Japan's Nuclear Volcano Erupts

By Mike Whitney

. . . Conditions at the stricken facility have steadily deteriorated and now the station is intermittently spewing lethal amounts of radiation into the atmosphere and around the world. A French nuclear group has warned that children and pregnant mothers should protect themselves from the fallout. According to Euractiv:

"The risks associated with iodine-131 contamination in Europe are no longer "negligible," according to CRIIRAD, a French research body on radioactivity. The NGO is advising pregnant women and infants against "risky behaviour," such as consuming fresh milk or vegetables with large leaves."

By raising the alert-rating to its highest level (7) regulators are conceding that a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects" is taking place.

The situation is getting worse by the day. Japan's government will now insist on the "implementation of planned and extended countermeasures.” In other words, a red alert. The threat to water supplies, food sources, livestock and humans is no longer in doubt.

The media's efforts to protect the nuclear industry by downplaying the scale of the catastrophe have been moderately successful, but the truth is gradually beginning to surface as more people look to alternate sources of information. The disaster has been as ruinous to the media's reputation as it has been to the environment...

...In the meantime, life-threatening levels of toxic radioactive material will be released into the air, water and earth. Small children and the unborn are at greatest risk, but incidents of adult thyroid cancer and other maladies will increase exponentially as well.

The future of the nuclear industry has never been more uncertain, and for good reason.

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American Gulag

U.N. Diplomat Denied Private Meeting Bradley Manning

By Ellen Nakashima

A United Nations diplomat charged with investigating claims of torture said Monday that he is “deeply disappointed and frustrated” that U.S. defense officials have refused his request for an unmonitored visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of passing classified material to WikiLeaks...

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His "leaks" have caused no deaths. The Iraq war caused one million+ deaths, five million + refugees, and totally destroyed a country's infrastructure and history. Bush, Blair, Howard & Obama should be fighting for that "smock" to keep warm at night as they wait on death row.

P.J. Crowley, then the spokesman for the State Department, said the conditions of Manning’s confinement were “counterproductive and stupid” — a comment that angered the White House and prompted Crowley’s resignation.

On Sunday, the New York Review of Books published a letter signed by more than 250 lawyers, professors and authors, including Harvard University constitutional law professor Laurence H. Tribe, that called the conditions of Manning’s confinement “illegal and immoral.” The British government has also raised concerns about the issue."

Internationally the treatment of Brad Manning demonstrates the absurdly hypocritical US accusations of other countries violating human rights. The US govt simply hates the fact that Brad Manning courageously refused to participate in the hiding of US govt lies and misrepresentations to the public. He's an international hero.

Meanwhile Julian Assange, an Australian Citizen, is in detention in England, with little sympathy from the Australian Press and Prime Minister.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3188451....

You can vote for him and for Julian Assange as being among the 100 most influential people in TIME magazine's poll at

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/articl... You might have to click through several candidates before finding Brad and Julian.

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Gaddafi Figures Prominently on the Roadmap for Peace

By Simon Tisdall

The idea that 'brother leader' Gaddafi must be forced out in Libya has scant support beyond London, Washington and Benghazi. Continue

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Libya and Humanitarian War

By Robert Dreyfuss

Two elder American statesman, at least one of which might better be put on trial for war crimes, have come up with an attempt to square the circle by reconciling “realism” and “idealism”—that is, neoconservative interventionism—in regard to “humanitarian” wars. They fail. Continue

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U.S. Doesn't Count Civilians Killed by Drones

By Justin Elliott

While Obama talks of saving civilians in Libya, information about innocents killed by U.S. drones is kept secret. Continue