USA: outrage and protests against Zimmerman's acquittal, many arrested arbirtrarily

As you probably know, a Cuban-American self-appointed vigilante, George Zimmerman, shot and killed an African-American teenager, Trayvon Martin, in Florida with everything pointing to racist murder, as the boy was unarmed, had not done anything at all and Zimmerman was almost twice his age. The "fault" of Martin was to be black, young and proud, not feeling intimidated by the self-appointed racist paranoid and criminal arrogance of Zimmerman. 

As Trayvon is dead, we only have Zimmerman's account but who can believe a paranoid racist self-appointed street vigilante who had been advised by police to mind his business and go home? Apparently a Florida popular court. 

This evidences that Zimmerman's madness is not only his own but is a social pandemic: Florida and probably much of US society seems to believe that Black people can be murdered "preventively" or just because. More or less what Nazis felt about Jews. 

It is in many aspects a Klu Klux Klan society, where the privileged segments of society: WASPs and assimilated (including fascist-mafioso Cuban-Americans but surely not most other Hispanics) can go on murderous rampage against the marginated ethnicities, such as African-Americans or Mexican immigrants. 

But society is reacting. Thousands have demonstrated in many North American cities against the deeply rooted racist criminal impunity that this sentence consecrates.

While protests were initially peaceful, police has been aggressive and arrested at least 19 people in Los Angeles and New York for "failure to disperse" or "disorderly conduct", in other words: for exerting their right to protest.

A result is that some protests are going slightly violent. In Oakland protesters burned US flags, broke windows, painted graffiti and thrashed a police car.

A 200-strong protest in Miami carried a banner reading: "Don't worry about more riots, worry about more Zimmermans". 

Protests have been reported across the whole federation, although the numbers are still relatively low (hundreds, a few thousands at best). 

Sources: Reuters, USA Today, CBC.

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).

Turkey: protests and repression continue in Antioch, Ankara and Istanbul

From Occupied Taksim:

* TMMOB (Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects) members held large protests against the unlawful budget cuts and de facto disabling of the chamber in Ankara and Istanbul.
* Without any substantial reason the police attacked the protestors in Istiklal Avenue with water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets. Clashes continue in the side streets.
* The people of Antioch started gathering in the Ugur Mumcu square to commemorate the martyrs of the resistance. Antioch was the hometown of Ali Ismail Korkmaz and Abdullah Comert.

Webguerrillero[es] also mentions the repression in Istanbul and provides this image:

It mentions that this particular protest was partly triggered by the decision of Erdogan's government to remove authority in urban planning to the Engineers and Architects Association, which was also involved in protests against the government.

Egyptian military authorities abusing Palestinians

Snowden is not the only one stranded at some airport: dozens of Palestinian families are stuck in Cairo airport unable to reach Palestine by any means, as are many other thousands since Egypt decided to close the Rafah crossing (again).

From Electronic Intifada:

“We spent about four days in a three-meter-wide and ten-meter-long corridor in Cairo international airport. On Monday, when I left back to Tunisia, there were dozens of stranded people like myself, including two families with children, wanting to cross on their way back to Gaza,” Salama Marouf told The Electronic Intifada by phone.

Marouf is now back to Tunisia, after being deported by Egypt and where he had already spent one week attending a media conference.

He is one of the thousands of people affected by Egypt’s ban on Palestinians entering the country in order to return to Gaza, the only route home for the vast majority of the strip’s residents.

The Rafah crossing on the border between Egypt and Gaza, about a six-hour drive from Cairo’s airport, is the main outlet to the outside world for Gaza’s nearly 1.7 million residents, due to Israel’s ongoing land, sea and air blockade of the territory.

Egypt closed the Rafah crossing after the army’s 3 July ouster of elected president Muhammad Morsi, stranding thousands of Palestinians abroad.

“For me personally, I had the chance to get a visa back to Tunisia with the help of the organizers of the conference,” Marouf said. “Many other travelers with whom I was stranded had difficulties getting back to the countries they had arrived from. We recently learned that the Egyptian authorities’ decision is still valid and there is no way for hundreds of Palestinians to go back to Gaza.”

After closing Rafah, Egypt began to deport Gaza residents as they arrived at Cairo airport, and instructed international airlines to deny boarding to Palestinian Authority passport holders on flights bound for Cairo.

The Egyptian provisional authorities blame Hamas of being behind attacks in Sinai Peninsula, which are in fact the making of Bedouins, who have their own grudges with the central Egyptian administration, which has neglected them for decades:

There have been several attacks on Egyptian army posts by militants in the Sinai peninsula since the army takeover, and Egyptian military officials have repeatedly blamed Palestinians and Hamas, which runs the government in Gaza, of involvement. There as been no credible evidence offered to support these allegations.

Lina Atallah and Mohamad Salama Adam, of the independent Egyptian news site Mada Masr, reported on 9 July that military claims of instability in Sinai, used to justify the closure of Rafah, are exaggerated (“Less than a warzone”).

One Egyptian judge, who welcomed the army takeover, even blamed Hamas for the fuel shortage that had hit Egypt in the days before Morsi’s ouster. The judge claimed, in The New York Times on 10 July, that the Morsi government had withheld fuel supplies from Egyptians in order to ship them to Gaza. This claim, also totally unsubstantiated, echoes pervasive anti-Palestinian messaging and rumor-mongering in Egyptian media.

These arbitrary and pro-Zionist measures are particularly painful as they cause family separation in the Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for the majority of Palestinians.

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.