Japan Is Developing Its Own Thorium Reactor

Oct. 6 (EIRNS)—At a news conference in Tokyo on Oct. 5, Keidanren, the Japanese industry group with big-name members such as Toyota, Toshiba, and Hitachi, revealed that International Thorium Energy Molten-Salt Technology, Inc. (IThEMS) plans to build the world's first commercial Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor (Th-MSR). It uses thorium fluoride which is dissolved in molten salt of lithium and beryllium fluoride. The Th-MSR uses liquid fuel. As a result, the fuel not only does not produce plutonium, but it acts as an incinerator, burning up fuel, and produces only a little high-level and low-level nuclear waste.

The principal reason that Japan is developing the Th-MSR is that these reactors will be under normal pressure, in a normal pressured container, unlike the high-pressure in a closed container used for the current solid fuel class of reactors. Japan is situated in a high-risk earthquake zone, and pressurized reactors were accepted reluctantly. In case of the Th-MSR, even if the thorium molten-salt were to be released from the container, it would glassify quickly, posing no danger to anyone.

Since the 1990s, long before the Indian nuclear program was opened up to the world, Japanese nuclear scientists were visiting India's institutions where the thorium fuel research work was being conducted. As of now, IThEMS, with start-up financing of US$300 million, is planning to develop a micro-mini reactor rated at 10MW. The long-term plan is to seek funding for developing a 200MW Th-MSR.

Zardari: Non-State Actors Are Destabilizing Pakistan

Oct. 6 (EIRNS)—Under intense pressure at home and from abroad, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, in a TV interview today, said it would be dangerous for the whole region, if "non-state actors" were to succeed in their plans. He said that the 2008 Mumbai attacks were carried out by "non-state elements" and called on democratic forces in Pakistan and India to strengthen their ties to "block such incidents in the future."

While Zardari was correct, he did not name the non-state actors, who are, in fact, the British-Saudi operatives that run terrorist operations inside Pakistan, with the help of a section of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI. EIR has long identified the role of this network.

Zardari and his coalition government are facing increasingly aggressive U.S. and NATO troops, who, in addition to stepping up drone attacks which are killing Pakistanis and some militants, have been violating Pakistan's airspace to attack militants inside Pakistan. One such attack last week led to the death of three Pakistani soldiers, forcing Islamabad to stop one of the two supply lines to the more than 150,000 foreign troops inside Afghanistan. The supply line has remained closed since Oct. 2.

The all-powerful Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, amid speculation of a military takeover in Pakistan, has "conveyed a plain message" to President Zardari and Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani, in a recent meeting, that the civilian leadership "must put its house in order," a senior Pakistani security official was quoted by the Washington Post.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo Is a Certified Nazi

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Chinese "dissident" who was awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize, is not just another Chinese human rights advocate, but a Columbia University-trained head of a "Nietzsche cult" in China, and an avowed Heideggerian. This Nazi ideologue was deployed from Columbia into the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations (just as they were about to die out on their own), with the (successful) intention of provoking a bloodbath.

Liu was threatening to revive the anarchy of the Red Guards from the days of the Cultural Revolution—mindless student gangs deployed by the "Gang of Four" to smash all authority, all science, all technology, all intellectuals, and to destroy the remnants of Classical Chinese culture. In his book Critique of China, published in 1988, Liu linked the ideology of the Communist Party with Confucianism, calling for a violent break from both. He wrote: "Nietzsche was the smasher of idols, the symbol of individual freedom.... In contemporary China ... extremism and ruthlessness is especially needed, especially in dialogue with traditional culture."

Lyndon LaRouche, watching the 1989 Tiananmen Square mass demonstrations from his jail cell in Alexandria, Va., noted that the youth were clearly searching for their souls, which had been ripped away from them during the Cultural Revolution. The Nietzsche revival in the mid-1980s helped to explain why the youth could not find those souls, since Nietzsche denied the soul's existence.

China Warns West: Do Not Force China into Economic Crisis

Oct. 7 (EIRNS)—The Washington and London-Brussels imperial crowd is trying to force China to commit economic suicide—but China will not give in. Yesterday, in the run-up to the IMF and World Bank meetings, both U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in Washington, and European Commission president José Barroso at the China-EU summit in Brussels, demanded that China end its policy of maintaining a stable exchange rate for its currency. China and India are the only nations in the world that insist on fixed exchange rates—a policy which is essential for all nations, to rebuild the world economy.

There is a lot more than fixed exchange rates at stake. China is now carrying out several crucial infrastructure programs, which would be wrecked if it were to yield to such demands. These include its space program and the only NAWAPA-scale water-transfer project being built in the world. Yesterday, China's Chang'e-2 lunar probe moved towards orbiting the Moon; in recognition of this achievement, space program official Qian Weiping told China Daily that the "most fundamental task for human beings' space exploration is to research human origins, and to find a sustainable way for mankind to live and develop."

Geithner et al. are demanding that China abandon its national economic security. At the Brookings Institution in Washington yesterday, Geithner ranted that the currency issue is the "central existential challenge" facing the world economy. China's exchange policy "sets off a dangerous dynamic." In Brussels, Barroso, speaking from the podium with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, demanded an "orderly and broad-based appreciation" of the renminbi. The planned EU-China joint press conference was later cancelled.

Wen reacted strongly. The yuan has appreciated by 55% since exchange-rate reform in 1994, he said; the euro's exchange fluctuations are due to the dollar's instability.

"Should the yuan appreciate by 20-40%, as demanded by some people, a large number of Chinese export enterprises will go bankrupt, the workers will lose their jobs, and the migrant workers will have to go back to the rural land, making it hard for society to remain stable," Wen said. "The world will by no means benefit from a crisis in the Chinese economy.... If the yuan exchange rate is unstable, enterprises will also be unstable. So will be employment, and society in general. Should China have problems in economy and society, it will be disastrous for the world."

Indonesia's President 'Opts Out' of Another Meeting with Obama

Oct. 5 (EIRNS)—Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has been working to repair military relations with the U.S. and increase U.S. investments, skipped the U.S.-ASEAN Summit called by President Obama in New York in September, and is now also skipping the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels. The Jakarta Post reports that in addition to resentment that Obama has cancelled three planned trips to Indonesia, the Indonesian President is unhappy with U.S. efforts to lobby ASEAN countries to be tough against China over the South China Sea dispute. President Yudhoyono also announced that he planned to go to China before the end of the month.

The Southeast Asia nations have overwhelmingly refused to be turned against China. Territorial issues in the South China Sea had been placed on hold while they cooperated with China on issues of mutual interest, especially development.

Yudhoyono had also planned on a trip to the Netherlands, Indonesia's former colonial master, to visit with the Queen. At the last minute, at the Jakarta airport, he cancelled this trip, for fear that he would be subject to demonstrations by pro-Moluccan independence/human rights activists who had asked a Dutch court to order the President's arrest. The Netherlands does not officially recognize the Independence movement, which includes terrorist elements, but it does provide asylum.