Japanese government’s anti-whistleblower crackdown

Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is called The Fukushima Syndrome – Japan.

While the Fukushima disaster gets worse and worse, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan spends time and money not on stopping that terrible threat to health and environment, but on reviving militarism and destroying civil liberties.

From Asahi Shimbun in Japan, 27 August 2013:

KUWAIT CITY–Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasized that proper attention will be paid to journalistic rights as his administration pushes to have a state secrets protection bill submitted to the Diet during the autumn session.

Oh yeah, hard liner Shinzo Abe‘s public relations talk aiming to make people sleepy, while he prepares to erode freedoms.

A project team of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party was expected to enter earnest discussions on the state secrets protection bill on Aug. 27.

The Abe administration’s plan, which would set prison terms of up to 10 years for government employees…

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Outside help offered to deal with Tepco debacle: U.S., French experts also ready; water woes escalate — The Japan Times

” Russia repeated an offer first made two years ago to help Japan clean up its radiation-ravaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear station, welcoming Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s decision to seek outside help.

As Tepco pumps thousands of tons of water through the wrecked Fukushima station to cool the melted cores of three reactors, the tainted runoff was found to be leaking into groundwater and the ocean. The approach to cooling and scrapping the plant will need to change and include technologies developed outside Japan if the cleanup is to succeed, said Vladimir Asmolov, first deputy director general of Rosenergoatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear utility.

“In our globalized nuclear industry, we don’t have national accidents, they are all international,” Asmolov said. Since the Liberal Democratic Party took power in December and Shinzo Abe became the prime minister, talks on bilateral cooperation on the Fukushima cleanup have turned “positive” and Russia is ready to offer its assistance, he said from Moscow last week. … ”

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Tepco sidelined by Japanese government as Fukushima reactors leak radioactive water — The Sydney Morning Herald

” Tokyo: The Japanese government has lost patience with the efforts of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to get the crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant under control.

Toshimitsu Motegi, the minister of trade and industry, visited the plant on Monday to determine progress on decommissioning three reactors damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in March, 2011.

Tepco admitted last week that hundreds of tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from a steel tank at the plant and that as much as 300 tons of contaminated water has been escaping into the sea every day since the earthquake…. ”

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