Julian Assange grills Julia Gillard on live television
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard appears on live Australian television program ''Q & A'' and is surprised with a video question from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Epic win. Clip aired on 14 Mar 2011.
Check out an article from The Age, which reports that ASIO was spying on Mr. Assange -- and then sharing that intelligence with the United States.
Wind currents at 30,000 feet could carry a nuclear cloud across the Pacific Ocean, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission admits that it is ''quite possible'' that radiation could reach the U.S., with California ''monitoring situation closely,'' according to The Daily Mail.
"Fears that America could be hit by the nuclear fallout from the Japan earthquake have dramatically increased as workers prepared to abandon a reactor crippled by the earthquake and tsunami ..." in Fukushima, Japan.
"Right now it's quite possible that there could be some radiation floating over the United States,' said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre, according to The Daily Mail. Other pertinent parts of The Daily Mail report :
"The wind direction for the time being seems to point the (nuclear) pollution towards the Pacific," Andre-Claude Lacoste, of the French Nuclear Safety Authority, told AFP.
The NRC downplayed the threat to Americans, however. Mr McIntyre told the AFP: "We don't think that it would be particularly harmful... even in a worst case scenario."
"We see a very low likelihood, a very low probability that there is any possibility of harmful radiation levels in the United States or in Hawaii or in any other U.S. territories," added an NRC statement.
Read the full report : America on radiation alert: Japan faces world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl as experts warn fallout may reach U.S.
OperationLeakS : Bank of America ''mortgage fraud'' documents have been released
Anonymous, an online activist group, has published documents, which it claims can prove mortgage fraud at Bank of America. With this latest document drop, the new site is already experiencing heavy traffic.
The group had previously released documents obtained from Bank of America and HBGary. The main home page for the new website can be found at : http://bankofamericasuck.com/
The latest publication followed several announcements posted on Twitter.
Since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami, Japan has endured a nuclear crisis that has now lead to two explosions at a nuclear power plant.
Moments ago, a new explosion took place at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, this time in what has been described as its Unit 3 reactor. YouTube video of the new explosion :
This new explosion follows an earlier explosion in the Unit 1 reactor at the same power plant. YouTube video of that explosion :
The twin disaster is prompting fears about radiation prevention and treatment, including any necessary safety measures that would provide for the public health.
The power plant at Fukushima is approximately 150 miles north from Tokyo. The people living closest to the damaged nuclear power plant had already been told to stay indoors and avoid drinking tap water as a result of the Saturday explosion. Evacuees are being taken to shelters. It is not yet known what other nuclear emergency advisories are being made, or preparations being taken, at other large large cities in Japan. Yesterday, it was also reported that authorities were planning for the distribution of Iodine to residents. (Iodine can be taken to prevent the absorption of radiation by the thyroid, reported MSNBC.)
New (Hydrogen) Explosion At Fukushima Number 3 Reactor (March 14)
March 14, 2011: A new explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant at the number 3 reactor.
From an AP Wire Story : "Japan’s chief cabinet secretary says a hydrogen explosion has occurred at Unit 3 of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The blast was similar to an earlier one at a different unit of the facility. AP journalists felt the explosion 30 miles (50 kilometers) away."
Video credit : ProducerMatthew
Third Anniversary Protest of Term Limits Scam : Christine Quinn's Puppet Show and Political Farce
Join us on Sunday, October 23, 2011, at 2 pm, outside City Hall, for a protest to mark the third anniversary of the City Council vote that overturned term limits.
Back on this day in 2008, the New York City Council voted to change the term limits law, thereby allowing Mayor Michael Bloomberg to seek re-election. The action by the City Council, lead by Speaker Christine Quinn, undid the term limits approved by New York City voters, who had previously passed two referendums that had restricted the service of elected politicians to a limit of two four-year terms.
Vote Quinn out of office !
Updated : Early Sunday : 13 March 2013 -- New (Hydrogen) Explosion At Fukushima Number 3 Reactor (March 14)
March 14, 2011: A new explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant at the number 3 reactor.
From an AP Wire Story : "Japan’s chief cabinet secretary says a hydrogen explosion has occurred at Unit 3 of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The blast was similar to an earlier one at a different unit of the facility. AP journalists felt the explosion 30 miles (50 kilometers) away."
Video credit : ProducerMatthew
Early Sunday : 13 March 2013 -- Fears Grow Over Second Nuclear Reaction Explosion in Japan ; Larry Kudlow Shockingly Insensitive Japanese Tragedy Comment ; Disturbing Satellite Photos Show Widespread Tsunami Damage
Worries intensify that another reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is at risk of explosion, due to continued mechanical malfunctions of the cooling system, including pressure relief valves.
News of the worries at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are in addition to problems that have been identified at three other nuclear power stations.
As of yesterday, it had been reported that the integrity of the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant was also in danger of collapse, leading to the possibility of another nuclear crisis. Now, words has been received that two additional nuclear power plants face critical failures : radiation had been detected outside one plant approximately 60 miles from Sendai, and still yet another nuclear plower plant, this one located approximately 75 miles north of Tokyo, was having cooling system problems, The New York Times reported.
The cumulative effect of all these power plant problems could result in additional power blackouts in the nation, which is still yet trying to assess the damage to infrastructure as a result of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
Meanwhile, reaction from conservative CNBC television commentator Larry Kudlow has shocked the conscious of the world. He took to the television to announce that, "We Should Be 'Grateful' That Human Toll From Japan Quake Is 'Worse' Than Economic Toll."
Meanwhile, The New York Times has published disturbing satellite photos of before and after the earthquake-tsunami disaster in Japan.
Arianna Huffington Describes The Lede Blog on The New York Times as an ''Aggregation Blog.''
Social media executive Arianna Huffington went on Twitter this afternoon, and she called the page on The Lede blog dedicated to the Japan disaster a ''great aggregation blog.''
| Re: Lisberg: Mayor Mike Bloomberg 'pedals' his vision of city's future Posted: Mar 13, 2011 6:00 AM  in response to: Guest | |||
 Watch the video footage from four years ago --- too date DEP and DOB cannot get this fixed and ditto for around the corner on St. Marks Place between 2nd Ave. and 1st and all over the city --- why are the streets and below the streets -- a dangerous mess? Ditto for the MTA? Bloomberg and the worst city planner, Amanda the people's Burden, socialite mega-millionaire pushed a reckless, dangerous tsunami of development and by the way --- many if not all of the hideous New New York built could not survive an earthquake like Japan's. DOB did not police the builds as they should have perhaps because of bribes and because there were too many builds too actually police but DOB, DEP, the MTA, Con Ed should have joined us in raised voices that said over and over Safety First!!! Bloomberg, Burden and Christine Quinn supported greed and stupidity first! | |||
Cuomo wants lobbying groups to be required to disclose financial backers
It is about time and sadly too little too late. Albany to City Hall it is a culture of corruption and most lobbyists are pimps! We should get rid of lobbyists and charge a set fee to post what one wants represented for all the people to see. For now it is back room deals, kick-backs, agreements to exclude rival companies from even being considered. Massive conflicts of interest and if we had wire tapping the jails would be filled with politicos and lobbyists!
Two Days After the 8.9 Magnitude Earthquake and Tsunamis, the True Extent of the Disaster in Japan is Yet Unknown.
Rescue teams from various countries, including the United States, Great Britain, and numerous other countries, have set out for Japan, to join what is being described as the ''colossal'' effort to rescue survivors of the tripple tragedies of the earthquake, tsunami, and the resulting nuclear emergencies.
Reports of food shortages in Japan continue to grow, not only as a result of the damage to stores, but to transportation and distribution systems.
One emotional story that demonstrates the large scale loss of life is the often-repeated news report that as many as 10,000 people are reported to be missing in the port town of Minamisanriku, after the tsunami swept away large portions of the town.
Adding to the rescue and recovery efforts is the concern about the nuclear emergency taking place at the Fukushami nuclear power plants. The New York Times is finally catching up to the severity of the nuclear fears.
''The emergency appeared to be the worst involving a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. The developments at two separate nuclear plants prompted the evacuation of more than 200,000 people. Japanese officials said they had also ordered up the largest mobilization of their Self-Defense Forces since World War II to assist in the relief effort.''On Saturday, Japanese officials took the extraordinary step of flooding the crippled No. 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 170 miles north of Tokyo, with seawater in a last-ditch effort to avoid a nuclear meltdown. That came after an explosion caused by hydrogen that tore the outer wall and roof off the building housing the reactor, although the steel containment of the reactor remained in place.
''Then on Sunday, cooling failed at a second reactor — No. 3 — and core melting was presumed at both, said the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. An explosion could also rock the No. 3 reactor, Mr. Edano warned, because of a buildup of hydrogen within the reactor.''
The official death toll, reported to be as low as 800 people, is unrealistic in the face of the evidence of disaster in the coastal town and villages following the dangerous tsunami.
Another example of the underreporting of the extent of the damage is the growing reality that Japan is facing a nuclear emergency. Although more than 200,000 people have been evacuated from danger zones around two atomic facilities in Fukushima, Japanese media and government officials keep insisting that few people have been hospitalised as as result of radiation exposure. And the events at the Fukushima nuclear power plants continue to be irresponsibly described as possible''partial meltdowns,'' in spite of the facts that one nuclear reactor exploded on Saturday and the desperate efforts to cool the damaged nuclear reactor cores at the troubled nuclear power plants with sea water.
Nobody knows what Japan's plans are, in order to keep people safe, should a nuclear meltdown happen.
Meanwhile, the divergence in reporting doesn't end with the fallout of the disaster. Even the size of the earthquake is in dispute. The Associated Press has reported that the Meteorological Agency in Japan upgraded the magnitude of Friday's catastrophic earthquake to 9.0 from its earlier measurement of 8.8. By comparison, the U.S. Geological Survey had measured the earthquake at magnitude 8.9 -- leaving that measurement unchanged as of Sunday.
Youtube.com - IAEA Director General Briefs Member States and Media on Nuclear Safety in Japan
At 17.45 CET on 14 March 2011, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano convened a technical briefing on the consequences of the twin natural disasters for nuclear safety in Japan.
Youtube.com - IAEA Director General's Video Update on Tsunami and Earthquake Emergency Response
[12 March 2011, 2000 CET] - IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano released a YouTube video statement on the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan. Director General Amano noted the current effort to prevent further damage to Unit 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The text portion of the YouTube video indicated that the IAEA was using emergency communication channels to exchange verified, official information between Japan and other IAEA Member States, as well has been coördinating the delivery of international assistance, should Japan or other affected countries request emergency relief.
In violation of due process rights, U.S. Magistrate Theresa Buchanan backs U.S. Department of Justice request for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's friends' online records.
The U.S. Magistrate with judicial power over the U.S. government investigation into WikiLeaks has issued a new court order, which affirms a previous secret court order demanding WikiLeaks-related discovery from user accounts on social media journalism sites, such as Twitter, which have no known connection to WikiLeaks other than for typical online social networking activities, such as ''following.''
The Hon. Buchanan denied legal challenges to her previous court order by prominent owners of Twitter accounts. The magistrate said that U.S. government prosecutors were not seeking the "content of the communications," according to Reuters.
Even though Twitter account owners may follow each other on the website, it does not mean that the account owners are, by association, automatically engaged in questionable online behaviour, some online privacy activists say. There is a freedom of assembly in the United States, whether it be in an assembly hall or over a social media website.
In a further worrisome development, the magistrate also invalidated legal arguments that if Twitter were to provide to prosecutors the Internet Protocol addresses of Twitter account owners, then the act of unreasonable disclosure would constitute a "violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure because it revealed their location," reported Reuters.
"Buchanan originally signed an order for prosecutors seeking about seven months of information from Twitter, including who they communicated with, who they followed, and who followed them. They also requested information about how they logged in, which could identify their location at the time," wrote the Reuters reporter Jeremy Pelofsky.
As reported before, what would the U.S. government be gaining from conducting a court-sanctioned surveillance for this kind of social media account information? Not for nothing, by focusing on subscribers and connection records, among other things, the U.S. government is casting a wide, indiscriminate net into cyberspace, and it is hoping to pull in something -- legal or otherwise, relevant or otherwise, applicable or otherwise. There is no focus to the court order ; its only objectives are to spy and to collect surveillance over both foreigners, over which the U.S. may have no jurisdiction, and citizens, who are being denied due process.
Update : CNN is reporting that spent nuclear fuel rods may have burned in the last disaster to strike the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.
Tokyo (CNN) -- Spent fuel rods containing radioactive material may have burned in Tuesday's fire at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant -- causing a spike in radiation levels, the plant's owner said.
The blaze started Tuesday morning but was later extinguished, Tokyo Electric Power Company said. It was unclear how much radioactive material may have been emitted, or what kind of health threat that could pose.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Tuesday afternoon that radiation readings at the plant's front gate had returned to a level that would not cause "harm to human health."
Japanese officials earlier told the International Atomic Energy Agency that radioactivity was "being released directly into the atmosphere" during the fire, according to a statement from the UN watchdog organization.
Official: ''We see the possibility of a meltdown''
12 March 2011 Update : CNN reports that a nuclear meltdown "may be underway" at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Conflicting reports confuse the real danger that Japan may be facing. An official with Japan's nuclear safety agency announced that a risk of meltdown exists. MIT scientist Jim Walsch said on the CNN news program hosted by Wolf Blitzer that it is too soon to tell if a meltdown is happening. When confronted on live television earlier this evening about the meltdown danger, Japanese Ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki denied that any meltdown was underway.
Image Source : Twitter. Image Date : 12 March 2011 6:08 pm New York Time"There was a concern about this reactor. We have confirmed that there was a blowup but it was not a blowup of reactor nor container. It was a blowup of the outer building so there was no leakage of the radioactive material," Ambassador Fujisaki told Mr. Blitzer.
Following is the initial CNN breaking news brief :
[5:48 p.m. ET, 7:48 a.m. Tokyo] A meltdown may be under way at one of Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear power reactors, an official with Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency told CNN Sunday.
A meltdown is a catastrophic failure of the reactor core, with a potential for widespread radiation release. However, Toshiro Bannai, director of the agency's international affairs office, expressed confidence that efforts to control the crisis would prove successful.
Meanwhile, a second reactor at the same facility failed shortly after 5 a.m. Sunday, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said, according to TV Asahi. The power company said it was having difficulty cooling the reactor and may need to release radioactive steam in order to relieve pressure.
A nuclear disaster, indeed, does loom in Japan, as a second nuclear reactor has failed. So far, the most notable official response by Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been the expansion of the evacuation zone around Fukushima from 10 to 20 kilometers.
In apparent desperation to prevent a nuclear meltdown, Tokyo Electric Power plans to use sea water to cool down the nuclear reactor at the Fukushima power plant. The drastic sea water plan may not be working.
Japanese authorities are in a race against time to secure the integrity of the nuclear reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, following a large explosion earlier today.
The large 8.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday in Japan had caused extensive damaged to the Fukushima power plant, leading to the failure of the reactor's critical cooling system. Prior to the explosion, nuclear engineers had been releasing steam from the cooling system in an emergency effort to relieve pressure.
Although some press is reporting that the release of radiation is decreasing, Yahoo! news is reporting that the attempt to use sea water is a sign that Japanese nuclear authorities are scrambling to find a solution to prevent a major nuclear disaster.
"They are working furiously to find a solution to cool the core," said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Nuclear Policy Program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Nuclear agency officials said Japan was injecting sea water into the core — an indication, Hibbs said, of "how serious the problem is and how the Japanese had to resort to unusual and improvised solutions to cool the reactor core."
In a subsequent report, The New York Times provided clarity about the last-ditch effort to use sea water to cool the nuclear reactor core : ''... ocean water is likely to permanently disable the reactor.''
