Gregor Gable
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On the same night last week that four robbers shot an emergency officer at Pelindaba, west of Pretoria, another attempt was made to bypass the nuclear site's security.
Intruders breached security at the Western Section of the SA Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), its chief executive Rob Adam said on Tuesday.
He said a patrolling security officer spotted the intruders, shots were fired and the intruders fled.
"My sense is that it must have been co-ordinated but there is no evidence of that yet," he told reporters at a media briefing at the Pelindaba site.
On Thursday, last week four men breached Necsa's tight security, making their way to the security control centre on the site where they took a computer and shot the station commander before taking off.
Anton Gerber was wounded in the lung and was on Tuesday still recovering in hospital where he was in a stable condition.
Adams denied that any nuclear installation at the site, including the research nuclear reactor, was compromised by the two security breaches.
Necsa has suspended its security management pending the outcome of an internal investigation.
It was offering a reward of R25 000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the four robbers and R10 000 for positively identifying any person involved in the incident. - Sapa
Entries from November 11, 2007 - November 17, 2007
The Longest Walk: 1987-2008
http://longestwalk.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Please look into this walk. I may walk and post from the road. I will give you more info as I find out more. Dennis J. Banks is one of the main organizers. Please check out their URL posted above.
Shundahai,Gregor
LONGEST WALK 2008: 30th Anniversary
 ---- 2008 Route ---- 1978 Route ---- 2008 Teams Meeting Walk |
| We take this opportunity to invite you to be part of an historic event, The Longest Walk 2008 . To commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Longest Walk 1978 , another great Walk will take place with a mission to Clean Up Mother Earth on its route. The Longest Walk will begin on February 11, 2008 in San Francisco and end 4,400 miles and 5 months later in Washington D.C. on July 11, 2008. Our message is: ALL LIFE IS SACRED. Out of The Longest Walk 1978 , our sister event The Sacred Run was born. The Sacred Run has yearly environmental walks and runs the world over. Over the last 30 years, over 1,000 Sacred Run participants have run over 25,000 miles around the world spreading the message through countries such as: The United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Scotland, Norway, Belgium, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Russia. These walks and runs have been supported by many activists, entertainers and politicians: Muhammad Ali, Marlon Brando, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Ken Norton and former California Governor Jerry Brown to name a few . The Longest Walk and The Sacred Run are funded by financial contributions and volunteer support that come from special events, through the sale of merchandise, and benefit concerts. For The Longest Walk 2008 to be a success, your contribution is necessary and will be greatly appreciated. The Nowa Cumig Institute is a federally recognized nonprofit 501(C3) organization and will be financially responsible for all contributions. All contributions are tax deductible. Thank you for supporting The Longest Walk 2008 and bringing this message of environmental harmony to your community. Respectfully,
Dennis J.Banks |
The VA's Claim Dodge
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_vas_claim_dodge
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| The two signature injuries of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). An estimated 26,000 U.S. veterans from these wars have had their brains traumatized from nearby explosions. Another 45,000 have initiated post traumatic stress disorder claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). These claims concern real disabilities that are medically hard to prove. In each VA case, it is up to the military and the Department of Veterans' Affairs to decide if and how much any given soldier's mental faculties have been impaired. These are also precisely the kinds of claims that the U.S. government has actively thwarted in the past -- and recent news and health articles suggest that a repeat performance is underway. The Defense Department is being accused of under-funding studies of traumatic brain injuries. The VA and Defense Departments are refusing to make their brain injury data public. Current PTSD claimants are finding their medical and service records missing, lost, or subject to challenge. A class action lawsuit was recently initiated on behalf of PTSD claimants. My recent investigation on the VA claims of a Navy waste disposal ship, the USS Calhoun County, provides a cautionary tale about what might be happening and why. Harvey Ray Lucas served in the late 1950s on the USS Calhoun County, a low-ranking Navy ship whose primary mission was to dump atomic and other military waste into the Atlantic Ocean. Lucas spent four years heaving radioactive materials over the side of the ship. After leaving the military, he suffered from chronic health problems and sired five children with birth defects. Lucas's testimony made my jaw drop. He described one baby whose skin oozed "bloodwater." He described the birth and death of another whom physicians termed an "anencephalic female monster." A couple years after his testimony, Lucas died of a rare cancer associated with radiation exposure. I came across Lucas's story in 1998, when I worked in a U.S. Congressional office and read the transcript of his Board of Veterans Appeals hearing. Lucas's widow, Barbara, and my boss, Congressman David Skaggs (D-Colo.), both felt that Harvey Lucas and his family's illnesses stemmed from radiation exposure in the Navy. But Barbara Lucas had been pursuing a compensation claim with the VA for 18 years without success. The VA always seemed to need more or different evidence. When our office dug up a key final document and Barbara prevailed, I decided to write a book about the USS Calhoun County and her VA claim. Deck logs and interviews with the ship's sailors, officers, and scientists suggested that the USS Calhoun County had carried excessively radioactive material and that the ship's decks had been contaminated. When I discovered a number of other sailors had experienced odd health problems, I broadened my inquiry to look at the VA cases of other USS Calhoun County veterans. I interviewed Deane Horne, whose teeth and hair had fallen out after he left the ship and whose eldest son was born without a femur. I interviewed Richard Tkaczyk, who had also lost his teeth and whose first born son had seizures and brain damage. I interviewed George Albernaz, who was half paralyzed after suffering from an odd brain disease that his physician called radiation necrosis. All had filed claims with the VA. None had made any headway. In all cases, the VA began the claims process by asserting that there was no proof that the USS Calhoun County had even carried atomic waste -- even though there was ample evidence of the ship's mission in public federal archives. In all cases, the Navy forwarded personnel files to the VA that were missing a key radiation exposure document. The treatment of these men's claims echoed what had happened with the Lucas claim. It was also entirely consistent with a vastly discouraging history of the VA's handling of hard-to-prove claims, including radiation, asbestos, Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, and PTSD-based injuries. All such cases were and are handled centrally out of a special office in VA headquarters. All required Congressional or court intervention to force the VA to grant claims. In the case of radiation-based claims, the military was found omitting incriminating documents from veterans' databases; veterans' documents were destroyed in a huge and mysterious fire at a military personnel records facility; the VA was found hiding and shredding more veterans' evidence; and whistleblowers were subjected to death threats and workplace retaliation. As I unearthed this information, I was drawn into providing evidence for the claims of several USS Calhoun County veterans. In particular, I began helping George Albernaz, who had served with Lucas on the ship between 1957 and 1958. To verify his claim, I sent the VA data on the ship's atomic loads, noting that my information came from deck logs in the National Archives. The VA called my information unsubstantiated. I sent Navy documentation on them. The Navy and the VA said that they still had no proof that Albernaz himself had ever been exposed to radiation. I sent information from the Lucas claim that challenged such "zero dose" exposure estimates. It was deemed irrelevant. Looking for more evidence on Albernaz's behalf, I dug deeper in the ship's administrative archives. I came across a memo to the ship's Commanding Officer from 1956, indicating that the deck of the USS Calhoun County had become radiologically contaminated. I found another from 1958 stating that all attempts to remove the contamination had failed. But my breath failed me when I read a final memo from 1962, stating that the Navy had never, in its history, been able to render such a ship safe for use and recommending that the USS Calhoun County be sunk. If I thought that such evidence would help win the Albernaz case, however, I was quite mistaken. Albernaz and I submitted the incriminating documents between 2005 and 2007. Yet the VA omitted the documents from the "evidence of record;" the Navy re-asserted that they had no proof of Albernaz's exposure but that he'd likely only received safe doses; and the VA continued to take the Navy at its word. As of this month, the VA was demanding a long list of additional evidence to support Albernaz's claim -- much of which he and I had already submitted. The treatment of these sailors exposes a U.S. veterans' claims adjudication system that enshrines military-produced evidence as the only "objective" arbiter of claims, even when there is ample reason to doubt it. Evidence -- even documents from the National Archives -- produced by the likes of Harvey Lucas and George Albernaz is viewed and treated as potentially fraudulent. And far from making any attempt to validate or verify claims through databases, "buddy statements," or consolidated claims reviews, the VA actively dismisses their compatriots' evidence as "irrelevant" to their claims. In sum, the veterans are treated as liars, told to prove their own cases to the government, and subject to having credible evidence dismissed when it contradicts military assertions. Americans are now becoming increasingly concerned with the treatment of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, and they ought to be. Because unless the U.S. revamps its veterans claims system to allow for decisions made independently of the U.S. military, we are headed for another series of large VA scandals. | ||||||
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 Deb Derrick is a U.S. governmental affairs specialist who is writing Exposed, a book on the USS Calhoun County and the betrayal of its veterans. She currently serves as executive director of the Better World Campaign, a group that lobbies for the United Nations in Washington, D.C. | ||||||
Robbers try again at SA nuke site
13 November 2007, 14:53
http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/?fSectionId=1042&fArticleId=nw20071113142547313C6038
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Nuclear power is back with a bang
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.WOTRArticle?article_id=17362
Writers on the Range - by
Jane Goetze
We were duped once before and paid dearly for our short-sightedness. The radioactive dust still hasn’t settled from the uranium boom during the Cold War that left an estimated 3,500 dead from lung diseases and a trail of waste sites, including 130 acres of toxic tailings along the Colorado River in Moab, Utah. If we can’t clean up that mess, what will we do about new nuclear waste produced by our insatiable appetite for energy?
It might help to remember that we are all in this together, and that there are lessons to be learned from recent history and the testimony of survivors. The crushing of raw ore produced a mushroom cloud of dust, though workers couldn’t see the dust that penetrated their lungs. They went home in their work clothes, looking like they’d been dipped in yellow flour. Bathing made them look human again, but next morning their vacated pillows bore the yellow, radioactive imprint of the backs of their skulls. After the laundry was done, handfuls of yellow dust had to be scooped from the bottom of washing tubs, and one widow recalls scattering the free mulch over her vegetable garden. This was in the 1950s and ‘60s, before the federal government mandated safety regulations.
The vast majority of workers were never informed of the risks. Twenty years after their exposure, they would be diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, emphysema, silicosis (a disease well known to Appalachian coal miners who called it black lung) or some other terminal illness. When American uranium miners and millers on the sparsely populated Colorado Plateau succumbed to lung diseases, cigarettes were labeled the culprit, despite low smoking rates among the predominantly Navajo and Mormon workers.
America’s Cold War mentality cocooned in secrecy the industry’s watchdog and promoter, the Atomic Energy Commission, and granted it unprecedented power to corner the uranium market. The federal government entrusted the safety of miners to the states. Records that could have been released in the 1950s to verify the fears of Public Health Service doctors were withheld from outsiders. Ignorant of the risks, miners worked until the boom went bust, or their health failed.
The diseases of the uranium industry did not discriminate. Reservation Indian, itinerant Anglo, fourth-generation Utah Mormon -- a sick worker could be fired without notice, severance and disability pay. If the diagnosis was lung cancer, the patient might have two or three months to settle his affairs.
It took more than 20 years of denied workman’s compensation claims, anger-filled public meetings, failed law suits, lost appeals, and more angry meetings before Congress finally acknowledged the documented medical claims of underground miners, nuclear test-site workers and “downwinders,” passing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990. But the required documentation excluded widows of Navajo miners who could produce no marriage certificates from tribal wedding ceremonies. Millers, surface miners, truck haulers and underground miners who began working after the enactment of health and safety regulations in 1970 were not covered at all. Neither were families whose houses were built on radioactive foundations, whose water supply was contaminated, or whose children played in the tailings.
Finally, in 2000, the testimony of two Utah State University sociologists and the victims they interviewed helped convince Congress to amend the 1990 act and extend coverage to surface miners, millers and truck haulers, and take into account cultural differences. But proving their case after the passage of so many years has proven challenging, and in some cases, fruitless.
Proponents of nuclear power today assure us that federal mining regulations will protect workers. Before we swallow that promise, let’s figure out a way to take care of the waste from the previous boom and bury the rest of the dead. We failed to heed the advice of the traditional healers of the Navajo Nation the first time, and what they had to say then is just as relevant today: “If you disturb the land, terrible illnesses will happen in retribution. Disrupting one part of your life knocks the whole system off balance.”
Jane Goetze is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She writes in Logan, Utah.
