MUST-READ!
– Fukushima: Radiation, Politics and Public Relations (Veterans Today, Nov 11, 2012):
by Leuren Moret, Dr. Majia Nadesan and Jim Fetzer (with Major William Fox)
On Friday, 30 March 2012, Dr. Majia Nadesan and Leuren Moret appeared as the featured guests on “The Real Deal” hosted by Jim Fetzer to discuss the radiation effects of the Fukushima disaster and the fashion in which it has been covered up both by the Japanese and by the American governments. Nadesan, PhD., a professor of communication in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University, has studied Fukushima extensively. Moret is an independent geoscientist who has done expert studies on the Fukushima disaster, radiation problems around the world including depleted uranium. What they had to tell us smacks of politics and public relations and is profoundly disturbing. This is Part I of the original interview, which can be heard here:
Introduction by Major William Fox
NOTE: I invited Major William Fox (former USMCR commissioned officer), who was instrumental in arranging this interview to prepare an introduction. His key point is that the first line of defense to handle any major crisis is accurate information. Tragically, not only has accurate information been deliberately withheld from Americans regarding the Fukushima crisis, but they have also been steadily fed disinformation. He continues:
Dr. Majia Nadesan reports in the interview below that on 16 December 2011, The Wall Street Journal wrote that the total radiation dispersed over a broad swath of northern Japan was 15% of what was released from Chernobyl. In contrast, the summary report of the RSMC [Regional Specialized Meteorological Center] Beijing on the Fukushima nuclear accident emergency stated that the total amount of radiation released from Fukushima in the first five days was equal to Chernobyl. In addition, scientists found radio-Xenon levels in the Pacific Northwest at 450,000 times average concentration levels in the weeks following Fukushima — not to mention other dangerous concentrations of radio-nuclides well beyond what any Western Europe countries ever experienced following Chernobyl.
Then we learn from Dr. Nadesan that, “…People in the Pacific Northwest actually inhaled between five and ten hot particles a day in the first month of the disaster — it could take 20 years for cancer to develop or it could take ten years or thirty years. But the significance is that the Western Press in the United States and in Europe as well as in Japan has trivialized the amount of radiation released by using terms like `no acute effects’, `no immediate health effect’…” Dr. Nadesan also comments:
“…If you look at the recently released NRC transcripts, they were projecting the dose to the thyroid of a one year old child, and they had different calculations. But one of their calculations was a thyroid dose of 30 millisieverts just from iodine to the thyroid of a one year old child annualized. And 30 millisieverts is a lot of radiation… clearly there was no effort to make any kind of recommendations to the public to keep their kids inside or to stop drinking milk or dairy, which was found in the wake of Chernobyl to be the primary vector by which small children were exposed to iodine is through milk. And that’s disturbing.”
Leuren Moret delves into the broader social and political context behind this abusive behavior by the establishment. Rather than resolve public issues through honest fact-finding and open dialog, powerful elements within the government and their corporate media allies have been ratcheting up the mechanisms of police state repression. The implication is that as ever increasing percentages of the U.S. population sicken from Fukushima radiation — over and above existing levels suffering from accumulations of toxic vaccines, Corexit, chemtrails, aerosolized depleted uranium, GMO food, fluoridated water, and myriad other poisons in our environment — a de facto police state intends to enslave and kill Americans as a first resort rather than help them out of their predicament.
As a further example of a malicious establishment in action, Ms. Moret points out that a day prior to when the Fukushima cloud was first expected to arrive over the San Francisco Bay area on 17 March 2011, letters went out to every medical doctor in every county in California from the Surgeon General warning doctors not to give iodine to patients who were concerned about radiation exposure from Fukushima. Ms. Moret notes: “The excuse was that it would damage their hearts or make them sick or this or that. Now I can’t imagine health officials doing that. It is so absolutely irresponsible and just malicious because the health effects of even low levels of radiation are very well known.”
One can find plenty of support for Ms. Moret’s position among many health professionals. As one example, Fukushima Meltdown & Modern Radiation: Protecting Ourselves and Future Generations (2011) by Dr. John Apsley states that people should saturate their thyroids in any fallout environment with iodine to pre-empt build-up of the radioactive version in this critical organ. Furthermore, most Americans are very iodine deficient. It is very hard to overdose with certain types of iodine treatments such as rubbing it on the skin. In certain cases involving iodine sensitivity, Dr. Apsley writes, “When high levels of iodine are taken too abruptly, toxins may exit `en masse’ so quickly that temporary skin rashes, minor hair loss, congestion, scratchy throat, or very rarely, even asthmatic reactions may arise” (page 93). The implication is that saturating the body with iodine even without any fallout threat can be therapeutic to help chase out “bad halogens” like chlorine, fluoride, and bromide.
The article, “Magnesium & Calcium Protect DNA From Radiation“, by Dr. Mark Sircus, dated 5 November 2011, notes that “Dr. David Brownstein and I have made a similar universal call for iodine in that the nutritive type of iodine protects the thyroid from the radioactive type of iodine. One has to be a fool not to be taking iodine because 95 percent of us are deficient in iodine, thus making our thyroids sitting ducks (sponges) for the radioactive type. A thyroid deficient in iodine becomes like an intense vacuum cleaner hungry for anything even looking like a halogen (fluoride, bromide, chlorine, rocket fuel). Because so much blood goes through the thyroid it has a fantastic capacity to concentrate radioactive iodine and these halogens no matter how low the concentration is of them in the blood.”
If we can go by the medical opinions expressed by Dr. Apsley and Dr. Sircus, what “honest and reasonable man” in his right mind would deliberately cause Americans to remain iodine deficient as they are getting plastered with the radioactive iodine and other toxic halogens from fallout? Once one factors in all the poisons quietly foisted on the American public, and then combines this with patterns of disinformation promulgated by major media, and then on top of all this weighs in myriad official actions that deliberately deny to the public the very civil defense-related resources that they have already paid for with their tax dollars, one can easily draw the conclusion that the American public has become the victim of a stealth war being waged against it by malevolent special interests.
Transcript: “The Real Deal” Radio Show (29 March 2012)
Host: Jim Fetzer: James Fetzer Ph.D.
Guests: Dr. Majia Nadesan, Ph.D., and Leuren Moret: Leuren Moret, B.S., M.A., PhD (ABD)
Hour One
Dr. James Fetzer: This is Jim Fetzer, your host on “The Real Deal” with another very special event. Two experts on radiation, contamination, Fukushima and related issues. One, Leuren Moret who has been a guest on this show numerous times, who is an independent geoscientist and who has done remarkable research around the world, articles that have been published in Veterans Today and elsewhere. The second joining us is Majia Nadesan from Arizona State University who has recently published “Lessons From Fukushima” as a participant in a workshop about what we have to learn here. I am simply so pleased to have you both. Majia, welcome to “The Real Deal”.
Dr. Majia Nadesan: Thank you.
Dr. Fetzer: Leuren, it is such a pleasure to have you back.
Leuren Moret: Thank you so much.
Dr. Fetzer: And Leuren, why don’t we begin with you. There are some rather startling developments going on here in the United States and elsewhere that are very bothersome as a kind of prelude to turning to Fukushima and the stunning results that we are getting from that event.
L. Moret: Well, it’s the militarization of the United States and just criminalization of the public in subtle and not so subtle ways. And I know that I am doing interviews in Mexico on HAARP, and the tectonic warfare application where they can trigger earthquakes with these huge HAARP antennas that are located all over the world. This is destabilizing Mexico. And there are also a lot of drug wars and mass murders that are happening too in Mexico. And this is all part of the North American unification of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, and also the NAFTA highway, which is part of that. Its actually drug routes. And what we have been seeing in California, there are a lot of videotapes, video clips that people have put on the Internet, and if you google “massive military equipment being moved” or titles like that, you’ll find them. And in May and July, in November and December, in January and even February, there are clips of trains, railroad trains, Union Pacific for example, carrying huge amounts of military equipment. Primarily what I have seen are Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Strykers. Those are probably coming from Ft. Lewis in Tacoma, Washington, and they seem to be going north and south. And a lot of them are going down near Barstow to Ft. Irwin. The army has a training base there out in the desert. And then the Marine Corps also has one near by [NOTE: Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow]. Also 29 Palms is there. And what we are seeing is soldiers, busloads of soldiers, some are in jungle fatigues, some are in desert fatigues, and some are in sort of blue-colored camouflage, and there have also been U.N. vehicles that are painted white reported on these trains of massive military equipment, so the number of trains and the amount of equipment being moved and the amount of men being trained is much greater than has normally been happening in the past years, although it has happened before. So I think that a lot of people suspect or believe that this increase in militarization and fusion of police departments in urban areas is just more movement towards regionalization and unification of North America. And then of course adding to it or facilitating it or enabling it, promoting it maybe, is that the huge amount of radiation that is coming from Fukushima, and what we are going to talk about today is an update on the news there, because this will greatly, greatly, greatly affect America, especially if any of those reactors have any further spent fuel pool collapses or more problems with emissions from the ruined reactors.
Dr. Fetzer: Yes, and of course I was born and grew up in Southern California. I have many friends there. My son lives in Seattle with his fiance [now wife], and I have many friends there. And of course, in between, I mean this is a staggering proportion of the American population, and it is extremely disturbing. I would just add a couple of notes to what you have been observing, Leuren, which include that the Department of Homeland Security has requisitioned 450 million rounds of .40 [S & W] caliber ammunition and another 175 million rounds of .223 high velocity rifle ammunition. There are only around 380 million citizens of the United States, so this is more than a bullet for every man, woman, and child. I can’t imagine what they would need that staggering quantity of ammunition (for). And of course we know repeated reports about these detention facilities where they are actually actively recruiting for personnel to man them. Obama’s recent signing of executive orders that seem to place the control of the country really at his disposal are equally disturbing. I am very apprehensive that the whole idea of the North American Union of consolidated Mexico, United States, and Canada into one entity is going forward in spite of the fact that there would be overwhelming popular democratic resistance which is a further sign that we may simply no longer be a constitutional republic. It is very, very troubling. But having the opportunity to have you and Majia here, let’s pursue the Fukushima aspect of this, and place the other on the burner, but to return to on another occasion. Majia, you recently participated in this work shop about what we have to derive from Fukushima, and I would be very pleased if you could give an outline, an introduction to your research and what you have discovered in terms of lessons from Fukushima.
Dr. Nadesan: OK, well, I am a communications studies scholar, so I don’t know a lot about the engineering of nuclear plants, but I do know quite a bit about media strategies, tactics, ways of representing information. I teach propaganda in a class on public relations, so I know quite a bit about how that works.
Dr. Fetzer: Well Majia, I think this is fabulous, because I have not only featured Leuren before, but also Christopher Busby before, and we have gotten into some of those other questions, but what you are offering is a fresh approach that I think is going to be extraordinarily revealing because the way this whole thing is being marketed and managed, as it were, of public relations and damage control is an extremely serious aspect of this, and one on which I think illumination needs to be shed, so I am very, very glad you are doing this.
Dr. Nadesan: Well, in a democracy, of course transparency is a prerequisite for a democracy to function as such. And also in democracies the health and welfare of populations should be the preeminent goal of government. And in my analysis of the media coverage of Fukushima and the crisis communication by the Canadian government, the Japanese government, and the U.S. government, as well as European governments, I think it is clear that these two objectives of democratic governments, that is, both transparency and the prioritization of human health, have not in fact been achieved or prioritized, and I have a lot of concerns about complete lack of transparency in crisis communication both with the Japanese government and the American, and also simply outright censorship and propaganda in mainstream media. And I don’t just say this glibly. I have evidence that supports these claims.
Dr. Fetzer: Yes, yes, yes, well please do proceed. I want to hear more.
Dr. Nadesan: OK, well, did you post the “Lessons of Fukushima” PowerPoint that I sent? If it is not at your site, I will provide some links where people can go in and look at the PowerPoints, and the PowerPoints contain the evidence. But in the first instance with crisis communication on the part of the Japanese and American governments, there was an initial effort to trivialize the scale of the disaster, and as a consequence of that trivialization by government, populations in Japan and also in the U.S. West Coast were not warned of the radiation releases and they were not warned of the severity of the disaster. For example, the Japanese radiation dispersion data, the SPEEDI data, was censored. Japanese officials resisted releasing important data about dispersion because they were afraid of panicking residents, and I think that there is good reason to believe that people are more likely to be panicked when they think their government is lying to them as opposed to when they have a realistic assessment of what the risks are, because then they can make educated decisions. And so what really produces panic is a lack of knowledge and a lack of trust. And unfortunately the Japanese government failed to uphold the public trust. They failed to expand the evacuation zone adequately, because they did in fact censor the SPEEDI data. They tried to shut down monitoring equipment to reduce fears about contamination. They used a variety of strategies to manipulate the data that was released, for example if the data on the fallout on the ground was too high, they would simply raise the radiation monitor higher in the air, where the concentrations of fallout would be less. They wouldn’t include all radionuclides. They would only look at iodine or cesium and they wouldn’t look at the presence of strontium or plutonium or other radionuclides. So across the board the crisis communication failed to lead to safe, adequate evacuations, and also there was an inability to distribute potassium iodide as a consequence of lack of knowledge about the severity of the crisis.
Dr. Fetzer: Majia, part of what you are telling me seems to be that they were filtering or selecting the evidence they were willing to present to the public and eliminating the rest, which of course violates a basic principle of scientific reasoning known as the requirement of total evidence. You are of course correctly observing in the absence of accurate information about what actually is taking place it is impossible to know what policies are the best ones to adopt in the public interest. So it appears to me we have a two-sided sham or scheme or shell game. They are not only not revealing the accurate scientific data, but they are then based upon the inaccurate reports offering solutions or recommendations for action or behavior modification that are actually inappropriate for the situation they are really in.
Dr. Nadesan: Exactly, and the same situation happened with the crisis communication by the U.S. and Canadian governments as well. There was the statement made that of course that no harmful levels of radiation would reach the United States, and in fact that is not true. We have EPA data that shows that uranium was detected, plutonium was detected, before the EPA stopped reporting. Now the EPA is no longer reporting all the RadNet data for the cities across the United States, but before they stopped reporting there were months and months of highly elevated radiation levels. A radiological expert that I have had communication with used the EPA’s data and found that Phoenix, for example, just at their radiation monitoring sites had 20% higher levels of radiation in 2011 than in 2010. The same kinds of analysis have been done for Oregon have also found elevated levels. So the government’s own data shows in fact that people were exposed to elevated levels of fallout. Cesium is not something that is found in nature, and it is not good for us, yet no precautions were advised. Children were not asked to stay inside during recess. There were absolutely no precautions. And again I think that is an indication of a lack of concern of the public welfare as a goal of government.
Regional Increases in Mortality: See Robert Soltysik http://optimalprediction.com/wp/fukushima-research/
Dr. Fetzer: Wouldn’t you infer also Majia that what is going on here is the government is suppressing information so as not to alarm the public, the problem being that this is an expensive public health — I mean life and well-being are at risk here — I mean if the government has an obligation to promote the general welfare, which I take to be one of its fundamental roles, then it is seriously abusing its responsibility here. I am reminded when Christie Whitman as head of the EPA announced on 9/11 that the air there, in New York City, was safe to breath when it was full of all kinds of heavy metals and toxic substances, arsenic, asbestos, and a host of others including from the computers that had been destroyed. It was completely and totally false that she made such a statement. It was deemed to be politically expedient, but it was at the great risk to the lives and health of the first responders where we now have an epidemic of the kinds of consequences in terms of cancer, leukemia, and multiple manifestations one would expect from exposure to highly toxic and hazardous materials in the atmosphere. This is just utterly shameful, and the government, of course, has put off and put off any acknowledgment in order apparently to forestall having to provide any benefits to those who are placed in jeopardy. I mean it is a complete disgrace as I see it and an abdication of the government’s responsibility to the people.
Dr. Nadesan: And we saw the same scenario in the BP Oil Spill. There have been subsequent analyses of the tissues of fish that the EPA deemed safe to consume and shellfish in particular were very highly contaminated and those products made it to market and people consumed them, and yet subsequent analysis, because the FDA had simply relied on taste tests, have shown that those products were not safe. [SOURCE ADDED: Seafood Contamination after the BP Gulf Oil Spill and Risks to Vulnerable Populations: A Critique of the FDA Risk Assessment Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, Karen K. Wong, Gina M. Solomon Environ Health Perspect. 2012 February; 120(2): 157–161. Published online 2011 October 12. doi: 10.1289/ehp.1103695 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/?term=10.1289/ehp.1103695]
Dr. Fetzer: Majia, how could they rely on taste tests, for God’s sake! I mean, you know all kinds of poisons can taste good.
Dr. Nadesan: And smell –
Dr. Fetzer: You know aspartame is widely used, and aspartame is well known to cause cancer. This seems to me to be yet another scandal impugning the integrity of our own government.
Dr. Nadesan: Well certainly the regulatory structure has been captured by the revolving door and by political appointees. I know that there are many scientists who work in the EPA and FDA who are committed to public safety, but unfortunately the agencies have been politicized, and the revolving door has corrupted their ability to fulfill their mission.
Dr. Fetzer: Listening to these stories, to me it is gut-wrenching. I mean I literally become nauseated at the abdication of responsibility of the American government. I mean those who find it far-fetched to imagine that the government could have been involved, for example, in the atrocities of 9/11, I think, should really consider what we are learning about the government’s cavalier attitude toward the life and welfare of the American people. I mean it appears as though we are expendable. I don’t quite grasp for whose benefit, you know, the loss of a major proportion of the American population would serve. But it seems as though it has been allowed to come to pass without taking any action whatsoever. No preventative steps, not even informing the public of the risks if confronts.
L. Moret: Could I make a comment?
Dr. Fetzer: Sure.
L. Moret: There is a book you might like to read Majia, or people in the audience. It is called Fire in the Rain: The Democratic Consequences of Chernobylby Peter Gould, and he was the Evan Pugh Professor of Geography at Penn State. This was published by John Hopkins Press in 1990. And it is very interesting because we can compare what is happening today surrounding Fukushima in terms of deception, and basically “deny and delay” is the main mechanism. They keep shoving the disaster off the chart. And in this book it has a figure which is called the relationship between the degree to which a country is dependant on atomic power and the degree to which information about Chernobyl’s effects were manipulated or suppressed. And what is interesting is the countries who were least dependent on atomic power were the least manipulative with the information and the developments. And those countries were Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Austria, and Ireland. And contrast that to the countries or the governments that did the most manipulation and suppression of information and those were Belgium and France, which are very, very, very dependent. In fact France is 75% dependent on nuclear energy compared to the U.S. which is maybe, I think it is 20% or something like that. So that is one of the explanations. It is the profits and the finances that really have a lot to do with what they report and don’t report to benefit and protect their own industry. And then also General Electric and Westinghouse own ABC and NBC so they are the biggest builders and designers of nuclear power plants in the world. So we are not going to see it on TV in the U.S.
Dr. Fetzer: Well I think those are all astute points and I would relate them to Iran as well where you know the primary concern with Iran appears to have nothing to do with nuclear weapons. It does appear to have a lot to do with nuclear energy, however. I mean the Iranian motto is “Nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none” because they are developing fuel rods that they can market in competition with the American nuclear energy industry at a competitive price and take away the market, whereas American corporations and industries like to have monopolies. I mean we have this mythology of the free market, but it is virtually nonexistent in the United States today. And the combination of the Iranian threat to undermine the American nuclear fuel rod process by undercutting it for the rest of the world is I think a major factor, plus of course Iran having gone to an oil bourse where they are no longer trading oil in petrodollars but have moved to multiple currencies. This of course was a pattern we saw with Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, which of course incurred the wrath of the United States where our intervention in Afghanistan appears to have a tremendous amount to do with the world’s largest deposits of lithium that are apparently located there, where lithium can be used for components in computers and in some nuclear weapons and apparently for new processes to convert water into energy in a dramatic fashion that can hugely reduce the cost of energy and could benefit the whole world. But it appears to be something that the United States is seeking to dominate, contain, and no doubt for the benefit of private corporations. I mean the situation is really outrageous. Majia, let’s get back to some of your observations about the PR aspects of this which I am sure are highly complementary with the political that Leuren has been addressing just now. Would you like to add a few words before we take our first break?
Dr. Nadesan: Well I think that she is just absolutely right about General Electric and Westinghouse and the corporate control of the mass media. And so that whenever the mass media does report about Fukushima, it is always represented as posing no health risk, even in terms of framing the consequences for the people in Japan. There was a headline in Bloomberg [NOTE: See the Reuters version cited at majiasblog.blogspot.com] that said “No Big [Fukushima] Health Impact [Seen]“, www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/31/us-japan-fukushima-health-idUSTRE80U1AS20120131] It was attributed to a former member of the U.N., and what in fact he had said was that there were no acute radiation illnesses among the civilians in the Fukushima prefecture. Well, acute radiation syndrome will kill you. And so essentially the article misrepresented the effects of health by equating all radiation effects with acute radiation effects. And if radiation kills you in five years, that is not an acute radiation syndrome. Acute radiation syndrome is it kills you in three months or six months or five days or whatever. And so the Bloomberg article functioned propagandistically to frame the health effects as minimal or trivial when in fact that is simply just not true.
Dr. Fetzer: Majia, that is such an important point. We are going to take our first break. This is Jim Fetzer, your host on “The Real Deal” with my very special guests today Leuren Moret and Majia Nadesan. We are talking about Fukushima radiation politics and PR. We will be right back.
FIRST BREAK
Dr. Fetzer: This is Jim Fetzer, your host on “The Real Deal” continuing my conversation with Majia Nadesan and with Leuren Moret about the Fukushima disaster, radiation effects, premature deaths, cancer, and all that, including of course, especially public relations aspects intended to minimize and control information that reaches the public, including, even to my astonishment, as Majia was recounting, the abuse of position by the head of a United Nations committee who said that there were minimal acute deaths associated with Fukushima when it turns out that the vast majority of deaths that are going to ensue are not going to be acute, which means happening with an immediate or rapid onset, but are going to occur over a more gradual period of time. So this is highly misleading. And as Majia was observing, it was picked up by Reuters and seriously misrepresented. Majia?
Dr. Nadesan: Yes, Reuters represented it with the headline “No Big Fukushima Health Impact Seen, UN Body Chairman States,” and this is January 31, 2012, Reuters, and he was quoted as saying that “Up to now there were no acute immediate effects observed.” This was being represented by Reuters as no big health impact. And of course we know that the health impact is going to take years to develop, and it is going to include leukemia, cancers, birth defects, and circulatory diseases. We know this from the long term research on Chernobyl which has also been suppressed and trivialized despite having numerous publications documenting these effects. And in the same sense, the efforts by the U.S. media to trivialize the amount of radiation released — [suddenly silence on her line]
Dr. Fetzer: Jesus Christ!
L. Moret: You have to just continue where she left off, or they will just do this for the next hour.
Dr. Fetzer: Just astounding. I will try to reach her back.
L. Moret: It is called censorship.
Dr. Fetzer: Yes, yes, yes. Just astounding.
Automated phone company voice: The person whom you are trying to reach –
L. Moret: Are you still recording right now?
Dr. Fetzer: Yes, actually I am to let the public know what we are going through.
L. Moret: OK.
Dr. Fetzer: This is just unbelievable, Leuren.
L. Moret: I have been putting up with it for a long time.
Dr. Fetzer: She had called me back before. You know, here she is –
Dr. Nadesan: [Only part of a word intelligible, the last two syllables of “accidental”].
Dr. Fetzer: Hi! Unbelievable, isn’t it?
Dr. Nadesan: Yes. I was just telling my husband who walked downstairs, so I could use my home phone now. Oh, now he says he is on the home phone. Do you want me to use the home phone? Would that be better?
Dr. Fetzer: I think that would probably be worth a try. Yes, with that number I gave you?
Dr. Nadesan: Yes, so [her husband’s first name] I am going to use the home phone number if that is OK? All right, I will go get it, the phone.
Dr. Fetzer: OK, perfect. Thanks so very much. And Leuren, of course, as you and Christopher were reporting, I mean the consequences of Fukushima may actually render all of the Japanese islands uninhabitable. I mean how can they be attempting to minimize what is going on here when the consequences are so vast and far-reaching?
L. Moret: Well they are exterminating a nation and a culture. Very, very capable scientists [believe], I believe myself, that one of the reasons, one of the main reasons for the Fukushima disaster is because the Japanese have been developing cars that run on air and on water, and that is challenging and threatening to the international financiers and their network who are completely energy-based in oil and gas.
Dr. Fetzer: OK, here she is. Hi, can you hear me?
Dr. Nadesan: OK. Shall I just talk into the phone now?
Dr. Fetzer: Yes, yes, yes, let me put us into the conference call and go for it. [a silence gap] Now I have got — Majia?
Dr. Nadesan: I see you [coming across faintly].
Dr. Fetzer: I can’t hear you now. Majia, are you there?
Dr. Nadesan: I am there, but we are back on the computer.
Dr. Fetzer: OK, well let’s just pick it up from where we left off. Let me get you in there on the computer.
Dr. Nadesan: Should I turn my phone off?
Dr. Fetzer: Let me make sure I have got us here.
Dr. Nadesan: Somebody doesn’t want me to say anything about Chernobyl.
Dr. Fetzer: Isn’t that remarkable. [Silence gap]. OK, can you both hear me now?
L. Moret: Yes.
Dr. Nadesan: Yes.
Dr. Fetzer: Go ahead about Chernobyl. We are just going to run and everyone is going to hear how we had this problem. Please continue, yes.
Dr. Nadesan: OK, for example, on December 16, 2011 The Wall Street Journal wrote that the total radiation dispersed over a broad swath of northern Japan –
Dr. Fetzer: A little louder, maybe getting a little closer to the computer?
Dr. Nadesan: OK, that the total amount of radiation released was 15% of what was released from Chernobyl. So did you hear that? Fifteen percent.
Dr. Fetzer: Yes. 15% of what was released from Chernobyl?
Dr. Nadesan: Yes, fifteen, and in fact that is completely inaccurate. The summary report of the RSMC [Regional Specialized Meteorological Center] Beijing on the Fukushima nuclear accident emergency by the world meteorological organization wrote that the total amount of radiation released from Fukushima in the first five days was equal to Chernobyl. Additionally, there has been academic research that has found that radio-Xenon levels in the Pacific Northwest in the United States were 40,000 times the average concentration in the weeks following Fukushima. This is an extremely high amount. And — [SOURCE: http://www.datapoke.org/blog/89/study-modeling-fukushima-npp-p-239-and-np-239-atmospheric-dispersion/]
Dr. Fetzer: 40,000 times what was experienced at Chernobyl, or I mean, you made the nice point that it was equal to Chernobyl in the first five days which means it was a hundred percent, not 15%, well that was already a gross misrepresentation.
Dr. Nadesan: Yes.
Dr. Fetzer: And now you are talking about an even greater discrepancy.
Dr. Nadesan: Well, I don’t have the number for the amount of radio-Xenon that was measured in the United States after Chernobyl, but the significance of the 40,000 times the average concentration in the Pacific Northwest was analyzed by a French anti-nuclear site and they argued that this emission is equivalent to 400,000,000 potentially lethal doses by inhalation. That is, this level of radio-Xenon has direct health effects equivalent of 400,000,000 lethal doses.
Dr. Fetzer: That probably greatly exceeds the population of Japan.
Dr. Nadesan: Probably!
L. Moret: Well you have to consider that Xenon is just one out of more than 1,300 fission products that are released. So you can multiply that 400,000,000 by a whole lot more deaths than that.
Dr. Nadesan: Yes, and of course the amount of time that this is going to take to impact populations — and there is a randomness about it — whether you happen to inhale a hot particle which was measured by Arnie Gundersen in his analysis in the Pacific Northwest looking at filters — was that people in the Pacific Northwest actually inhaled between five and ten hot particles a day in the first month of the disaster — it could take 20 years for cancer to develop or it could take ten years or thirty years. But the significance is that the Western Press in the United States and in Europe as well as in Japan has trivialized the amount of radiation released by using terms like “no acute effects”, “no immediate health effect,” and are not looking at the long term health effects of radiation exposure which at the very least equates with Chernobyl, and given that there were so many more reactors involved, probably far exceeds the health effects of Chernobyl.
Dr. Fetzer: Leuren?
L. Moret: Yes, that is correct. Dr. Chris Busby who is the low-level radiation expert for the British government and the European Union for the Green Party, he was able to get air filters from the Fukushima area, that prefecture, from Tokyo, and from the Chiba Prefecture which is between Fukushima and Tokyo. So he measured the radiation on the air filters. He knew the volume of the engine, so he was able to calculate the air concentration, the atmospheric concentration during the peak periods in Japan in those regions and he calculated it was 300 times higher than what the British measured of Chernobyl in England after Chernobyl happened.
Dr. Fetzer: Very, very disturbing. Majia, tell us more about the different ways in which there has been manipulation of information to pacify the public and avoid raising concerns which would be more than justified if the facts were known.
Dr. Nadesan: I think the most recent example was the censorship of the Emperor of Japan‘s speech within Japan. This censorship was — the only American media that picked it up was The Atlantic where there was an article discussing this. But the Emperor of Japan stated that the Fukushima disaster was not over — one [his first point]. And there has been a concerted propaganda effort to make people in Japan and elsewhere believe that the reactors are in cold shut down, and that is a myth. And so the Emperor destroyed that myth by saying that the disaster was not over. The second thing that the Emperor said was that it wasn’t safe for people to return to their homes in the exclusion zone or even further out. That was censored in Japan, and there was no coverage of it in the United States. And, sort of the predominate message of cold shut down continues to prevail in the U.S. media even while we are getting a trickling of reports that the water level in Unit 2, Reactor 2, has decreased significantly, and that the radiation levels, I think the most recent level reported, was I think it was seventy three sieverts an hour, and I believe that five will kill you pretty quickly. So the levels in Unit 2 are so hot that machines cannot even operate there. I do not know how this could be equated with cold shut down.
Dr. Fetzer: Majia, this is stunning to me. The Emperor of Japan gives a speech to the Japanese people, and the Japanese media censor it?
Dr. Nadesan: Yes, they censor the passage in which he states that the disaster is not over, and that it is not safe for all the refugees, the Fukushima refugees, to return home. That passage was deleted from the transmission of his communication to the public and –
Dr. Fetzer: You mean it was actually deleted in real time when he was delivering his statement, they were actually censoring it in real time, no doubt because they had a copy of the transcript of what he was going to say in advance and they used that as a guide for censorship.
Dr. Nadesan: I am not exactly sure of the specific mechanism. This was covered in The Atlantic, and I can provide the link, and it is the only place that there was any kind of coverage of it at all. [NOTE: Please see “Japan in Uproar Over Censorship of Emperor’s Anti-Nuclear Speech,” The Atlantic, March 26, 2012.] And it is a very significant issue because the Emperor is still very much revered and it shows the extent in which the Japanese industrial complex, including the government, will go to censor any kind of countervailing message to the myth of cold shut down.
Dr. Fetzer: I would have thought this was virtually inconceivable, and the part censored, as I am sure you will agree Leuren, were the two most important parts of what he had to say to the Japanese people.
L. Moret: Yes, and he was being honest. I know he is, you know, an Emperor, but he is a person too, and he certainly understands what the implications are for Japan. It is all really very sad. And I think what Majia is saying is so important. And Majia, what I wondered is if you have any comments about your take on how the Japanese media is reporting or non-reporting as compared to the U.S. media.
Dr. Nadesan: Well that is a very interesting question, because in the Japanese media when they interview scientists who are not working directly for TEPCO or the Japanese government, there will be revealing information that occurs, for example, people will say that the idea of cold shut down is simply ludicrous. That the idea that there is core that is still contained in the reactor pressure vessels, particularly for Unit Three for example, is just ludicrous. So we do see in the Japanese press occasionally some information which is not censored and disclosive of the true disaster. And then following that disclosure, usually at the end of the article or in a subsequent article, some official spokesperson or even the author of the news article will say, “But there are no health effects, or no immediate health effects” or “cold shut-down remains and TEPCO has assured us that the roadmap for containment and cleanup is still on track.” So in some senses the Japanese media has been more disclosive because there have been almost no experts, other than occasionally Arnie Gundersen who has found their way in the U.S. media and has expressed anything other than the official story. And so in some ways it seems as if the U.S. media has been more carefully propagandizing even than the Japanese media. That has been my impression. I would be interested in what you all think.
L. Moret: Well I agree with you. But the U.S. had to hide the effects of the nuclear weapons testing program, and they have hidden the effects of nuclear power in the United States, and actually it is Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and former British Petroleum scientist Steven Koonin from Cal Tech who have been directing TEPCO and the Japanese government on their emergency response. The way we discovered this is — and they are taking their orders from BP and British headquarters — but the way we discovered that is a friend of mine, Shingo Annen, who is an electrical engineer, and he became a rapper in Japan to educate the young people about radiation and other social issues. And he hacked a map that was jointly released by the U.S. and the Japanese government. It was the cesium levels in northern Japan, after Fukushima, a couple of months. So when he took the top layer off of that image, underneath it said “This map is made by the Department of Energy.” It wasn’t jointly with Japan at all. It was a DOE map. So I know from other indications and evidence that the U.S. is very, very heavily involved in also censoring what gets into the media in Japan. But they can’t control everything, and occasionally there are honest scientists or engineers or professionals who are just so angry that they just blurt it out or they want people to know. So in that sense Japanese are culturally different from Americans and sometimes they are very outspoken.
Dr. Nadesan: I think in the U.S. the most insidious way that propaganda works is through distraction.
L. Moret: Yes.
Dr. Nadesan: So people aren’t paying attention, because they are so distracted by pop celebrity culture.
L. Moret: Yes.
Dr. Nadesan: And so the censorship simply goes un-remarked because so few people are paying attention at all, and this includes people who should be paying attention like medical doctors. I have had quite a few conversations with medical doctors who know really essentially nothing about the health effects of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation, or any level of ionizing radiation, and wouldn’t be able to recognize the symptoms if they showed up in their office, and are clueless about the state of Fukushima. It is pervasive, this insidious culture of distraction. So that is one of the reasons I think that the U.S. media is more able, because people are not demanding to have more transparency.
L. Moret: Very good comment.
Dr. Fetzer: Yes, yes, yes. You mentioned that occasionally there are interviews with non-government sources — and that information that is important and significant is revealed — have you noticed efforts to counteract those occasional revelations, Majia?
Dr. Nadesan: Well, oftentimes the way in which the propaganda strategy works is a report will come out that is full of alarming content in Japan today or one of the Japanese presses, and then it will be followed up by assertions from officials that essentially contradict the report but do not acknowledge it. So if you go back through the record, you see all these contradictions across the stories. And so the way to make a truthful report invisible is simply to have a subsequent barrage of messages that contradict it without ever acknowledging it.
L. Moret:Cognitive dissonance.
Dr. Nadesan: Yes, because the sheer cognitive dissonance presented by conflicting stories is going to cause audiences who want to believe that everything is fine anyway to accept the authority of the TEPCO or the government official in distinction from some scientist or engineer who leaked a few sentences about the true scope of the disaster. And I think one of the saddest things is what is happening with the kids. I have a headline in front of me that came out in Asahi — I don’t know how to pronounce that correctly –
L. Moret: Yes, Asahi, that’s right.
Dr. Nadesan: Yes, and this is from February 22, 2012, and the article explores how the Japanese government sat on a survey of radiation in Fukushima children’s thyroid glands. The government tested the thyroid glands of 1,080 children, and rather than releasing this information, they essentially suppressed it. Many of the kids who have been scanned have had — I think about 30% of them — nodules on their thyroids. But rather than investigating this further, the information was suppressed and there has been no subsequent coverage of it at all that I have seen, and I have been looking for it. So it is almost as if the report never occurred. So those kids are going to have thyroid problems, and ten years from now they will say, “Oh, it could not have possibly been Fukushima because, look, the thyroid levels in all parts of Japan are high.” Because, of course, they are incinerating radioactive debris everywhere, so therefore they are trying to hide the concentrated effects.
Dr. Fetzer: Well, yes, pretty disturbing. Yes, you get false information into the record and then you cite it. This is a common practice among disinformation operatives. They work in tandem or more where one puts up a false report and then another comes along and complements it or cites it as though it were reliable to reinforce the false impression.
Dr. Nadesan: Exactly. And sometimes those messages can just simply be public relations messages. So in the United States right now there is a concerted nuclear campaign that is ongoing, where in Business Week there was a public relations ad saying “nuclear creates jobs” and “nuclear is a clean energy source.”
Dr. Fetzer: [Laughter]
Dr. Nadesan: And then an insert in the Wall Street Journal on South Korea, how South Korea is emerging as a “global leader.” I think it ranks fifth now in selling nuclear plants and how wonderful that is for economic development in South Korea and other places. So what little factual information we have about the ongoing disaster gets eclipsed by this concerted public relations campaign which is across the media which is telling people “nuclear is good,””nuclear is clean,” “nuclear produces jobs.”
Dr. Fetzer: Let’s take a break here. Jim Fetzer your host on “The Real Deal” with my special guests today, Leuren Moret and Majia Nadesan. We are going to continue our discussion in just one moment. Stand by.
PART II (continued)
Leuren Moret is an independent geoscientist who has done expert studies on the Fukushima disaster, radiation problems around the world including depleted uranium.
Majia Nadesan, Ph.D., is a professor of communication in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University.
Jim Fetzer, Ph.D. is the McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is a former Marine Corps officer and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
William B. Fox, Publisher, America First Books, prepared the transcript and also assisted in organizing this interview with Leuren and Majia.