Colombian Army Escalates Attack on Communities near Tolemaida Military Base
By Luke Finn | Red Hot Burning Peace | May 14, 2014
The communities of Yucala, Mesa Bajo, and Naranjala are facing a slow and deliberate process of displacement by a key army base used by the U.S. military in Colombia.
Seven military bases in Colombia fall under the U.S.-Colombia Defense Cooperation Agreement, which allows for U.S. Military access to Colombian bases, and one of those is Tolemaida, Cundinamarca. It was originally founded in 1954 by Colombia’s only ever dictator, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (though, of course, Colombia’s list of authoritarian rulers is much longer), and modeled on Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the School of the Americas (now WHINSEC), the infamous training ground for human rights abusers throughout the hemisphere. Like the School of the Americas, Tolemaida was to become primarily a center for training, here in anti-guerrilla (and more recently counter-insurgency) warfare, specifically through its lauded “Curso de Lanceros” course run by U.S. officers and taken by amongst others the armies of the United States, France, and Panama, as well as Colombians. Tolemaida has a permanent presence of U.S. soldiers.
The Tolemaida base is located on a plateau, overlooking the river Sumapaz, an area that amongst other things contains the largest páramo ecosystem in the world, noted even within Colombia for its bio-diversity. Prior to 1954, a community on the plateau, named their settlement “El Mirador,” or “La Mesa.” One man I met, who still remembered those days, told me proudly that they had both a butcher and a soccer field. But then came La Violencia and the new military base, and the communites moved further down the hillside to the veredas of Yucala, Naranjala, and Mesa Bajo, clearing the land and planting their crops.
The community has been in a state of near constant harassment ever since the base’s construction, and even more so as the base looks to expand. For example, back in the 1980’s the military cut electricity to the community. The 150 campesino families affected today, experience three main forms of harassment as part of the Colombian Army’s petty and vindictive campaign.
The first is the economic blockade of the community. The small road (in a state of severe disrepair) up the hillside, turns off the Pan-American highway, and Policía Militar from the base, are posted daily on the road. Thus, the military prevents the community’s access to large amounts of food, materials to repair houses, and materials to prepare their stable fruit crops. Not even a single bag of cement comes through. People are going hungry, there is no money coming into the community, and their houses are falling down around their ears.
The second is the deliberate destruction of community property. On a number of occasions over the last year soldiers have come down from the base and torn up irrigation systems and fruit trees. On June 19, 2013, over 150 fruit trees were uprooted. This carnage is a further attempt to put a stranglehold on the economic life of the community, and starve them out.
The third way, and perhaps the most shocking, is the deliberate contamination of the community’s water, constituting a sort of biological warfare. At the Cueca de la Quebrada Naranjala, the primary water source for the families, the Army has dumped the rubbish from the base, an estimated 30 tons. Battery packs, broken glass, and ceramics, slowly rotting camouflage patterned clothing and bedding, munitions boxes (labeled in English and produced in the United States), and electrical equipment of all sorts litters the fount of the stream, and in rainy season get washed down hill and collect in sodden clumps. The water is visibly toxic green in parts, orange in others, with an oily sheen, and chemical foam. The putrefaction fills your lungs and turns your stomach as you clamber over a mountain of rubbish in one of the most beautiful places in the country.
The charitable could imagine this to be merely neglectful and careless, were it not for the numerous complaints raised by the community, including two (ignored) petitions at local and national level, a new case in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the economic harassment they have faced. But rubbish is still being dumped, and as it stands this seems to be a deliberate attack on the psychological, moral, and physical well being of these fifth generation workers of this land.
The expanding military base (and not to mention the vacationing bogotanos who buy up fincas and build condominiums in the area) has squeezed the communities of Yucala, Naranjala, and Mesa Bajo from both sides in a campaign of outrageous malice. There is no explicit violence in the area, no guerrilla, paramilitary, or bandas criminales, just the economic and environmental violence of the state against this blameless community. The fatuous, meaningless motto of the Colombian Army is “Faith in the Cause”—but if we were to take this at face value, what cause is this? Another slogan is “Yes, there are Heroes in Colombia”—is poisoning wells ever heroic?
Luke Finn is a writer and international accompanier with Fellowship of Reconciliation Peace Presence in Colombia. He graduated from the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester. Follow @Peace_Presence and on Facebook.
Dangerous radioactive contamination found in an Iraqi village
MEMO | May 9, 2014
The official environmental authority in the Iraqi governorate of Missan, which is located 390 kilometres away from Baghdad, has announced the discovery of dangerous radioactive contamination that is attributed to the 2003 US-led war on Iraq.
The director of the general authority for the environment in Missan, Samir Kadim, told the New Arab news website that the authority’s specialised staff found radioactive material, mainly in military equipment and the skeletons of cars, in a small village south of Missan known as Karima.
Kadim explained that the ministry’s authority is cautiously entering the three areas where radioactive material was discovered and is taking strict procedures to remove it.
The village witnessed one of the fiercest battles between the former Iraqi army and the US-led coalition forces in 2003.
“Unfortunately, we have discovered it late, after a number of the village’s residents have been diagnosed with various diseases,” Kadim said.
One of the village’s residents told the New Arab in a phone interview that: “Cancer has spread among us, in addition to birth defects among new-born babies and other diseases that doctors cannot explain.”
“But it is only now that we have discovered the cause – it is the US,” said 45-year-old Abboud Moussa.
Moussa described how a number of Karima’s villagers, including children and his own mother, died as a result of this radioactive material. Doctors diagnosed his mother with skin cancer and bone disease, and they told him that she needed to receive medical treatment abroad, but she died very quickly before she could travel.
According to Missan’s environment authority, Karima is the third place in the governorate where radioactive material has been discovered amid primitive treatment and an American refusal to take responsibility. Any US assistance in handling the radiation would be an acknowledgement of its use of internationally banned weapons in Iraq.
Abdel Khalek Mahmoud, an environmental expert, told the New Arab that “radioactive contamination in Iraq is divided into two types: The first, which is rarely found in Iraq, is high-level radioactivity that can be discovered by electronic devices. The second is low-level radioactivity, which is more difficult to discover. It was caused by the waste of depleted uranium that was used by the US in its 2003 war on Iraq. This is abundantly found and it has caused a lot of lethal damage in the country.”
“We have often said that the reason why thousands of Iraqi soldiers went missing is that their bodies burnt as a result of uranium-saturated bombs. But the country’s new leaders, who were empowered by the US, were not willing to bother the Americans,” Mahmoud added.
Abdel-Aziz Al-Taey for the New Arab
When Our Land is Free, We are Free
By Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor & Jacinta Fay | The Ecologist | May 7, 2014
Right now in Abuja, Nigeria, agribusiness corporations are courting African governments at the Grow Africa Investment Forum to “further accelerate sustainable agricultural growth in Africa”.
That sounds harmless enough, until you know what it really means. Corporate interest in agriculture in Africa has certainly accelerated corporate control of land, seeds and water. But it has done little to support agriculture that will feed the continent.
Rather than support family farming and smallholder agriculture, private sector investment in agriculture has resulted in grabbing land from communities – the land which they farm sustainably and rely on for their survival.
Resisting the corporate bully boys
Communities are resisting this corporate takeover of their land and they are winning. All over Africa people are sending a clear message to their governments: “Stop selling Africa to corporations!” The Jogbahn Clan in Liberia is one such community and here is their story.
The sense of jubilation in Blayahstown, small town in Liberia, is palpable. People come from surrounding villages to join in the celebrations and the town is filled with singing and dancing.
The Jogbahn Clan is celebrating a victory as the President of Liberia has now recognised their right to say no Equatorial Palm Oil (EPO) a British palm oil company grabbing their land.
This is no small feat in a country where over 50% of the land has been given to corporations without the consent of the communities who customarily own the land.
We come from this land – it is ours!
The sense of accomplishment is not lost on Chief Elder Chio Johnson who looks like he hasn’t stopped smiling since he returned from the Clan’s meeting with the President of Liberia – where she committed to support them in protecting their land from being grabbed by EPO.
“Why should a company take away our livelihood?” asked Chio. “We come from this land. Everything our ancestors left us is preserved in the forest, so why should we give up our forest?”
Walking through the forest with Deyeatee Kardor, the Clan’s Chairlady, she picks leaves and describes the different medicines that they can be used for. She recounts how she and her family hid in the forest throughout the Civil War and managed to survive on the plants and fruits growing in the bush.
Though the land bears the scars of the recent past it also represents the Clan’s ancestral home and they would not willingly allow this deep connection to the land to be fractured.
20,000 hectares of community land given away
“The land gives us everything”, Chio says as he surveys the area; the vegetables, wild palm and sugar cane growing all around. Like other rural communities in Liberia they make their livelihood from the land they manage collectively.
The clan are self-sufficient and manage the land sustainably. For the Clan, to lose their land is to lose everything.
The communities’ resistance began in 2012 when EPO began to expand their plantation onto the community land of eleven towns. The Government of Liberia and EPO had signed a concession agreement allowing the company’s plantation to engulf communities’ land amounting to over 20,000 hectares.
Communities all over Liberia are facing the same threat as their lands are given to companies without their consent. As a result conflict between communities and companies has been widespread.
Police and EPO security intimidation
The Clan organised and came together to resist their land being grabbed. Men, women and youth from the affected towns chose representatives to form a core group to lead the resistance.
They met the company and the government several times to object to the company’s expansion. In spite of this towards the end of 2012 EPO began clearing and planting their land, destroying crops and farmland.
In September 2013 EPO began surveying the communities’ land without their consent. When the communities attempted to stop the survey a paramilitary police unit was deployed into the area, and began to run a campaign of harassment and intimidation by both the police and EPO’s security force.
They drove through villages at night flashing their emergency lights and arrived in villages riding on top of vehicles the same way rebel fighters did during the war.
People were also assaulted during a peaceful march and 17 people suffered arbitrary arrest. The Clan Chief was also suspended from his position by the government because he spoke out against the company.
Divide and rule – this time, it failed
Despite these aggressive tactics the community continued resisting. They lodged a complaint to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and presented a petition to the government stating their objections.
“All they have done is try to divide us”, commented Deyeatee. “They offer important people a little money to try to convince them.”
However the community refused to be weakened by division and eventually secured the crucial meeting with the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf where she recognised their right to say ‘no’ to the company.
“The struggle has made us stronger than ever before and we’ve learned a lesson to stay united”, said Anthony Johnson, a youth representative.
“The success is so great as it secures my future and the future of my children to come. I will stay on this land and plant crops for my children so future generations can live off the land.”
But for EPO, it’s business as usual
Despite the President’s commitment EPO has still not recognised that the Clan has said no to their operations. They are operating as if things are business as usual and conducting studies of the Clan’s land in preparation for clearing.
But the Clan are not discouraged and they continue their resistance for the hope of a better future.
Land clearance and other preparatory activities would be unlawful, as they do not respect communities’ right to give or withhold their Free Prior and Informed Consent, which is a requirement provided for under both national and international law.
“We want the government to support us to be self-sufficient on our land instead of giving it to a company who will just take the money and go home”, said Garmondeh Benwon, who suffered assault on the march. ”Instead we can keep the money in Liberia and we can live better lives.”
Organise and resist!
Every year, an area five times the land size of Liberia is grabbed from communities around the world. The Jogbahn Clan show that stopping it is possible when communities stand together, mobilise and resist.
The government has recognised their right to say no – and now EPO and KLK, their majority shareholder, must do the same.
It is a privilege to work in solidarity with the Clan and their drive and resilience has been a constant source of inspiration for everyone in SDI / FoE Liberia.
The Clan are preparing to share the lessons of their struggle and give hope to other communities resisting land-grabbing. And as Deyeatee says:
“I am very happy my land is free – because when our land is free, we’re all free.”
Silas Siakor is a campaigner on Community Rights and the founder of the Sustainable Development Institute/Friends of the Earth, Liberia a national civil society organisation promoting the sustainable and just use of Liberia’s natural resources. Silas has received the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2006, the Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Environmental and Human Rights Activism from The Alexander Soros Foundation in 2012 and TIME Magazine chose him as one of the 2008 Heroes of the Environment.
Jacinta Fay is a community worker and campaigner for the Community Rights and Corporate Governance Programme of the Sustainable Development Institute/Friends of the Earth Liberia which supports communities protect their land and resources and challenges corporate and government actions which threaten community rights. She is also Landgrab Campaigner for Friends of the Earth International which works to challenge landgrabbing, defend community territories and protect land rights. She also campaigns on trade justice, reproductive rights and social justice.
Twitter: Join the conversation on Twitter #stopEPO
Petition: Support the Jogbahn Clan to protect their land and resources: Landgrabbing in Liberia: Tell Equatorial Palm Oil NO means NO!
EPO backgrounder: EPO’s majority shareholder is the Malaysian company KLK, widely known to use child labor and other egregious practices. In turn, US-based investment company Dimensional Fund Advisors holds over $12 million in KLK. DFA also holds over $2.5 billion in companies with significant stakes in the palm oil sector. And DFA is partly owned by Arnold Schwarzenegger – who claims to care a great deal about saving forests. DFA also manages money for a wide range of US clients, from cities’ endowments to pension funds.
George Monbiot in the Guardian lobster pot
By Jonathon Cook | April 8, 2014
Back in February the Guardian quietly announced a deal with the global consumer goods corporation Unilever. Here is the beginning of the Guardian’s press release:
Guardian News and Media today officially launches Guardian Labs – its branded content and innovation agency – which offers brands bold and compelling new ways to tell their stories and engage with influential Guardian audiences. The official launch of the new commercial proposition is marked by the announcement of a pioneering seven-figure partnership with Unilever, centred on the shared values of sustainable living and open storytelling. … The new Unilever partnership will create a bespoke engagement platform to increase awareness of, and foster debate about, sustainability issues, and ultimately encourage people to live more sustainable lives.
I wonder how many of those who proudly declare themselves “Guardian readers” recognised their beloved newspaper in that statement.
In fact, it makes perfect sense for Unilever – a corporation whose brand “positioning” depends on its customers identifying it as a responsible and caring business, despite the evidence to the contrary – to team up with the Guardian, another corporation whose brand positioning has already persuaded most of its customers that it is a responsible and caring business.
Today the Guardian columnist George Monbiot does something pretty brave for a Guardian columnist: he alerts his readers to the existence of this arrangement and gently questions what it represents, in an article bewailing the fact that “corporations have colonised our public life”.
Here is what he says:
I recognise and regret the fact that all newspapers depend for their survival on corporate money (advertising and sponsorship probably account, in most cases, for about 70% of their income). But this, to me, looks like another step down the primrose path. As the environmental campaigner Peter Gerhardt puts it, companies like Unilever “try to stakeholderise every conflict”. By this, I think, he means that they embrace their critics, involving them in a dialogue that is open in the sense that a lobster pot is open, breaking down critical distance and identity until no one knows who they are any more.
It’s worth noting how rarely journalists criticise the nature of the media they work in. Maybe that is not so surprising: few businesses, the media included, are happy having their flaws paraded in public. But what Monbiot has done here is to appear brave while really shrinking from the truth. He criticises the Guardian while really not criticising it.
Monbiot’s implication in the nice metaphor above is that Unilever is the the lobster pot, while the poor Guardian is the lobster in danger of being “stakeholderised”. Or, in another metaphor he uses, the Guardian is the one being led up the primrose path.
What he encourages his readers to infer is that the Guardian is the victim in this deal, being seduced and violated by Unilever. The reality is that Unilever and the Guardian are both wolves in sheep’s clothing. The arrangement works to the benefit of them both. In Monbiot’s reckoning, the Guardian is “public life” being colonised by Unilever. In fact, the Guardian is no more public life than Unilever. Both have colonised the public space, in the interests of maximising profits whatever the consequences to the public good and the planet. (And please, no one try to claim that my argument is refuted by the fact that the Guardian loses money. It is not a charity. Its goal is not to lose money; its goal is to find a strategy, like the one with Unilever, to revive its fortunes in a dying industry.)
In fact, the lobster pot metaphor would be much more apt to describe Monbiot’s relationship with the Guardian. The newspaper has “embraced” him, “breaking down his critical distance and identity until he no longer knows who he is”. Now if he told us that, I really would be cheering him for his honesty.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/08/corporations-public-life-unilever
Russia will not import GMO products – PM Medvedev
RT | April 6, 2014
Russia will not import GMO products, the country’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said, adding that the nation has enough space and resources to produce organic food.
Moscow has no reason to encourage the production of genetically modified products or import them into the country, Medvedev told a congress of deputies from rural settlements on Saturday.
“If the Americans like to eat GMO products, let them eat it then. We don’t need to do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food,” he said.
The prime minister said he ordered widespread monitoring of the agricultural sector. He added that despite rather strict restrictions, a certain amount of GMO products and seeds have made it to the Russian market.
Earlier, agriculture minister Nikolay Fyodorov also stated that Russia should remain free of genetically modified products.
At the end of February, the Russian parliament asked the government to impose a temporary ban on all genetically altered products in Russia.
The State Duma’s Agriculture Committee supported a ban on the registration and trade of genetically modified organisms. It was suggested that until specialists develop a working system of control over the effects of GMOs on humans and the natural environment, the government should impose a moratorium on the breeding and growth of genetically modified plants, animals, and microorganisms.
Earlier this month, MPs of the parliamentary majority United Russia party, together with the ‘For Sovereignty’ parliamentary group, suggested an amendment of the existing law On Safety and Quality of Alimentary Products, with a norm set for the maximum allowed content of transgenic and genetically modified components.
There is currently no limitation on the trade or production of GMO-containing food in Russia. However, when the percentage of GMO exceeds 0.9 percent, the producer must label such goods and warn consumers. Last autumn, the government passed a resolution allowing the listing of genetically modified plants in the Unified State Register. The resolution will come into force in July.
Related articles
- Duma seeks moratorium on GMO production in Russia (rt.com)
- Total ban on GM food production mulled in Russia (rt.com)
- Russian senators seek ban on GMO-containing foodstuffs (en.itar-tass.com)
U.S. Still Cleaning up Chemical Weapons from World War II… in 40 States
By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | March 26, 2014
Bring us your nerve gases, your blister agents, your horrible weapons of warfare, your wretched refuse of World War II… This about sums up the decision of leaders in Washington after World War II when it came time for the American military to dispose of its arsenal of chemical weapons and those belonging to both the countries it fought against and alongside.
After the war’s conclusion, the U.S. government buried thousands of munitions loaded with chemical agents all across the country. These weapons of mass destruction were part of the U.S. arsenal as well as those belonging to ally Britain and enemies Germany and Japan.
The bombs and containers were simply dumped in the ground and buried, without concern for long-term environmental and health consequences.
Alabama is home to the largest of 249 such sites that are located in 40 states. Redstone Arsenal, a longtime U.S. Army base, sits atop miles of hidden trenches containing blister agents, choking agents, blood agents and more.
The 38,000-acre base is surrounded by homes, schools, churches and shopping centers—a city of 200,000 people. It was reported that few residents are aware of the toxic danger lurking nearby.
A disposal team has been working at Redstone since the 1970s trying to locate all of the chemical weaponry that is buried beneath 17 six-mile-long trenches. Once those trenches have all been located, the next step—scheduled to begin in 2019—is to remove the bombs and containers with great care, due to the uncertainty of the weapons’ condition after being held deep underground for decades. No more than six munitions can be safely removed each day.
“Even if we tried to do this as fast as anybody could ever get it done, we’re talking decades and decades,” James Watson, a disposal team member, told the Los Angeles Times. “This stuff is very dangerous to dig up. It’ll hurt you. It will blister you up. If you get that nerve agent on you, it will kill you.”
Redstone’s cleanup is expected to take until at least 2042. The quantity of weapons: 388,000. Between 20,000 and 25,000 of these are intact and, once disturbed, may be volatile.
Alabama has a second site, at former Camp Sibert (pdf) near Huntsville, with at least 13 stockpiles of mustard and phosgene gas.
Another of these sites is located in Spring Valley, Virginia, not far from the White House. Its arsenal features even older chemical munitions—possibly including mustard and arsenic—manufactured during World War I.
Several years ago, a vast supply of munitions from World War II was discovered beneath the grounds of Odyssey Middle School in Orlando, Florida. One of the weapons ignited into flames, but didn’t explode, injuring an Army Corps of Engineers contractor attempting to remove it. More than 200 potentially volatile explosives were found, most under the school and some near homes in the surrounding neighborhood. Home values, which were originally in the $600,000 range, plunged by at least 30%, while banks told homeowners their residences were worthless to lend against.
The U.S. military also dumped a huge volume of chemical weapons off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. There are no plans to clean up those sites, although Congress has authorized studies to look into it.
In 1958, about a hundred miles offshore of California, the SS William Ralston—loaded with more than 300,000 mustard gas bombs and 1,500 one-ton containers of Lewisite, a blistering agent—was scuttled by the U.S military. To this day it sits beneath nearly 14,000 feet of water just outside of San Francisco.
Ralston believes the U.S. task of removing 1,300 tons of secured chemical weapons from Syria for destruction at sea will be something of a breeze compared to the job here at home. “In Syria, you know where the weapons are and what they are, and they can move them with a forklift,” Watson told the Times. “Here, we don’t know. We have to go out there and dig them out of the ground … The sheer mass of this stuff is overwhelming.”
To Learn More:
Deadly Chemical Weapons, Buried and Lost, Lurk Under U.S. Soil (by David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times)
Redstone Arsenal: Yesterday and Today (by Michael Baker, U.S. Army Missile Command)
A Generation of Indiscriminate Dumping (Daily Press) (pdf)
Edinburgh accuses UK of hushing up British nuclear leak on Scottish territory
RT | March 10, 2014
The British government has “disrespected” Scotland by keeping quiet about a nuclear leak at a Scottish-based reactor for two years, believes nationalist minister, Alex Salmond, all at a time of high tensions ahead of a referendum on independence.
Salmond, the Scottish National Party’s First Minister, is now demanding an apology and an explanation from British Prime Minister David Cameron that an internal leak, found all the way back in January 2012 at the Dounreay site in Scotland, which houses an MoD test reactor identical to the one used by the British nuclear submarine fleet, was kept under wraps all this time with little excuse, the Herald Scotland reports.
“This shocking turn of events leaves Philip Hammond with some very serious questions to answer. Not only does it look as if he has misled parliament – he has misled it on the extremely serious matter of nuclear emissions– which will send a shiver down the spine of everyone in Scotland. It has taken nearly two years for the Westminster government to even tell the Scottish government about problems at the nuclear facility – now it looks as if there is a cover up and the full facts are still not known,” the first minister said.
The news that led to full-on accusations of underhanded tactics and so outraged the Scottish parliament was actually revealed unexpectedly. UK defense secretary, Philip Hammond, brought the matter up on Thursday that the oldest British sub, the HMS Vanguard, was in need of having its reactor refueled. He also announced that a small internal leak had been discovered at another identical test reactor, with elevated radioactivity levels in the cooling water.
The Scottish accused Westminster of playing down just how long ago the discovery was made.
Hammond, in defense, said that the reactor had been shut down shortly after “low levels of radioactivity” had been discovered, and that the Independent Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) had been notified.
Scotland’s first minister has written a letter to the British expressing “deep dismay” and is treating it as an insult to Scotland that Westminster had such a lax attitude to communication under the Memorandum of Understanding on Devolution – a 2012 document that sets out principles of communication between the UK government and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
“I recognize that, in reserved areas, your government must decide what it chooses to share with us, but on areas devolved to the Scottish parliament, you have an unarguable responsibility to share information with us,” Salmond wrote, adding that in informing SEPA the MoD had recognized an environmental hazard, yet made a political decision to request that the problem be hushed for security reasons. Sepa, who itself only found out about the issue nine months after the fact, has admitted that it was told to keep the matter on a “strictly need-to-know basis.”
“By ignoring the MOU in this way, your government has completely disrespected the Scottish parliament – and the people of Scotland – as well as the democratic processes of the whole United Kingdom,” Scotland’s first minister continued, calling the perceived lack of interest by Westminster as “underhand as it is disrespectful.”
Salmond finished by saying that the matter will not be tolerated, and demanded three things: that the British government explain immediately why the Scottish government had not been notified in a timely manner, issue an apology and promise that such a thing would never again take place.
The Scottish government also demanded an immediate inquiry into the seriousness of the leak and Britain’s part in the matter.
Hitting back, a Ministry of Defence spokesman tried to explain that SEPA “was not ordered to withhold information from the Scottish government and it is absolutely wrong to suggest otherwise,” adding that SEPA decided on its own not to report the leak.
The British also maintain that the Thursday announcement had to do solely with refueling the HMS Vanguard and not the issue of the Dounreay nuclear leak, which was deemed safe and operational by regulators.
But SEPA has also measured radiation levels and noted that discharges of gases like argon, xenon and krypton increased tenfold from 2011 to 2012. Although it was judged that emissions were within legal limits, the Scottish don’t see this as an excuse for not reporting the matter.
It should be noted that Salmond had also promised voters that an independent Scotland would be nuclear-weapons-free, so the current issue adds to the existing tensions between the two countries regarding Scottish independence from the UK. Scotland, which already has a certain level of legal and financial autonomy from London with various powers devolved to the Scottish parliament, has scheduled a referendum for full independence from the UK on September 18. Salmond insists that Scotland will retain its EU membership if it splits with Britain and will merely have to renegotiate the terms.
But the UK’s foreign minister, William Hague, said in January that Scotland will likely have to reapply to join the EU, and will probably not get anywhere near the same benefits as the UK did. He also believes Scotland will be obliged to accept the euro, and that is something the SNP already said it would not do.
Related articles
Fukushima Three Years On
By JANETTE D. SHERMAN, MD and JOSEPH MANGANO | CounterPunch | March 4, 2014
The third anniversary of the Fukushima meltdown will occur on March 11th.
The news is that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and major Japanese corporations want to re-open the 50 other nuclear power plants that closed when Fukushima blew up, calling them a friendly economic source of cheap power. Will this end up with business as usual?
We were recently asked if we thought that Fukushima could ever be cleaned up. We have to say “no,” based upon what we know of the biology, chemistry and physics of nuclear power and isotopes and the history of nuclear development.
Chernobyl melted down in 1986 and is still releasing radioisotopes. Not all life systems were examined around Chernobyl, but of those that were – wild and domestic animals, birds, insects, plants, fungi, fish, trees, and humans, all were damaged, many permanently, thus what happens to animals and plants with short-term life spans is predictive of those with longer ones. Worldwide, some 985,000 “excess” deaths resulted from the Chernobyl fallout in the first 19 years after the meltdown. In Belarus, north of Chernobyl, which received concentrated fallout; only 20% of children are deemed to be “healthy” although previously 80% were considered well. How can a country function without healthy and productive citizens?
Notable in the U. S. is the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State, built some 70+ years ago by 60,000 laborers, and currently leaching radioisotopes into the Columbia River. DuPont was the original contractor, but since, multiple corporations, each paid mllions of dollars and have yet to contain the leaking radioactivity. Every nuclear site is also a major industrial operation, contaminated not only with radioactive materials, but multiple toxic chemicals, such as solvents and heavy metals.
In 1941, the folk singer, Woody Guthrie was hired by the US government’s Department of the Interior to promote the benefits of building the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams to harness the power of the Columbia River, and to generate electricity and supplement irrigation. It is unlikely that Guthrie learned that the dams were to provide electricity to the Hanford nuclear site, then under construction to produce plutonium for bombs.
He sang:
“Roll on, Columbia roll on
Roll on, Columbia roll on
Your power is turning our darkness to dawn
So roll on Columbia, roll on.”
Rather than turning darkness to dawn, we released nuclear weapons that made the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “Brighter Than a Thousand Suns” – the title of Robert Jungk’s prophetic book.
Guthrie’s monthly salary was $266 – compare that to the yearly $2 billion it is costing taxpayers now.
From 1946 until 1958, the U. S. tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, the most famous of which is Bikini Island. Stillbirths, miscarriages and thyroid gland defects were detected early in the islanders. 60 years on, decontamination of Rongelap, a small island, that lies about 180 km east of Bikini Atoll, continues. Only about 0.15 square kilometer of land has been decontaminated, or just 2 percent of the island’s area, at a cost of $40 million so far. In 1956, the Atomic Energy Commission regarded the Marshall Islands as “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.
Within the U. S., the Nevada Test Site, and countless other sites remain contaminated. The most recently reported releases occurred in Feb. 2014 at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, NM. Detected in the air were of plutonium-239/240 and americium-241, transuranic elements strongly linked to cancer. So far, thirteen federal contract workers have measured levels of internal radioisotope contamination. The release spread contaminants through more than 3,000 feet of tunnels, up a 2150-foot tall exhaust shaft, out into the environment, and to an air monitoring station approximately 3,000 feet northwest of the exhaust shaft.
Fukushima is still leaking large quantities of Cs-137 and Sr-90 into the Pacific Ocean, where all forms of marine life will absorb them – from algae to seaweed, to fish, to sea mammals and ultimately to humans who consume the contaminated sea life.
Our recently released peer-reviewed paper confirms hypothyroidism in newborns in California, whose mothers were pregnant during the early releases from Fukushima. Thyroid abnormalities were detected early in Marshall Islanders and in Belarus residents of Gomel located near Chernobyl. Radioactive iodine, known to interfere with thyroid function entered the U. S. from Fukushima in late March, shortly after the meltdowns, and was carried by dairy products resulting in damage to the unborn.
It takes ten half-lives for an isotope to decay. Sr-90 and Cs-137 have half-lives of approximately 30 years, which means three centuries will occur before the initial releases are gone, and the releases have not stopped.
There are some 26 nuclear reactors in the United States with the same design as those at Fukushima, and they pose a significant risk to people and the environment. The Indian Point Nuclear Power Reactors are located some 35 miles from mid-town Manhattan, with 18 million people living within 50 miles of the site. What would be the environmental, human and economic costs if the Indian Point reactors were to fail?
The current estimated price tag to “clean up” the TEPCO mess at Fukushima is $500 billion (that’s billion, with a “B.” For us who have trouble thinking of such numbers, it will take 96,451 years to spend $10.00 per minute.
Unless we close the existing nuclear power plants and build no new ones, we are destined to repeat the on-going stories of Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and the myriad other sites that have already caused untold environmental, health, social, and economic costs. So will it be sanity or business as usual?
Perhaps it was Albert Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We must choose a sane path away from nuclear energy. Business as usual is Insane.
Janette D. Sherman, M. D. is the author of Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease, and is a specialist in internal medicine and toxicology. She edited the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature, written by A. V. Yablokov, V. B., Nesterenko and A. V. Nesterenko, published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Her primary interest is the prevention of illness through public education. She can be reached at: toxdoc.js@verizon.net and www.janettesherman.com
Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA, is the author of Mad Science (pub. 2012) as well and many articles on the effects of nuclear power. He is an epidemiologist, and Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project and can be reached at: (www.radiation.org).
Footnotes
Jungk, Robert, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, Harcourt, Brace, New York. 369 pp., C. 1956. (worth getting second-hand.)
Mangano, J, Sherman, J., Busby, C. Changes in confirmed plus borderline cases of congenital hypothyroidism in California as a function of environmental fallout from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Open J. of Pediatrics. 2013, 3:370-376 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojped.2013.34067 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojped/)
Mangano, J. J., Sherman, J. D. Elevated airborne beta levels in Pacific/ West Coast U. S. States and trends of hypothyroidism among newborns after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Open J. of Pediatrics, 3:1-9, March 2013
http://wwwscript.org/journal/ojped/
Yablokov, Alexey V., Nesterenko, Vassily B., Nesterenko, Alexey V., Sherman-Nevinger, Janette D., Consulting Editor. Chernobyl – Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Vol 1171, 2009. Available at: orders@grekoprinting.com
Obama builds nuclear legacy
By Kate Colwell | Friends of the Earth | February 19, 2014
WASHINGTON, D.C. – At a press conference today, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz announced finalized government support for constructing the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in almost forty years. The $3.46 billion loan guarantee to Georgia Power and the $3.05 billion loan guarantee to Oglethorpe Power Company will enable the construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Plant Vogtle Nuclear Generating Station near Waynesboro, Ga. The U.S. Department of Energy currently has a July 31, 2014, deadline to finalize a separate loan guarantee for $1.8 billion with a third Vogtle partner, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia.
Below, is a statement of Friends of the Earth’s Nuclear Campaigner Katherine Fuchs, responding to the announcement:
“Fewer than three years have passed since the tragedy at Fukushima demonstrated that nuclear reactors can never be safe. Yet the president and Energy Secretary are ignoring its lessons. The tragedy forced more than 80,000 people from their homes and left an area, roughly the size of Connecticut, uninhabitable. Despite the dangers nuclear reactors pose and the lack of any sustainable solutions for nuclear waste disposal, President Obama’s commitment to nuclear energy succeeds only in condemning future generations to live with the fallout.
By insuring reactors American taxpayers are forced to underwrite a financial gamble that Wall Street deems too risky. A high rate of construction cancellation and history of massive cost overruns have caused Wall Street investors to shun reactor projects. Nuclear reactors are too risky to finance, too slow to build and too dangerous to be part of a meaningful energy solution.”
Related article
Nuclear Site Safety Official Fired After Her Repeated Warnings of Safety Problems
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | February 21, 2014
Yet another official at the nation’s most challenging environmental cleanup project has been fired after raising serious safety concerns.
This time it was Donna Busche, the head of nuclear safety for cleaning up the former nuclear weapons site at Hanford, Washington, which sits atop 53 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks.
Busche, a nuclear engineer who oversaw a staff of 140, was fired by her employer, URS Corp., one of the federal contractors hired by the U.S. Department of Energy to resolve the Hanford mess.
“The Energy Department’s overall safety culture is broken and all they are doing now is sitting idly by,” Busche told the Los Angeles Times.
Her termination came after she repeatedly warned company executives that the radioactive-waste solution being used was flawed and posed safety problems.
URS denied that her firing had anything to do with her safety complaints, saying she was let go for “unprofessional conduct.”
Busche was the second senior project official fired at Hanford. A third official resigned, after citing safety-related concerns with the $13.4-billion construction project.
Walter Tamosaitis, who headed research at URS, was fired in 2013 after he questioned whether the company’s decision to mix the waste in large tanks might result in a buildup of hydrogen gas, which can explode.
In addition, Gary Brunson, the Energy Department’s engineering division director at Hanford, quit after warning of nearly three-dozen problems not being addressed by another site contractor, Bechtel.
But the worries don’t stop there. The Energy Department’s inspector general and other federal investigators have also warned of management and safety issues at Hanford. With 150 aging nuclear-waste tanks, many of which are leaking, it’s the largest cleanup project leftover from the Cold War.
To Learn More:
Official Who Raised Safety Concerns at Hanford Nuclear Site is Fired (by Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times)
Whistle-Blower Fired From Hanford Nuclear Site (by Nicholas K. Geranios, Associated Press)
As Hanford Radioactive Leak Continues, Clean-Up Contractor Pays Fraud Penalty (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Six Underground Tanks Leaking Nuclear Waste in Washington State (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)
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Film Review
Cover-Up Is an Indispensable Chronicle of American Overreach
New documentary about journalist Seymour Hersh uncovers the pathologies of US imperialism
By Leon Hadar | The American Conservative | January 2, 2026
Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s new film Cover-Up is more than a documentary about the legendary journalist Seymour Hersh—it is an inadvertent chronicle of the pathologies of American empire. As a foreign policy analyst who has long advocated for realist restraint in U.S. international engagement, I find this film both vindicating and deeply troubling. It documents, through one journalist’s extraordinary career, the pattern of deception, overreach, and institutional rot that has characterized American power projection for over half a century.
What makes Hersh’s reporting invaluable from a realist perspective is that it consistently exposed the gap between stated intentions and actual policy outcomes. CIA domestic surveillance, the My Lai massacre, the secret bombing of Cambodia, Abu Ghraib—each revelation demonstrated what realists have long understood: that idealistic rhetoric about spreading democracy and protecting human rights often masks cruder calculations of power, and that unchecked executive authority in foreign affairs inevitably leads to abuse.
The documentary’s treatment of Hersh’s Cambodia reporting is particularly instructive. Here was a case where the American government conducted a massive bombing campaign against a neutral country, killing tens of thousands of civilians, while lying to Congress and the public. This wasn’t an aberration, but the logical consequence of what happens when a superpower faces no effective constraints on its use of force abroad. In exposing the scandal, Hersh also documented how empire actually functions when stripped of its legitimating myths. … continue
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