Entries from August 19, 2007 - August 25, 2007
Ten Thousand Things
Ten Thousand Things
Multicultural Webfinds
"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.
Corbin Harney praying in Carlos DeMenezes' TRESPASSING: Where Turtle Island intersects with Kazakhstan, Japan, & the Rest of the World
This excerpt from Carlos DeMenezes' 2005 documentary, Trespassing, of Shoshone Spiritual Leader Corbin Harney praying, juxtaposed with film footage of some of the repeated atomic bombings in the American Southwest, is a powerful reminder that Japanese Hibakusha are connected with global Hibakusha in the United States, Kazakhstan, the Pacific Region, and throughout the world.
Widely censored at many film festivals>, Trespassing premiered in Australia in 2007 at the Byron Bay Film Festival and won awards at the Festival Raiz La Imagen,VIII Oaxaca, Mexico; the Boston International Film Festival; the Festival De Cine De Granada Video in Spain; the Santa Cruz (California) International Film Festival; the Berkeley Film Festival; and the Arizona International Film Festival.
DeMenezes' compelling documentary features Japanese radiation survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who speak of global healing and forgiveness at the Nevada Test Site, and the film shows the extraordinary efforts and risks that indigenous activists, in solidarity with Hibakusha, atomic veterans and global environmentalist, nuclear abolitionists, and peace activists take, to protect sacred lands, the air, the water, and people from desecration by further weapons testing and nuclear waste.
A work of profound dimensions, it took DeMenezes, who directed, produced, shot and edited the film, ten years to complete this project, using borrowed and donated labor and equipment. Trespassing is an elegiac examination of the deadly controversies intersecting land rights, uranium mining, nuclear testing, and the disposal of nuclear waste – issues with global significance and resonance.
This a very profound movie and I highly recommendt it to any one. (Note: Carlos has been a personal friend for 10+years) If you have the chance to view it please do, as it is breath taking in scope. Corbin Harney is in his prime and well worth viewing, just for those scenes. It is heartbreaking and chilling both at the same time. Please view if if you can, you can google Trespassing and redumbrella together and it will give a site where it is being shown, as it is a documentaty, it is a littler harder to find. But keep looking, it is well worth the time spent looking for it-gregor
Gregor Gable
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PrintPlease add to Wikipedia on Corbin Harney
Shundahai Readers,
With all the knowledge that we possess about Corbin, it is a sham that Wokipedia has so little info on Corbin. PLEAS FOR CORBIN'S SAKE add true info to the postings at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbin_Harney
Here is Corbin and Bill prior to crossing the line at the Nevada Test Site. Both walked their talk.-gregor
Nuke group eyes shielding kids
Nuke group eyes shielding kids
http://www.timesleader.com/news/20070818_18preschool_nuke_plan_1a_ART.html
Eric Epstein, of Three Mile Island Alert, is petitioning the NRC for a 15-mile radius in event of meltdown.
By Rory Sweeney rsweeney@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
If a reactor at the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station ever melted down, a citizens’ group fears some of the most vulnerable potential victims might not have a way to escape.
Eric Epstein, who heads Harrisburg-based Three Mile Island Alert, is petitioning the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to demand that all evacuation centers for children be at least 15 miles from an emergency site and that all institutions charged with supervising children, like schools and day-care centers, create dedicated evacuation route and transportation plans.
The current regulations include “fatal vulnerabilities,” Epstein said, that could keep parents from retrieving their children in such an emergency.
First, preschool children are expected to be taken to general-population evacuation centers 15 miles from meltdown sites, but no dedicated routes or transportation are mandated. Both are mandated for school-aged children, but evacuation sites are only required to be beyond 10-mile “emergency planning zones,” which means “parents might not be able to get to them because their routes might be closed down,” Epstein said.
“There’s no invisible lead curtain 10 miles from a nuclear plant. The NRC and the industry believe they don’t need to plan beyond a 10-mile radius from an accident,” he said. “The NRC’s regulations contradict (the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s) recommendations. … All we’re asking is for the NRC to be true to what they put on paper.”
PPL Corp., which operates the nuclear plant near Berwick, opposes creating such regulations because the company works with child-care providers to create and practice evacuation plans regularly, according to PPL Susquehanna spokesman Lou Ramos.
“I think that the plan that we have in place has been studied very carefully. … We feel very, very confident that it’s a good process,” he said. “We will not support Epstein’s recommendation.”
Besides, he added, “we have never, ever had to evacuate school children at Susquehanna. … That surely shows the safety record that we’ve been able to prove to the community. … We’re talking about a very, very remote issue. ”
But PPL’s “more proactive” policies mean nothing if the plant is ever sold, Epstein warned. “That’s why you need to enforce regulations. Pennsylvania politics has to be more than a handshake.”
Epstein has previously tried to petition the NRC on evacuation issues regarding pre-school children, who are more vulnerable to radiation than others. “They can’t take care of themselves, so we wanted an additional layer of protection,” he said.
To back the petition
Contact the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before Sept. 24 via the following methods. Include Docket No. PRM-50-85 in the subject line. Comments will not be edited to remove any identifying or contact information, so don’t include any information not fit for public disclosure.
Mail comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff.
E-mail comments to: SECY@nrc.gov. If you do not receive a reply e-mail confirming that comments have been received, contact the NRC at 301-415-1966. Comments can also be submitted via the NRC’s rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov.
Rory Sweeney, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7418.
On-line Poll PLEASE VOTE Is this a viable way to fund book
| Do you think that we should have a store to fund the book | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Having a store selling Calanders,Journals & Clothing | |||
| Poll starter: gregor See Results | |||
State files court papers to halt Yucca Mountain water use
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
State files court papers to halt Yucca Mountain water use
Federal officials overseeing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project put themselves in a "legal no man's land" when they used Nevada's water to drill bore holes without permission and shouldn't be allowed to continue, state attorneys said in court papers filed Tuesday.
The Department of Energy "has been using water for at least a year in violation of the understanding the parties had. And now, incredibly, DOE continues to use Nevada's water for a purpose outside the agreement and unsupported in federal law," Nevada's Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said in an interview Tuesday.
"They have the audacity to seek emergency relief (from the courts) based on their own misdeeds," Adams said.
Documents the state filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas constitute Nevada's latest response to an attempt by the Justice Department to persuade Judge Roger Hunt to block a cease-and-desist order issued by the state.
A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 15 on the Justice Department's emergency motion on behalf of the Department of Energy which, despite the cease-and-desist order, has continued to use Nevada's water from wells near the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department needs the water to finish collecting rock samples needed for a license application the agency intends to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 2008.
"Merely because DOE finds itself in a legal no-man's-land of its own making does not justify the preemption of Nevada water law," wrote Senior Deputy Attorney General Michael Wolz, who represents State Engineer Tracy Taylor and Allen Biaggi, director of Nevada's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
Adams, who represents the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, stated in her filing that "the public interest in holding public officials accountable for deliberate or reckless violations, and in respecting the sovereignty of the State of Nevada, outweighs the speculative harm to DOE associated with a possible delay in meeting a self-imposed and completely artificial schedule for filing a license application."
The Energy Department has claimed that it will suffer contractual damages in the range of $90,000 per day if the drilling project is curtailed, but Adams said that's no reason to allow the drilling to continue.
"In any event, DOE's monetary loss is predicated entirely on DOE's unilateral decision to hire drilling contractors for an unauthorized use of water for a purpose outside the parties' agreement," Adams wrote.
She concluded that the department is not entitled to a preliminary injunction to use Nevada's water for its bore hole drilling project.
Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, states in an affidavit that the Energy Department engaged in "an effort to 'fly under the radar' by uniquely failing to communicate" with Nevada's counsel or directly with the state engineer.
Loux cites an internal Energy Department memo that describes the ongoing drilling program as "site characterization activities."
"If DOE were to lose its legal challenge and were not allowed to use ground water on the site, the department could truck in water, which would only delay, not terminate the project," the Feb. 17, 2005, internal memo notes.
Based on the federal nuclear waste law, the site characterization work for which the Energy Department is using the water, to cool and lubricate drill bits and to create mud for collecting soil-and-rock samples, ended five years ago, the state contends.
At that point, the department had 90 days to file a license application for construction of a nuclear waste repository and surface facilities at Yucca Mountain but failed to do so.
"DOE, because of its failure to comply with the NWPA (Nuclear Waste Policy Act) and specifically the congressional mandate to file a license application within 90 days, now finds itself in an unauthorized middle ground where it is neither in site characterization nor the construction stage," Wolz wrote.
"There is certainly no authority that would allow DOE to begin completely new studies such as its bore hole drilling program during this period," he wrote. "Nevada law cannot be deemed to have been preempted by federal law where there is no federal law requiring or even allowing the bore hole drilling program."
Keith Saxe, assistant chief of the Justice Department's Natural Resources Section, won't comment on the Yucca Mountain water issue.