Belgium, Catalonia: anti-capitalist sabotages

This month there have been several anti-capitalist sabotages in Western Europe:

Belgium:

(Dated to September 12th)

A large telecommunications station in Koningslo, near Brussels, was destroyed by fire arson. Flames reached 50 m. high and firefighters needed many hours to stop the fire. Regional communications of Base and Movistar were interrupted, the damage is set to affect the communications for months. 

A police car was set on fire before the Mortsel station. Apparently it is a revenge for the killing by beating of a youth two years ago in those dungeons. It is already the second such attack.

At Dinant, a forestal truck was set on fire. Again this is the second such attack with an apparently ecologist background, as permission to exploit forests has been expanded in Belgium recently. 

In Louvain, a bank office was also arsoned.

Source: Contra Info.

Catalonia:

In September 16th, locks of the offices of energy company Endesa were sealed in protest against the construction of very high voltage line.

Source: Contra Info.

Radioactive Japan's slippery slope: mafias and fascism

Two snippets of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Japan:

On one side Fukushima emergency... mentions that there was a mafioso mass dumping of radioactive materials in a river bed in Western Japan:

A huge amount of contaminated waste was found on the river bed in Shiga prefecture, western region of Japan.
According to the local authorities, among the waste include 2,300 tons of wooden tips contaminated by radiation as well as 77 sandbags filled with the same contaminated wooden tips.
The incident was came to light after an anonymous informant, possibly related to the illegal dumping, called in last month. The survey conducted by the local office shows up to 3000 becquerel per kilogram was detected.
"This is a possible illegal dumping case, though the place where they were brought from remain unknown." the authorities said.

 

Fascist repression against truth

(CC by Masaru Kamikura)

On the other side, actress (and former Miss Japan) Norika Fujiwara (pictured) has stepped forward against the implementation of fascist censorship laws that will severely punish whistleblowing and bring punishments against bloggers who expose the truth about the nuclear catastrophe, mentions EneNews, citing Japanese sources (→ Japan Times).

The new law, known as Secret Security Act, allows government to hide important information like radiation readings, to severely punish whistleblowing officials and even to exert censorship on the Internet at whim.

In a message posted on Friday, Fujiwara accused the government of covering up the truth about the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and spreading misinformation about radiation and leaks of radioactive water there.

“As a citizen I am really concerned about it,” Fujiwara wrote in another message. “Our nation has a right to know.”

Fujiwara joins the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association in opposing the bill as a violation of the right to freedom of speech that will undermine Japan’s democracy.

“Once the bill is signed, the people who will write the truth on the Internet (or through other means) will be punished,” she stressed. “When I think of all the consequences that it will lead to, it really bothers me.”

Fukushima radiation continues climbing: x30 in just a week!

I already mentioned how this Tuesday water radioactivity in the collapsed nuclear power plant had spiked x15 in three days, well now, after six days, it is x30!

→ EneNews (citing NHK).

Fukushima: radioactivity spikes x15 in just two days

In TEPCO's own words:

... tritium levels in water taken from a well close to a number of storage tanks holding irradiated water rose to 64,000 becquerels per liter on Tuesday from 4,200 becquerels/liter at the same location on Sunday.

Source: Reuters (via EneNews).

Thousands march in Romania against cyanide poisoning plans by Canadian mining company

All the last week there have been protests in the European country against the intention of Gabriel Resources, a multinational mining company with see in Canada, to exploit a gold mine in, Rosia Montana, Transylvania by means of cyanide.

The toxic corporation plans to contaminate with nothing less than 12,000 tons of cyanide per year. Naturally Romanians are outraged. 

Only this Sunday some 8000 people marched in Buchares, while 6000 did the same in Cluj against cyanide poisoning and capitalist corruption. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Fukushima: reactors lose all water as soon as it goes in

This is just one of the many news I read daily on that brutal nuclear catastrophe of global implications which is Fukushima. I just can't keep up with all but the situation seems to be seriously deteriorating by the moment (or more likely it was all the time that way, just that we were not informed). 

A robot camera descending to Hell... I mean: one of the reactors of the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear site, found barely "inches" of water where there should have been at least 4.5 meters. 

The video published by TEPCO shows that the 400 tons of water injected to reactor 1 go down the drain into the ground as soon as they are poured in. As the Japan Times explains:

The water used to cool the fuel eventually flows into the turbine building, where it is believed to mingle with water intruding from outside. The turbine building is also connected to an underground trench that runs toward the coast. Highly radioactive water from the trench is believed to be mixing with separate groundwater flows before entering the sea.

This does not just happen in reactor 1 but it is probably the case of the three reactors which were active when the catastrophe happened. The storage of "spent" fuel (actually more toxic than "unspent" one) in the reactors themselves, two of which violently exploded, while another collapsed almost completely because of radioactive erosion and seismic movements, only adds to the severity of the problem.

The water flow from the mountains and the tides seems to be entering freely inside the destroyed reactors, incorporating all kind or radionuclides before it goes to the sea. Then it travels quickly across the Pacific Ocean with only limited dilution to the coasts of Canada and the USA. While the Pacific Ocean is really big, it seems not to be big enough to face a single nuclear catastrophe.

Sources: Fukushima Emergency..., Energy News.


Also for sushi-lovers, Simply Info mentions that South Korea is banning more and more fish and seafood imports from Japan because this country does not control the radiation levels of its produce. 

Turkey: more repression against students in Ankara

The police forces of Islamist ruler Erdogan brutally charged with loads of tear gas and other violence against students protesting the deforestation of their campus to build a highway. 

The also Islamist mayor of Ankara, Melih Gökçek, recently announced that the works for the highway to be built right through the Technical University of the Middle East would begin this week. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Argentina: anti-fracking protests in Neuquén

Thousands protested before the Neuquén Parliament against fracking concessions to Chevron. As usual police attacked the citizens in defense of capitalist interests. Several were injured. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Leaderless movements, late Capitalism and everything else

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism hosts today a thoughtful meditation by Bill McKibben on the loss of the classical role of leadership, as the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther's King famous speech "I have a dream" approaches. 

Even if Smith has a "liberal" (progressive) approach, she is a very intelligent and thoughtful author and I often enjoy her analysis, even if I do not necessarily agree with all the details. The same can be said about McKibben's piece, which is focused on the ecologist facet. 

McKibben concludes that the paramount leader role has vanished and that instead a multi-headed kind of movement in which many smaller-scale leaders are actually doing the work in a cooperative networked manner is the only thing that can exist now. 

This, as he admits, is "old news" for those with experience in social and political movements. Indeed. In this sense, I include here my own commentary:

When you say that “I could cynically point out that this is also the Wall Street model, where “producers” enjoy more autonomy…” makes good sense because, after all, we exist in a socio-economic-cultural context. In “The Politics of Subversion”, Toni Negri claims that this loss of faith in leaders actually reflects the transition from highly hierarchical and disciplinary Fordism to the more decentralized Toyotism, both of which he relates to Marx’ forecasts in his posthumous manuscripts: the Formal and the Real subsumption of Work into Capital, which also have other implications, including the impossibility of the Stalinist system to survive without never-performed deep reforms. The central motif is anyhow the loss of respect for authority, and therefore the loss of power of authority itself: certain “anarchism” within the ultimate form of Capitalism (but also complete ideological success of Capitalism in many senses). This phase would have been going since c. 1968, a date he picks because of the “springs” of that time, which were full of anti-authority rebelliousness, expressing a radical change in the way we all think. Characters like Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler of De Gaulle (or even Gandhi, I guess) are now impossible because nobody really would take them seriously enough, unlike what happened before. This has pros and cons but is in any case the sign of the time. 

If we are to follow Deleuze and Guattari in “Anti-Oedipus”, a masterwork of the transition to this Toyotist era (already decades old in fact) we can understand that Capital is a corrupting force that decodifies without creating anything of its own in the social realm. In this senses it has two polarities: the schizoid decodifying vector and the paranoid recodifying reaction (drag), which is nevertheless always defeated because it only draws from the past, a past that is quickly erased and corrupted by Capitalism itself.

The real issue is how to go beyond this moral desert that Capital leaves at its wake. In many senses this is something positive because goes beyond what the most ambitious Maoist cultural revolution could imagine, but it also leaves Humankind naked and distructured. The only thing that survives is a naked Humankind in a totally transformed environment, so different from the Paleolithic reality we evolved for. 

In this sense I have been thinking that the novel ideas that are sometimes attributed to Capitalism such as human rights, democracy and such, are in fact not its product but the product of Naked Humankind, devoid of all the old Medieval values. If, as D&G say, Capitalism cannot create anything other than economic flows, then these must be creations of the thin red line, of the popular class struggle within Capitalism that exists since the time of the Sans Culottes. As D&G suggest, Capitalism incorporates ideas and structures from other realities, mostly from the Ancien Régime, which it rots until they fall dead… but it seems to me that also from the new antagonist forces conformed within it. 

If so these institutions (human rights, democracy, etc.) actually should prefigure to some extent the way out of this late Capitalist nightmare. But, of course, they are only part of the solution: in key things like private property, Capitalism can make no concessions or it would risk its own unlife.

Latest advances in energy storage may pave way for renewable-only energy grid

While some countries like Germany have take giant steps in the development of cost-efficient solar and other renewable energy sources, that virtually scrap the need for the so-called "conventional" sources like oil, gas or nukes, a problem remains: how to store energy in a reliable and efficient way to be released in a controlled way when the renewable sources are temporarily not available (night for solar, windless days for eolic, etc.)

Research is in progress but I will mention here a few examples on how this is advancing. 

A year ago, a team of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, led by Sri Narayan, developed an advanced battery based on iron rusting. This method has the advantage of being relatively well known (has been around from the 1970s) but previously faced the challenge of about half its capacity being robbed by hydrolysis. This research managed to reduce such loss to just 4%, what is a great advance, thanks to the use of a small amount of bismuth sulfide. 

More recently research has been focused on membraneless batteries. In April team of U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University researchers announced a lithium polysulfide battery, that overcomes material limitations of previous similar designs (lithium and sulfur are relatively inexpensive) and is easily scalable for large scale energy management needs.

This week MIT researchers offered another new membraneless alternative that beats lithium capacities by "an order of magnitude". The model, based on bromine and hydrogen reactions overcomes the limitations of these materials, whose composite hydrobromic acid tends to eat the battery membranes, by totally suppressing them. The development is being presented as "a quantum leap" in energy storage systems, although other researchers are more cautious.

USA: nuclear accident in South Georgia: chemical explosions at radioactive waste site

The Perma-Fix Environmental Services plant at Valdosta (Georgia, border with Florida) suffered a series of huge chemical explosions today. The industry describes itself as "a global provider of nuclear services and radioactive waste management solutions". The profile of the residues treated in the plant are openly described as "radioactive waste".

The plume of the accident rose at least 30 meters above ground, what may imply radioactive and other unclear risk for the surrounding area. 

Source: Energy News.

Italy: raids against NO TAV activists

The movement against the High Speed Rail (NO TAV) in NW Italy has been subject to police harassment, intimidation and criminalization in the last weeks, as reported by Struggles in Italy:

[en] Police operation against No TAV: charges of terrorism and subversion

Posted on 2013/08/01 by Struggles in Italy

 

In the Susa Valley and Turin, tens of homes and even restaurants owned by No TAV activists from the group Comitato di Lotta Popolare have been searched in an extraordinary anti-terrorism and subversion police operation. Police were looking for “explosives, blunt objects, items suitable for cutting fences and audio-visual and digital devices that could lead to the identification of possible accomplices.”

Searches and arrests have taken place under article 280 of the Italian Criminal Code rather than the more usually employed articles 270 and 270bis. This represents a significant reframing of the No TAV struggle by the judiciary, with consequences to be found in the actions of the police. Charges associated with article 280 (“subversion of democracy”) are easier to bring than those associated with article 270 (“criminal organisation”). For article 280 charges (which can attract custodial sentences of up to 30 years), a judge only requires a couple of injured police officers. Article 270 charges, on the other hand, are difficult to bring against anarchists (who are often involved in demonstrations) as they tend not to be involved in a formal organisation. In addition, the use of petrol bombs (Molotov cocktails) is treated most seriously by Italian law.

These searches and arrests are related to the protests that took place on July 10, when stones and firecrackers were thrown at the heavily fortified building site and many demonstrators were arrested. After the arrests, many demonstrations took place in solidarity with those arrested. A few days later, all were released.

On July 19, another demonstration, a march through the woods to the perimeter fence of the building site, turned very ugly with 63 injured, two detained and seven arrested. Among them was Marta, an activist who has reported harassment and humiliation by the police. She was left for four hours with a split lip (despite a police doctor having ordered immediate admission to hospital) while police officers spat at her and insulted her.

Tension is growing in the Susa Valley. Police jeeps carrying officers have been seen close to the No TAV camp in Venaus and other police vehicles are guarding different parts of the valley. No TAV activists believe that the new wave of searches and charges indicate the judiciary’s desire to increase the level of repression. There have been no more arrests but there is now the threat of most serious charges being brought, charges which could lead, without evidence, to long pre-trial detention orders.

As a footnote – reporting of the No TAV struggle, in all its variety, by the mainstream media is extremely biased. By presenting a partial story to the general population, the media (such as La Stampa, a newspaper based in Turin) encourages people to take a particular view, with no alternatives countenanced.

USA: Hanford leaks 150 Kg (330 lbs) of uranium to the Columbia River every year

The troubled Handford facility in NW USA is leaking 330 lbs (~150 Kg) of uranium to the Columbia river per year.

The specific source is the so-called "300 Area", where uranium was milled and plutonium processed in WWII and the Cold War.

→ EneNews.

Fukushima nuclear catastrophe: nuclear fire (video)

What seems to be the remains of reactor 3 developed a fire yesterday or the day before (unsure), as it is very apparent in this security camera video:

Visually it would seem to be reactor number 3 but the automatic translation of a Japanese news site provided by Fukushima Emergency... reads:

According to the leak of TEPCO officials, current, Unit 4 and Unit 3 and Unit 2 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, further, is that the site and its surrounding facilities, nuclear fuel and are beginning to burn.

What seems to imply that all three southern units are burning, although I cannot confirm this yet. 

Source: Fukushima Emergency... (link 1, link 2).

Argentina, Brazil: controversy on Bergoglio's visit

The fascist criminal Pope Bergoglio is visiting his native Argentina this week, as well as nearby Brazil. Believe it or not the Argentine state is wasting USD 82 million in this private religious activity. 

Even more controversial is the the felling of some 300 trees in Niteroi (Brazil) to make room for Christian fanatics to perpetrate virtual human sacrifice (mass), an act denounced as "criminal" by the vice-mayor of this city.

There are already anti-Pope demonstrations called, although it is unclear how many people will attend. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Occitania: Greenpeace breaches security at Tricastin nuclear facility

Tricastin, near Avignon, is one of the most important nuclear facilities on Earth: it is not just a huge nuclear power plant of four reactors, producing some 6% of France's electricity, but also holds one of the main uranium enrichment plant of Europe. It's shadow is so ominous that nearby wine producers recently changed their official denomination from Coteaux du Tricastin to Grignan les Adhemar.

Today activists of Greenpeace breached the security perimeter and deployed a banner at a stairway just besides one of the reactors. Meanwhile from the opposite side of the canal their comrades projected on the reactor images of a luminous crack and the words "Tricastin nuclear accident", later replaced by an image of President Hollande and the legend "President of the catastrophe?"

Tricastin had a very serious accident in July 2008, when 18,000 liters of uranium solution (containing some 75 kg of enriched uranium) were released to the nearby rivers Gaffière and Lauzon, which have been since then restricted for all normal activities. Also that same month a hundred workers were exposed to radioactive particles and another spill was detected lagging from 2005.

According to Fukushima Emergency...:

The 33-year-old plant is the third-oldest in France’s nuclear park. Multiple cracks on the reactor vessel no. 1 and its location in an area at risk of flooding and tremors make it a safety hazard, according to Greenpeace.

Police only appeared more than an hour after the break-in had been executed. All in all the activists were only arrested six hours later, with full deployment of helicopters and a mountain police special team.


Main source: Greenpeace[fr].

Switzerland: radioactive substance found in Lake Biel (water source)

The source is a water discharge by Muehleberg nuclear plant, which is located some 20 km upstream the Aar river, some 13 years ago.

Geologists working in a unrelated project found cesium-137 at levels claimed to be not harmful but still well above what the power plant is allowed to release, especially considering that Lake Biel water is used for human consumption. 

Greenpeace demanded that the Bern Canton prosecutor acts against the culprits. They also raised the matter on how the Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate missed the fault or, very possibly, decided to hide the incident.

The Muehleberg plant is located not far from the Swiss capital Bern. Switzerland has already voted to gradually close all nuclear power plants in the next two decades.

Source: Fox News (via EneNews).


Update: EXSKF has more details: the radioactive releases were not just one but three: mid-1970s, early 1980s and around the year 2000. However even more important were the the atmospheric fallout from Chernobyl (1986) and widespread nuclear testing around 1963:

The full study (open access) is available at Springer Link.

The absolutely mad radiation figures of Fukushima's ongoing 'China syndrome' - growing extremely fast!

William Boardman at Dissident Voice explains that we do not need to know what exactly is a measure such as Bequerel/liter (Bq/l), we just need to know that the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) considers 10 Bq/l the highest safe limit in regular drinking water (60 Bq/l for nuclear plants' drinking water).

Probably because the corium has reached the water table under the collapsed Fukushima Daiichi NPP, the radiation levels are spiking like crazy these days:

On July 5, radiation levels at Fukushima were what passes for “normal,” which means elevated and dangerous, but stable, according to measurements by the owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

On July 8, radiation levels had jumped about 90 times higher, as typically reported. TEPCO had no explanation for the increase.

On July 9, radiation levels were up again from the previous day, but at a slower rate, about 22 per cent. TEPCO still had no explanation.

On July 10, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) issued a statement saying that the NRA strongly suspects the radioactive water is coming from Fukushima’s Reactor #1 and is going into the Pacific.

Then he provides some truly scary TEPCO (official) figures for July 8th:

9,000 becquerels per liter — On July 8, according to TEPCO, the company measured radioactive Cesium-134 at 9,000 becquerels per liter. Since TEPCO characterized this as 90 times higher than on July 5, the implication is that the earlier reading (about 100) was less than twice as toxic as the allowable limit and only 10 times more toxic than drinking water for civilians.

11,000 becquerels per liter – TEPCO’s measurement of Cesium-134 on July 9.

18,000 becquerels per liter — TEPCO measurement of Cesium-137 on July 8.

22,000 becquerels per liter – TEPCO’s measurement of Cesium-137 on July 9.

900,000 becquerels per liter – TEPCO’s measurement of the total radioactivity in the water leaking from Reactor #1. This radiation load includes both Cesium isotopes, as well as Tritium, Strontium and other beta emitters. There are more that 60 radioactive substances that have been identified at the Fukushima site. 

So, from almost safe levels (with many question marks because of the usual TEPCO obscurantism) on July 5th, the radiation being leaked to the Pacific Ocean had jumped a week ago (Jul 8-9) to 90,000 times the safe level. In just few days!

The latest official figure (from July 11th) is mirrored at Fukushima Diary, and is much worse (of course): 150,000,000 Bq/l, i.e. 15 million times the safe level!!!

Let's chew on these amazingly horrifying figures:

1. July 5th: ~100 Bq/l (x10 safe level)
2. July 8th: 900,000 Bq/l (x90,000 safe level: grew an average of almost 30,000 Bq/l per day)
3. July 11th: 150 million Bq/l (x15,000,000 safe level: grew an average of almost 50 million Bq/l per day)
4. If this explosive rhythm continues, today it should be like what?!

I honestly have no idea if and when this "spike" will reach its limit and what will happen afterwards (not declining surely), what I know is that this situation is totally out of control and is absolutely unprecedented. Humankind and all Earth is suffering the most ridiculously crazy radioactive pollution ever. 

And I also know that this is not in the first page of all newspapers as it should. Just by not looking at it the problem is not going to be solved at all! It may not even have any solution but whatever the case it must be talked about because, at the very least, the survivors (if there are any, an I'm beginning to doubt it) must learn from this cruel lesson. 

Japan: massive demo against restarting of nuclear plants

Tokyo:

Source: Fukushima Emergency, what can we do? (also → video).

China: protests succeed against nuclear plant project near Guangzhou

The planned Heshan uranium-processing plant was canceled after hundreds of protesters wearing anti-nuclear t-shirts "walked" through Jiangmen, the prefectural capital. 

"I need life, not nukes", reads the banner

It is the first nuclear energy project canceled by Beijing. However there are fears that the authorities are just trying to win some time and the project may be restarted in the near future.

Environmental concerns seem able to mobilize the citizenry in China: last year a copper industry in Sichuan was canceled after large clashes. 

Source: EXSKF.