Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

Human Rights Violations: China Is Rubber, The US Is Glue



A summary of a recent CNN post.  Looks like people in glass houses should either STFU or do more than  just say they are retraining their out-of-control police.

SUMMARY of

China Not Happy With U.S. Human Rights Record

posted by Justin Surrency


Fri 5:41 PM, May 25, 2012



"The United States' tarnished human rights record has left it in no state -- whether on a moral, political or legal basis -- to act as the world's 'human rights justice,'" China said in an annual report on U.S. human rights.

The report cited the arrests of protesters participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States.  Many protesters, it said, accused police of brutality.

Thursday, the U.S. State Department criticized a number of countries, including China, in its annual report on human rights around the world.  The human rights situation in China, it said, "deteriorated, particularly the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association," with Chinese forces reportedly committing "arbitrary or unlawful killings."

The U.S. report comes after the arrival in the United States of one of China's best-known activists, Chen Guangcheng, after he escaped house arrest and took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, marking a dramatic diplomatic showdown between Washington and Beijing while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was visiting China for talks.  China regularly criticizes U.S. interference with what it calls domestic political issues.

Although the U.S. report covered 2011, before the high-profile saga over Chen, it detailed concerns about Chen's treatment, including thugs' "severe" beatings of him and his wife.  It said that Chen was denied medical care, while activists trying to visit his house in eastern Shandong province said they were "assaulted, detained, forcibly removed or otherwise abused."

Read more.


Be seeing you.

REPEAT AFTER ME:
RT Is Wrong:
Fukushima is NOT 4½ Chernobyls (Even Though Fukushima Is Worse Than Chernobyl)




The problem is that numbers were compared without being converted -- some of the measurements were in I-131 equivalence (and yes, this is the first I have heard of it, and no, I do not undrstand why everyone does not use the same scale, especially because it is easy to not catch mistakes like this when stressed out over the implications, duh).  

The first to sound the alarm clearly, however, was EX-SKF:



But the English sites that read Daily Yomiuri's article (but not necessarily TEPCO's press release) naturally compared the numbers this way:
Cesium-137 released from Fukushima: 360,000 terabecquerels
Cesium-137 released from Chernobyl: 85,000 terabecquerels

without realizing the Fukushima number is iodine equivalence, and the Chernobyl number isn't. Thus the headlines like "Cesium-137 contamination: Fukushima amounts to four Chernobyls" at RT, for example.

But without the 40x multiplier on Fukushima, the numbers are (I use the correct number, 10,000 which would be 400,000 with 40x multiplier):
Cesium-137 released from Fukushima: 10,000 terabecquerels
Cesium-137 released from Chernobyl: 85,000 terabecquerels

Or with the 40x multiplier on Chernobyl to get iodine equivalence, the numbers are:
Cesium-137 released from Fukushima: 400,000 terabecquerels
Cesium-137 released from Chernobyl: 3,400,000 terabecquerels

As one of the readers of the blog commented, the meme, however false, that Fukushima contamination is 4 times worse than Chernobyl seems to have taken a life of its own and is spreading. It's doubly ironic that it is all thanks to Yomiuri Shinbun, pro-nuke establishment newspaper whose owner Matsutaro Shoriki did all he could to bring about a nuclear Japan and succeeded.

Of note are the comments to the original RT -- especially because they linked to the most thorough breakdown of the mistake so far. Here are excerpts:

from
Fukushima’s Cs-137 is NOT “Four Chernobyls” ! 
(Russia Today spreading misinformation)
Posted on May 25, 2012 
by Michaël Van Broekhoven

So… see if get this right: The Cs-137 estimate went from 15,000 TBq, which is 15 PBq to… 10 PBq.  Wow…  That’s pretty crafty:  the estimate is lowered by 50%, but by using the iodine-equivalence in their press release, their new totals look much bigger.  Not understanding this sleight of hand, alternative media goes crying wolf about “4x Chernobyl!”, so that TEPCO can, in turn, point out their stupidity and score points for the lunatic pro-nuke crowd… 

So…  To make sense of all those news outlets comparing apples and oranges, I created this little table to shed light on the confusion (things in the same color can be compared):



(snip)

So while you could scream:   “FUKUSHIMA Cesium = 112 Hiroshima bombs” (which is old news, see my July 31, 2011 post HERE), saying it is “4 times Chernobyl” is truly NONSENSE.

(snip)

While in some respects, such as total Iodine-131 and Cs-137 release, Fukushima is less severe, as far as total radioactivity release, as well as ocean contamination, the 2011 and ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is WORSE than Chernobyl’s.  This is 100% backed up by the official data I quote above.   Recent reports (from RT in this case) that Fukushima’s Cesium totals are much worse than Chernobyl’s cannot be substantiated upon scrutiny.   

Do yourselves a favor and read more.

If you reposted the RT article, PLEASE consider posting a thorough, careful retraction -- as soon as possible --- with details, you know, and apology.  We could not only not look so bad, but maybe even gain ground with the people we most need to gain ground with.

Thanks.

UPDATE: the blog linked to above has been terminated, it seems, by the owner.  I made a PDF of the post that inspired this post, just in case.  So if the iframe below is blank, my apologies; it means the Internet Archive link is down as well, but then you can right-click and download the PDF here (data URI) or from Anonfiles here or here.  If one format doesn't work, try another.




Be seeing you.