Protests against nuclear waste tourism effective

Every year the same procedure. Nuclear waste is travelling from the french plutonium plant near La Hague to Gorleben in Germany (10 years of Castor transports). At the first look this seems to be unavoidable as this nuclear waste was produced by german nuclear plants in the past decades.

But as always the second look uncovers some ugly details.

First this nuclear waste was shipped to Cogema in France for recycling. Too bad there is in fact no recycling. There is only extraction of Plutonium (which is needed for nuclear weapons of mass destruction) and Depleted Uranium (used for projectiles with maximum penetrating power, e.g. in Iraq). This chemical extraction process produces huge amounts of new nuclear waste. Most of it is dropped into the Channel, from where it is transported into all oceans. Ever tried norwegian lobster?

Second Germany (as all other countries of our world) has no place for storing nuclear waste safe. Safe means safe for a very long time. Not 100 years, not 1.000 years, not 10.000 years. Can you imagine a time period of more than 100.000 years? That's the minimum if ever.
So the waste is stored overground in simple Potato Barns. After me the deluge.

More ugly details left for exercise.

In the past Germany's administration tried two transports a year, but was urged by protesting citizens to pool them into one transport. In November for the good weather conditions of cause. Every year more than 10.000 police men and special forces are activated to break the resistance by brute force. And every year the transport arrives at the potato barn at Gorleben.

Next year the transport will be omitted. Why is this?

Simple answer: next year the Soccer World Championchip will be in Germany. There are not enough forces available for two activities of such dimensions in one year.
This is a clear success of the persistent protest movement against nuclear industry.

Nobel Peace Price 2005 ...

... is awarded both to IAEA (International Atom Energy Agency) and it's head Muhammad al-Baradei (more). What? Are they gone nuts?
But it's not for the first time the Nobel committee does not follow the last will of Alfred Nobel. He wrote the peace price should be awarded to whoever had done most for the "abolition or reduction of standing armies". The IAEA is causing a lot of things, but nothing of this kind. The IAEA is responsible for the world wide propagation of nuclear plants. As a consequence more and more countries are getting know how and control of nuclear technology. And all means for building nuclear weapons.

Suicide Terrorism

"Nobody could know about that!" is what leaders of "high developed" countries will say somewhere in the future. But as almost always they could know or already know about the facts. They don't want to draw the obvious conclusions or just ignore them.

What I'm talking about? Read this:

"The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw."

(excerpt from an interview with Robert A. Pape; published by The American Conservative)

Oktoberfest

There are still left some parts of Rosenheim after two weeks of it's own beer festival called "Wies'n" or "Herbstfest". More than a million people visited this event. Many coming from far, e.g. from Austria, Italy and so on.
It's all over now and local authorities can start rebuilding the city. Isn't it funny how people's behaviour is changing when they appear in groups? They're getting uninhibited, walking, driving and parking at all places which are not protected by armed forces. But then they get drunk and ... you don't believe it.
Actually I stopped wondering why so many shops are closed for this two weeks and their owners left for holidays out of Rosenheim.

Preventive Crime Prosecution

The next step in deconstructing democracy and constitutional state is on the way. It's discussed by Great Britain and Germany. Crime prosecution shall be improved by giving the police more rights, thus more power. That's not new at all. But in future they don't wait until crimes are committed. No, they will arrest suspicious and dangerous persons in advance to protect our society. Fine, that's great. No more committed crimes. All offenders are in prison before they could execute their plans. Perhaps even before they think about it!? Wow.
Who defines what behaviour will be suspicious and who is dangerous? How long should the arrest last? Arbitrariness will rule our everyday life. You don't want to be arrested? Better behave like your government recommend to you. Brave new world.

Shoot & Kill

But what about 'In Dubio Pro Reo'? Killing innocent people is the wrong response to terrorism. Seems obvious but most British are supporting the shoot-and-kill policy this days.

So how many noninvolved people the British police are allowed to kill? If 40 people were killed by bad guys it's acceptable to kill one more by the 'good' guys? 40 to 1 seems to be acceptable for British people. What's about 40 to 4? It's only ten percent. Acceptable I hear. 40 to 20? Mmh. Maybe better to kill 20 uninvolved people than risk to get 40 victims by the next terroristic act. 20 lives saved. Pure mathematics. So everyone can compute the maximum 'collateral damage' (nice term) for herself/himself.

It's the same with death penalty. Many innocent poeple are killed for nothing (ok, because they are coloured or can't afford a good lawyer or ...). If there is a risk officials could kill the wrong one the practice is the wrong one too.

It's not only one victim too many but a fundamental change in our everyday life. Now you can get killed by the police for your suspicous appearance or your slow/wrong reaction. My advice for foreigners visiting Great Britain and all the other countries fighting 'international terrorism': when someone addresses you - freeze. Maybe you'll survive.

Corruption in Germany

It's not Nigeria to point at when talking about corruption but your own country. That's not suprising at all as corruption is everywhere. Where it's not visible you just have to investigate more serious.

Infinion manager received 259,000 Euro (german)

Nine of ten companies involved in corruption (german)