Text Fwd:Releases: children and fetuses must be well protected

* Text and image fwd from M.Sato on April 30, 2011

Friends,
I've just happened to find this website below, so I wanted to let you know, just in case some of you don't know.
And below that, I'll put some additional information as well.
(I must have missed some more names. )

I'm terribly sorry, especially to those in the Pacific, specifically to those in Hawai'i,
which must be the most badly affected area out side of Japan
by the on-going and the forthcoming long-term releases of radiation from Fukushima.
The situations of radiation in the U.S.west coast and Vancouver seem to be bad as well.
I do hope children in other areas are well warned and protected;our future generations--children here in Japan-- are not.
It must be that IAEA, WHO, NRC,... above all, Japanese consecutive governments...
are currently and have been colluded
to conceal the consequence reports of the present one as well as
the past nuclear disasters, including, perhaps, those in Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
That matter should be delved into as well later, but so many problems have been surfaced now here,
and more than anything, Japanese citizens have to stop some nuclear reactors here,
which are still shaking, sometimes. Thank you for your concern. Sorry to interrupt.
Makiko

__________________________________

Additionally, four pieces of information:
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(* from Junko Abe)
Friends,
Japanese citizens, especially those in the Fukushima nuclear disaster area and those who are trying to help them in many ways respect you all and your concern on our nuclear problems. You would not realize it but voices from overseas are strong support for us all. We are very thankful about it.
I am sure many of you are concerned about schools. We do have to save children. Here is an example of how the power hinders the school from protecting children. Junko Abe

( * below was translated by Junko Abe )..............
From School Home Page in Koriyam city, Fukushima, Japan

＊Radioactivity level at the east entrance of Koriyama Building for Prefectural Offices, 58km west of Fukushiam nuclear plant, was 1.57μsv/h (2011-04-29, 15:00)


Tachibana Elementary School, Koriyama city, Fukushima, Japan

Emergency information 2011-04-26 10:31 up
・We have been posting results of radioactivity measurement we made independently at points at school buildings and grounds. We inform you that we suspend our posting starting this week. It was prohibited (by the ministry and the prefecture) because posting radioactivity results on the web is restricted to those that were made by public institutions such as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and prefectures.
Yet, we will continue independent measurement we have carried on so far. We will inform parents how the results change on the school bulletin. We would like to ask you for your generous understanding.


emergency information 2011-04-28 11:50 up
・Concerning publication of our radioactivity measurement results
Formerly, we put on notice in our home page about suspending the publicity of our radioactivity measurement results there that we had continued. Reasons for this are: 1. Correct measurement is publicized by the Government and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The radioactivity measurement at this school is basically made by the hands of the teachers, therefore, it would be more appropriate to send it to parents through letters rather than posting on the Home Page. 2. Seeing that parents come first as receivers of our information, they will rather get it surely by letters than posted on Home Page.
We will continue the measurement and inform the results regularly by letters. We would like to ask you for generous understanding. (writer: Sato Morihiro, Principal, Tachibana Elementary School)


emergency information 2011-04-28 13:25 up
・ Concerning Introducing radioactivity measurement results.
We continue the measurement of radioactivity level at school. From now on, we will send the parents the results of radioactivity measurement through “School Bulletin”. Furthermore, in response to local demands, we will publicize the results in our Home Page in PDF.
Presently, we use radioactivity counter we borrowed from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, “Counter Boy 2” . It is for the range 0.001μsv/h～9.999μsv/h.

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sent to me by Junko Okura this morning:
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Extra! The Magazine of FAIR The Media Watch Group
May 2011

Cover Story

Downplaying deadly dangers in Japan and at home
After Fukushima, Media Still Buying Nuclear Spin

by Karl Grossman

Ever since the start of nuclear technology, those behind it have made
heavy use of deception, obfuscation and denial--with the complicity of
most of the media. New York Times reporter William Laurence, working
at the same time with the Manhattan Project, wrote a widely-published
press release covering up the first nuclear test in New Mexico in
1945, claiming it was nothing more than an ammunition dump explosion.
The Times and Laurence went on to boost nuclear power for years to
come (Beverly Deepe Keever, News Zero: The New York Times and The
Bomb).

A central concern of nuclear promoters, as Rosalie Bertell writes in
her book No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, has
been: "Should the public discover the true health cost of nuclear
pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people
would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death." In the
U.S., nuclear industry and government nuclear agencies lied after the
accident at Three Mile Island. In the Soviet Union, government lies
flowed after the catastrophe at Chernobyl. There have been cover-up
after cover-up of the smaller accidents in between (Harvey Wasserman
and Norman Solomon, Killing Our Own, The Disaster of America’s
Experience with Atomic Radiation; Jay M. Gould and Benjamin A.
Goldman, Deadly Deceit; Low-level Radiation, High-level Cover-up).

The nuclear enterprise, with its army of PR people, has had little
trouble through the years manipulating a largely compliant media, a
major component of which it has owned: Westinghouse owning CBS for
many years, and General Electric, NBC. And this continues in the
still-unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan.

Media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear power facility disaster has
ranged from dreadful to barely passable. Much of the reporting about
the threats of nuclear power and the impacts of radioactivity has been
outrageously poor, as journalists and their talking-head experts have
parroted the assurances of Japanese and other officials that the
amounts of radioactivity being released were low and thus posed "no
health threat" to people (e.g., AP, 3/21/11).

Decades ago, there was the notion of a "threshold dose" of radiation,
below which there was no harm. That’s because when nuclear technology
began and people were exposed to radioactivity, they didn’t promptly
fall down dead. But as the years went by, it was realized that lower
levels of radioactivity take time to result in cancer and other
illnesses--that there is a five-to-40-year "incubation" period.

Now most scientists acknowledge that any amount of radioactivity can
lead to illness and death, especially in fetuses and children whose
cells are dividing more rapidly than in adults. As the National
Council on Radiation Protection (No. 136, 2001) has said: "Every
increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in
the risk of cancer." Or the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ("Fact
Sheet: Biological Effects of Radiation"): "Any amount of radiation may
pose some risk for causing cancer.”

Much coverage reassured the public that, even if there was some risk,
potassium iodide pills being distributed in Japan "block
radioactivity" (CNN, 3/18/11). In fact, potassium iodide pills work
only on the thyroid, filling it with "good" iodine so radioactive
iodine-131, which causes thyroid cancer, cannot be absorbed. But there
are hundreds of other fission products--including cesium-137 and
strontium-90, both of which were discharged when the Fukushima nuclear
plants erupted--and there are no magic pills for any of them.

Fox News took its coverage to another level, with Geraldo Rivera
declaring (3/18/11): "I love nuclear power." And right-wing firebrand
Ann Coulter on the O'Reilly Factor (Fox News, 3/17/11) asserted that
"radiation [amounts] in excess of what the government says are the
minimum amounts we should be exposed to are actually good for you and
reduce cases of cancer." Even fellow right-wing firebrand Bill
O’Reilly was taken aback. "You have to be responsible," he told her.

Coulter's comment stems from a wild theory of some nuclear scientists
called "hormesis," which holds that radioactivity is good because it
exercises the immune system. Coulter challenged media for not pursuing
the radiation-is-good hypothesis. They should--they'll find that it's
been dismissed by national and international agencies involved with
radiation protection, including the U.S. National Research Council,
the National Council on Radiation Protection and the U.N. Scientific
Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

There have been huge scientific errors, even by people who
acknowledged the seriousness of the disaster­such as the
explanation for cesium-137 by "expert" Bill Nye, aka "The Science
Guy," on CNN (3/12/11). "We hear about this substance called cesium,
which is being released," anchor John Vause said to Nye. "What's the
significance of that?" The "Science Guy" responded: "Cesium is used to
slow and control the nuclear reaction, the fission of these very large
atoms of uranium. And so when cesium can’t get in there to slow things
down, it gets hotter and hotter."

In fact, cesium-137 has absolutely nothing to do with slowing or
controlling fission (that's boron); it is one of the deadliest
radioactive products created by fission, and one of the main reasons
there's still a 1,660-square-mile Exclusion Zone around the site of
the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. "The Science Guy" flubs a high-school
physics exam question, and one that is crucial to understanding the
health effects of nuclear accidents.

Media have betrayed a lack of understanding about the hydrogen
explosions that blew the roofs off the Fukushima plants as well. It
was reported that this had to do with fuel rods, and sometimes
zirconium was mentioned. (e.g. LA Times, 3/16/11). But missed was a
huge issue: Zirconium, which is used to make nuclear fuel rods because
it allows neutrons to pass freely, is extremely volatile. It explodes
at 2,000[o] F with the explosive power, pound for pound, of
nitroglycerin. (A tiny speck of zirconium produces the flash in a
flashbulb; a typical nuclear plant contains 20 tons.) With lesser
heat, it emits hydrogen, which itself can explode, and this is what
occurred at Fukushima. Using zirconium in a nuclear plant is like
building a bridge out of firecrackers. It’s not hard to explain, but
that didn’t happen.

Then there were the reports about three GE nuclear engineers who
resigned because of defects in the GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor
used at Fukushima (ABC News, 3/16/11). This was in line with the spin
that the problem is not nuclear power in general, but merely one
flawed plant design.

While the Mark 1 design was, indeed, a factor in why the three GE
nuclear engineering supervisors, Dale Bridenbaugh, Richard Hubbard and
Gregory Minor, left the nuclear industry, their broader point went
missing in media coverage: As they declared in a statement to the
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in Congress in 1976,

We did so because we could no longer
justify devoting our life energies to the
continued development and expansion
of nuclear fission power--a system we
believe to be so dangerous that it
now threatens the very existence of life on
this planet.

Meanwhile, disinformation about the impacts of previous nuclear plant
disasters has served to downplay the potential impacts of the
Fukushima disaster.

U.S. media regularly reported that only a few thousand people died as
a result of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant
catastrophe--commonly used as a baseline of comparison (e.g. New York
Times, 3/27/11). These numbers ignore the most comprehensive study
done on the effects of Chernobyl, a book published in 2009 by the New
York Academy of Sciences titled Consequences of the Catastrophe for
People and the Environment. A team of scientists from Russia and
Belarus studied health data, radiological surveys and scientific
reports--some 5,000 in all--from 1986 to 2004, and estimated that the
accident caused the deaths of 985,000 people worldwide. More deaths,
they wrote, will follow. That’s the real baseline for a major disaster
at one nuclear power plant.

Indeed, the senior scientist in that study, Dr. Alexey Yablokov, at a
March 25 press conference in Washington, D.C., pointed out that
because of the multiple nuclear power plants and spent fuel pools
involved in the Fukushima disaster, and "because the area is far more
densely populated than around Chernobyl, the human toll could
eventually be far worse." The New York Times did not cover or run a
story on that press conference at the National Press Club--or the New
York Academy of Science's book.

There were also declarations that "no one died" as a result of the
Three Mile Island accident in 1979 (e.g., O'Reilly Factor, 3/16/11).
NPR (3/28/11) went so far as to claim that "relatively small amounts
of radiation had escaped from the plant. No one was even injured."

That myth was long ago long exploded by the book Killing Our Own,
which includes a chapter called "People Died at Three Mile Island,"
detailing infant and adult deaths. I wrote and narrated a TV
documentary on the impacts of the TMI partial meltdown, Three Mile
Island Revisited, that focused on the cancers and death in the area
around the plant, and how its owner has quietly given pay-outs, many
for $1 million apiece, to settle with people who suffered health
impacts or lost family members because of the accident.

Meanwhile, media didn't mention that Japan in recent years has become
a global giant in the sale of nuclear power plants. GE and
Westinghouse have long been the Coke and Pepsi of nuclear power plants
worldwide, historically manufacturing or designing 80 percent of all
nuclear plants. In 2006, Toshiba bought Westinghouse's nuclear
division and Hitachi entered into a partnership with GE to run its
nuclear division. How might this huge Japanese stake in selling
nuclear plants worldwide affect what Japanese officials were saying
about Fukushima? This area was ignored by U.S. media--many of which
have links to the nuclear industry themselves. (See FAIR Blog,
4/12/11).

A pioneer journalist on nuclear technology, Anna Mayo, had one word to
describe U.S. media coverage of the Japanese disaster: "grotesque."
From 1969 to 1989, Mayo worked for the Village Voice, writing a column
titled "Geiger Counter." She once said (Karl Grossman, Cover Up), "I
built a full-time career on covering nuclear horror stories that the
New York Times neglected." Mayo was forced out after changes of
ownership at the Village Voice, with "nuclear industry pressure"
having much to do with her ouster: "The nuclear industry went after
me. It was very obvious."

The nuclear industry on the disaster in Japan, said Mayo, "is trying
desperately to conceal the extent of radiation exposure, and they’ve
wheeled out the same old lies." And media, as usual, have bought the
deadly nuclear deception.


Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New
York/College at Old Westbury, is the author of books on nuclear
technology, including Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know
About Nuclear Power, and is the writer and host of many TV programs on
the issue (Envirovideo.com).
_______________________________________________________________________
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(*I cannot help suspecting that chem trail, which has been for some time being released into the sky in my hometown as well,
must have something to do with nuclear radiation from such plants.)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9062737295949774810#
Rosalie Bertell tells about Chem Trail
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(* Bruce told about this below issue to some Japanese citizens in Fukuoka, Japan,
two years ago, and I later read about it in his book. I happened to find this pdf last year.
This shows how mercilessly these mere soldiers were used as scientific test samples,
maybe just as those victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

http://www.energy.gov/media/NTS_History.pdf
P.16/258pages : After the Charlie shot, members of the 82nd Airorne Division parashute into the
area near ground zero.
(p.15)They were met on the north side of the blast area by 120 paratroopers who had been air
dropped by C-46 aircraft. Thirty paratroopers failed to show up when they jumped early, landing as far
as 13 kilometers from the designated drop zone.5]
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