Solar Power Portal 23rd Aug 2018 London’s mayor Sadiq Khan has today launched a second round of funding for community energy projects following the success of the first, which
funded the initial stages of 11 solar projects set to be installed by the end of the year.
First mooted a year ago when deputy mayor Shirley Rodrigues sat down with Solar Power Portal in City Hall, the first round of the London Community Energy Fund (LCEF) awarded £150,000 to fund a range
of solar project feasibility and scoping activities.
More than a dozen local environmental groups from coast to coast have organized the Freedom to Breathe Tour, where journalists, activists, and environmental-justice experts will present vulnerable communities with their case for swift and dramatic action on climate change. The 21-day tour, which begins August 25 and will traverse the entirety of the American South and Southwest, will illustrate the current climate realities for communities of color in the nation’s most marginalized places.
“I don’t believe the science is inaccessible,”
The Victims of Climate Change Are Already Here
With a new global summit approaching, communities in the southern United States are calling attention to the disaster scenarios they currently face., VANN R. NEWKIRK II
The Atlantic, AUG 22, 2018 In the new global reality, where each passing year is the hottest on record, the final month of summer foretells calamity. It’s always hot and volatile in the dog days between mid-August and mid-September, but the past few years have dialed those elements up high. Heat waves, droughts, storms, floods, and other extreme events have garnered increasing attention. The largest wildfire in California’s history is now raging almost a year after the previous record holder hit the state. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma ravaged the Gulf Coast and Florida in late August last year. Hurricane Maria became the second-most deadly natural disaster in contemporary American history when it passed over Puerto Rico last September. And the 13th anniversary of the Louisiana landfall of Hurricane Katrina, the largest such storm, is on August 29.Climate change is not a future problem. Climate change is a current problem. Yet the United States—despite this recent history—has pulled back from a number of already insufficient commitments to reversing emissions and global warming. Faced with this vacuum, American nongovernmental organizations and states have stepped forward with campaigns designed to reinvigorate climate activism and policy making. But they have a long way to go, especially in connecting a mainstream climate movement with the majority of the victims of those disasters.
One of the major initiatives put together as President Donald Trump began to withdraw the White House from climate leadership is the Global Climate Action Summit, which will take place in September. “This summit’s happening in San Francisco, California, but it’s something that was requested several years ago by the United Nations,” says Nick Nuttall, the summit’s spokesman. A collective of non-state actors organized the event, Nuttall says, with the goal of “bring[ing] together leaders from state and local governments, business, and citizens from around the world to demonstrate how the tide has turned in the race against climate change.” As Nuttall told me, the general idea is to recapture the energy that preceded the 2015 Paris climate agreement, in which most of the world’s countries agreed to pursue policies that would curb global temperature growth to well under 2 degrees Celsius.*
This year, our national celebration will be held on Wednesday 5 September, with events across the entire country. And we’re hoping to raise more than $300,000 to provide over 30,000 books to remote Indigenous communities nation-wide.
Two of our biggest events will be at Federation Square in the heart of Melbourne and at the Sydney Opera House.
In Melbourne, students from Victorian schools will be joined by our Lifetime Ambassadors and ever-popular authors Andy Griffiths and Anita Heiss, ILF Ambassador Shelley Ware (from the Marngrook Footy Show on NITV), artist/storyteller Gregg Dreise and Aunty Joy Murphy.
The celebrations will feature performances by a group of students from Worawa College, who have just published a new book, Deadly Sisters of Worowa. Anita and Shelley worked with these talented young women to develop their pieces of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Meanwhile, at Sydney Opera House, two more Lifetime Ambassadors, the renowned children’s author Alison Lester and musician Josh Pyke, along with Justine Clarke (of Playschool fame) and Natalie Ahmat (from NITV) will be performing alongside a group of remarkable women from the Binjari community near Katherine in the NT to celebrate their new books.
Last year, these women wrote and illustrated not one, but nine kids’ books in Kriol, their first language. In December the three board books, three picture books and three chapter books were launched to much acclaim in Katherine. Indeed, so popular has Moli det Bigibigi (Molly the Pig) proven, that an animated version of this book, which features a Weetbix-devouring pig, is well underway, with the narration in Binjari Kriol.
At the end of each of these celebrations, there’ll be a GREAT BOOK SWAP, where the students attending, swap a favourite book and make a gold coin donation to help boost the funds that support our literacy programs.
Independent 20th Aug 2018The majority of the British public would like to install solar panels and home energy storage schemes if greater government assistance was available, a new survey has revealed.
In total 62 per cent said they would like to fit solar panels and 60 per cent would install an energy storage device.
An even greater proportion – 71 per cent – would be interested in joining a
community energy scheme if government support was there. Client Earth’s
chief executive James Thornton said: “These results make it clear that the
British public want action on climate change, and urgently. The government
can take the lead on climate quickly by cutting off the hundreds of
millions of pounds in annual subsidies to fossil fuel power stations and
other schemes that are giving carbon-intensive power generation an unfair
advantage over renewables.”
Jeremy Leggett, the founding director of the UK’s largest solar company, Solar Century, and author of The Winning of The Carbon War told The Independent: “Maybe fears about climate change are growing – justifiably – with the heatwave, but solar has been the single most popular energy technology in government surveys of consumer attitudes for a good few years now.”
He added: “The key issue here is that government is missing a huge opportunity, as things stand, to build a strong domestic
solar industry ready for the day – coming soon – when solar is cheaper than
any other form of energy, even in cloudy Britain.
They are backing the wrong horses: nuclear and shale gas, and seem willing actively to suppress solar to make space. They should at least take out a hedged bet on solar, and keep an export tariff for solar generation. As things stand, from next March they intend to allow energy companies to take excess solar electricity generated by solar ‘prosumers’ for free. That is really a
retrograde action, especially when you contrast it with the incentives for
solar generation elsewhere in the world.” https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/solar-panels-government-cuts-funding-british-tesla-a8500051.html
The Department is calling for submissions about the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges and says these will be “one of the factors the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia may take into account when determining broad community support for the Facility.”
The communities of Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula and the Flinders Ranges are being asked to participate in a ballot to gauge community sentiment about the NRWMF proposal, although the results are not binding on Minister Canavan. Many affected people are ineligible to vote, including Traditional Owners who live outside the ballot area.
Minister Canavan is hoping to select a site in October – if you or others who are interested are not eligible to vote in the community you are still able to make a comment and express your view by sending DIIS a submission..
Pay no attention to that radiological disaster behind the curtains https://globalhibakusha.com/page-2/?permalink=hiding-fukushima-behind-the-curtains-in-official-japan The government of Japan is clearly intending that the 2020 Olympics will function as a public relations win in which the image of Japan, and especially of Northern Japan and Fukushima are cleansed of images of radiological contamination. Even as the Fukushima Daiichi site itself, and the traces where the plumes of its explosions deposited fallout throughout the area remain un-remediated, the public perceptions will be remediated. This is typical of the behavior of governments in the developed world that suffer radiological disasters. The disasters themselves are so difficult to clean up, and take decades to even begin the clean up, that money is allocated for extensive public relations efforts. These become tasks that CAN be completed and CAN be considered successful. They function both to advance the public image agenda of the governments, and also deliver a sense of agency when the overall tone of nuclear disaster remediation is one of lacking effective agency.
Towards that end, the Japanese government is planning to integrate Fukushima sites and perceptions into the upcoming Olympics media fest. The journey of the Olympic torch through every prefecture of Japan will begin in Fukushima, a symbolic rebirth intended to facilitate the repopulating of the local communities that were evacuated, many of which have had few returnees since the government has declared them “safe” and cut public funds to those forcibly evacuated.
The government is also planning to hold multiple Olympic events in Fukushima prefecture including baseball and softball events. “Tokyo 2020 is a showcase for the recovery and reconstruction of Japan from the disaster of March 2011, so in many ways we would like to give encouragement to the people, especially in the affected area,”said Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori last March.
This active rebranding of Fukushima as safe involves removing physical reminders of ongoing risk. The central government has recently announced that it will be removing 80% of public radiation monitors from the region. An argument can be made that the presence of these monitors is theatrical in that they only measure external gamma radiation levels, which are not the primary risk to residents (this comes from internalizing radioactive particles that blanketed the region in the fallout of the plumes of the explosions of March 2011), and that positioning these gamma detectors in midair produces low readings since the particles are primarily on the ground. However, they are a tangible, embodied reminder that risk remains.
While there is a clearly an active campaign to rehabilitate the image of the region leading up to the 2020 Olympics, an effort that will no doubt intensify as the event draws near, there is also pushback and resistance in the local and national communities. A recent sculpture unveiled at the JR train station in prefectural capital Fukushima City (about 80km from the Daiichi nuclear site) has been stirring up controversy. A Guardianarticle explained:
“The statue, by Kenji Yanobe, depicts a child dressed in a yellow Hazmat-style suit, with a helmet in one hand and an artistic representation of the sun in the other.
Yanobe said his Sun Child, which was installed by the municipal government after appearing at art exhibitions in Japan and overseas, was intended to express his desire for a nuclear-free world.
The artist said he did not mean to give the impression that local children needed to protect themselves from radiation more than seven years after the Fukushima Daiichi plant became the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
He pointed out that the child was not wearing the helmet and that a monitor on its chest showed radiation levels at ‘000’.”
While some, including the mayor of Fukushima City, have praised the statue for emphasizing a hopeful future for local children, others have criticized the statue for suggesting that there is any danger to local children.
Regardless of how one interprets the sculpture, it does confront people with the fact that things are far from normal in the region. This, in spite of the central government’s strong efforts to implore people not to pay any attention to what is happening behind the curtains it has been raising.
The danger: Police state The nuclear industry has traveled a long, dark way from its claims in the 1950s that it would produce energy too cheap to meter, Keegan said.
With nuclear power plants being retired around the globe, the age of nuclear energy has become the age of nuclear waste, Keegan said. No solution has been found for the safe disposal or storage of the waste, which remains dangerous essentially for eternity.
As the LaSalle proposal suggests, the potential involvement of the military, the secrecy of the transportation routes and the absence of consultation with the public are signs of a police state taking shape, according to Keegan.
“We’ve become a police state in which the transportation of the lethal excrement of the nuclear industry — nuclear waste — is totally secret and takes place under military escort,” said Keegan.
One of the costs: Our civil liberties.
“The industry and the government say, Sorry, we can’t tell you the details,” said Keegan. “We’re protecting you by not telling you.
Exelon Corp. proposes shipping nuclear waste by road through Port Huron, Route is under review by NRC, By Jim Bloch For The Voice, 18 Aug 18
Federal officials are considering approving a highway shipping route for high-level nuclear waste between the LaSalle nuclear reactors in Illinois and the city of Port Huron — and environmental groups are concerned……….
The company is proposing to transport the nine spent fuel rods, weighing about 5 pounds apiece, inside a 24-ton, collision-absorbing, heavily shielded shipping cask to the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, Canada, for testing.
The Chalk River site is about 425 miles northeast-east of Port Huron on the far side of Algonquin Provincial Park.
………Michael Keegan, with Don’t Waste Michigan and the Coalition for a Nuclear-free Great Lakes, uncovered the proposed shipment. Keegan said shipments of high-level liquid nuclear waste from Chalk River through Buffalo to the Savannah River Site, owned by the Department of Energy in South Carolina, are accompanied by military escort. About 75 of the 150 shipments have taken place, Keegan said.
The Yomiuri ShimbunTokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. will strengthen its protections against tsunami at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to prevent water contaminated with high levels of radiation from spilling outside the plant, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
During the decommissioning work, contaminated water has accumulated in the basements of the buildings that house the nuclear reactors. If a tsunami were to hit, this water could flow into the sea.
To prevent water from entering the basements, TEPCO will move up the schedule for work to block openings on the surface and the buildings’ ground floors, as well as add more spots to be blocked.
Mega-quake seen as ‘imminent’
The decision to step up tsunami protections was made after the government’s Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion released a long-term assessment in December on the possibility of a gigantic earthquake along the Chishima Trench on the Pacific Ocean side of Hokkaido.
The assessment warned that a huge earthquake of magnitude 8.8 or greater was “imminent.”
TEPCO calculated that a tsunami striking the Fukushima plant could be as high as 10.3 meters — which is 1.8 meters higher than the elevation of the site where the reactor buildings and other facilities are located — possibly flooding the site.
About 50,000 tons of water contaminated with high concentrations of radioactive substances have accumulated in the basements of the reactor buildings, turbine buildings and other facilities of reactors Nos. 1-4.
Reactors Nos. 1-3 experienced meltdowns after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Reactor No. 4 is adjacent to reactor No. 3.
Water could enter the basements of these buildings through stairways, air vents, perforated pipes and other openings. This would cause the level of contaminated water to rise, which could be taken out to sea by a tsunami’s backwash or other means.
To prepare for another tsunami, TEPCO has already closed several openings by blocking them, welding them shut and other measures. In addition, it has built temporary seawalls, moved emergency power sources to higher ground and taken other actions.
However, it has prioritized preparatory works to begin removing nuclear fuel debris — a mixture of melted fuel and parts of the reactors — and measures to deal with the ever-increasing amount of contaminated water and other issues. Of the 122 openings to reactors Nos. 1-4, only 60 have been blocked.
TEPCO is currently working on blocking seven openings. In response to the headquarters’ assessment, it plans to move up work on 11 openings by about six months and add an extra nine openings to be blocked.
“We decided to speed up our measures based on the assessment that a gigantic earthquake is imminent,” said a TEPCO employee in charge of the matter.Speech
What Is the Probability of a Mega-quake Striking Japan in the Future?, NHK News, 2 July 18, “…….. A government panel has released its latest earthquake probability map, which indicates the likelihood of each area being hit in the coming 3 decades by tremors of 6-minus or above on the Japanese intensity scale of zero to 7 — about the same level as the one that hit Osaka. A member of the panel says an earthquake of 6-minus could strike anywhere in Japan, and urges people to be prepared.
High probability in the Kanto region and along the Pacific coast………. In the Kanto region, the probability of a major quake is highest in Chiba City, at 85 percent. The figure is 82 percent for Yokohama and 81 percent for Mito. Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward is located in an area with 48 percent probability.
In the Tokai region, the probability for Shizuoka is 70 percent and Nagoya is 46 percent.
Beware of massive earthquakes that occur in ocean trenches The panel explains that these areas have high probabilities because massive earthquakes centering in the Chishima Trench, Japan Trench and the Nankai Trough have been occurring at intervals of a few decades to a century.
These earthquakes occur around ocean trenches where the oceanic plate is forced underneath the continental plate.
Huge earthquakes have been occurring especially around the Nankai Trough roughly every 100 years. As the last one took place more than 70 years ago, there is a growing probability the next one will happen soon around the Pacific coast of western Japan……….https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/nhknewsline/backstories/megaquakestriking/
The Nuclear Resister, August 13, 2018 Text of the flyer distributed at the Go West Come West memorial for nuclear victims in Hiroshima, August 6, 2018.
Tokyo as well as Fukushima Is NOT Radiologically Safe. The Government of Japan Is Making Tokyo Olympics “Radiating Fields” of Athletes and Visitors .
We are “Go West Come West,” an organization of evacuees from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and their supporters. On the 73rd anniversary of the United States atomic bombing, we would like to send greetings of solidarity to all visitors to Hiroshima:
Hiroshima is NOT a story of the past
Even the Japanese government’s underestimated data shows that the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster released 168 times the cesium 137 discharged by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which entailed about 168 times the fallout at Hiroshima. Prime-minister Shinzo Abe declared that “with regard to health-related problems (of the Fukushima accident), I (Abe) will state in the most emphatic and unequivocal terms that there have been no problems until now, nor are there any at present, nor will there be in the future.” This claim is tantamount to saying that Hiroshima atomic bombing caused no human health problems. It is totally groundless and false!
Fukushima nuclear disaster is NOT over
The disaster is still unfolding. High doses of radioactive materials are still leaking from the tops and the bottoms of the reactor buildings every moment of every day. Air, water, soil, ocean and food, all essentials for human life, are still severely contaminated by radiation due to this disaster. It is not only Fukushima that is contaminated but also the eastern part of Japan as a whole, including Tokyo.Recently four key figures among the authorities in charge of Fukushima’s reconstruction died relatively young: a former Reconstruction minister, a former Reconstruction Vice-Minister and a former Environment Parliamentary Secretary, and the incumbent Mayor of Namie, Fukushima prefecture. Now it is time that we faced the truth.
What is the Japanese government doing – Cover-up.
The Japanese government, the plant operator (TEPCO) and the mainstream mass-media are using all their power to cover up the true picture of the disaster. They do not want to take any responsibility for it, or to pay any compensation regarding the huge health damage that has been done to the residents.
Gov. returning evacuees to areas with four times the contamination level of the ‘radiological control area’
Any area in nuclear facilities or hospitals etc.where radiation levels can exceed 1.3 milli-sieverts(mSv) in 3 month period (5.2 mSv/year) or 40,000bq/m2 is designated as a ‘radiological control area.’ Access to those areas is strictly controlled. Children are banned from entering and eating or drinking there are prohibited. But the Japanese government is now spurring people to return and live in areas with levels as high as 20mSv/y!
Gov. denying any real health damage induced by the Fukushima disaster
According to the Fukushima Prefectural government, 209 children have been diagnosed with child thyroid cancer.Normally, without irradiation, the incidence is about one in a million per year.But the Japanese government has denied the relationship with irradiation. Radiological exposure, especially internal irradiation, can cause not only cancer or leukemia but also many forms of cell deaths or cell damage in important human organs including blood vessels, heart muscles and brain nerve cells. A sharp increase in cardiac infarctions, heart failures, sudden deaths, strokes, and Alzheimer diseases have been reported since the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Many evacuees have seen some of their family members, friends, relatives, acquaintances falling victim to these catastrophic failures and the number of reported cases is still increasing.
Gov. showcasing Tokyo Olympics 2020 to build up a safe image of Fukushima
The Japanese government is trying to cover up by using the “Olympics”.Tokyo is spending a large amount of money to propagate a new “radiation-safety” myth both domestically and internationally in order to make people believe that Fukushima is now totally safe.
Gov. planning to make athletes and visitors eat Fukushima produce
The government is also setting up the Olympics catering program based on the wide use of Fukushima produce for both athletes and visitors from abroad (Yomiuri Shimbun, July 24.2018).Some games are planned to be held at grounds or facilities located in highly contaminated areas of Fukushima and other prefectures (especially baseball and softball).This will also pose a severe risk to athletes and spectators through inhaling insoluble radioactive particles floating in the air.
Gov. reusing decontamination waste in public works all over Japan
The government’s decontamination efforts have accumulated 22 million tons of heavily radio-contaminated ‘decontamination waste’ in mountains of flexible container bags. The government is now trying to reuse this contaminated soil in public works and spread the radio-contamination all over the country.
Gov. planning to dump tritium-contaminated water to the ocean
TEPCO is about to release more than one million tons of the radioactive-tritium-contaminated water stored in the tanks on the premises of the defunct plant into the ocean. Tritium, radioisotope of hydrogen, is very hazardous to human health because it behaves as hydrogen and can invades any part of the body, affecting DNAs, genomes, proteins, enzymes, fat, and brain tissues. The amount of tritium to be disposed is estimated to be about 1～3 peta becquerels (1015Bq), almost 3～8 times what all the Japanese nuclear power plants released every year before the Fukushima disaster (0.38PBq).If this plan is implemented, serious radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean, fish and marine ecosystems, eventually air and rain, is inevitable.
We must stand up against these dangerous Japanese government policies. Let’s fight back together!
we can say it is highly likely that they would not have had such extreme impacts without global warming. Indeed, all weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.
Climate change and wildfires – how do we know if there is a link? Distinguished Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research,
These burn forests, houses and other structures, displace thousands of people and animals, and cause major disruptions in people’s lives. The huge burden of simply firefighting has become a year-round task costing billions of dollars, let alone the cost of the destruction. The smoke veil can extend hundreds or even thousands of miles, affecting air quality and visibility. To many people, it has become very clear that human-induced climate change plays a major role by greatly increasing the risk of wildfire.
Yet it seems the role of climate change is seldom mentioned in many or even most news stories about the multitude of fires and heat waves. In part this is because the issue of attribution is not usually clear. The argument is that there have always been wildfires, and how can we attribute any particular wildfire to climate change?
As a climate scientist, I can say this is the wrong framing of the problem. Global warming does not cause wildfires. The proximate cause is often human carelessness (cigarette butts, camp fires not extinguished properly, etc.), or natural, from “dry lightning” whereby a thunderstorm produces lightning but little rain. Rather, global warming exacerbates the conditions and raises the risk of wildfire.
Even so, there is huge complexity and variability from one fire to the next, and hence the attribution can become complex. Instead, the way to think about this is from the standpoint of basic science – in this case, physics.
Global warming is happening
To understand the interplay between global warming and wildfires, consider what’s happening to our planet.
The composition of the atmosphere is changing from human activities: There has been over a 40 percent increase in carbon dioxide, mainly from fossil fuel burning since the 1800s, and over half of the increase is since 1985. Other heat-trapping gases (methane, nitrous oxide, etc.) are also increasing in concentration in the atmosphere from human activities. The rates are accelerating, not declining (as hoped for with the Paris agreement).
Heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere act as a blanket and inhibit the infrared radiation – that is, heat from the Earth – from escaping back into space to offset the continual radiation coming from the sun.
As these gases build up, more of this energy, mostly in the form of heat, remains in our atmosphere. The energy raises the temperature of the land, oceans and atmosphere, melts ice, thaws permafrost, and fuels the water cycle through evaporation. Continue reading →
Methane released by thawing permafrost from some Arctic lakes could significantly accelerate climate change, according to a new study. Unlike shallow, gradual thawing of terrestrial permafrost, the abrupt thaw beneath thermokarst lakes is irreversible this century. Even climate models that project only moderate warming this century will have to factor in their emissions, according to the researchers.
A nuclear waste facility site is on the cards for South Australia. The federal government has whittled down its list of potential sites to two communities: Hawker in the Flinders Ranges, and Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula.
But local populations, and the people of South Australia in general, have come out strongly against what they see as a natural disaster coming their way.
Local Indigenous communities have been leading the opposition.
Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Regina McKenzie, a custodian of the Flinders Ranges site, has noted that the site is culturally significant. McKenzie told NITV: “Just in this one spot where they want to put it it’s got 14 different story lines going over it … If they put this waste dump there, that’s robbing us, that’s cultural genocide.”
Yet the federal government is choosing to ignore these views and concerns.
Instead, it is going ahead with a “consultative vote” on August 20, in which 99% of South Australian’s are not allowed to vote. Only people living within a 50-kilometre radius of the proposed sites are allowed to participate. McKenzie said Adnyamathanha people who are currently living away from the area would not be able to vote.
To incentivise voters, the federal government announced in late July that it would provide $31 million in community development funding for whichever town voted to accept the dump.
The government has also made it clear that the vote is non-binding.
“This whole process they’ve been doing, it’s totally flawed”, McKenzie said.
Australia has a looming nuclear waste problem but moving radioactive nuclear waste from one location to another makes no sense. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, headquartered at Lucas Heights, NSW, has the capacity and expertise to store Australia’s national nuclear waste for another three decades.
This time should be used to develop a cohesive plan for phasing out nuclear waste instead of building new waste dumps.
Taking away the land that people have considered sacred for 80,000 years is not closing the gap. And a few million dollars in “community development” is a drop in the ocean compared to the health and social costs that will be incurred if the proposed facility goes ahead.
The government must not be allowed to go ahead with its proposed nuclear waste facility in South Australia.
The Trump administration is pushing hard on its scheme to create a Space Force. Last week Vice President Pence, chairman of a newly reconstituted National Space Council, in a speech at the Pentagon declared: “The time has come to write the next great chapter in the history of our armed forces, to prepare for the next battlefield.”
Pence claimed—falsely: “Our adversaries have transformed space into a warfighting domain already and the United States will not shrink from the challenge.”
Trump, who in June announced he was “directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces,” following Pence’s address Thursday promptly tweeted: “Space Force all the way!”
At the same time, signaling that the Space Force drive will be used politically, the Trump campaign organization sent out an email asking supporters to choose between six Space Force logos that were depicted. “President Trump wants a Space Force—a groundbreaking endeavor for the future of America and the final frontier,” wrote Brad Parscale, campaign manager of “Donald J. Trump for President, 2020.” “To celebrate President Trump’s huge announcement, our campaign will be selling a new line of gear.” He asked backers pick “your favorite logo.”
“THIS IS A CRUCIAL MOMENT WHERE THE PUBLIC MUST STAND AND SAY ‘HELL NO!” SAID BRUCE GAGNON, COORDINATOR OF THE GLOBAL NETWORK AGAINST WEAPONS & NUCLEAR POWER IN SPACE, ON HIS BLOG. “STAR WARS” ISN’T “AFFORDABLE, IS AN INSANE IDEA, AND WOULD VERY LIKELY LEAD TO WW III—THE FINAL WAR,” SAID GAGNON.
THE GLOBAL NETWORK, BASED IN MAINE AND FOUNDED IN 1992, DECIDED AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING, IN JUNE IN OXFORD, UNITED KINGDOM, TO HAVE THE SPACE FORCE SCHEME BE THE TARGET OF ITS “INTERNATIONAL WEEK OF PROTEST TO STOP THE MILITARIZATION OF SPACE.”
IT WILL BE HELD BETWEEN OCTOBER 6 AND 13 WITH PROTESTS AND OTHER ACTIONS AGAINST THE SPACE FORCE PLAN HAPPENING THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONALLY. WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM, U.S. CHAPTER, IS THE CO-SPONSOR.
“HOW IN THE WORLD CAN OUR BANKRUPT NATION AFFORD TO PAY FOR STAR WARS WHICH THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY HAS LONG CLAIMED WOULD BE THE LARGEST INDUSTRIAL PROJECT IN HUMAN HISTORY?” SAID GAGNON. “THE ONLY WAY IS TO COMPLETELY DESTROY SOCIAL PROGRESS—CUT SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, MEDICAID AND WHAT LITTLE IS LEFT OF THE WELFARE PROGRAM. ARE YOU GOING TO STAND FOR THAT?” Continue reading →
Tens of thousands of cleanup workers at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station risk exploitation, UN human rights experts said in a statement on Thursday.
The three experts, who report to the UN Human Rights Council, warned that exposure to radiation remained a major risk for workers handling the cleanup of the plant.
“Workers hired to decontaminate Fukushima reportedly include migrant workers, asylum-seekers and people who are homeless,” said the three: Baskut Tuncak, an expert on hazardous substances, Dainius Puras, an expert on health, and Urmila Bhoola, an expert on contemporary slavery.
“We are deeply concerned about possible exploitation. The workers risk exposure to unhealthy levels of radiation not only because they work in places with high radiation but also because they work for longer hours than they should,” Tuncak told DW after the statement was released.
“They are not sufficiently trained, which exposes them to serious health risks. Also, most of them are economically vulnerable, who may not turn down the job despite hazardous working conditions,” he said.
Tuncak added that the team’s observations were based on “repeated and reliable” reports.
Poor working conditions
TEPCO, the owner of the nuclear power station, which was damaged by a tsunami in 2011, has faced criticism for its treatment of workers involved in the cleanup, which is expected to take decades.
In July, a survey conducted by the Japanese Justice Ministry showed that four construction companies had hired foreign trainees for radioactive decontamination work at the plant.
The survey found that one of the four companies paid only 2,000 yen ($18, €16) per day to the trainees, a fraction of the 6,600 yen provided by the government as a special allowance for decontamination work.
An investigation by Reuters news agency in 2013 also found widespread labor abuses, including workers who said their pay was skimmed.
Japan must act
The UN experts called on Japanese authorities to act urgently to protect the workers. “The government must conduct greater oversights. In cases of wrongdoing, it must prosecute the wrongdoers to set an example for others,” Tuncak said.
“The government must also allow independent experts to visit Fukushima to review the existing work conditions.” Tuncak said Japan has not responded to several of his and other experts’ requests to visit the damaged nuclear station.
More than a dozen local environmental groups from coast to coast have organized the Freedom to Breathe Tour, where journalists, activists, and environmental-justice experts will present vulnerable communities with their case for swift and dramatic action on climate change. The 21-day tour, which begins August 25 and will traverse the entirety of the American South and Southwest, will illustrate the current climate realities for communities of color in the nation’s most marginalized places.
Antinuclear 