unit 4, evidence on Unit 3, Plume-Gate highlights

Source Video: Patrick Henry

http://youtu.be/vqhWRNsrYxc

PDF: Leaked Documents - N.R.C. Official Transcript of Proceedings:

Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Audio File Communication - March 12^th, 2013

http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1205/ML12052A100.pdf
Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Audio File Communication - March 16^th, 2013
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1205/ML12052A108.pdf

NRC Transcript – TEPCO relayed information Unit 4 SFP Dry – Walls collapsed and incapable of holding inventory – Unit 3 “everything else gone”

http://enformable.com/2012/03/nrc-transcript-tepco-relayed-information-unit-4-sfp-dry-walls-collapsed-and-incapable-of-holding-inventory-unit-3-everything-else-gone/

MORE INFO:

Video Playlist News from March 11^th 2011 to Today of the Fukushima Disaster

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC57A7B23200D0C87

 

Fed insider exposes giant central bank “easing” swindle

A former Federal Reserve official who helped the Central Bank manage its bond buying program, dubbed QE, has admitted that the program is a fraud.

By: Mike Whitney, CounterPunch

Source: Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/16/335041/fed-insider-easing-swindle-banks/

“This was a program (QE) that was devised to help mortgage lending in America…Instead, what we saw was massive Wall Street earnings.” Andrew Huszar, Bloomberg TV Interview

A former Federal Reserve official who helped the Central Bank manage its bond buying program, dubbed QE, has admitted that the program is a fraud. In a shocking op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andrew Huszar apologized for his role in the Fed’s $1.25 trillion asset purchase program which he described as “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”

So far, no one at the Fed has responded to the charges, nor has Congress or the Department of Justice (DOJ) taken steps to investigate allegations that the multi-trillion dollar program was not intended to help Main Street as announced, but to shore up flagging bank balance sheets and zombie financial institutions that would have defaulted without the Fed’s stealth welfare program.

Surprisingly, Huszar’s credibility has not yet been challenged nor his claim that he played a pivotal role in overseeing the program. As he notes in his confession, he was “managing what was at the heart of QE’s bond-buying spree-a wild attempt to buy $1.25 trillion in mortgage bonds in 12 months.” He was asked “to quarterback” the largest giveaway to Big Finance on record. The fact that his allegations have not prompted an thorough investigation of criminal malfeasance at the Fed boggles the mind and points to a justice system that makes no pretense of operating in the interests of the people it is supposed to serve.

Huszar admits that he left the Fed -where he’d worked for seven years- because he’d “witnessed the institution deferring more and more to Wall Street”, that is, implementing policies which only benefited the banks.

“I had come to believe that the Fed’s independence was eroding,” says Huszar. These feelings were reinforced when Huszar was asked to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities, which according to him, put the system at risk of another crash.

“We constantly risked driving bond prices too high and crashing global confidence in key financial markets,” he said. “We were working feverishly to preserve the impression that the Fed knew what it was doing.” (“Andrew Huszar: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer“, Wall Street Journal)

The implication is clear, the Fed shrugged off its mandate of “price stability” and deliberately put the system at risk in order to assist its primary constituents, the banks.

It wasn’t long before Huszar figured out the program was a fake and that QE “wasn’t helping to make credit any more accessible for the average American. The banks were issuing fewer and fewer loans,” he said. “More insidiously, whatever credit they were extending wasn’t getting much cheaper. QE may have been driving down the wholesale cost for banks to make loans, but Wall Street was pocketing most of the extra cash.” (WSJ)

This column (Mike Whitney - CounterPunch) has been making this same point for more than two years, that all the profits on the interest rate spreads were going to the banks. QE has not led to a credit expansion nor was it designed to do so. It is a lavish subsidy to the financial elites and deep pocket bondholders who control the political-economic system. Huszar’s testimony further underscores that point.

Huszar again: “From the trenches, several other Fed managers also began voicing the concern that QE wasn’t working as planned. Our warnings fell on deaf ears. In the past, Fed leaders-even if they ultimately erred-would have worried obsessively about the costs versus the benefits of any major initiative. Now the only obsession seemed to be with the newest survey of financial-market expectations or the latest in-person feedback from Wall Street’s leading bankers and hedge-fund managers.” (WSJ)

No one cared that QE was not stimulating credit, because that was not the objective. The real goal was to boost profits at the banks so they could offset the massive losses on their trove of mortgage-backed assets which dropped precipitously following the Crash of ’08 leaving them exposed to potential restructuring and nationalization. The $700 billion from the TARP bailout merely provided enough operating capital for the banks to continue to run their businesses. In contrast, QE was a strategy to drain the ocean of red ink from bank balance sheets and restore them to profitability. What mattered was profits. Profits at the expense of employment, profits at the expense of growth, profits at the expense the nation’s economic future. Profits, profits, profits. How can anyone fail to see that now?

Huszar again: “Trading for the first round of QE ended on March 31, 2010. The final results confirmed that, while there had been only trivial relief for Main Street, the U.S. central bank’s bond purchases had been an absolute coup for Wall Street. The banks hadn’t just benefited from the lower cost of making loans. They’d also enjoyed huge capital gains on the rising values of their securities holdings and fat commissions from brokering most of the Fed’s QE transactions. Wall Street had experienced its most profitable year ever in 2009, and 2010 was starting off in much the same way.” (WSJ)

See? It was an “absolute coup for Wall Street”…the “most profitable year ever.” In other words, QE was a transparent ripoff from the get go, and the Bernanke Fed orchestrated the entire affair.

And it didn’t stop there either, because the Fed launched three more versions of QE increasing its balance sheet by nearly $4 trillion while inflating asset bubbles in US Treasuries, equities, junk bonds, farmland, housing and financial assets across-the-board. The Fed has created a gigantic bubble in long-term Treasuries which threatens the world’s biggest and most liquid bond market and puts the dollar at risk of losing its position as the world’s reserve currency.

Huszar admits that the Fed’s actions have dealt a blow to the so called “free market” calling QE “the largest financial-markets intervention by any government in world history.” He also dispels the illusion that QE spurred growth in the real economy. (“Even by the Fed’s sunniest calculations, aggressive QE over five years has generated only a few percentage points of U.S. growth.”) He also admits that the Wall Street banks are a cartel that’s been strengthened by the Fed’s actions. (“The biggest ones have only become more of a cartel: 0.2% of them now control more than 70% of the U.S. bank assets.”) And, he also suggests that the Fed suffers from “regulatory capture”, that is, that monetary policy is shaped in a way that best advances the interests of the banks. (“I had come to believe that the Fed’s independence was eroding.”)

Huszar’s testimony leaves little doubt that QE is a P.R. scam designed to pull the wool over the publics eyes. While the Fed’s critics have always said that that was the case, Huszar is the first insider to confirm those claims and to denounce the program as a blatant bailout for the banks.

So where are the regulators? Where are the investigations? Where is the DOJ or the US Congress?

Where is the outrage?

Links:

Andrew Huszar – Confessions of a Quantitative Easer – Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579183680751473884
Original Post by: Mike Whitney (CounterPunch)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/15/fed-insider-exposes-giant-central-bank-easing-swindle/

 

TEPCO tries to Cover Up Nuclear Fuel Removal Problems at Fukushima

Remove TEPCO Before Removing Fuel

Video Source: Fairewinds Energy Education

http://fairewinds.org/podcast/remove-tepco-removing-fuel

Fairewinds has fielded a number of questions regarding the removal of the fuel rods from the spent fuel pool in Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi. Today’s video shows Arnie debunking TEPCO’s animated film point by point, and highlights the issues TEPCO will have removing the fuel rods. TEPCO needs to be removed as the organization overseeing the cleanup of the site prior to the removal of the fuel rods.

Please visit the Fairewinds Energy Education website and consider donating at the following link: http://fairewinds.org/donate/
 

Shut down all nuclear power plants! – Dr. Helen Caldicott

Video Source: Russia Today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-Of-3VontE

Dr Helen Caldicott answers questions on the effects of Radiation from the ongoing meltdowns at Fukushima Japan and the impending disaster that Japan & TEPCO will unleash on the Northern Hemisphere around the World with any error in the removal of nuclear material at Fukushima plant 4. TEPCO and the Japanese government are refusing any help by experts, and are playing with the future of life on our planet by their absolute arrogance and focus on financial cost rather than saving life.

Google Hangout with one of the most articulate and passionate advocates of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises Dr Helen Caldicott.

Important Links:

Dr Helen Caldicott – Official Website

http://www.helencaldicott.com/
Fairewinds Energy Education
http://fairewinds.org/


 

NRC rubber stamped building a 3rd Unsafe “Economic” Nuke Plant in Detroit

 
Updated: 2013 November 07

Source Video: Fairewinds Energy Education

http://fairewinds.org/podcast/let-games-begin

The Games Began in Monroe Michigan as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (NRC ASLB) started hearings on Detroit Edison’s “Fermi 3 Licensing Project”. Outgunned? Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen and the seven expert witnesses retained by the NRC staff and Detroit Edison agree that there was no Quality Assurance (QA) program in place for two years as required by federal law, but the seven industry experts say build it anyway! Damn the safety regulations; full speed ahead to the pork-barrel federal loan guarantees to build a one of a kind Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor. Listen as Maggie, Arnie, and host Nathaniel White-Joyal discuss the stacked deck on this week’s Fairewinds Energy Education Podcast.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Strips Whistleblower Protection

Video Podcast Source
http://fairewinds.org/media/nrc-strips-whistleblower-protections

In sworn testimony in Monroe, Michigan, the NRC admitted that it has stripped whistleblower protection from the licensing of new nuclear power plants. By flip-flopping on what it means to be an applicant, the whistleblowers who are truly looking to protect the public health and safety are having their lives and livelihoods jeopardized. Fairewinds Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen discusses what this means as utilities look for short cuts and cheaper ways to build new nukes.

Visit Fairewinds website to stay on top of all future developments.
http://fairewinds.org/

 

Ending Dependency on Large Energy Grids with Viable Solutions

A Road Less Taken – Energy Choices for the Future

A Road Less Taken: Energy Choices for the Future from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

 

Video Source:

http://vimeo.com/77644352

This week Fairewinds' podcast compares the paradigm of 20th century large nuclear power plants to the new 21st century paradigm utilizing smaller interconnected renewable sources of power in what is called distributed generation. Significant advances in digital equipment and computers, like cell phones and cloud computing, are creating a new energy future using diverse sources of power that are less expensive and have a smaller environmental footprint. View "A Road Less Taken: Energy Choices for the Future", Arnie's presentation last week at Vermont's Johnson State College.

It's Time to End Large Grid Energy and Corporate Control - May 2011

Video Source: World United News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TNCBbd6O3s

Links:

Fairewinds Energy Education – Official Website

http://fairewinds.org/
Fairewinds Energy Education - Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/fairewinds
A Road Less Taken – Energy Choices for the Future
http://vimeo.com/77644352
It's Time to End Large Grid Energy - May 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TNCBbd6O3s

 

Mainstream Journalists Expose 9/11 Cover Up

The aftermath of the 9/11 attack

By: Kevin Barrett

Story Source: Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/10/19/330112/mainstream-journalists-expose-911-hoax/

Several leading American mainstream journalists say that the US government is lying about 9/11 and the so-called war on terror. Unfortunately, media owners and editors won't let them report their findings.

 

Recently, Seymour Hersh, America's top mainstream investigative reporter, broke the news that the US government's claim to have killed Osama Bin Laden on May 2nd, 2011 is “a big lie. There is not one word of truth in it.”

Hersh went on to harshly criticize his long-time employer, the New York Times, and other big media outlets: “We lie about everything, lying has become the staple.” He said all big US media outlets should be shut down for lying to the American people.

Other mainstream journalists agree that the US government’s story of Osama Bin Laden and 9/11 is a big lie. Sherwood Ross, an award-winning journalist who has worked for the City News Bureau of Chicago, the Chicago Daily News, and for Reuters and other wire services, told me in a recent radio interview:

“It's very doubtful that Muslims were behind 9/11. Think about this for one minute: That President Bush's family had done business with the family of the man who allegedly made the terrorist attack, Osama Bin Laden. The Bin Laden family was actually on the board of Bush's oil company. How is it possible that of all the billions of families in the world, the one family that makes the attack on America has done business with the President of America. That sounds more like a favor than anything else. I don't think 9/11 was an Arab conspiracy or a Muslim conspiracy. I think it's an American conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States and install what is becoming a police state, and also to advance the imperial ambitions of the United States, to swindle the Middle East out of their energy resources.”

Ross explained that American journalists are no longer free to expose even the most outrageous official falsehoods and fabrications:

“You don't see any serious questioning by the mainstream media. I thought one of the tip-offs that it was a put-up job was when a cameraman from a little weekly in Pennsylvania went to the site where this airliner had supposedly crashed (on 9/11). And he said, 'I didn't see any airliner. I saw a hole in the ground. I didn't see any bodies. I didn't see any luggage.' All right, maybe that guy just made this up. But I don't think so. I think he was just doing his job. And then at the Pentagon, you had the claim that airliner hit it. But again, there was no wreckage. Reporters who worked in the Press Room at the Pentagon went out there on the lawn, and they couldn't see any airliner. So, over and over again, you have manufactured lies that the press largely is not reporting.”

I asked Ross whether he is allowed to express such views in his articles for the Miami Herald, the Chicago Daily News, or the wire services. He answered:

“Absolutely not. When I used to write for Reuters, covering workplace issues, for ten years, my columns were picked up from the New York Times to the L.A. Times. But if you write about 'why did 7 World Trade Center collapse when it wasn't hit by an airplane,' nobody will pick it up. So, now my columns are used on the Internet by bloggers, and they're used by Middle East wire services. I get phone calls from Press TV, and you can read my interviews there. But you won't see me quoted by the Associated Press.”

Another leading American journalist, Paul Craig Roberts, has also been banned from US mainstream media for telling the truth about 9/11. Dr. Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, won the French Legion of Honor and other awards for his contributions to economics, and has been a regular columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and other mainstream publications. But since he spoke out about the controlled demolitions of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11, Paul Craig Roberts has been put on the mainstream media's no-publish list.

In a recent interview on my radio show, Dr. Roberts explained why the US mainstream media, as Seymour Hersh said, lies about everything:

“One of the worst things that ever happened (to America) was when President Clinton allowed five companies to concentrate the American media. That destroyed its independence. And ever since Clinton permitted that, which was totally against all American tradition, and totally against the antitrust law ... but in the United States, as we've seen, law doesn't mean anything anymore. The minute these five conglomerates concentrated the media, the independence of the media disappeared. It's no longer run by journalists, it's run by corporate advertising executives. The value of these media conglomerates resides in their federal broadcast licenses. And so they can't dare offend the government. Their licenses may not get renewed, and the entire multi-billion-dollar value of the companies would disappear. So, the so-called mainstream media is no longer the media. It doesn't tell you anything. It's a propaganda ministry - the Ministry of Propaganda. Gerald Celente calls them 'presstitutes.'”

Rather than writing for the mainstream media, Paul Craig Roberts is now exposing the fake killing of Osama Bin Laden and deconstructing the 9/11 false-flag operation for an independent outlet called the Institute for Political Economy. In a recent article published on the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Roberts wrote:

“The neoconservatives who advocate America’s hegemony over the world called for 'a new Pearl Harbor' that would allow them to launch wars of conquest ... No evidence exists that supports the government’s 9/11 story ... On this 12th anniversary of a false-flag event, it is unnecessary for me to report the voluminous evidence that conclusively proves that the official story is a lie. You can read it for yourself. It is available online. You can read what the architects and engineers (for 9/11 truth) have to say. You can read the scientists’ reports. You can hear from the first responders who were in the WTC towers. You can read the pilots who say that the maneuvers associated with the airliner that allegedly hit the Pentagon are beyond their skills and most certainly were not performed by inexperienced pilots. You can read David Griffin’s many books. You can watch the film produced by Richard Gage and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 truth. You can read the 9/11 Toronto Report, International Hearings on 9/11.”

But don't bother reading the mainstream media. As Seymour Hersh, Sherwood Ross, Paul Craig Roberts, and a rapidly growing number of ordinary Americans realize, the mainstream media's motto is now: “We lie about everything. Lying has become the staple.”

The government’s not demanding an investigation into an event that is the greatest embarrassment to a “superpower” in world history is a complete give-away that 9/11 was a false-flag event.

 

ReThink911: The Evidence Might Surprise You

 

Source Video: Global Research

http://youtu.be/zuFc1Gd_GyA

 

World Trade Center 7 Collapses on 911

Source Video:

http://youtu.be/Zv7BImVvEyk

 

Rosie O'Donnell & William Rodriguez On 9/11/2008

Source Video:

http://youtu.be/14f8_y_zWtk

 

9/11 FireFighters - THREE Explosions After Plane Hit WTC

Source Video:

http://youtu.be/1IYlEVCpG_0

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About: Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America's best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). His website is: http://www.truthjihad.com/