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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on May 23, 2014
Discuss this Rant at the Podcast Table inside the Diner
Snippet:
…Today’s topic is Spy vs. Spy. Remember the Mad Magazine cartoon, with the pointy nose spies, one in black the other white, holding bombs behind their backs?
Well, in another one of those cases of Life Imitating Art, the Chinese and the NSA are playing the same buffoonish game, with constantly escalating claims that the other side is doing more and worse spying.
The whole controversy over spying has been revving up since the Edward Snowden thing exposing a fair amount of NSA foul play, so to throw the ball into another court the FBI went ahead and declared 5 Chinese Military officers “Most Wanted”. You’re picturing one of the Old West Wanted Dead or Alive posters with Sum Dum Phuk and Long Dong on it right now I am sure…
For the rest, LISTEN TO THE RANT!
What is “Normal Spying”?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-22/guest-post-what-are-boundaries-legitimate-espionage
Submitted by Robert Farley via The Diplomat,
Are the norms of appropriate espionage changing? Glenn Greenwald’s new book, based on revelations from Edward Snowden, critically highlights an episode from the 2010 UN Security Council vote on sanctions against Iran. At the behest of U.N. ambassador Susan Rice, the NSA targeted the delegations of at least four countries for surveillance and analysis in order to provide the U.S. with better intelligence on how those states might vote. Although the overall impact remains unclear, this collection could have given the U.S. the ability to make targeted “side payments” to the countries in question, to frame its rhetoric differently, or to have a better sense of the progress of the campaign.
Greenwald’s use of this example has evoked some debate among diplomatic and intelligence analysts, as it strays far from the central themes of the Snowden Project, which involve mass data collection and global public surveillance. Along with the recent indictment of five PLA officers on charges of cyber espionage, it drags the focus onto the question of how nations spy on one another, and where the appropriate boundaries for “legitimate” espionage lie.
The UNSC incident was reminiscent of one of the most famous cryptography successes of the 20th century, the U.S. intercept of Japanese information at the Washington Naval Conference in 1921. Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom disagreed about where the ratios limiting naval construction should fall, with the Anglosphere powers arguing that the great distances of the Pacific meant that Japan could manage its defense with fewer ships. While the United States argued for a 10:6 ratio in capital ship construction, Japan held out for a 10:7 ratio.
Led by the remarkably colorful Herbert Yardley, U.S. cryptographers broke Japanese codes and provided U.S. negotiators with crucial information about how far, precisely, the Japanese were willing to push their opposition to the proposed warship ratios. In the end, the Japanese accepted the U.S. proposal, allowing the Treaty (and eventually, its successors) to move forward and substantially reduce the number of warships in global navies. Not incidentally, it helped relieve the enormous pressure that the naval race was putting on the British and Japanese economies. Indeed, the biggest issue for Japan may not have been the codebreaking itself, but rather the later public announcement of the intercept, which humiliated the military and the diplomatic corps. Embittered by the lack of government support and impoverished by the stock market crash of 1929, Yardley detailed these achievements in 1931’s The American Black Chamber. This resulted in worldwide attention to the codebreaking success, and a lifetime blacklist for Yardley.
But isn’t the UNSC different? In some ways, yes; the UNSC is a long-term, established institution that’s key to international governance. But then the point of the Washington Naval Treaty was to conclude a viable, sustainable global peace. Every participant wanted, and in some cases desperately needed, to achieve an agreement on the limitation of naval weaponry. The only question that cryptography helped resolve was “who shall this viable, sustainable global peace favor the most?” Of course, the peace did not remain viable or sustainable, but it’s hard to argue that U.S. cryptography was decisive in pushing Japan to renounce the system of naval arms limitation.
The indictment of the five accused Chinese hackers raises similar questions. The United States and other countries have engaged in cryptography for quite some time to gain advantages in trade negotiations. The theft of intellectual property doesn’t seem such a large departure from this practice, especially given that the theft of foreign military and economic secrets was celebrated, rather than frowned upon, a century ago. This doesn’t mean that the Department of Justice was wrong to indict the hackers, but rather that we should perhaps all approach questions of economic and diplomatic espionage with a trifle less indignation.
RE
These rants don’t get a lot of comments, but I enjoy them and I hope they keep coming. Nice job.
Thanks Stuck. They don’t get many comments on the Diner either. I think people find it difficult to comment on this type of thing, other than say they think it is funny or think it sucks.
People do listen to them though, no doubt there. WWIII BEGINS! is past 400 Listens now. The Extinction Rant is over 800. Not to mention, Page Views on the Diner have nearly doubled since they started going up.
Also, John Lounsbury will feature 1 each week on GEI.
So yea, they’ll keep on coming. Racorded one for next week you will love, called Hookers, Blow & Frackers. Comes after my Sunday Brunch article which is a neat one this week called The Money Valve</b., with a Bonus Rant called Doubling Down attached. Don’t miss that one. 🙂
RE
Got another rant in the can on Fukushima! Now dumping 100 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean a DAY! I gotta stop eating Sushi here.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-23/japan-begins-purposely-dumping-100s-tons-radioactive-water-fukushima-pacific
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
How do you get rid of hundreds of tons of highly radioactive water? You dump it into the Pacific Ocean of course! In Japan, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. has made the “painful decision” to begin purposely dumping massive amounts of radioactive water currently being stored at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear facility directly into the Pacific. This is being done even though water radiation levels near Fukushima spiked to a brand new all-time record high just a few days ago. The radioactive material that is being released will enter our food chain and will potentially stay with us for decades to come. Fukushima is an environmental nightmare that never seems to end, but the mainstream media in the United States decided to pretty much stop talking about it long ago. So don’t expect the big news networks to make a big deal out of the fact that Japan is choosing to use the Pacific Ocean as a toilet for their nuclear waste. But even though they aren’t talking about it, that doesn’t mean that radioactive material from Fukushima is not seriously affecting the health of millions of people all over the planet.
According to the Japan Times, Tepco released 560 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific on Wednesday, and Tepco says that for the foreseeable future we should expect another 100 tons of radioactive water to be released into the ocean every single day…
Tokyo Electric Power Co. began dumping groundwater from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant into the Pacific on Wednesday, in a bid to manage the huge amounts of radioactive water that have built up at the complex.
The utility, which says the water discharged is within legal radiation safety limits, has been fighting a daily battle against contaminated water since Fukushima No. 1 was decimated by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.
Tepco said 560 tons of groundwater captured and stored before it entered reactor building basements was to be released Wednesday, using a bypass system that funnels it toward the ocean after checking for radiation levels.
Using the bypass, Tepco hopes to divert an average of 100 tons of untainted groundwater a day into the ocean.
Tepco is assuring us that the radioactive water that is being released is within “legal radiation safety limits”.
But this is the same company that could not tell us why radiation levels in water near Fukushima reached a new all-time high just a few days ago…
Radiation has spiked to all-time highs at five monitoring points in waters adjacent to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power station, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday.
The measurements follow similar highs detected in groundwater at the plant. Officials of Tepco, as the utility is known, said the cause of the seawater spike is unknown.
Three of the monitoring sites are inside the wrecked plant’s adjacent port, which ships once used to supply it.
At one sampling point in the port, between the water intakes for the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, 1,900 becquerels per liter of tritium was detected Monday, up from a previous high of 1,400 becquerels measured on April 14, Tepco said.
Nearby, also within the port, tritium levels were found to have spiked to 1,400 becquerels, from a previous high of 1,200 becquerels.
So do you trust Tepco?
I certainly do not.
And this is not just a Japanese issue. Radioactive material from Fukushima has literally been found all over the planet. For example, a nuclear fuel fragment from Fukushima has been found as far away as Norway.
Once this radioactive material gets into the ocean and into our food chain, there is no telling where it may end up.
If the mainstream media really did care about “the environment”, they would be talking about this. But instead, there seems to be a conspiracy of silence. Just consider the comments that Martin Fackler of the New York Times made during one recent interview…
Yeah… it’s so hard in Japan to talk about the radiation issue, like how bad is it really… There is a sense that if you even talk about these issues, you’re hurting the poor people of Fuksuhima. Therefore, we shouldn’t talk about it. That’s just not right… The folks who don’t want us to talk about it are the government, because they don’t want to pay compensation… I feel like there is a lot going on in Fukushima that just doesn’t get talked about in the local media, not necessarily for government cover-up sort of issues, but self restraint or self censorship. Even papers that are pretty strong in their reporting on Tepco in some ways, like the Tokyo Shimbun, won’t talk about these issues because they’re afraid that somehow its unpatriotic to talk about radiation. There’s a lot of questions and issues that are not being talked about, and I think they should be talked and if there is damage to the people of Fukushima that’s the responsibility of Tepco…
And the U.S. media certainly doesn’t seem to want to talk about how radiation from Fukushima could be affecting the west coast of our country.
But the evidence continues to mount that something very unusual is happening.
Just consider what is happening to young sea lions along the coast of California…
Sea lions are once again struggling to survive and are washing ashore, many of them pups dehydrated, malnourished and on the brink of death.
The year started off quieter than last year, and the Pacific Marine Mammal Center’s director of development, Melissa Sciacca, thought they were in the clear – until about a month ago, when the calls started coming in nonstop. The center, in Laguna Beach, is near capacity, with about 100 sea lions being treated so they can be returned to the wild once they are strong enough.
“We thought it was going to be a nice calm year; in the last month it’s just spiked,” she said. “The rescues just keep coming in at a steady pace.”
And as I wrote about just the other day, something is causing millions of fish to die in mass death events all over the globe right now.
Could Fukushima be a contributing factor?
A lot of people out there are attempting to downplay the impact that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has had on the Pacific Ocean.
I believe that this is a huge mistake.
Nuclear radiation causes cancer.
Nuclear radiation kills.
The total amount of nuclear material released from Fukushima just continues to increase and slowly accumulate in our food chain. When these nuclear particles get into you, they can literally start cooking you from the inside out. In a previous article, I included a quote from an opinion piece by Helen Caldicott that was published in the Guardian….
Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.
Doesn’t that sound lovely?
And it has been documented that radioactive material from Fukushima has been getting into the seafood being sold in North America.
For example, back in 2012 the Vancouver Sun reported that cesium-137 was being discovered in a very high percentage of the fish that Japan was selling to Canada…
• 73 percent of the mackerel
• 91 percent of the halibut
• 92 percent of the sardines
• 93 percent of the tuna and eel
• 94 percent of the cod and anchovies
• 100 percent of the carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish
So why was radiation testing for seafood subsequently shut down in Canada?
Since that time, as I detailed in one of my previous articles, a high school student up in Canada tested seafood bought at local grocery stores for radioactive contamination. What she found was absolutely stunning…
A Canadian high school student named Bronwyn Delacruz never imagined that her school science project would make headlines all over the world. But that is precisely what has happened. Using a $600 Geiger counter purchased by her father, Delacruz measured seafood bought at local grocery stores for radioactive contamination. What she discovered was absolutely stunning. Much of the seafood, particularly the products that were made in China, tested very high for radiation. So is this being caused by nuclear radiation from Fukushima? Is the seafood that we are eating going to give us cancer and other diseases?
Why aren’t we being warned about this?
Earlier this year, a fish that was caught just off the coast of the Fukushima prefecture was discovered to have 124 times the safe level of radioactive cesium.
But virtually nobody in the mainstream media considers this to be important enough to talk about.
A lot of people seem to think that the Fukushima nuclear disaster is old news. But in many ways the biggest problems for North America may just be beginning. For example, according to scientists at the University of South Wales, the main radioactive plume of water from Fukushima has finally crossed the Pacific Ocean and is going to hit our shores at some point during 2014…
The first radioactive ocean plume released by the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster will finally be reaching the shores of the United States some time in 2014, according to a new study from the University of New South Wales — a full three or so years after the date of the disaster.
The following graphics come directly from that study…
Fukushima Radiation – University Of New South Wales
So as the main plume of nuclear radiation reaches our shores, what will that do to our wildlife, our fishing industry and our beaches?
And what kind of danger does this radioactive water pose to those living along the west coast?
These are very important questions, but unfortunately those in power and those working for the mainstream media don’t really want to talk about these things.
Doom is the Gift that Keeps on Giving.
RE