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Fairewinds has fielded a number of questions regarding the
removal of the fuel rods from the spent fuel pool in Unit 4 at Fukushima
Daiichi. Today’s video shows Arnie debunking TEPCO’s animated film point by
point, and highlights the issues TEPCO will have removing the fuel rods. TEPCO
needs to be removed as the organization overseeing the cleanup of the site
prior to the removal of the fuel rods.
Please visit the Fairewinds Energy Education website and consider donating at the following link: http://fairewinds.org/donate/
The Games Began in Monroe Michigan as the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (NRC ASLB) started hearings on
Detroit Edison’s “Fermi 3 Licensing Project”. Outgunned? Fairewinds’ Arnie
Gundersen and the seven expert witnesses retained by the NRC staff and Detroit
Edison agree that there was no Quality Assurance (QA) program in place for two
years as required by federal law, but the seven industry experts say build it
anyway! Damn the safety regulations; full speed ahead to the pork-barrel
federal loan guarantees to build a one of a kind Economic Simplified Boiling
Water Reactor. Listen as Maggie, Arnie, and host Nathaniel White-Joyal discuss
the stacked deck on this week’s Fairewinds Energy Education Podcast.
In sworn testimony in Monroe, Michigan, the NRC admitted
that it has stripped whistleblower protection from the licensing of new nuclear
power plants. By flip-flopping on what it means to be an applicant, the
whistleblowers who are truly looking to protect the public health and safety
are having their lives and livelihoods jeopardized. Fairewinds Chief Engineer
Arnie Gundersen discusses what this means as utilities look for short cuts and
cheaper ways to build new nukes.
Visit Fairewinds website to stay on top of all future developments. http://fairewinds.org/
This week
Fairewinds' podcast compares the paradigm of 20th century large nuclear power
plants to the new 21st century paradigm utilizing smaller interconnected
renewable sources of power in what is called distributed generation.
Significant advances in digital equipment and computers, like cell phones and
cloud computing, are creating a new energy future using diverse sources of
power that are less expensive and have a smaller environmental footprint. View
"A Road Less Taken: Energy Choices for the Future", Arnie's presentation
last week at Vermont's Johnson State College.
It's Time to End Large Grid Energy and Corporate Control -
May 2011
This week Fairewinds Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen
participated in two panel discussions in Boston and New York City entitled “The
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Ongoing Lessons” Other panelists included
Ralph Nader, Peter Bradford, Naoto Kan, Gregory Jaczko and Jean-Michel
Cousteau.
The video above is a recording of Arnie’s speech entitled
“Forty Good Years And One Very Bad Day.” To watch the entire NYC presentation, visit this link
Presentation Transcript:
Special thanks to the Samuel Lawrence Foundation for
creating and underwriting these post Fukushima Daiichi events.
More importantly, today’s gathering would not be necessary
if Federal and State policy makers and business executives believed that
Fukushima Daiichi really happened. If they had believed what they saw on
television, they would understand that nuclear accidents happen. Nuclear
accidents are inevitable. They would understand that “Sooner or later, in any
foolproof system, the fools are going to exceed the proofs!”
Indian Point presents an interesting dichotomy. The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) claims that the chance of a meltdown is one in a
million. With 400 operating nuclear reactors worldwide, the NRC data means one
meltdown would occur every 2,500 years. The NRC bases this analysis on a
technique called Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA- pray for short). On old
plants like Pilgrim and Indian Point, the NRC uses data from newer plants to
show how reliable these plants will be to continue if they operate for the next
20-years. That’s like my doctor telling me how long I will live based on the
heath statistics for 25-year-olds. If we apply the NRC’s methodology, the
probability of what happened at Fukushima Daiichi is one million x million x
million (a 1 with eighteen zeros) to one.
But that is not what has happened in real life. Instead,
history shows us that there have been five meltdowns during the last 35 years:
TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi 1, 2, and 3 (apologies for not including
Windscale, Santa Susana, and about a dozen more reactors). The real numbers
show that there is a seven-year frequency between meltdowns. Policy makers and
business interests are ignoring history as they attempt to force the
relicensure of Indian Point.
While demanding that taxpayers cover the risk of a nuclear
accident by paying for the Price-Anderson nuclear insurance, it seems that the
NRC and every major politician and nuclear fabricator actually believes that A
Nuclear Accident Can’t Happen at Indian Point or Pilgrim. When someone’s brain
reasons in a way to justify support for what it wants to be true, psychologists
call it “Motivated Reasoning”.
Recently I was asked to testify to the Canadian Nuclear
Safety Commission because the Pickering Nuclear reactors have applied to
operate beyond their useful life. Pickering is located only 20 miles away from
the heart of Toronto. At the hearing in Toronto, speaker after speaker implored
the CNSC to keep this aged nuclear plant running because it is a major employer
that pays its taxes. They said that Pickering Nuclear Power Plant has great
employees who live in town, who are on the school board, on the soccer teams,
or sing in local church choirs. The statements suggested that surely, such nice
people would know if their plant was unsafe.
This situation reminds me of Garrison Keillor and his tales
about Lake Woebegone, where he would say, “…all the women are strong, all the
men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” Every town I
visit that has a nuclear plant believes its nuclear plant is better than
average. If history has taught us anything, it’s that nuclear accidents happen
despite the best intentions of the men and women who work there.
I knew the operators at Three Mile Island, they were active in
their community and they lived near the plant, yet an accident happened.
Nuclear Power is a technology that can have 40 good years and one bad day.
After the Chernobyl accident, I got to know some of the
operators there, and they were brilliant engineers who were very safety
conscious. They and their families lived very near to the Chernobyl reactor,
and still an accident happened. This is a technology that can have forty good
years and one bad day.
After I wrote my book Fukushima Daiichi: The Truth And The
Future, I got to know some of the Fukushima Daiichi operators. Like the
operators at TMI and Chernobyl, they too were meticulous and knew their reactor
like a book. They also lived right near the Daiichi plants with their families.
And yet, another accident happened. Nuclear Power is a technology that can have
forty good years of operation and one very bad day.
Policy makers and business interests clearly want to believe
the “forty good years” part of that sentence, but choose to ignore the “one
very bad day”!
Companies like Entergy claim that their nuclear plants are
“safe”. What does this mean??? This means that the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) has reviewed 5% of that plant’s paperwork and checked off in
boxes that the paperwork existed. However, those same companies did not tell
you that the nuclear industry lobbying group has vetted every NRC Commissioner
for the past twenty years before they allowed Congress to approve those
Commissioners. And, did you know that those same lobbyists worked with the NRC
to write those power plant regulations? So safe to Entergy and other nuclear
power plant owners means that plants like Indian Point comply with the minimum
acceptable criteria established by a compliant regulator.
Let’s talk specifically about the corporations that own
nuclear power plants, especially merchant plants.
1. The NRC has allowed many nuclear power plants to become
Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs): corporations that are separate from the
companies that own them. Why is that an issue or concern to the rest of us?
1.1. Did you notice that Indian Point 2 is a separate LLC
from Indian Point 3? Two entirely separate legal entities. Why is that? It
allows the Entergy to keep one plant running if the other one has a serious
radiation release. It allows one unit to be declared bankrupt, while the other
units continue to generate cash that can’t be spent on the radiation cleanup.
1.2. Entergy wouldn’t do such a thing, would they? One only
has to look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to see that Entergy has
already used this legal maneuver. While the people of New Orleans where bailing
out their city, Entergy’s New Orleans LLC subsidiary declared bankruptcy, and
applied for federal disaster relief. The US government moved cash that had been
destined to help New Orleans poor community through a Community Development
Block Grant and gave it to Entergy. Entergy gave its executives bonuses.
2. What is the condition of these aging nuclear plants that
have been operating 30 to 40-years and have reached the end of their design
life?
2.1. According to the Indian Point Independent Safety
Evaluation Report July 31, 2008: The physical condition of the plant …is
visibly deficient… the care and maintenance of some other plant systems and
structures do not meet the standards of high-performing plants… it is the
Panel’s view that the maintenance and preservation of non-critical plant
systems, equipment and structures is important, because it communicates to
employees and the public alike the owner’s and operators’ commitment and
professionalism. (Indian Point Independent Safety Evaluation Report July 31,
2008, page 11)
2.2. The Vermont Yankee Oversight Panel, convened by the
State of Vermont, uncovered similar issues: “The issue of inadequate
application of resources takes on heightened importance given Entergy’s status
as an aging plant. Over the remainder of Entergy’s operating life, the
possibility of shutdown within a few years can never be ruled out and will
become a near certainty at some point. If the events of the last few years are
any guide, Entergy has a tendency to focus expenditure on safety systems and
systems of obvious reliability importance while withholding resources from
systems that it deems of secondary reliability importance.” [Emphasis Added]
“Limited resource allocation for non-safety systems might, therefore, be
systemic within Entergy.”
2.3. Most recently, Entergy announced across the board staff
cutbacks of five percent, euphemistically called its Human Capital Management
Initiative. So, in spite of two independent panels determining that Entergy is
not spending enough money, Entergy has decided to cut its staff at all of its
aging and most vulnerable nuclear power reactors.
What you may ask is the NRC doing about this? Nothing, absolutely
nothing. Instead, Neil Sheehan, the NRC Region 1 PR spokesperson said, “… the
NRC has the ability to determine whether there are any adverse impacts through
our Reactor Oversight process.” “If we observe any negative trends via
inspection findings and/or performance indicators, we could determine if there
was any linkage to human resource changes.”
To me, Sheehan’s quote says that after an accident, the NRC
might determine that Entergy had cut too much staff.
For that matter, staff reductions have become the nuclear
industry’s approach to make more money when electricity prices are down as they
are now. The Millstone nuclear power plant in Connecticut “reduced staff to
approach industry average”. The NRC allowed them to reduce staff. But if
Millstone was above the industry average, then other plants must have been
below the industry average. Why hasn’t the NRC approached those plants to
increase the number of employees in order to measure up to the industry
average? The industry only puts downward pressure on its reactor staffs, and
the NRC is unwilling to put on the breaks.
Every day we at Fairewinds Energy Education receive
questions asking us how American nuclear power plants compare with those that
melted down at Fukushima Daiichi. Is Indian Point or Pilgrim really any
different from Fukushima Daiichi? No! Actually both plants have many worse
features:
Population centers are much closer to Indian Point and
Pilgrim. And, before the Daiichi accident people believed that the emergency
planning in Japan was far better than in US. Even Japan’s strong emergency plan
failed because every safety system at Fukushima Daiichi failed.
The spent fuel pools at both Indian Point and Pilgrim holds
five times more nuclear fuel that Fukushima Daiichi and they hold more cesium
than all the atom bombs dropped in above ground testing. And, that is just
cesium… think about all the other radioactive isotopes.
Indian Point and Pilgrim are the same age, first generation
designs. Daiichi 1 started commercial operation in 1971 and had just received
its authorization to run an additional 10 years only one month before the
tsunami hit. Daiichi 2 started operation in 1974.
Fukushima Daiichi experienced an earthquake and tsunami, but
what really knocked them out were the Loss of Offsite Power and the Loss of the
Ultimate Heat Sink. Both could happen at Indian Point and Pilgrim. LoUHS can be
created from a terrorist attack on the intake structure.
What about earthquake frequency? Indian Point has the
highest probability of its nuclear core being damaged during an earthquake
(core damage frequency) of any reactor in the US, according to the NRC by
applying USGS seismic hazard curves. Experience at the North Anna nuclear plant
in Virginia indicates that the frequency of a severe earthquake is grossly
underestimated. The worst earthquake in 10,000 years was expected to be a
Richter 6 at North Anna. Yet a Richter 6 happened in 30 years, meaning that the
worst is yet to come. Indian Point has an earthquake fault one mile from the
reactors that could easily create a quake greater than the plant was designed
to withstand.
Let me sum this up. It is easy for the nuclear industry to
allow arrogance to set in when one looks at the sheer size of a nuclear plant.
I started my career in 1972 with a Master degree in nuclear engineering from
RPI. The nuclear engineering department visited Indian Point when it was being
completed. Both then and now, it is an impressive building. No one asks why
does that building have to be so impressive? What is inside these plants that
requires such an impressive structure in the first place?
But now that we have seen first hand that nuclear power
safety systems can fail with catastrophic results, we need to ask why we should
build such an uncontrollable and unmanageable technology. The forces within
these plants are enormous, and must always be contained 24/7/365. Fukushima
Daiichi, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island proved just how utterly impossible it
is to always contain these forces. One operator error or one significant
weather event, or one earthquake or one terrorist attack, and all of New York
City will face a very bad day, and like Japan, a very sad future.
Governing policy has never really changed much in Quebec or
Canada, regardless of perception of who makes the laws or controls the wealth.
The fact is, that the people from all the provinces and
territories within Canada are controlled by an elitist group that hold power at
every level of government, where legislation is used to divide and conquer via
cultural and language divisions.
Keeping our communities at each others throats is the tactic
used by those that control the wealth, especially when attention begins to
focus on what they are really doing.
Consider that every law that is passed, by any level of
government, works in favour of someone or some company that is either bent on
aquiring or selling something that is not theirs or is to protect them from
liability from past legislation that gave them control to buy or sell something
that was not theirs.
Division has worked well for the Elite Across Canada.
Let us remember that it isn’t the little people that rule
but those that control the money that rule. The people of Canada have been
enslaved to serve a system put in place by the wealthy of this and other
nations. The “Oligarchy” controls all aspects within the system and has
cornered every market while quelling the resistance against them.
What we are told to do is go to our subservient jobs, pay
taxes, and follow every law imposed on us regardless of its tone. To resist is
to be imprisoned or threatened by the security system they have put in place.
Ideally, the Police force is used for their own protection and not the
protection of society as the lessons from the G20 meetings in Toronto, or the
Student protests in Montreal clearly illustrated.
Video: Peaceful Protesters are attacked after singing Canadian
National Anthem on Queen Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2010)
Video: Violence erupts as Riot police attack student protest
in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (2012)
Put in our place.
When the population protests government decisions, there is
complete silence by the mainstream media on the real issues surrounding the
protests and a deafness towards the peoples complaints by an out of touch
Parliament. They have our best interests at hand or so they tell us.
We are then told that to change the decisions they have
made, we have the democratic right to make change through the political process
and choose one of the parties the Oligarchy bankrolls and parades in front of
us…does anyone really think there is a mainstream political party that has not
been bought and paid for?
The power structure that governs us politically, socially,
and economically in Canada are decidedly parasitic against everyone and are the
root causes of all the economic hardships we endure and will continue to endure
if something is not done. The establishment controls the wealth and power by
their ownership of all the banks, land and major corporations. We are just
pawns to be used in a Banking Kingdom and Fife.
One of the illusions given by those in control is that our
local, Provincial, and Federal tax dollars go into taking care of the
community…however, we are never allowed to know how much they collect, or where
the money is spent. To make things worse, corrupt government allowed our
Central Bank to give away the power to issue money.
The Bank of Canada gave away the issuance of the Canadian
Dollar to privately owned banks who then started to “Loan us our own money”,
PLUS, we had to pay our own money back to them with interest! This little known
fact happened in 1974 under the watch, of then, Canadian Prime Minister,
“Pierre Elliot Trudeau”. However, this practice of thievery was known by all
other political parties and allowed to continue by every Governing Provincial
and Federal Governments since.
Video: Canada Issued Debt-Free Money From 1935-1974
The “National Debt” and thus “Provincial Debt” is controlled
by a foreign group of elitest bankers who have taken control of all our wealth by
charging us compound interest on money that was never intended for them to
issue. Where before, when the Bank of Canada issued the money, we didn’t have
to pay interest back because it was our own money being created by our own
bank, and therefore controlled only by Canadians.
The Politicians will not return us to debt free money or
even address it because they are owned by the corporate structures that control
the very same avenues of theft. It does not matter which political party is in
power because all parties are controlled by corporate and banking interests
that run the entire power structure. Politicians will evade the banking theft
question whenever pressed.
The compound interest that has taken hold of our tax dollars
is the sole reason that we have soaring inflation, tax increases across the
board, a loss in purchasing power, a loss of social services, increased
unemployment, a rapid increase in poverty, homelessness, and rise in crime. The
monetary system and those that control what has been in place since 1974 is directly responsible for
our hardships.
Today in Canada we face a growing foreign takeover of all
our infrastructure, wealth and resources by greedy interests. An outrageous
example of this is the take over bid by Chinese "State Owned" CNOOC of the
Canadian privately owned corporation NEXEN. (See video below.)
Video: China’s CNOOC has agreed to buy Canada’s NEXEN for
15.1 Billion Dollars
When there is no more money available to pay back debt,
you lose everything of value that you have as a Nation.
Today in Quebec and Canada all our tax money is going to pay
off the compound interest on the principal of a debt that is controlled by
private foreign elitist bankers instead of going into the community. This fact
is the sole reason why our country’s mineral and resources are being sold down
the river to outside groups…here in Quebec the land and everything on it
belongs to outside interests, it’s not ours…and that goes for those in Alberta,
Ontario and every other Province and or territory.
The more indebted to the international banking cartel we
become, the more intertwined we become in the grotesque international hatreds we see
unfolding across the World. Our government has told us they have taken sides
against people in other nations whom they have no business or right to
interfere with. Certainly NOT in my name!!!
My plea to the Canadian people regardless of descent,
origin, or status be it English, French, Jew, Muslim, black, white, purple or
orange, it’s time to stand together as a unified community, as a nation, and stop
the division being inflicted upon us by those that rule!
Common sense, respect, and tolerance to culture and language
are expressions of unity and the tools that will free our society from this
oppression we face. Standing together is our strength in battling all forms of division
that the ruling elite constantly unleash upon our communities. We should be
united in telling our government that “If you oppress one part of the
community, you oppress all of it, and we do not support you!” We should not
tolerate ANY attempts of division what so ever.
This is not a Liberal, Conservative, Separatist, or New
Democratic position. It is a position of being a humanist, of having empathy
for others, of mutual respect, and being what we hold deer in our hearts as
"being Canadian"…To be free…really free.
It’s time to stand up and take back the control of our
monetary system from the parasitic private bankers! It’s time to FORCE the
government and mainstream media to back down! It’s time to change the system to
one that is controlled by the people and not political representatives that
cater to the wishes of the corporate few.
How Do We Make Change
How do we do it? We do it by creating direct democracy and
establishing criteria that allows people to run for office based on experience
in the fields that they hold. We do it by removing the private banks from
control of our national currency. We do it by becoming the media, by being open
to change, by becoming an economic block, and by our passion for equal rights,
respect for one another and belief in the right to exist. We do it together!
No person or culture should be singled out and subject to a
muzzle by fear mongering groups or individuals that base their paranoia in
propaganda spread by an elitist group and their media, nor should we respect
laws that force us all to conform to their racism in all its shapes and forms.
No foreign individual, group, or nation should come first over the people of Canada!
Canada’s eastern province of Quebec is bracing for more mass demonstrations as talks between students and the provincial authorities aimed at ending months of anti-tuition hikes protests were deadlocked.
Four days of talks over the proposed tuition fee rises reached an impasse on Thursday after Premier Jean Charest’s government walked away from the negotiating table and refused to change its plan to increase university fees.
The talks were considered as the provincial government’s last chance for an immediate resolution to end the mass demonstrations that has swept across the country for about four months.
Student unions have asked for a tuition freeze but the government has ruled it out and passed an anti-protest law to limit student demonstrations across the province.
Student union leaders believed that the government had no intention to compromise with students to end the conflict, and that Minister of Education Michelle Courchesne only used the students as pawns in a political game.
“The Minister of Education said that for political reasons she could not accept a freeze on tuition fees,” spokesman for the student group CLASSE, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, said.
“The government is using the youth to make political gains. They only wanted to sit us down for a public relations move, for a political move, not to negotiate,” said Martine Desjardins, president of the Quebec federation of university students.
The student groups then called on students to pour into the streets of Montreal again on Saturday to voice their opposition to the government’s plans.
Over 2,500 people have been arrested since student protests began in February at over a dozen colleges and universities in Quebec.
The protests against tuition hikes spread throughout the country.
Thousands of people marched in Toronto On Wednesday in solidarity with protesters in Quebec.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International called on Quebec authorities to rescind the emergency law, which outlines strict regulations for demonstrations and conditions of heavy fines for students and their federations.
Two United Nations special reporters also voiced concerns on Wednesday, urging “federal and provincial governments of Canada and Quebec to fully respect the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, expression and association of students affected by two new legislations.”
Quebec's student movement and the swelling ranks of its popular allies staged a massive rally and march in Montreal on May 22 in favour of the students’ fight for free, quality public education and against government repression. Estimates by some mainstream news outlets and by independent observers place the number of participants as high as 400,000. It was the largest social protest in Canadian history and amounted to a massive display of civil disobedience against a special law adopted by the Quebec government four days earlier that aims to break a more than three-month long strike of post-secondary students in the province.
Lead banners on the march read, “100 days of strike, 100 days of (government) contempt!” and “Block the sexist tuition fee hike!” A massive banner of the militant, CLASSE student association was carried overhead by hundreds of marchers and read, “May 22: This is only the beginning!”
Contingents of teachers, professors, high school students, public service workers and other trade unionists joined the march. Marchers bused into Montreal from across the province while people streamed into the city center from neighborhoods throughout the metropolitan region. French-language media termed the march a “monster” demonstration. Montreal's English language daily covered its front page with an aerial photo of the march and a headline reading “River of Red,” referring to the symbolic color of the student movement (symbolizing student indebtedness) that was omnipresent that day.
Referring to the draconian Bill 78 that was adopted by Quebec's National Assembly on May 18 and that effectively proscribes the right of students to strike and to protest, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, a leader of CLASSE, the largest of the student federations, told reporters that the law is “absurd and unenforceable. The proof of that is here today, where the street is speaking forcefully.” Challenging Quebec's minister of public security, he stated, “If the minister wants to be true to his law, he will have to levy fines on tens of thousands of people.”
Cops Wield Truncheons and Handcuffs
The students are on strike to block a proposed 75 per cent hike in post-secondary tuition fees over the next seven years. Many consider their fight to be one front in a broader struggle for a society of social and environmental justice.
The government of Premier Jean Charest has made an apparent about-face in agreeing to resume talks with the student associations on May 28. But this comes on the heels of a massive escalation of repression in the preceding days, so the government's intent is not clear.
During the evening of May 23, provincial and municipal police forces arrested 518 protesters in Montreal and 150 in Quebec City. Thirty six were arrested two nights earlier in Sherbrooke. The number of arrests in Montreal that evening exceeds those during the infamous declaration of martial law by the Canadian government in October 1970.
Police held the arrested Montreal protesters in buses overnight. The cops had declared an evening protest “illegal” under municipal regulations. One young woman who was detained told CBC Radio that police acted like “animals.” The detainees were denied bathroom access and one man who suffered a cardiac emergency was denied emergency medical treatment. The fine for the alleged offences is $634.
Commentators widely noted that while the arrests in Quebec City and Sherbrooke were done in the name of Bill 78, the eventual charges were for violations of municipal regulations or provincial traffic laws. The government is without doubt aware of the tenuous legality of its law. A two-front legal challenge to Bill 78 has been launched by lawyers on behalf of the student associations. They are seeking a ruling that the law is unconstitutional, which could take a year or more. More immediately, they want the Quebec court to immediately suspend the law's applicability.
Bill 78 allows for fines of student associations that could easily bankrupt them. It assigns criminal responsibility to the associations if they fail to control the acts of their individual members.
While there were few arrests during the monster demonstration on May 22, 113 people were arrested at the evening protest that followed. Some 2,500 arrests have been made since the onset of the student strike.
Repression is Backfiring
The government is counting on a combination of threats, fines and police violence to quell and eventually discourage the student movement. But the opposite is happening – the protest movement is growing. The nightly protests in Montreal that students and supporters have been waging for 30 consecutive nights are now growing exponentially. Roger Rashi, a longtime activist with the Quebec solidaire party, reports that the nightly march of May 24 drew several tens of thousands of participants, ten or twenty times the pre-Bill 78 nightly numbers. What's more, multiple marches are taking place concurrently.
One of the inspirations of the spreading movement is “Angry Mothers in Solidarity” (Mères en colère et solidaires). Nightly, spontaneous protests by mothers in support of the students began weeks ago in working-class districts in the center of Montreal such as Rosemont, Villeray, and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. It began with the banging of pots and pans each evening from apartment balconies and streets, gradually emerging into street protests.
The “pots and pans” movement has now coalesced into multiple, nightly marches and is spreading like wildfire throughout the province. (RT Video Link).
Pots & Pans Protest: Angry Canadians make a bang
Timing and locations each evening are coordinated via Twitter. Thousands of mothers from the movement joined the May 22 March. “I march alongside the other mothers because I am one, but this is really about future generations,” Marie Christine Chabot, 45, a nurse, told the Montreal daily The Gazette on the May 22 march. “The more that education is accessible to everyone, the more society is likely to make the right choices. I see it in my work: People with more education smoke less, eat better, exercise more, and have less stress. We'd all be better off if people were better educated.”
“It's important to show it's not just students out in the streets protesting,” Marie-Claude Gagnon, a social worker and founder of Mères, told the paper. “The symbol of mothers is a good one, and it also helps protect us in the crowd,” said Gagnon, whose children are aged 3, 9 and 13. “The police think twice about wading into a group of mothers and children.”
A new website invites people to post personal declarations of defiance of Bill 78 by posting a photo of themselves along with their written dedication. Called “Arrest Me, Someone!” (Arretez-moi, quelqu'un!) The site has more than 5,000 declarations and the number is growing.
Protesters of all political persuasions are also taking to wearing face covering, in defiance of a Montreal municipal law rushed into adoption May 17 and a similar law threatened by the federal government that makes it illegal to wear a face covering (mask) at a protest declared “illegal.”
A micro-brewery has placed its ‘Grande Noirceur’ beer on special sale. The name translates as ‘the great darkness,’ a term deeply embedded in popular culture that describes the years of rightist government in Quebec under Premier Maurice Duplessis from 1944 to 1959.
The brewery says its daily production is limited to less than 50 bottles in deference to the provision of Bill 78 that requires protests of more than 50 people to seek advanced police permission.
Trade unions, opposition political parties and the Quebec Bar Association have all denounced Bill 78 and called on the government to reach a negotiated settlement with the students.
During the course of May 22 protest, CLASSE did not inform the police of its route for the protest that day, as required by Law 78. The two other large student associations as well as the large trade union contingents joining with them on the march did so. Nevertheless, the vast majority of demonstrators followed the lead of CLASSE in marching on the route of their choosing for hours through the downtown core of the city, including during the afternoon rush hour. The police were powerless to act.
But it's not at all clear if the government can call an election. It has problems not just with the student struggle but also with a corruption scandal weighing heavily on it. Last year, the government was obliged to convene a special commission of inquiry into the close ties between the criminal syndicates that run much of the construction industry in the province and successive Liberal Party governments.
Coincidentally, the commission began its public hearings on May 21 and these will continue into the autumn months. Testimony is expected to be especially damning to the party and the current government. A recent poll showed 80 per cent of the population believes the Liberal Party to be thoroughly corrupt.
Support for the student strike in Quebec from the rest of Canada has been building, albeit slowly. Students and unions in Ottawa are organizing a solidarity action on May 29, to include a march across the Ottawa River into the neighbouring Gatineau region of Quebec. Ottawa students have already joined several actions in Quebec, including the May 22 march. Hundreds of people attended a solidarity rally in Vancouver on May 22. In Ontario, a student solidarity network has been formed to step up support action in that province.
Trade unions in Canada have provided financial support and contingents of activists came to Montreal for May 22, including Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan. News of the student protest is spreading around the world and solidarity actions have taken place in Paris and New York City.
On the other hand, support from the NDP, the federal party to which many trade unions in English Canada are affiliated, has been all but absent. Party leader Thomas Mulcair explains his party's silence by the fact that education is a provincial responsibility. However, Bill 78 is a massive violation of the rights and freedoms supposedly guaranteed by the Canadian Constitution.
In last year's federal election, the NDP became the official opposition party for the first time in Canadian history. Nearly 60 per cent of the party's MPs represent electoral districts in Quebec. They have apparently been muzzled by the party brass.
The student protest is beginning to worry business interests in the province. A string of large summer events and festivals, including a Grand Prix auto race next month in Montreal, draws hundreds of thousands of cash-wielding visitors each year. Already, hoteliers in Montreal say that bookings in May were down ten percent compared to last year.
In a delicious irony for striking students, a co-leader of CLASSE, Jeanne Reynolds, has won an award for academic excellence from the office of the titular head of the provincial government of Quebec, its Lieutenant Governor. Her “excellence” on the picket lines and in street protests, along with that of tens of thousands of student colleagues, is also winning awards – in the hearts and minds of growing numbers of working-class people in the province.
The Quebec government risks being swept away by a growing tide of human solidarity, with important repercussions for all of Canada. •
Roger Annis is a retired aerospace worker in Vancouver who recently spent time in Montreal reporting on the student strike. He can be reached at rogerannis@hotmail.com
A legal defense committee for students and student associations in Quebec threatened with legal action has been established and can be reached at the following link.
Over 700 students have been arrested in Canada during the latest night of rallies against tuition fee hikes and the adoption of controversial bill that is widely seen as a tool to limit freedom of speech, association and assembly.
Police in Montreal dispersed unsanctioned protests and arrested 518 demonstrators on Wednesday night. The arrests were also made in Quebec City, where some 170 were detained, and in Sherbrooke. There were no reports of injuries or casualties.
Police used kettling tactics to encircle the protesters and contain them within a small space. People reportedly threw projectiles such as fireworks and bottles at officers, forcing them to carry out extensive arrests.
Most of those detained have already been released. Some face $1,000 fines.
For over 14 weeks, Canada has been facing the most sustained student demonstration in its history. The protest on Wednesday started as a peaceful march of thousands, just like the majority of previous rallies.
In order to give the police another non-lethal means of pressure on protesters, Quebec’s legislative assembly adopted a bill that introduces enormous fines of $24,000 to $122,000 against unions and student organizations which do not stop their members from protesting. Individuals found guilty of organizing a protest now face a fine of some $34,000.
On Tuesday, the movement marked the 100th day of demonstrations against the tuition hikes of around $250 per year with a massive rally in Montreal. Over 120 people were detained following the event.
More than 100,000 people took to the streets of Montreal yesterday to mark the 100th day since the beginning of the Quebec student strike and to denounce the Quebec Liberal government’s Bill 78.
Adopted in less than 24 hours late last week, Bill 78 criminalizes the student strike by outlawing picket lines anywhere in the vicinity of the province’s universities and CEGEPs (pre-university and technical colleges) and by threatening teachers with criminal prosecution and massive fines if they make any accommodations to striking students or fail to perform all of their normal functions
Bill 78 also places sweeping restrictions on the right to demonstrate anywhere—and over any issue—in Canada’s second most populous province. Any demonstration of more than 50 people is illegal unless demonstration organizers submit to police in writing more than eight hours in advance the route and duration of the protest and abide by any changes requested by the police. Demonstration organizers are also legally compelled to assist the authorities in ensuring that protesters do not transgress the police-prescribed protest route.
The same day the Liberals rammed Bill 78 through the National Assembly, Montreal’s municipal government, meeting in special session, adopted its own emergency bylaw compelling police authorization for demonstration-routes and making it illegal to wear any form of face covering—including face-paint, a nijab, or a scarf—while participating in a demonstration.
Quebec’s corporate elite has strongly supported Bill 78, just as it has the government’s insistence that its plan to raise university tuitions by 82 percent over the next seven years is non-negotiable.
The huge turnout for Tuesday’s demonstration is testimony to the widespread support for the students and recognition that Bill 78 constitutes a sweeping attack on the democratic rights of all
There were numerous hand-made placards denouncing Bill 78. One read, “Academic Freedom=Free Speech and Free Assembly”; another “Bill 78, May 68”; a third, "A government that uses repression is a government that is afraid. We won’t give up.”
While students comprised the majority of the protesters, there were also large numbers of workers, a significant contrast from the massive province-wide demonstration in support of the student strike held in Montreal on March 22. There were union delegations, including of teachers, and Montreal blue-collar and transit workers. But most of the workers did not appear to have come as part of an organized contingent. Some were recent university or CEGEP graduates, others retirees.
Midway through yesterday’s march, CLASSE (The Broader Coalition of the Association for Student-Union Solidarity)—the province-wide student association that initiated the current student strike—broke away from the police-approved march itinerary and led tens of thousands on an alternate course through downtown Montreal, briefly paralyzing rush-hour traffic. Police did not intervene.
The breakaway march was meant to exemplify CLASSE’s vow, announced Monday after a meeting of its leadership, that it will not submit to Bill 78. “We believe our fundamental rights should take precedence over respecting an unjust law,” announced CLASSE spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “The Liberal government talks about intimidation since the beginning of the conflict. But with this law as it is, it is practicing intimidation.”
CLASSE’s defiance, however, is not from the standpoint of making the students’ strike the catalyst for the mobilization of the working class against the austerity program of the Liberal government and of the Quebec and Canadian ruling class as a whole. Rather it is entirely within the framework of a single-issue protest aimed at pressuring Premier Jean Charest and his Liberal government into a negotiated settlement—a perspective typified by the refrain taken up by many of yesterday’s demonstrators, “Criions plus fort que personne nous ignores” (Shout louder so that nobody can ignore us.)
On the basis of this perspective, CLASSE negotiators already put their signatures to an entente with the government—later massively repudiated by the students—that imposed the tuition fee increases in full and would have established a government-business dominated tri-partite committee to cut university spending.
Although police did not immediately intervene to arrest CLASSE leaders for defying Bill 78, Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier emphasized that the government will not tolerate civil disobedience. “Civil disobedience,” he declared, “is a nice word for vandalism.”
Later Tuesday the state struck back, invoking for the first time the draconian provisions of Bill 78.
For almost four weeks there have been nightly demonstrations in Montreal in support of the students. On Tuesday evening, no sooner had protesters converged on the park that has become the starting point for these nightly protests, than police declared the gathering illegal under Bill 78, since demonstrators had not obtained police sanction for the demonstration.
This clearly was done with a double purpose. First to show that notwithstanding yesterday’s massive protest, the government intends to pursue its campaign to forcibly break the student strike. Second, to provoke a violent confrontation that could be used to drown out coverage of yesterday’s massive march and provide grist for the government-corporate media campaign tarring the students as violent.
Unlike, CLASSE, the other two province-wide student associations, FECQ (Quebec Federation of College Students) and FEUQ (Quebec Federation of University Students), have declared they will comply with Bill 78, while contesting its constitutionality in the courts.
FECQ and FEQ, which have close ties to the trade union bureaucracy, are also placing renewed emphasis upon their campaign to defeat the government at the next election. The call for students to pursue their strike at the ballot box is a transparent attempt to boost the electoral fortunes of the big business Parti Quebecois, a party which when it last held office instituted the greatest social spending cuts in Quebec history, then slashed taxes for big business and the most privileged sections of the population.
The trade unions have denounced Bill 78 as a grievous attack on democratic rights, but also said that they will comply with the law, which stipulates that they use all means at their disposal to ensure that teachers and other university and CEGEP employees assist the government in breaking the student strike. Earlier the unions played a major role in pressuring the student associations to accept the sellout entente that was subsequently repudiated by the students.
At yesterday’s march supporters of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Students for Social Equality distributed a thousand copies of a statement titled “Faced with state repression, students must turn to the working class.”
It read in part: “The passage of Bill 78, which criminalizes the student strike and tramples on the right to demonstrate, shows that the ruling class is ready to use authoritarian and anti-democratic methods to impose its class program—the dismantling of public services and the impoverishment of broad layers of the population.
“This assault on living standards and democratic rights cannot be repelled by single-issue protests, no matter how militant.
“What is required is the independent mobilization of the working class, in opposition to the pro-capitalist unions, in a counter-offensive against government social spending cuts, the destruction of jobs and wage cuts. Such a mobilization must be part of a political struggle uniting the working class, French- and English-speaking and immigrant, in Quebec and across Canada in the fight for a workers’ government. Such a government would use the vast resources created by workers’ collective labor to meet the social needs of all, not fill the pockets of a tiny capitalist elite.”
Students in Montreal are gearing up for a massive rally on Tuesday to mark the 100th day of their protests against tuition hikes. It will follow a turbulent weekend, marked by clashes with the police and hundreds of arrests.
Over 300 people were detained and more than 20 were injured in the protests that took place on Sunday night, during which students clashed with police.
Violence and chaos ensued, with protesters ripping large slabs of cement out of the roadway and throwing them at the police, who responded with percussion bombs and tear gas.
There were also reports of protesters jumping on police cars and throwing Molotov cocktails. After midnight, a fire hydrant was burst open, with water gushing out and flooding a nearby building.
Ten police officers and 11 protesters were taken to hospital. La Presse published a picture of a man who appeared to have suffered a head injury though it was unclear whether he took part in the demonstrations.
Most of those detained were arrested en masse. Even the police were staggered by the high number of arrests.
“I don't think we have seen this many arrests at one time,” police spokesman Ian Lafreniere told QMI Agency. Lafreniere also noted that overall, police had made close to 2,000 arrests since the beginning of the student protests in February. He also estimated that approximately 250 rallies had taken place since then.
Students in Quebec have been protesting against tuition cost hikes of $254 per annum over the next seven years. The province’s premier, Jean Charest, refused to roll back the plan despite the ongoing mass protests.
On Friday the local government also sought to curb the demonstrations by adopting a new emergency law to restrict protests. The law sets a requirement that police be informed of gatherings of more than 50 people, eight hours before a rally takes place. It also requires demonstrators to provide the police with the planned route for the protest.
The law was denounced by those who took part in the weekend’s rallies, with many now calling it a cause for protest itself.
“Tonight was really about fighting an unjust law,” Concordia University graduate Jamie Klinger, who took part in Sunday’s rally said, as quoted by the Montreal Gazette “We’ll fight this in the streets and we’ll fight it in the courtrooms and it will die because the freedom of assembly is one of our most fundamental rights. These laws have no place in a democracy.”
"In Canada we have a charter and one of the articles in the charter is the right to protest peacefully. Protesters are now saying that certain provisions of this new law (Bill 78) are infringing on the freedom to protest peacefully. So people are in fact retaliating even stronger,” said Michel Boyer, journalist for Astral Radio.
“One of the most extremist groups has publicly said it is going to completely defy this new bill, go against it and continue protests,” he added.
In the meantime, the student protest movement managed to garner celebrity support over the past week. Rock band Arcade Fire were seen wearing the movement’s iconic red squares, while American filmmaker Michael Moore openly praised the students’ cause and featured links about the issue on his website.
Thousands of Spanish students have taken to the streets across the country to protest against the government’s new education cut plans.
University students, high school pupils and teachers joined the protests organized by the national Student’s Union in more than 50 towns across the country on Thursday, AFP reported.
"We have called this demonstration as an initial response to this attack on public education, which is without precedent in the past 35 years," said the union leader, Tohil Delgado.
Several hundred university students took to the central streets of the capital, Madrid, marching behind a banner that read, "Everyone together against the cutbacks".
A large group of high school students also held a demonstration outside the education ministry over the recent reforms that the protesters believed were ruining their education.
Schools and universities all over Spain have staged a series of demonstrations against the harsh austerity measures against education system by the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
Right after the last student protests on February 29, the government announced an additional three billion euros in cost-cutting reforms and increasing the tuition fees to an average 1,500 euros from 1,000 euros.
Education Minister Jose Ignacio Wert reiterated that the cut plans were needed to improve the quality of education and reduce the country’s public deficit.
"These are decisions that we are imposing because of the demands for fiscal consolidation, which the country has agreed too and which it must fulfill," he said.
The Spanish government has planned to shrink its public deficit to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2012 from 8.5 percent in 2011.
Spain’s major teaching unions planned to hold a larger strike on May 22, which is expected to attract widespread support from anti-spending cuts protesters.
When the Defense Department wasn’t blowing billions on failed machinery and weapons of war, the Pentagon was paying a US Army lieutenant colonel to indoctrinate servicemen with the notion that the entire Islam religion should be eradicated worldwide.
Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley no longer lectures members of the Armed Forces at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, but he is still a part of the school’s faculty, reports Wired. This week the website reveals that the former instructor is under investigation by the military but, while he remains on the books, they have published material from recently uncovered training materials that were once used in the decorated soldier’s military-mandated classes.
According to documents used in those lectures, Dooley demanded that the US military must engage in a “total war” against Islam in order to maintain security for America.
“By conservative estimates,” 10 percent of the world’s Muslims, “a staggering 140 million people … hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit [to Islam],” Dooley told servicemen expected to rise in the ranks of the US military.
“Your oath as a professional soldier forces you to pick a side here,” said Dooley — who also suggested that a “total war” against the widespread religion might be the only thing that would protect the future of America.
The news of the military’s past practices of encouraging a cultural and religious war are not entirely new — in fact, Wired reported last month that the Pentagon pulled the plug on the program as per the direct orders of General Martin Dempsey. Only now, however, have documents actually used in the college been made available.
Scouring a .pdf copy of a presentation offered up by Lr. Col. Dooley called “A Counter-Jihad Op Design Model,” it is revealed that the leading soldier said to his pupils that “some actions offered for consideration here will be seen as not ‘politically correct’ in the eyes of many, both inside and outside the United States.” In case his students lacked the attention span to sift through the pages of his presentation, Dooley explains his warning with direct parenthetical notation declaring that his insistence on having “Islam reduced to cult status” might not sit well with all members of the military.
Other quasi-controversial opinions introduced in his classroom include “taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary.” Lt. Col. Dempsey recalls “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki” as examples that may need to be invoked once again.
When he wasn’t offering up his own examples of how to introduce a war to the rest of the world, Dooley relied on the aid of others to open up debates in his classroom. Those discussions included presentations such as Former FBI employee John Guandolo’s paper, “Usual Responses from the Enemy When Presented With the Truth.” In it, Guandolo warns Dooley’s students that “it is a permanent command in Islam for Muslims to hate and despise Jews and Christians.” In another instance, former professor Serge Trifkovic lectured students via video with a curriculum that included footage that supposedly proves that US President Barack Obama is a Muslim.
On their part, Wired reports that “the commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the US military.”
Police in the Chilean city of Valparaiso have clashed with demonstrators protesting against the government of President Sebastian Pinera's policies.
Most demonstrators were peaceful, but bands of hooded protesters attacked police and smashed shop windows and damaged other properties.
The demonstration -- organized by the country's main trade union movement, the CUT -- was in protest at Pinera's environmental, education and labor policies, state-run BBC reported.
Protesters said his promises were “in the opposite way from those the populations were demanding.”
Many had come to protest against the construction of a dam that would flood 6,000 hectares of land in the remote southern Chilean Patagonia.
The environmentalists predict that the construction of the dam will not only have immediate impacts on the Chilean ecosystem, but will affect the environment of neighboring Argentina, and in the long run will affect the Latin American countries of Uruguay, Paraguay and even Bolivia.
But the government says the HidroAysen project is needed to meet Chile's increasing demand for electricity and is expected to give its final approval in June.
"We can't say we need energy, consume it abundantly, and at the same time oppose all of its sources," said Pinera during his state of the nation address.
Besides HidroAysen, Pinera has approved the construction of three very pollutant coal thermo-electric plants this year, one of which will be the biggest in Latin America.
Chilean officials have ruled out nuclear energy following Japan's nuclear disaster, saying Chile is as seismic as Japan.
The Latin American country witnessed an 8.8-magnitude earthquake on February 7, 2010 which entailed a tsunami.
Italy's top court has partially rejected a law that extended criminal prosecution immunity to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi while he is in office.
The decision by the Constitutional Court on Thursday allows individual judges to decide whether Berlusconi can be forced to face trial or not.
The judges can decide whether or not to accept excuses by the prime minister or members of his cabinet that they are unable to attend trials due to conflicts with official duties.
Berlusconi will no longer be able to automatically invoke a "legitimate impediment" claim exempting him and his ministers from appearing in court.
“The court's sentence has complicated things,” a parliamentarian in Berlusconi's People of Liberty party, Osvaldo Napoli, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying in response to the new law.
“It has turned over to the subjective evaluation of judges, facts and issues that should have been cleared up with the strength of objectivity,” he added.
A Milan court, which has accused Berlusconi of paying USD 600,000 to a UK lawyer to lie under oath, now presents the greatest legal challenge to the prime minister.
In February 2009, the lawyer, David Mills, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for accepting a bribe from Berlusconi.
Students protest against the government-proposed education reforms which are being discussed in the Italian senate, in Rome, Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Italian senate has approved controversial reforms in the education system proposed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in a bid to tackle the country's public debt.
The reforms set forth by Berlusconi sparked mass demonstrations across Italy on Wednesday as students protested the cuts which are aimed at saving the country billions of dollars.
The protests followed last week's violent demonstrations triggered when the Italian prime minister survived a confidence-vote motion.
The reforms would cut the number of courses and faculties, reduce funding for grants and introduce non-academic university deans to the education system.
The bill was passed by 161 votes to 98 with six abstentions in the senate where Berlusconi and his political allies have a large majority.
President Giorgio Napolitano will now sign the bill into law.
Italy is currently spending less than 5 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on education which is much lower than many developed countries.
South Africa's Closing Argument Against Israel for Genocide at the ICJ
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