Why you should cover your face at protests – by Anonymous

The use of balaclavas and scarves has been branded in the mainstream press as anything from a signal of thuggish criminality, to a pathetic aspirational-revolutionary fashion statement. This kind of ‘analysis’ exposes the distance between so-called journalists and demonstrators. They really have no idea about the social movement taking place before their eyes.

Concealments such as balaclavas, scarves, and notably ‘V for Vendetta’ masks, are being used as political constructions – wearing them at demonstrations indicates a concerted meaning, not simply a by-product of criminality. We are intentionally striving to remain anonymous, and we have very good reasons why.

‘Journalists’ such as Janice Turner of The Times spout the typically arrogant and myopic view of face covering.

Turner confidently declares that:

“… the increased use of masks by (UK) Uncut members is symptomatic of its drift from the mainstream. Covering the face manifests your social separation, your rejection of the rule of law for your own value system (…) A mask makes you an outlaw, bandit, fugitive, a rebel waging war against the State.”

(‘We must look each other in the eyes as equals’ – Janice Turner, The Times, p.27: Saturday 2^nd April, 2011)

Right on, Janice – one mustn’t possibly drift from the mainstream! That would be ‘symptomatic’ of some strain of politically progressive disease, threatening your poor psychological immune system. The disenchanted mainstream, characterised by acquiescence, apathy, arrogance and ignorance is doing such a great job right now – well, at funding perpetual war, poverty, and destruction worldwide.

Although I contest the bias of Turner’s mask decoding, many of the mask wearers are indeed ‘rebel(s) waging war against the State’, and do indeed have their ‘own value system(s)’. And too right. Is this not something to be congratulated, in a ‘democracy’? If more people in the world took a similar interest in politics and values, the world would be a more beautiful and progressive place to live in.

Rather than masks being purely an indicator of identity or criminality, as writers such as Turner suggest, it is in fact an entirely practical decision, as well as a pre-meditated political statement, to wear one. Not an accident of thuggery.

For practical reasons, I advocate that all protestors/demonstrators conceal their faces and wear fairly unidentifiable clothing. This is a response to the encroaching police state that we find ourselves in. The highly controversial (yet lacking adequate public discussion) ‘FIT team’ (Forward Intelligence Team) is watching you unnervingly closely when you protest. Even if you manage to evade their shadowy surveillance, approximately 300 CCTV cameras will capture you on any given day.

Here are some excerpts from ‘Fitwatch’ (fitwatch.org.uk) describing the roles of FIT teams.

• ‘Spotting’ or identifying people they know from previous events. These people are sometimes then targeted for increased police surveillance, a stop and search or are ‘accompanied’

• Gaining intelligence on people they decide they have an interest in. FIT officers have testified in court they gain intelligence on people who have committed no offences and have done nothing wrong. They will focus on people who may frequently attend political protest, or who associate with someone already ‘known’. (…)

• Directing photographers or evidence gatherers to take photographs and footage of individuals or groups. (…) they have been known to follow a group of people for half an hour or more to obtain front, back, side and close up shots of each subject. They do NOT need to have suspicion that any offence has occurred, or will occur.

• Obtaining personal details of people they are interested in. This is frequently done by carrying out a stop and search to obtain people’s details, but other methods have also been used. They frequently misuse S60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which gives them a blanket power to stop and search everyone, without need for suspicion.

• Writing intelligence reports including descriptions, names and any other intelligence obtained for inclusion onto a police database. In London these are entered onto the CRIMINT (criminal intelligence) database

• ‘Accompanying’ activists they are interested in. This is supposedly carried out to prevent crimes taking place, although it often resembles harassment. They have been known to ‘accompany’ protesters for many hours, and this has included following them to their places of work, their homes, into pubs and shops, on trains and buses, even tailing their cars as they drive home.

• Gaining pre-event intelligence. This usually involves surveillance of meetings, and the identification of individuals thought to be organisers

.

(FIT – The Role, http://www.fitwatch.org.uk/forward-intelligence-teams/fit-the-role/, accessed 2^ndApril 2011. Omissions and emphases added).

I can testify that the FIT teams do indeed fulfil this role as Big Brother’s slavishly mobile employees. I have been at gatherings when a van full of ‘FIT’ (clearly working on pre-event intelligence) has sidled up, silently captured all of ‘our’ faces (as if public groups are that easily discernable), and then crept off again. These kinds of gatherings are political, often hobbyist as much as activist. There is no suggestion of criminality or mal intent attached, and therefore they can have no intelligence suggesting anything of the like – these are just free political assemblies which, er, are supposed to be a pillar of any democracy. But it seems in modern Britain, political assembly is a dangerous act to be documented, harassed, and infiltrated.

Unfortunately, FIT’s photos and videos are not destined for the dustbin. They go onto databases and spotter cards, so that perfectly innocent people – or ‘dissenters’ – like you and I, can be ‘kept an eye on’: i.e., spied on, harassed, and targeted next time. FIT teams cast a worrying shadow over habeas corpus, treating the political public as guilty until proven innocent and with a total lack of respect, in the hope of catching a tiny minority of protesters who commit violent acts. My experience from protests is that whilst acts of political destruction are often well organised, violence, a totally different ball game, is primarily by the Police, and secondarily by drunk, rogue, or occasionally provoked/kettled protesters. Not something particularly preventable or curable with FIT teams, and certainly not warranting such a sacrifice of our civil liberties.

‘Nothing to hide, nothing to fear’, is the shrill retort of the naïve. This statement overlooks philosophies of privacy, anonymity, and liberty. In the same way that people wearing Burkas are wearing a construction of meaning, many people wearing balaclavas also a wearing a construction of meaning very important to them, and there is no reason that a religious philosophy should be regarded higher than a political philosophy in the system of law. But nevertheless, let’s address the terms.  I am not ashamed to say today, that yes, I am ‘hiding’ something, but that is not a crime (unless Theresa May has her way). I hide my face from CCTV cameras and FIT teams because I do not agree with the unlawful, persecutory way that they will use my identity, and I refuse to enable it. The Love Police is all about lowering fear and raising love – I do not wish to increase fear, but the reality of our situation is that we are being targeted. As The Love Police walked away from 10 Downing Street on March 26^th 2011, people in and around the group were ambushed by a van-full of police officers: one thrown to the floor, many with balaclavas forcibly ripped off, many subjected to a search. Those who are really in fear are the employees of the State. They see that elements are rebelling, and they are scared. The State is not built by us, it is built over us, and our right to make it crumble when it becomes diseased is being, and will be, vehemently opposed by its system justifying employees.

The Forward Intelligence Team is a particularly grotesque tentacle of the State, mutating the colourful environment of protest and demonstration into an intimidating, intelligence gathering operation that treats democratic processes with utmost suspicion. So I advise you all to cover your faces, unless you feel it is acceptable to risk your innocent and unknowing mug-shot being kept on a police database, and potentially being targeted in the future. If you disagree with this level of surveillance, take the simple step of concealing your face and disable their tactic. If Theresa May is successful and the police are granted increased rights to use force to remove our concealment, then we shall outwit them. If it means I have to demonstrate in a full morph suit that would require me to be totally stripped in order to identify me, I’ll do it, and I’ll have a really great time.

View the original article here

Why you should cover your face at protests – by Anonymous

The use of balaclavas and scarves has been branded in the mainstream press as anything from a signal of thuggish criminality, to a pathetic aspirational-revolutionary fashion statement. This kind of ‘analysis’ exposes the distance between so-called journalists and demonstrators. They really have no idea about the social movement taking place before their eyes.

Concealments such as balaclavas, scarves, and notably ‘V for Vendetta’ masks, are being used as political constructions – wearing them at demonstrations indicates a concerted meaning, not simply a by-product of criminality. We are intentionally striving to remain anonymous, and we have very good reasons why.

‘Journalists’ such as Janice Turner of The Times spout the typically arrogant and myopic view of face covering.

Turner confidently declares that:

“… the increased use of masks by (UK) Uncut members is symptomatic of its drift from the mainstream. Covering the face manifests your social separation, your rejection of the rule of law for your own value system (…) A mask makes you an outlaw, bandit, fugitive, a rebel waging war against the State.”

(‘We must look each other in the eyes as equals’ – Janice Turner, The Times, p.27: Saturday 2^nd April, 2011)

Right on, Janice – one mustn’t possibly drift from the mainstream! That would be ‘symptomatic’ of some strain of politically progressive disease, threatening your poor psychological immune system. The disenchanted mainstream, characterised by acquiescence, apathy, arrogance and ignorance is doing such a great job right now – well, at funding perpetual war, poverty, and destruction worldwide.

Although I contest the bias of Turner’s mask decoding, many of the mask wearers are indeed ‘rebel(s) waging war against the State’, and do indeed have their ‘own value system(s)’. And too right. Is this not something to be congratulated, in a ‘democracy’? If more people in the world took a similar interest in politics and values, the world would be a more beautiful and progressive place to live in.

Rather than masks being purely an indicator of identity or criminality, as writers such as Turner suggest, it is in fact an entirely practical decision, as well as a pre-meditated political statement, to wear one. Not an accident of thuggery.

For practical reasons, I advocate that all protestors/demonstrators conceal their faces and wear fairly unidentifiable clothing. This is a response to the encroaching police state that we find ourselves in. The highly controversial (yet lacking adequate public discussion) ‘FIT team’ (Forward Intelligence Team) is watching you unnervingly closely when you protest. Even if you manage to evade their shadowy surveillance, approximately 300 CCTV cameras will capture you on any given day.

Here are some excerpts from ‘Fitwatch’ (fitwatch.org.uk) describing the roles of FIT teams.

• ‘Spotting’ or identifying people they know from previous events. These people are sometimes then targeted for increased police surveillance, a stop and search or are ‘accompanied’

• Gaining intelligence on people they decide they have an interest in. FIT officers have testified in court they gain intelligence on people who have committed no offences and have done nothing wrong. They will focus on people who may frequently attend political protest, or who associate with someone already ‘known’. (…)

• Directing photographers or evidence gatherers to take photographs and footage of individuals or groups. (…) they have been known to follow a group of people for half an hour or more to obtain front, back, side and close up shots of each subject. They do NOT need to have suspicion that any offence has occurred, or will occur.

• Obtaining personal details of people they are interested in. This is frequently done by carrying out a stop and search to obtain people’s details, but other methods have also been used. They frequently misuse S60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which gives them a blanket power to stop and search everyone, without need for suspicion.

• Writing intelligence reports including descriptions, names and any other intelligence obtained for inclusion onto a police database. In London these are entered onto the CRIMINT (criminal intelligence) database

• ‘Accompanying’ activists they are interested in. This is supposedly carried out to prevent crimes taking place, although it often resembles harassment. They have been known to ‘accompany’ protesters for many hours, and this has included following them to their places of work, their homes, into pubs and shops, on trains and buses, even tailing their cars as they drive home.

• Gaining pre-event intelligence. This usually involves surveillance of meetings, and the identification of individuals thought to be organisers

.

(FIT – The Role, http://www.fitwatch.org.uk/forward-intelligence-teams/fit-the-role/, accessed 2^ndApril 2011. Omissions and emphases added).

I can testify that the FIT teams do indeed fulfil this role as Big Brother’s slavishly mobile employees. I have been at gatherings when a van full of ‘FIT’ (clearly working on pre-event intelligence) has sidled up, silently captured all of ‘our’ faces (as if public groups are that easily discernable), and then crept off again. These kinds of gatherings are political, often hobbyist as much as activist. There is no suggestion of criminality or mal intent attached, and therefore they can have no intelligence suggesting anything of the like – these are just free political assemblies which, er, are supposed to be a pillar of any democracy. But it seems in modern Britain, political assembly is a dangerous act to be documented, harassed, and infiltrated.

Unfortunately, FIT’s photos and videos are not destined for the dustbin. They go onto databases and spotter cards, so that perfectly innocent people – or ‘dissenters’ – like you and I, can be ‘kept an eye on’: i.e., spied on, harassed, and targeted next time. FIT teams cast a worrying shadow over habeas corpus, treating the political public as guilty until proven innocent and with a total lack of respect, in the hope of catching a tiny minority of protesters who commit violent acts. My experience from protests is that whilst acts of political destruction are often well organised, violence, a totally different ball game, is primarily by the Police, and secondarily by drunk, rogue, or occasionally provoked/kettled protesters. Not something particularly preventable or curable with FIT teams, and certainly not warranting such a sacrifice of our civil liberties.

‘Nothing to hide, nothing to fear’, is the shrill retort of the naïve. This statement overlooks philosophies of privacy, anonymity, and liberty. In the same way that people wearing Burkas are wearing a construction of meaning, many people wearing balaclavas also a wearing a construction of meaning very important to them, and there is no reason that a religious philosophy should be regarded higher than a political philosophy in the system of law. But nevertheless, let’s address the terms.  I am not ashamed to say today, that yes, I am ‘hiding’ something, but that is not a crime (unless Theresa May has her way). I hide my face from CCTV cameras and FIT teams because I do not agree with the unlawful, persecutory way that they will use my identity, and I refuse to enable it. The Love Police is all about lowering fear and raising love – I do not wish to increase fear, but the reality of our situation is that we are being targeted. As The Love Police walked away from 10 Downing Street on March 26^th 2011, people in and around the group were ambushed by a van-full of police officers: one thrown to the floor, many with balaclavas forcibly ripped off, many subjected to a search. Those who are really in fear are the employees of the State. They see that elements are rebelling, and they are scared. The State is not built by us, it is built over us, and our right to make it crumble when it becomes diseased is being, and will be, vehemently opposed by its system justifying employees.

The Forward Intelligence Team is a particularly grotesque tentacle of the State, mutating the colourful environment of protest and demonstration into an intimidating, intelligence gathering operation that treats democratic processes with utmost suspicion. So I advise you all to cover your faces, unless you feel it is acceptable to risk your innocent and unknowing mug-shot being kept on a police database, and potentially being targeted in the future. If you disagree with this level of surveillance, take the simple step of concealing your face and disable their tactic. If Theresa May is successful and the police are granted increased rights to use force to remove our concealment, then we shall outwit them. If it means I have to demonstrate in a full morph suit that would require me to be totally stripped in order to identify me, I’ll do it, and I’ll have a really great time.

View the original article here

Why you should cover your face at protests – by Anonymous

The use of balaclavas and scarves has been branded in the mainstream press as anything from a signal of thuggish criminality, to a pathetic aspirational-revolutionary fashion statement. This kind of ‘analysis’ exposes the distance between so-called journalists and demonstrators. They really have no idea about the social movement taking place before their eyes.

Concealments such as balaclavas, scarves, and notably ‘V for Vendetta’ masks, are being used as political constructions – wearing them at demonstrations indicates a concerted meaning, not simply a by-product of criminality. We are intentionally striving to remain anonymous, and we have very good reasons why.

‘Journalists’ such as Janice Turner of The Times spout the typically arrogant and myopic view of face covering.

Turner confidently declares that:

“… the increased use of masks by (UK) Uncut members is symptomatic of its drift from the mainstream. Covering the face manifests your social separation, your rejection of the rule of law for your own value system (…) A mask makes you an outlaw, bandit, fugitive, a rebel waging war against the State.”

(‘We must look each other in the eyes as equals’ – Janice Turner, The Times, p.27: Saturday 2^nd April, 2011)

Right on, Janice – one mustn’t possibly drift from the mainstream! That would be ‘symptomatic’ of some strain of politically progressive disease, threatening your poor psychological immune system. The disenchanted mainstream, characterised by acquiescence, apathy, arrogance and ignorance is doing such a great job right now – well, at funding perpetual war, poverty, and destruction worldwide.

Although I contest the bias of Turner’s mask decoding, many of the mask wearers are indeed ‘rebel(s) waging war against the State’, and do indeed have their ‘own value system(s)’. And too right. Is this not something to be congratulated, in a ‘democracy’? If more people in the world took a similar interest in politics and values, the world would be a more beautiful and progressive place to live in.

Rather than masks being purely an indicator of identity or criminality, as writers such as Turner suggest, it is in fact an entirely practical decision, as well as a pre-meditated political statement, to wear one. Not an accident of thuggery.

For practical reasons, I advocate that all protestors/demonstrators conceal their faces and wear fairly unidentifiable clothing. This is a response to the encroaching police state that we find ourselves in. The highly controversial (yet lacking adequate public discussion) ‘FIT team’ (Forward Intelligence Team) is watching you unnervingly closely when you protest. Even if you manage to evade their shadowy surveillance, approximately 300 CCTV cameras will capture you on any given day.

Here are some excerpts from ‘Fitwatch’ (fitwatch.org.uk) describing the roles of FIT teams.

• ‘Spotting’ or identifying people they know from previous events. These people are sometimes then targeted for increased police surveillance, a stop and search or are ‘accompanied’

• Gaining intelligence on people they decide they have an interest in. FIT officers have testified in court they gain intelligence on people who have committed no offences and have done nothing wrong. They will focus on people who may frequently attend political protest, or who associate with someone already ‘known’. (…)

• Directing photographers or evidence gatherers to take photographs and footage of individuals or groups. (…) they have been known to follow a group of people for half an hour or more to obtain front, back, side and close up shots of each subject. They do NOT need to have suspicion that any offence has occurred, or will occur.

• Obtaining personal details of people they are interested in. This is frequently done by carrying out a stop and search to obtain people’s details, but other methods have also been used. They frequently misuse S60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which gives them a blanket power to stop and search everyone, without need for suspicion.

• Writing intelligence reports including descriptions, names and any other intelligence obtained for inclusion onto a police database. In London these are entered onto the CRIMINT (criminal intelligence) database

• ‘Accompanying’ activists they are interested in. This is supposedly carried out to prevent crimes taking place, although it often resembles harassment. They have been known to ‘accompany’ protesters for many hours, and this has included following them to their places of work, their homes, into pubs and shops, on trains and buses, even tailing their cars as they drive home.

• Gaining pre-event intelligence. This usually involves surveillance of meetings, and the identification of individuals thought to be organisers

.

(FIT – The Role, http://www.fitwatch.org.uk/forward-intelligence-teams/fit-the-role/, accessed 2^ndApril 2011. Omissions and emphases added).

I can testify that the FIT teams do indeed fulfil this role as Big Brother’s slavishly mobile employees. I have been at gatherings when a van full of ‘FIT’ (clearly working on pre-event intelligence) has sidled up, silently captured all of ‘our’ faces (as if public groups are that easily discernable), and then crept off again. These kinds of gatherings are political, often hobbyist as much as activist. There is no suggestion of criminality or mal intent attached, and therefore they can have no intelligence suggesting anything of the like – these are just free political assemblies which, er, are supposed to be a pillar of any democracy. But it seems in modern Britain, political assembly is a dangerous act to be documented, harassed, and infiltrated.

Unfortunately, FIT’s photos and videos are not destined for the dustbin. They go onto databases and spotter cards, so that perfectly innocent people – or ‘dissenters’ – like you and I, can be ‘kept an eye on’: i.e., spied on, harassed, and targeted next time. FIT teams cast a worrying shadow over habeas corpus, treating the political public as guilty until proven innocent and with a total lack of respect, in the hope of catching a tiny minority of protesters who commit violent acts. My experience from protests is that whilst acts of political destruction are often well organised, violence, a totally different ball game, is primarily by the Police, and secondarily by drunk, rogue, or occasionally provoked/kettled protesters. Not something particularly preventable or curable with FIT teams, and certainly not warranting such a sacrifice of our civil liberties.

‘Nothing to hide, nothing to fear’, is the shrill retort of the naïve. This statement overlooks philosophies of privacy, anonymity, and liberty. In the same way that people wearing Burkas are wearing a construction of meaning, many people wearing balaclavas also a wearing a construction of meaning very important to them, and there is no reason that a religious philosophy should be regarded higher than a political philosophy in the system of law. But nevertheless, let’s address the terms.  I am not ashamed to say today, that yes, I am ‘hiding’ something, but that is not a crime (unless Theresa May has her way). I hide my face from CCTV cameras and FIT teams because I do not agree with the unlawful, persecutory way that they will use my identity, and I refuse to enable it. The Love Police is all about lowering fear and raising love – I do not wish to increase fear, but the reality of our situation is that we are being targeted. As The Love Police walked away from 10 Downing Street on March 26^th 2011, people in and around the group were ambushed by a van-full of police officers: one thrown to the floor, many with balaclavas forcibly ripped off, many subjected to a search. Those who are really in fear are the employees of the State. They see that elements are rebelling, and they are scared. The State is not built by us, it is built over us, and our right to make it crumble when it becomes diseased is being, and will be, vehemently opposed by its system justifying employees.

The Forward Intelligence Team is a particularly grotesque tentacle of the State, mutating the colourful environment of protest and demonstration into an intimidating, intelligence gathering operation that treats democratic processes with utmost suspicion. So I advise you all to cover your faces, unless you feel it is acceptable to risk your innocent and unknowing mug-shot being kept on a police database, and potentially being targeted in the future. If you disagree with this level of surveillance, take the simple step of concealing your face and disable their tactic. If Theresa May is successful and the police are granted increased rights to use force to remove our concealment, then we shall outwit them. If it means I have to demonstrate in a full morph suit that would require me to be totally stripped in order to identify me, I’ll do it, and I’ll have a really great time.

View the original article here

TEPCO Admits To Another Cover Up As Radioactivity In Seawater Near Fukushima Soars To 1,251 Above Legal Limit

The latest news out of Fukushima confirms fears that irradiated water containment at the radioactive plant has been complete breached, after Radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration 1,250.8 times the legal limit was detected Friday morning in a seawater sample taken around 330 meters south of the plant, near the drainage outlets of the four troubled reactors, the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday. As Kyodo updates: "The level rose to its highest so far in the survey begun this week, after remaining around levels about 100 times the legal limit. It is highly likely that radioactive water in the plant has found its way into the sea, TEPCO said." It's all good though: the government has a prepared strawman for this unprecedented surge in radioactivity as well."Radioactive materials ''will be significantly diluted'' by the time they are consumed by marine species, the agency said, adding it would not have a significant impact on fishery products as fishing is not being conducted in the area within 20 kilometers of the plant because the government has issued a directive for residents in the zone to evacuate." But none of this matter as we get the latest confirmation that no news coming out of the stricken plant can be trusted: "TEPCO's Fukushima office acknowledged Saturday that it had known earlier that the radiation in the underground level of the turbine building of one of the reactors was extremely high, but had not made the information available to pertinent parties."

From Reuters: " Officials said iodine 131 levels in seawater 30 km (19 miles) from the coastal nuclear complex were within acceptable limits established by regulations and the contamination posed little risk to aquatic life. "Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official from Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. Despite that reassurance, the disclosure may well heighten international concern over Japanese seafood exports. Several countries have already banned milk and produce from areas around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, while others have been monitoring Japanese seafood." So fear not - instead of having 10 fins, that yummy piece of toro you are injesting will sport only a substantially "diluted" 5. Also, expect to see Kan eating seaweed and sashimi,  and washing it down with radioactive tap water on TV any minute to prove just how safe everything really is.

More from Kyodo:

The level rose to its highest so far in the survey begun this week, after remaining around levels about 100 times the legal limit. It is highly likely that radioactive water in the plant has found its way into the sea, TEPCO said.

Radioactive materials ''will be significantly diluted'' by the time they are consumed by marine species, the agency said, adding it would not have a significant impact on fishery products as fishing is not being conducted in the area within 20 kilometers of the plant because the government has issued a directive for residents in the zone to evacuate.

TEPCO is planning to inject fresh water into pools storing the spent nuclear fuel at the plant to prevent crystallized salt from seawater already injected from hampering the smooth circulation of water and thus diminishing the cooling effect. It has begun injecting fresh water into the reactor containers of the No. 1 and No. 3 as well as No. 2 reactors.

At the same time, the company is trying to remove the pools of water containing highly concentrated radioactive substances that may have seeped from either the reactor cores or the spent fuel pools.

On Thursday, three workers were exposed to water containing radioactive materials 10,000 times the normal level at the turbine building connected to the No. 3 reactor building.

On Friday, a pool of water with a similarly high concentration of radioactive materials was found in the No. 1 reactor's turbine building, causing some restoration work to be suspended.

Similar pools of water were also found in the turbine buildings of the No. 2 and No. 4 reactors, measuring up to 1 meter and 80 centimeters deep, respectively. Those near the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors were up to 40 cm and 1.5 meters deep, respectively.

And the most dramatic example of strategic idiocy: all the hoopla about dumping tons of water on the reactors will now have to be undone:

While analyzing the radioactivity levels of the pools from the water found in the No. 2 and No. 4 reactors, TEPCO will remove the water in all four reactor units to reduce the risk of more workers being exposed to radioactive substances, it said.

The risk would hinder efforts to restore the plant's crippled cooling functions, which are crucial to overcoming the crisis, the government's nuclear safety agency said.

But the most infuriating development is the latest disclosure from TEPCO that once again it covered up critical data.

TEPCO's Fukushima office acknowledged Saturday that it had known earlier that the radiation in the underground level of the turbine building of one of the reactors was extremely high, but had not made the information available to pertinent parties.

Edano criticized the utility's handling of the data, saying unless it reports necessary information to authorities in a timely manner, ''the government will not be able to give appropriate instructions and (TEPCO) will make workers, and eventually the public, distrustful'' of the firm.

So aside from the constant lies and misinformation, the public can be assued that all is well.

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View the original article here

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Selafield Windscale cover up

From the Daily Mail today, read this and never again ask if we can trust our government.
NR

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...cer-cases.html

Britain's nuclear inferno: How our own Government covered up Windscale reactor blaze that's caused dozens of deaths and hundreds of cancer cases
By Sue Reid
Last updated at 1:22 AM on 19th March 2011

As Japan's radiation disaster appals the world, this disturbing dispatch from the Lake District investigates a lethal legacy closer to home...
Down a long country lane at Newbiggin, past the Brown Cow pub and a shop that sells sausages which proudly sport the royal warrant, you finally get to reach the Irish Sea.
The water laps near a weathered wooden signpost pointing out the pleasant walk to the Roman port of Ravensglass. The edge of the estuary is an expanse of sticky mud covered with greenish moss and rotting seaweed.
However, this brown sediment is contaminated with radioactivity from the nearby Sellafield power station.
When anti-nuclear protesters tried to highlight the health dangers by taking a dustbin full of mud to Whitehall a few years ago, men in white protective suits were scrambled to take it away.
Sellafield, the world?s first commercial nuclear station, stockpiles more spent plutonium than any other similar plant ? a huge store that has been built up over half a century.
?We test the mud at Newbiggin regularly and it always contains low-level nuclear waste,? said Martin Forwood, the co-ordinator of the lobby group Cumbrians Opposed To A Radioactive Environment.
?There are no warning signs anywhere along the coast. People walk on this shoreline with their dogs and children. The dogs take the contaminated mud back home on their hair. The children carry it on their shoes. It then dries and can be breathed in. Don?t tell me this is not a danger to human beings.?
A Geiger counter measurement in the muddy area taken by Martin gives a reading of around 15 counts of radioactive particles a second. That is double the amount of radiation normally found in the atmosphere in Britain. Tests from some other parts of the shoreline shoot up to 50.

Anti-nuclear campaigners blame these high levels on traces of plutonium (as well as other dangerous elements such as caesium and americium, which are used in the production of nuclear fuel) in the mud.
This is because waste water from Sellafield has been discharged for decades through a pipe just two miles off the coast.
The former World War II munitions factory became Britain?s first nuclear complex in the late Forties.
The giant facility opened under the name of Windscale to produce plutonium for Britain?s H-bomb.
In 1956 Calder Hall nuclear power station was opened alongside it to produce low-cost electricity for millions of homes. Back then, the long, sandy beach at the nearest town of Seascale was popular with swimmers.
But families are now too afraid to go there because radioactive contamination has been traced in shellfish, seaweed and the sand.
The levels of radioactivity recorded by Martin Forwood are so high that they would not be permitted under safety regulations for the inside of the huge nuclear plant itself. Indeed, they are higher than those taken within the 20-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl, scene of the world?s worst nuclear disaster in 1986.
The deeper you dig down into the mud, the more poisonous the levels become because of the accumulation of waste over the years.
This week, as the world looked on in horror at the frantic attempts to try to make safe the out-of-control nuclear power station hit by the tsunami in Japan, it is not surprising that questions are being asked about the safety of Britain?s 19 nuclear reactors.
The Government has asked Mike Weightman, chief nuclear inspector, for a full report on the implications of the Fukushima disaster before a decision is made on the future of nuclear power in this country.
A series of new plants is being planned by the Government, and advocates of nuclear power argue that (although they have to be built next to the sea because they need vast amounts of water as part of the cooling process) they will be safe and will not be at risk from damage by coastal erosion, storms, earthquakes or tsunamis.
One of the new plants is pencilled in for Sellafield.
Of course, Britain does not experience earthquakes the size that hit Japan ? the largest to strike (off the coast at Great Yarmouth in 1931) was 130,000 times smaller than the one that set off the cataclysmic events in Japan.
But anti-nuclear campaigners are not so convinced about safety guarantees and point to the troubled history of Sellafield.
'People walk on this shoreline with their dogs and children. The dogs take the contaminated mud back home on their hair. The children carry it on their shoes. It then dries and can be breathed in'
In 1957, a fire broke out in No 1 of the twin ?piles? or reactors. It was only discovered 50 hours later, and took three days to bring under control.
The blaze was caused by heat building up in the reactor after a series of safety blunders. As the fire raged, workers at the plant used hoses to try to cool the reactor.
However, contaminated air escaped through the 400ft-high chimney and rose over the Lake District in a long grey plume. Eventually, radioactive particles fell on to the local countryside or were caught in a changing wind, which blew them further inland towards Wales and over the sea to Ireland.
Marjorie Higham, now in her 70s, remembers the accident well. As a young local woman, her job was to monitor data in the scientific laboratory at the site and, like all employees, she had signed the Official Secrets Act, which prevented her from talking about her work.
Only now is she prepared to discuss what happened. She says: ?I arrived one morning and was told I couldn?t leave the site. We had to stay in the laboratory and not say anything.
?It was rumoured that an operation was under way to pump water into the reactor to extinguish a fire.
'When some men phoned their wives to explain why they would be late home, they got into terrible trouble from the bosses.?
Marjorie went home late that night too and never mentioned a word. The hope of the authorities was that the full extent of the accident would never be made public.
But there were reports from government scientists in subsequent days that cows across the Lake District had been contaminated by eating grass that had become covered with radioactive dust.

For the next six weeks, milk collected over a 30-mile radius was discreetly removed from dairies so it would not be distributed for human consumption.
When a delivery from Grasmere in the Lake District mistakenly got into the supply system, the truth was kept secret by Harold Macmillan?s government to avoid ?unnecessarily alarming? the local population.
My godmother Peggy, holidaying in the area at the time, looked out of her hotel window and saw sheep dead in the fields. She told my parents what had happened, but since she was unaware there had been a fire at Sellafield (or Windscale, as it was then called), made no link between the dead animals and the accident at the nuclear plant.
In 1982, the British National Radiological Protection Board issued a report estimating that 32 deaths and at least 260 cases of cancer could be attributed to the fire at Windscale. But there are widespread concerns that this figure was much too low
The truth is that Macmillan ordered an official cover-up ? fearing the British people would reject the idea of nuclear energy if they found out about the accident or its potential danger to human health.
The Government decreed that the official report into the fire should blame operator negligence and failed instrument readings. What?s more, ministers made sure the document would be kept secret by sealing it for 30 years.
After the fire, the twin reactors at Windscale were permanently closed and their function to produce plutonium was moved to an expanded Calder Hall.
Eventually, locals realised that the fire which they all knew about via the grapevine had, in fact, been a serious nuclear incident. But it took a whole generation to pass before its impact on the health of local inhabitants was revealed.
In 1982, the British National Radiological Protection Board issued a report estimating that 32 deaths and at least 260 cases of cancer could be attributed to the fire. But there are widespread concerns that this figure was much too low.
In 1993, the Government?s Health and Safety Executive confirmed that in nearby Seascale, the incidence of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (both linked with people being exposed to radioactive material) was 14 times the national average and twice that found in other areas of the western Lake District.
My godmother died of cancer in her fifties. It was never established whether the disease was linked to her exposure to radiation, but our family certainly suspect she was one of Windscale?s many silent victims.
John Urquhart, an epidemiologist at Newcastle University, said in the Eighties that he believed the chances of getting cancer in Seascale was one in 60, compared with a national average of one in 600.

Anti-nuclear campaigner Janine Allis-Smith?s son was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1983. She is convinced he was exposed to radiation during family trips to the Cumbrian seaside.
?He put handfuls of mud and sand on his head and face. I?m sure Sellafield has something to do with it,? she says.
?I know lots of children who?ve died and whose fathers worked at Sellafield. The graveyard at a church near Newbiggin has lots of graves of children who died in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.
?It was not just leukaemia, but other cancers. Some were stillborn, while other suffered unexplained deaths at a very young age.?
Another campaigner, Greenpeace?s nuclear adviser Jean McSorley, was born in the area. She describes herself as one of the ?Windscale generation?. Her mother was pregnant with her when the fire happened in 1957.
She says: ?Growing up, I watched children and adults go for cancer treatment at The Christie Hospital in Manchester. It is impossible to prove that the illnesses were caused by the fall-out from the fire, but we just knew.
'Growing up, I watched children and adults go for cancer treatment at The Christie Hospital in Manchester. It is impossible to prove that the illnesses were caused by the fall-out from the fire, but we just knew'
?At the time, people didn?t make a big fuss because the local community was very dependent for employment on the nuclear industry. Free speech was impossible because workers had signed the Official Secrets Act.?
But what is the truth?
In October, 1993, 36 years after the Windscale fire, two leukaemia victims lost their four-year battle for damages from the nuclear authorities. Although a judge did not rule out a connection between the radioactive emissions and the disease, he said there was a lack of supporting evidence for the theory.
Of course, worries remain.
A few years ago, complaints were made by neighbours against two women in Seascale who were feeding large numbers of pigeons. The estimated 2,000 birds were roosting in buildings at the nuclear plant and flying all over town causing a nuisance.
A cull was carried out by the RSPCA. Analysis of six of the dead birds, carried out by Greenpeace at an independent French laboratory, revealed high levels of radiation in their bodies.
As a result, the Ministry of Agriculture warned that ?any pigeons found within a ten-mile radius of Sellafield should not be handled, slaughtered or consumed?.
Government scientists said eating the breast meat of the birds would give a radiation dose equivalent to the safe limit for an adult for a whole year.
The culled pigeons were placed in lead-lined canisters and buried at a dump for low-level nuclear waste which is patrolled by guards 24 hours a day.
Today, the entire Sellafield site no longer produces nuclear power because its equipment has reached the end of its lifespan. But it remains the world?s leading centre for reprocessing nuclear waste ? taking waste from power stations all over the globe (including Japan) to extract the spent plutonium.
From this, a fuel called MOX (mixed oxide) is manufactured and sold back to power stations, again including those in Japan, as a means of burning weapons-grade plutonium to produce electricity.
The result is that Britain has the dubious distinction of being the world?s plutonium capital, with 112 tons of the element (about half the global total) stored at Sellafield.
No wonder Martin Forwood?s Geiger readings are so high when he tests levels of radioactivity over the Newbiggin mud.
And there is a small, sad postscript to all this. Last Christmas Eve, the Cumberland sausage, hams and bacon maker with a royal warrant was forced to sell up because of ill-health. He no longer sells his prize bangers to prestigious stores across the country.
Now only his little shop near Newbiggin remains.
Colin Woodall, who is in his early 50s, said that after generations of his family making traditional sausages, he had contracted leukaemia.
One can only speculate, of course. But has this proud Cumbrian become another victim of Sellafield and its very poisonous legacy?

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Swedish Government: Radiation To Cover Entire Northern Hemisphere

Swedes were first in world to detect radiation from Chernobyl disaster

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, March 17, 2011

Suggesting that levels of radiation leaks from the stricken Fukushima plant are being grossly underreported by Japanese authorities, a Swedish government agency told Reuters today that not only will the radiation reach North America, but it will subsequently cover the entire northern hemisphere.

“Lars-Erik De Geer, research director at the Swedish Defense Research Institute, a government agency, was citing data from a network of international monitoring stations established to detect signs of any nuclear weapons tests,” reports Reuters.

“Stressing that the levels were not dangerous for people, he predicted the particles would continue across the Atlantic and eventually also reach Europe.”

De Geer said he was “convinced it would eventually be detected over the whole northern hemisphere,” according to the report, adding that radioactive particles would “eventually also come here,” referring to Europe.

De Geer’s prognosis arrives on the back of a study of data by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which confirmed that the radioactive plume from Fukushima would reach the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting southern California late on Friday. The CBTO has a network of radiation monitors deployed globally that can detect radioactive particles such as caesium and iodine isotopes.

Experts are correct in assuming that the initial waves of radiation will be low, but expect levels to rise in subsequent days as the effects of the three blasts to impact the Fukushima facility, which occurred on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, manifest themselves in the form of increased radiation injected into the atmosphere.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

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“Naturally, with the credibility of every government around the world shot, it is no surprise that most consumer Geiger counter stores are sold out of inventory at this point, at virtually all price points,” writes Tyler Durden.

As we reported earlier, having confidence in the trustworthiness of governments globally who have habitually lied about the true threat posed by radiation, notably after the 3 Mile Island accident and the Chernobyl disaster, is somewhat less than wise.

However, at least the Swedes can be trusted to know a thing or two about detecting radiation. While the Soviets were furiously engaged in a cover-up of the Chernobyl disaster which occurred on April 26 1986, Swedish workers at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant were the first ones to detect the fallout from the accident two days later on April 28.

It was only after the workers failed to find the source of any radioactive leak at their own plant that the true horror of what had happened 1,100 km (680 miles) away in the western Soviet Union began to unravel.

The whole planet is united in hoping that Japanese technicians find some way to restore power and water cooling system to the Fukushima plant before that terrible scenario has any chance of repeating.

The video below shows how far the radiation clouds from Chernobyl spread across Europe, smothering virtually the entire continent within 7 days. Although agencies like the WHO and the IAEA claimed that only 9,000 people died as a consequence, more contemporary studies have shown that nearly a million people have been killed from cancers caused by the disaster over the course of the last 25 years.

I wrote for Investigate Magazine from 2000-2005, then decided to invest my energy in the alternative media, when I became aware of the rise of fascism that was being concealed from the public under the guise of hoaxes, such as the "war on terror," by the mainstream media.

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LARGE SCALE COVER UP of Japan's Multiple Nuclear Meltdowns is Now Underway!!!

All the nuclear reactors at the earthquake stricken Fukushima nuclear plant are under threat of  melting down and exploding in a chain reaction that will signify the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster and send clouds of radioactive particles hurtling towards the United States...

Enlarged Photo

Image: Digital Globe

...that’s the scale of the crisis facing Japan as officials admit for the first time that three nuclear reactors are already in a meltdown.

All the nuclear reactors at the earthquake stricken Fukushima nuclear plant are under threat of  melting down and exploding in a chain reaction that will signify the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster and send clouds of radioactive particles hurtling towards the United States – that’s the scale of the crisis facing Japan as officials admit for the first time that three nuclear reactors are already in a meltdown.

While the mainstream media continues to argue over the definition of a “meltdown” while unquestionably regurgitating the dubious claim of Japanese officials that the two massive explosions witnessed at the plant were caused by pressurized hydrogen, radioactive isotopes cesium-137 and iodine-121 have been detected by helicopters flying 160km (100 miles) away from the nuclear plant, which can only mean one thing, according to the Seattle Times: “One or more of the reactor cores is badly damaged and at least partially melted down.”

After claiming for three days that the explosions did not damage reactor cores and downplaying the severity of the situation, Japanese officials have now been forced to admit the obvious, that nuclear fuel rods in three reactors are melting.

Given the sequence of events, it is entirely probable that all six reactor sites will now go into total meltdown and start spewing radioactive particles into the atmosphere that threaten not only Japanese citizens but also those living on the west coast of the United States.

The two explosions have already compromised the surrounding facilities. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from a 20-km exclusion zone around the plant which keeps growing. Latest reports suggest that the exclusion zone is already at 50km and expanding. Casualties in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear facilities are likely to be far higher than reported.

Japanese authorities, presumably in an effort to prevent hysteria, have engaged in a cover-up of the true scale of the Fukushima crisis from start to finish, and they have been largely aided by a mass media that has slavishly repeated their lies without question, despite the fact that there is a long history of covering up nuclear catastrophes in Japan. This process has only put the Japanese people in more danger.

Amidst the disgusting spectacle of a castrated and inept corporate mass media failing to ask hard questions about the true scale of the Fukushima crisis, a handful of nuclear experts are attempting to blow the whistle.

As reported by the BBC:

Japanese engineer Masashi Goto, who helped design the containment vessel for Fukushima’s reactor core, says the design was not enough to withstand earthquakes or tsunamis and the plant’s builders, Toshiba, knew this.

Mr Goto says his greatest fear is that blasts at number 3 and number 1 reactors may have damaged the steel casing of the containment vessel designed to stop radioactive material escaping into the atmosphere.

He says that as the reactor uses mox (mixed oxide) fuel, the melting point is lower than that of conventional fuel. Should a meltdown and an explosion occur, he says, plutonium could be spread over an area up to twice as far as estimated for a conventional nuclear fuel explosion. The next 24 hours are critical, he says.

Goto warns that Japanese authorities have suppressed the true severity of the crisis and that there is “a severe risk of an explosion, with radioactive material being strewn over a very wide area – beyond the 20km evacuation zone set up by the authorities,” adding that the worst case scenario would manifest itself as “many Chernobyls,” and that the effect would be, “Like a volcano spreading radioactive material.”

Nuclear expert Joe Cirincione warns that radiation from Japan’s multiple potential nuclear meltdowns could spread to the US west coast and that the threat represents an “unprecedented crisis.”

Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times,  states that after a high-level government meeting, “Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top,” and that censorship of what is really occurring at the plant is being overseen under the Article 15 Emergency Law.

Professor Richard Wakeford, a nuclear expert at Manchester University, said yesterday: ‘If the fuel is not covered by cooling water it could become so hot it begins to melt – if all the fuel is uncovered you could get a large-scale meltdown.’

Today it looks as if that scenario is playing out.

Shaun Burnie, an independent atomic energy consultant, also warns that Japan’s nuclear crisis is much worse than it seems:

The US has moved one of its aircraft carriers from the area after detecting low-level radiation 160km (100 miles) offshore.

The Japanese government is playing down the scale of the disaster, however, experts have pointed out that it has a long history of nuclear cover ups, and that this is merely  the latest.

Documentary filmmaker Tony Barrell says in 2003 reactors across the country had to be shut down after it emerged the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had hid accidents.

“They had to shut down 17 plants in 2003 because they’d been falsifying the records about what had been happening at them,” he said.

“Lives were threatened, systems broke down, there were failures to report and there were cover-ups. People pretended things hadn’t happened.”

Barrell says several other major incidents have occurred and gone relatively unreported:

“A place called Monju, which in 1995 sprang a leak in its liquid sodium cooling system which made the whole thing absolutely red hot and had to be shut down immediately and stayed shut down until the beginning of last year – 15 years,” he told ABC News in Australia.

Barrell also pointed out that the Fukushima Daiichi plant should have been shut down long ago because it is now 40 years old.

Should other plants in Japan experience complete meltdowns, the entire country could become a nuclear wasteground, and the radiation could engulf large areas of the planet, leading to huge numbers of cancers and future birth deformities.

Paul Joseph Watson - Steve Watson - March 14, 2011 - InfoWars

Submitted by SadInAmerica on Tue, 03/15/2011 - 12:38am.

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