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Three years have passed since the earthquake and tsunami that caused the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The tsunami's immediate death toll was more than 15,000, with close to 3,000 still missing. Casualties are still mounting, though, both in Japan and much farther away. The impact of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown on health and the environment is severe, compounded daily as radioactive pollution continues to pour from the site, owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO.In an unusual development, more than 100 U.S. Marines and Navy sailors have joined a class action suit, charging TEPCO with lying about the severity of the disaster as they were rushing to the scene to provide humanitarian assistance. They were aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and other vessels traveling with the Reagan, engaged in humanitarian response to the disaster. The response was dubbed "Operation Tomodachi," meaning "Operation Friendship."

This is the second attempt to sue TEPCO on behalf of these sailors and Marines. The first lawsuit had eight plaintiffs and was dismissed for technical reasons based on the court's lack of jurisdiction. "By June of 2013, we had 51 sailors and Marines who had contacted us with various illnesses," lead attorney Charles Bonner explained, "including thyroid cancers, testicular cancers, brain cancers, unusual uterine problems, excessive uterine bleeding, all kinds of gynecological problems, problems that you do not see in a population of 20-year-olds, 22-year-olds, 23-year-olds, even 35-year-olds. ... So, now we have filed a class action for approximately a hundred sailors." As news of the lawsuit spreads, many more will likely join in. The USS Reagan had at least 5,500 people on board when off the coast of Japan.

The ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima should serve as a warning to the world. Instead of following the wisdom of Naoto Kan, President Barack Obama is committing public funds to build the first new nuclear power plants in the United States in more than 30 years. In the wake of Fukushima, Obama's Nuclear Regulatory Commission put out talking points designed to diminish growing public concern with the safety of nuclear power plants in the U.S. NBC News obtained the NRC's internal emails instructing staff to downplay safety risks. U.S. nuclear plants are not safe. The U.S. sailors and Marines of Operation Tomodachi deserve their day in court. The U.S. public deserves an honest assessment of the grave risks of nuclear power.

The United Nations Human Rights Council announced today the appointment of the last of three members of its probe to investigate purported violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and particularly in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began on 13 June. In a statement released today, the Council’s President, Ambassador Baudelaire Ndong Ella (Gabon), announced that Mary McGowan Davis (United States) will join William Schabas (Canada) and Doudou Diène (Senegal) whose appointments were announced on 11 August. The previously appointed Amal Alamuddin (United Kingdom) was unable to serve due to prior commitments. Ms. Davis is from the United States and has served as a Justice for the State of New York and as a federal prosecutor during the course of a 24-year career. She also has extensive experience in the fields of international human rights law and has served as Chair on a UN Committee tasked with following up on the findings of the Gaza conflict that occurred between December 2008 and January 2009.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry – launched by the Human Rights Council on 23 July – is charged with investigating human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular the occupied Gaza Strip. It plans to investigate all violations of human rights and humanitarian law since the current military operations began in mid-June. As it stands now, the cumulative death toll among Palestinians stands at 2,076. Some 1,454 – 70 per cent – are believed to be civilians, including 491 children and 253 women, according to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Out of the 2,076 killed, 253 are believed to be militants, and the status of a further 369 killed Palestinians is still to be determined. Meanwhile, UNRWA said today that its schools along with Government-run schools are not ready for the new school year in Gaza, which was set to begin yesterday. More than 200 schools which were affected by shelling need to be repaired, including 22 which have been completely destroyed. In the meantime, UNRWA said its TV station will run education programs at emergency shelters and will expand psychosocial work with humanitarian organizations.

Kyung-wha Kang, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, stated that at least 18 medical facilities, including five UNRWA health clinics, had been hit by airstrikes and shelling since the beginning of the fighting.  The seven-year blockade had destroyed Gaza’s economy, with high unemployment rates and growing dependence on international assistance.  The United Nations was feeding 67 per cent of the population.  The international community and the parties to the conflict had to live up to their obligations.  Lance Bartholomeusz, Director of Legal Affairs of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said that by yesterday evening, 22 July, approximately 118,000 Palestinians had sought refuge in 77 UNRWA schools.  That was about 6 per cent of the population of Gaza and double the peak in UNRWA shelters during the 2008 to 2009 conflict.  The conflict had not spared UNRWA premises.  Makarim Wibisono, Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, speaking on behalf of the Coordination Committee of the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, said in addition to at least 599 Palestinians killed, the destruction of numerous houses had left several thousand families homeless.  At the same time, the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation could not justify the launching of thousands of rockets and mortars directed against Israeli civilians. 

NAVI PILLAY, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said since Israel announced its military operation “Protective Edge” on 7 July, Gaza had been subjected to daily intensive bombardment from the air, land and sea, employing well over 2,100 air strikes alone.  The hostilities had resulted in the deaths of more than 600 Palestinians, including at least 147 children and 74 women.  As in the two previous crises in 2009 and 2012, it was innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, including children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities, who suffered the most.  According to preliminary United Nations figures, around 74 per cent of those killed so far were civilians, and thousands more had been injured.  Hundreds of homes and other civilian buildings, such as schools, had been destroyed or severely damaged in Gaza, and more than 140,000 Palestinians had been displaced.  Two Israeli civilians had also lost their lives and between 17 and 32 others had been reported injured as a result of rockets and other projectiles fired from Gaza, and 27 Israeli soldiers had been killed during military operations in Gaza.  The indiscriminate firing by Hamas and other armed groups of more than 2,900 rockets and mortars from Gaza continued to endanger the lives of civilians in Israel, and Ms. Pillay once again condemned such indiscriminate attacks.  It was unacceptable to locate military assets in densely populated areas or to launch attacks from such areas.  However, international law was clear - the actions of one party did not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law.

he also warned that the current situation in Gaza overshadowed the backdrop of heightened tensions in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem and expressed concern about a significant rise in incitement to violence against Palestinians, including through social media.  Only those responsible for criminal acts could legitimately be punished, she said, individuals should not be subject to collective penalties. 

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose to well over 1,000 on Saturday, as search teams recovered bodies from destroyed buildings during the brief ceasefire.Some 151 bodies were recovered during the 12-hour window, according to the Ministry of Health.Nearly 6,000 Palestinians have been injured in the offensive.

Venezuela seems to be following Ukraine on the neocon hit list for “regime change” as Washington punishes Caracas for acting against a perceived coup threat. But a broader problem is how the U.S. conflates “free markets” with “democracy,” giving “democracy” a bad name, writes Robert Parry.

The one common thread in modern U.S. foreign policy is an insistence on “free market” solutions to the world’s problems. That is, unless you’re lucky enough to live in a First World ally of the United States or your country is too big to bully.So, if you’re in France or Canada or – for that matter – China, you can have generous health and educational services and build a modern infrastructure. But if you’re a Third World country or otherwise vulnerable – like, say, Ukraine or Venezuela – Official Washington insists that you shred your social safety net and give free reign to private investors.

If you’re good and accept this “free market” domination, you become, by the U.S. definition, a “democracy” – even if doing so goes against the wishes of most of your citizens. In other words, it doesn’t matter what most voters want; they must accept the “magic of the market” to be deemed a “democracy.”Thus, in today’s U.S. parlance, “democracy” has come to mean almost the opposite of what it classically meant. Rather than rule by a majority of the people, you have rule by “the market,” which usually translates into rule by local oligarchs, rich foreigners and global banks.Governments that don’t follow these rules – by instead shaping their societies to address the needs of average citizens – are deemed “not free,” thus making them targets of U.S.-funded “non-governmental organizations,” which train activists, pay journalists and coordinate business groups to organize an opposition to get rid of these “un-democratic” governments.

The Israeli government is holding closed-door meetings about receiving some 6,000 Jewish citizens who have been replaced due to the Ukrainian civil war, reports the Israeli Maariv newspaper. Meanwhile, western support for overtly National Socialist and Ultra Nationalist parties and militants in Ukraine continues. 

The cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly plans the construction of “refugee camps” to receive the “6,000 displaced” Ukrainian Jews, reports Maariv. The construction of refugee camps for the 6,000 Ukrainians is reportedly being planned under the supervision of Israel’s Minister of Economy, Naftali Bennett. Maariv didn’t specify where these 6,000 Ukrainians should be settled. The news comes as the death toll of a recent attack on a Jewish Synagogue in Jerusalem has risen to five and the eruption of a row between the Netayahu government and the Palestinian government under President Mahmoud Abbas. While Netanyahu blames Fatah and Hamas for terrorism and for the attack, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded by blaming Israel’s occupation of Palestine for causing conflict and for driving people into acts of terrorism. The rapid spread of ultra nationalism, overtly Nazi Parties and militia, and their rapid rise to power during the Western-backed “Euro-Maidan” protests in Kiev has resulted in pogroms and threats against Jews and Jewish communities throughout Ukraine with the exception of those areas in the rebelling Donbass region which are firmly under the control of the rebelling regional governments, as well as with the exception of Crimea, which acceded into the Russian Federation after a referendum in  Crimea on March 16, 2014.

As if the Syrian tragedy weren’t terrible enough, with a death toll now topping 200,000, and over half of the population uprooted by the civil war, another ingredient has been added to the plight of this nation: some of the international humanitarian aid seems to be slowing down to a trickle. In a decision intended to ring alarm bells, the United Nations’ World Food Programme has announced that it is suspending food aid in the region because of a lack of funding. The WFP needs around $60m to provide critical food vouchers to over 1.7 million Syrian refugees through the month of December. The money hasn’t been forthcoming, in part perhaps because of donor fatigue. One can only imagine the devastating impact that any interruption of food distribution will have on the countless camps and shelters in which those Syrians who fled the war now live. More than 3 million Syrians are refugees in neighbouring countries, mainly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

No one wants, or seems able, to deal with the root of the Syrian problem – the Assad regime – but now we are not even dealing with the symptoms. Food aid is essential. Governments of the richest nations, starting perhaps with those in the Gulf, must give the UN the money it needs to feed Syrians going hungry. The very stability of the countries sheltering those refugees may be at stake.

America loses all its wars because it seems we’ve always been on the wrong side of history. Morally nor legally should any nation have the right to invade and occupy another sovereign nation, much less believe it can achieve victory in long, protracted wars. Yet in violation of all ethical precepts and all international laws, the sole global superpower citing its impunity through exceptionalism hypocritically insists it can maintain its moral high ground in its relentless pursuit of regime changes anywhere it so chooses on earth. We are the global village bully that’s hated by much of the world. And it’s pure self-aggrandizing bullshit to perpetrate the myth that America is hated because of our “freedom,” another rhetorical brainwashing lie. We now live in a fascist totalitarian police state run by a globalized crime syndicate of the central banking cabal. As of last April per a Princeton-Northwestern study the US has officially been designated an oligarchy. Last year after a group of ethnic Russians living in Crimea voted to become part of Russia, the Russian military claimed control over its own naval base there that the US-NATO had been lusting to steal after the unlawful overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected sovereign government. Ever since it’s been nonstop lies and propaganda propagated to demonize Putin as the aggressor when in fact all along it’s the American Empire that’s been recklessly pushing what could end up World War III against nuclear powered Russia. With US-NATO missiles installed on Russia’s doorstep in virtually every former Soviet eastern bloc nation, hemming Russia in, who’s really the aggressor here?

Meanwhile, despite costing US taxpayers up to six trillion dollars and counting in Iraq alone and another trillion so far in Afghanistan in this age of increasing austerity, the albeit detached reverence for the US military and its abysmal losing war record fail to draw much notice or reflection, much less any real criticism or troubleshooting that might correct the same pattern of mistakes being repeated indefinitely. Another article in the same issue calls for resurrecting the draft as the feeble answer, something my ex-West Point roommate-former Afghan Ambassador-retired general and current Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Karl Eikenberry has also publicly advocated. They are all missing the point, unwilling or unable to address the pink elephant in the global room. Respected author-activist David Swanson wrote an incisive rebuttal also confronting the Atlantic article for not answering the obvious question of why America loses at war. He makes the excellent point: The U.S. has killed huge numbers of men, women, and children, made itself hated, made the world more dangerous, destroyed the environment, discarded civil liberties, and wasted trillions of dollars that could have done a world of good spent otherwise. A draft would do nothing to make people aware of that situation. But Swanson merely glides over as a passing fact that the ruling elite is the only entity that stands to gain from war. He fails to emphasize that it is the elite’s power, money and influence that both initiates, but then by calculated design, willfully sabotages the chance of any US military victory after World War II. The reason is simple. If the US triumphed in war it would only delay the totalitarian New World Order from materialization. Only a weakened United States would expeditiously promote a one world government.

As a brief historical review tracing events from the dawn of the twentieth century, media mogul Randolph Hearst used the false flag of the Spanish American War to “remember the USS Maine” sinking in the 1898 Havana harbor as its deceitful justification to ruthlessly, violently colonize Cuba and the Philippines, committing ethnic cleansing with estimates as high as near a half million dead Filipinos in that bloodbath. Then it was the “great” English statesman Winston Churchill who plotted the sinking of the Lusitania killing nearly 1200 of his own British citizens (along with 128 Americans) as the baited sacrifice secretly carrying arms to ignite the First World War that was supposed to end all wars.

It seems that Saudi Arabia has started to undergo the transformation various experts predicted. Those became obvious when the sitting king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud replaced his deceased elder brother Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in January 2015, and made a number of quite unusual arrangements within the ruling elite, appointing the head of the Ministry of Interior Muhammad bin Nayef from Abdullah’s clan the Crown Prince, while his 33-year-old son Mohammad bin Salman Al Saudfrom the Sudairy clan received the appointment of Deputy Crown Prince.

Now it seems that the wheels of the political machine are moving again. Last week reports from Riyadh indicated that his disease is taking a toll on the king and he wants to renounce his reign in favor of the Crown Prince. But then neighboring states, especially Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, started hinting that the members of the Saudi royal family along with the sheikhs of the strongest tribes, which are the foundation of Al Saud’s rule, are extremely dissatisfied with the sharp deterioration of the economic and social situation in the country, leading to a major drop in their personal incomes. It is no secret that Riyadh increased the volume of oil production to weaken the positions of its main competitors – Russia, Iran and Venezuela. But the kingdom had to take a punch as well, it was forced to unseal its reserve fund and cut the funding of numerous social programs.

Now the highly respected Institute for Gulf Affairs is stating that the king of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is preparing to renounce the throne in favor of his son Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, and has since brought his country to the brink of a disaster. It means that the 80-year-old Salman is trying desperately hard to persuade his brothers on the succession board to allow him to change the principle of succession of the Saudi throne, since he’s ready to leave, but not so ready for his nephew Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud to rule the country. What the king has been doing is allegedly done “only for the sake of the stability of the kingdom.” Although the reality of the situation is clear – should Salman retain his position, the disintegration of the kingdom is imminent, with certain Shia areas breaking away, while the regions on the border with Yemen which are mostly populated by Yemeni tribes, more than happy to return home. Moreover, the Minister of Interior used to be a habitual cocaine user, so he was only able to “produce” two daughters, and now he’s somewhat incapable of producing more children. Should the king manage to carry out the above described scheme, he will become the first Saudi monarch to leave the throne to his son.

How do you calculate the human costs of the U.S.-led War on Terror? On the 12th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, groups of physicians attempted to arrive at a partial answer to this question by counting the dead. In their joint report— Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror—Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded that this number is staggering, with at least 1.3 million lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the onset of the war following September 11, 2001. However, the report notes, this is a conservative estimate, and the total number killed in the three countries "could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely." Furthermore, the researchers do not look at other countries targeted by U.S.-led war, including Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and beyond. Even still, the report states the figure "is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs.