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Japanese researchers are reluctant to comment, but more than 90 percent of fir trees in forests close to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) show signs of mutations and abnormalities while plant lice species sampled in a town more than 30 kilometers from the disaster site either have deformed legs or are missing legs. The mutations are a probable precursor of what is in store for Japanese people who are being resettled in allegedly de-contaminated towns and villages.

Japanese scientists are reluctant to comment on the record. Several attempts by nsnbc to reach out resulted in off-protocol confirmations of suspicions and references to Japanese law that makes revealing of unauthorized information about the Fukushima disaster a criminal offense that can be punishable with up to ten years in prison. The official line is that Japanese scientists are trying to figure out whether there is a causal relation between the wave of mutations and the still ongoing release of radiation and radionucleides into the environment. Studies focus primarily on hos radioactive cesium spread in forests and forest soil after the catastrophic triple meltdown at the TEPCO operated Fukushima Daiichi NPP after it was struck by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami in 2011. Results of a 2013 study already revealed that levels of the radioactive isotope cesium from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant in northern Japanese forests had almost doubled within one year and that it will continue increasing as the forests bioaccumulate the isotope. The 2013 study and ongoing studies have major ramifications even though these studies largely ignore a cohort of other, potentially more dangerous isotopes such as plutonium.

The wave of mutations in insects, fir trees and other animals is according to Japanese experts who are relutant to speak on the record a precursor for what populations who live within a 100 km radius of the crippled power-plant can expect to see in human populations. The Japanese government’s push for resettling populations that were evacuated to so-called de-contaminated villages and towns is particularly problematic and controversial. The Japanese government’s definition of a de-contaminated village, for example, means that the village itself and an area of a few hundred meters leading to these villages have been de-contaminated by e.g. top-sol removal. Water and airborne isotopes will, however, move with the waters and winds and easily re-contaminate these so-called safe zones. Evacuees who refuse to be resettled risk losing government support. Another serious issue is that radioactive contaminated waste from the region is incinerated in facilities throughout Japan, thus spreading airborne contamination throughout the entire country. Some critics stress that this program may aim at making it extremely difficult to conduct epidemiological studies.

And in the years since the September 11 attacks, the security market is booming. The government spends nearly six times what it did in 2001 in the fight against terrorism, fueling a growing security apparatus that has added thousands of private contractors to its payrolls, with new levels of funding for both legacy security firms and new-fangled start-ups. Homeland security funding totaled more than half a trillion dollars over the past decade, providing new jobs for those with specialized skills.

Water exposed to radiation from Japan’s wrecked Fukushima atomic plant will reach the U.S. at safe levels, the chairwoman of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said as the first isotopes linked to the plant near the West Coast. “The highest amount of radiation that will reach the U.S. is two orders of magnitude -- 100 times -- less than the drinking water standard,” Allison Macfarlane said in Tokyo today. “So, if you could drink the salt water, which you won’t be able to do, it’s still fairly low.” The impending arrival of water exposed to the March 2011 accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s Dai-Ichi plant to the U.S. West Coast has prompted concerns about health impacts. Council members in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Fairfax yesterday passed a resolution calling for more testing of coastal seafood and for international experts to work on reducing radiation emissions from the Japanese plant.

In New York City, the police now maintain an unknown number of military-grade vans outfitted with X-ray radiation, enabling cops to look through the walls of buildings or the sides of trucks. The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Each X-ray van costs an estimated $729,000 to $825,000.The NYPD will not reveal when, where, or how often they are used.

Here are some specific questions that New York City refuses to answer:How is the NYPD ensuring that innocent New Yorkers are not subject to harmful X-ray radiation? How long is the NYPD keeping the images that it takes and who can look at them? Is the NYPD obtaining judicial authorization prior to taking images, and if so, what type of authorization? Is the technology funded by taxpayer money, and has the use of the vans justified the price tag? Those specifics are taken from a New York Civil Liberties Union court filing. The legal organization is seeking to assist a lawsuit filed by Pro Publica journalist Michael Grabell, who has been fighting New York City for answers about X-ray vans for 3 years.“ProPublica filed the request as part of its investigation into the proliferation of security equipment, including airport body scanners, that expose people to ionizing radiation, which can mutate DNA and increase the risk of cancer,” he explained. (For fear of a terrorist “dirty bomb,” America’s security apparatus is exposing its population to radiation as a matter of course.)

A state court has already ruled that the NYPD has to turn over policies, procedures, and training manuals that shape uses of X-rays; reports on past deployments; information on the costs of the X-ray devices and the number of vans purchased; and information on the health and safety effects of the technology. But New York City is fighting on appeal to suppress that information and more, as if it is some kind of spy agency rather than a municipal police department operating on domestic soil, ostensibly at the pleasure of city residents.Its insistence on extreme secrecy is part of an alarming trend. The people of New York City are effectively being denied the ability to decide how they want to be policed.