ignorance is never blissful

more admission from the liars at TEPCO

2011-05-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Yomiuri Shimbun 4/14/11

..."Water leaks from No. 1 reactor
Meanwhile, TEPCO has announced that water has been leaking through small openings in the bottom of the No. 1 reactor's pressure vessel.
Combined, the openings would be equivalent to a hole several centimeters in diameter, and according to TEPCO, were made when melted nuclear fuel damaged the bottom.
The melted fuel likely has accumulated in the bottom of the vessel. TEPCO has admitted the situation is a meltdown, in which melted nuclear fuel cannot maintain its shape and drops down to lower parts of a reactor core.
TEPCO had previously said fuel was just partially damaged...."

fukushima quickly becoming chernobyl on roids....

2011-05-14T05:57:00.001-07:00

looks like as they finally get the ability to measure what is going on at the daiichi plant things are going from bad to worse. Note that before this they were only guessing but made it appear as it were scientific fact.

Holes in reactor 1 mean road map needs major overhaul

By MINORU MATSUTANI

Staff writer

Tokyo Electric Power Co. will have to change its road map for stabilizing the Fukushima No. 1 power plant because it will take longer than expected to install a cooling system with circulating water for heavily damaged reactor No. 1, experts said Friday.

Tepco said Thursday it found that the water level in the reactor's pressure and containment vessels was much lower than it had estimated and said both had developed holes or cracks.

The utility is still pumping massive amounts of water into the vessels to cool the fuel rods inside the pressure vessel.

"Tepco will have to review its plan in the road map dramatically. We now know Tepco has much more work to do, such as locating cracks and holes and sealing them," said Hiromi Ogawa, a former engineer at Toshiba Corp. who managed its nuclear power generation project.

Industry minister Banri Kaieda echoed Ogawa, telling journalists Friday that the holes at the bottom of the containment vessel are "a major factor requiring a change in how to stabilize the situation."

Tepco is working to gain control over reactors 1, 2 and 3 in line with the road map announced April 17.

According to the plan, Tepco aims to start reducing the amount of leaked radioactive substances in three months and achieve cold shutdown, the status in which the water temperature in the pressure vessel drops below 100 degrees and the fuel rods are being stably cooled, in six to nine months.

Tepco has not injected water into the containment vessels for reactors 2 and 3, and it did not deny the possibility that those vessels may be as badly damaged as reactor No. 1's.

"Tepco was going to establish a cooling system of circulating water from (reactor 1's) containment vessel to the pressure vessel and back again, but it may have to establish the system so that water in the basement of the reactor building will be circulated to the pressure vessel and from there to the containment vessel, depending on where and how many holes there are," Ogawa said.

Sealing holes in the containment vessel will probably be "very difficult" because workers will have to go very close to the spot where highly radioactive water keeps flowing out, he said.

Even the floor of the reactor building may have cracks, and if so, a cooling system that is circulating water inside it will leak, Ogawa said.

However, leaks from the reactor building would probably not be as bad as from the containment vessel, and sealing cracks in the reactor building is probably less dangerous than fixing those in the containment vessel, he said.

Shinichi Morooka of Waseda University, who specializes in nuclear reactor engineering, agreed with Ogawa. Even though Tepco will not be able to meet the deadline it spelled out in the April 17 road map, "I believe Tepco has been doing the best job it could possibly do" since April 17, he said.

The temperature in the pressure vessel is about 100 to 120 degrees, according to Tepco. But that doesn't mean the utility is about to achieve cold shutdown, Ogawa said.

"Cold shutdown is achievable with water temperature less than 100 degrees only if the fuel rods are neatly placed. Now a chunk of mixed melted rods and zirconium is in the bottom of the pressure vessel and the temperature at the center of the chunk is probably higher," he said.

The Japan Times: Friday, May 13, 2011

fukushima more BS

2011-05-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

Reactor 1 fuel rods melted, sank to bottom

Coolant water much lower than Tepco had been estimating

By KAZUAKI NAGATA

Staff writer

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday that the water level in the No. 1 reactor's pressure vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant is much lower than thought and that some of the fuel rods melted down and fell to its bottom.

But Tepco also said the temperature in the pressure vessel has been kept at around 100 to 120 degrees, which is cool enough to keep the reactor safe, for now.

The low water level, however, indicates that the pressure vessel could have holes or cracks through which radioactive water is leaking.

Tepco's latest discoveries were found after workers entered the main building, where they were finally able to check and fix water-level indicators damaged when the March 11 monster earthquake and tsunami crippled the nuclear power plant.

The workers also learned that the water in the containment vessel, which Tepco has kept spraying to cool down the pressure vessel from the outside, is also much lower than earlier believed. There might be some holes or cracks in the vessel or components connected to it, Tepco said.

Any holes or cracks in the pressure and containment vessels are sure to make repair work more difficult.

The utility plans to keep cooling the reactor's core by attaching air-cooling machines that will recirculate the water inside the containment vessel.

Tepco has poured about 10,000 cu. meters of water into the containment vessel so far. But only about 7,500 cu. meters should be necessary to cool the fuel rods if a way can be found to reuse it instead of letting it flow away.

"We're not sure how much of the fuel rods fell down to the bottom and in what form, but the temperature shows that they are being cooled," Tepco spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said at a news conference.

On March 12, reactor No. 1 suffered a hydrogen explosion after the fuel rods were fully exposed for hours and generated hydrogen, which reacted violently with oxygen.

But Matsumoto said Tepco believes such an explosion at this time is unlikely because nitrogen has already been poured inside the containment vessel to purge explosive gases.

Matsumoto also said that, considering the situation with the No. 1 reactor, the water level data from reactors 2 and 3 may not be credible.

Tadashi Narabayashi, a professor of reactor engineering at Hokkaido University, also said it is likely that the melted fuel rods are being cooled with coolant water at the bottom of the pressure vessel.

According to Narabayashi, the zirconium encasing the fuel rods becomes weak and brittle when it is fully exposed to oxygen and then covered with cold water again.

According to Tepco, the water-level indicators of the pressure vessel had indicated the water surface was about 1.65 meters below the top of the fuel rods. But as of Thursday morning the reading was more than 5 meters below the top. The fuel rods, if undamaged, are only 4.5 meters in height.

Although the water is leaking from somewhere in the pressure vessel, Tepco officials don't believe the melted fuel has penetrated the bottom of the pressure vessel and dropped into the containment vessel below, given that the thermometer placed at the bottom of the pressure vessel is still working. If a big chunk of the bottom was missing, the thermometer would malfunction, Tepco said.

There are actually no tools specially designed to check the water level inside the containment vessel, but Tepco said that it made estimates based on other factors, including the pressure level inside the containment vessel.

information from kyodo added

The Japan Times: Thursday, May 12, 2011

Paul Craig Roberts: osama bin laden's useful death

2011-05-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

Osama bin Laden’s Useful Death

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
May 3, 2011
In a propaganda piece reeking of US Triumphalism, two alleged journalists, Adam Goldman and Chris Brummitt, of the Associated Press or, rather, of the White House Ministry of Truth, write, or copy off a White House or CIA press release that “Osama bin Laden, the terror mastermind killed by Navy SEALs in an intense firefight, was hunted down based on information first gleaned years ago (emphasis added) from detainees at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe, officials disclosed Monday.”
“No credible image to show Osama killed by U.S. Special Forces.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRv-Zo7iZHE&feature=player_embedded

How many Americans will notice that the first paragraph of the “report” justifies CIA prisons and torture? Without secret prisons and torture “the terror mastermind” would still be running free, despite having died from renal failure in 2001.

How many Americans will have the wits to wonder why the “terror mastermind” who defeated not merely the CIA and the FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with Israel’s Mossad and the intelligence services of NATO, who defeated NORAD, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Air Force, and Air Traffic Control, who caused security procedures to fail four times in US airports in one hour on the same day, who caused the state-of-the-art Pentagon air defenses to fail, and who managed to fly three airliners into three buildings with pilots who did not know how to fly has not pulled off any other attack in almost ten years? Do Americans really believe that a government’s security system that can so totally fail when confronted with a few Saudi Arabians with box cutters can renew itself to perfection overnight?
How many Americans will notice the resurrection of the long missing bin Laden as “terror mastermind” after his displacement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Guantanamo prisoner who confessed to being the “mastermind of 9/11″ after being water-boarded 183 times?
Americans are too busy celebrating to think, a capability that seems to have been taken out of their education.
Americans are so enthralled over the death of bin Laden that they do not wonder why information gleamed years ago would take so long to locate a person who was allegedly living in a million-dollar building equipped with all the latest communication equipment next to the Pakistani Military Academy. Allegedly, the “most wanted criminal” was not moving from hide-out to hide-out in desolate mountains, but ensconced in luxury quarters in broad daylight. Nevertheless, despite his obvious location, it took the CIA years to find him after claiming to have gained information of his whereabouts out of captives in secret prisons. This is the image of the CIA as the new Keystone Cops.
In an immediate follow-up to the announcement that the Navy SEALs and CIA mercenaries acted in an exemplary fashion following the rules of engagement while a cowardly bin Laden hid behind a woman shield when the gunfire erupted, we have from the pressitutes that “U.S. officials conceded the risk of renewed attack. The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge bin Laden’s death, CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a memo. . . . Within a few hours, the Department of Homeland Security warned that bin Laden’s death was likely to provide motivation for attacks from ‘homegrown violent extremists’.”
John Brennan, White House counter-terrorism adviser, told reporters that “it was inconceivable that the terrorist fugitive didn’t have support in Pakistan where his hideout had been custom built six years ago in a city with a heavy military presence.”
So the claimed murder of bin Laden by the US in a sovereign foreign country with which the US is not at war, a crime under international law, has set up three more self-serving possibilities:
Terrorists will avenge bin Laden’s death, says the CIA, setting up another false flag attack to keep the profits flowing into the military/security complex and the power flowing into the unaccountable CIA. Homeland Security can extend the domestic police state, abuse of travelers, and arrests of war protestors. And Pakistan is under the gun of invasion and takeover (for India, of course) for shielding bin Laden.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)
The Israel Lobby’s representatives in the US Congress quickly fell in with the agenda. Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared that the Pakistani Army and intelligence agency “have a lot of questions to answer, given the location, the length of time and the apparent fact that this was actually this facility was actually build for bin Laden, and its closeness to the central location of the Pakistani army.”
The two reporters question nothing in the government’s propaganda. Instead, the reporters join in the celebration. Nevertheless they let slip that “officials were weighing the release of at least one photo taken of bin Laden’s body as part of what Brennan called an effort to make sure ‘nobody has any basis to try and deny the death.’”
As the Guardian and European newspapers have revealed, the photo of the dead bin Laden is a fake. As the alleged body has been dumped into the ocean, nothing remains but the word of the US government, which lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections, about yellowcake, about Iranian nukes, and, according to thousands of experts, about 9/11. Suddenly the government is telling us the truth about bin Laden’s death? If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll let you have for a good price.
My initial interpretation of the faked bin Laden death was that Obama needed closure of the Afghan war and occupation in order to deal with the US budget deficit. Subsequent statements from Obama regime officials suggest that the agenda might be to give Americans a piece of war victory in order to boost their lagging enthusiasm. The military/security complex will become richer and more powerful, and Americans will be rewarded with vicarious pleasure in victory over enemies.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

U.S. doctors hit Tokyo radiation limit for kids

2011-05-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

Monday, May 2, 2011

U.S. doctors hit Tokyo radiation limit for kids

Kyodo

Physicians for Social Responsibility, a U.S. nonprofit organization of medical experts, has condemned as "unconscionable" the Japanese government's safety standards on radiation levels at elementary and junior high schools in nuclear disaster-stricken Fukushima Prefecture.

The PSR statement directly challenges Tokyo's stance that it is safe for schoolchildren to use school playgrounds in the prefecture as long as the dose they are exposed to does not exceed 20 millisieverts over a year.

The PSR view is also in line with that voiced by Toshiso Kosako, who said Friday he would step down as an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan on the Fukushima nuclear crisis in protest. The University of Tokyo professor urged the government to toughen guidelines on upper limits on radiation levels the education ministry recently announced for elementary school playgrounds in Fukushima.

The U.S. group said in a statement released Friday, "Any exposure, including exposure to naturally occurring background radiation, creates an increased risk of cancer.

"Children are much more vulnerable than adults to the effects of radiation, and fetuses are even more vulnerable," it said.

The medical experts group is part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

"(Twenty millisieverts) for children exposes them to a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer. And if they are exposed to this dose for two years, the risk is 1 in 100. There is no way that this level of exposure can be considered 'safe' for children," the statement said.

Nuclear Adviser to Japanese President Resigns Over Radiation Levels

2011-05-02T06:19:00.001-07:00

Nuclear Adviser to Japanese President Resigns Over Radiation Levels

Infowars.com
May 1, 2011
During an emotional and teary news conference, Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the University of Tokyo, announced his resignation as senior nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
Kosako said he could not stay on while the government set inappropriate radiation limits for elementary schools near the plant. “I cannot allow this as a scholar,” he said, adding that he is also opposed the government raising the limit for radiation exposure for workers at the plant, according to the CBC.
Japanese authorities have set a 20-millisievert limit for radiation exposure as safe. Kosako said that is 20 times too high, especially for children, who are more vulnerable to radiation than adults.

On Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the corruption plagued utility that runs Fukushima Daiichi, revealed that the radiation exposures for two workers at the tsunami stricken plant have been found to have reached the limit of 250 millisieverts.
“I cannot help but to think [the government and other agencies] are only taking stopgap measures,” Kosako said during the news conference.
On Friday, Michio Ishikawa, the former head of the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute and a leading proponent of nuclear energy, appeared on a Japanese television program. Ishikawa said spent nuclear fuel rods at the Fukushima plant have melted down. “Right now, it’s [a] war with radiation. TEPCO’s response is horrendous,” he said, according to a translated transcript posted on a Japanese blog last week.

Ishikawa’s comments went unreported in the West.
The Fukushima story has all but fallen off the corporate media radar screen as it concentrates on the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton and other far less significant news stories.

Radioactive traces found in Tohoku, Kanto breast milk

2011-05-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

the (not-so) funny thing is that they don't mention that if the radiation is in the breast milk...so too then is it throughout the mothers' bodies. In their bones and glands and that they will die form cancer as a driect cause of the fuckinshima radiation. But hey, don't worry, small amounts of radiation being fed directly into you is god for you ... like meamine, and mercury (which anyone knows makes you smarter)

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Traces of radioactive material were detected in the breast milk of women living in the Tohoku and Kanto regions last month, but not at levels that could pose a health risk to them or their babies, according to the health ministry.
"The levels detected wouldn't harm the health of the mothers or their infants, so they can keep breast-feeding as normal," a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry official said.

The ministry sampled breast milk from 23 women from Fukushima, Ibaraki, Chiba and Saitama prefectures and Tokyo on April 24 and 25.
Traces of radioactive material were detected in seven of the samples provided for what was the first survey of its kind since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered a crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Provisional safe levels for radiation in breast milk have not yet been set.
However, up to 100 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram of drinking water and milk is considered safe for infants, while up to 200 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram is deemed safe for children and adults.
Breast milk from seven of the women showed 2.2 becquerels to 8 becquerels of radioactive iodine, and one also showed 2.4 becquerels of radioactive cesium--well below the levels deemed safe for water and milk.
Materials detected in the breast milk are thought to have come from radiation leaks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.
Shunichi Yamashita, dean of the Nagasaki University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, was not surprised by the survey findings, but said there was no need for alarm.
"Radioactive material has been dispersed into the air and water and will be absorbed by the human body, so I expected tests on breast milk would reveal traces of radiation," said Yamashita, an authority on radiation exposure.
"However, the levels detected were very low and can be ignored. There's no health risk, so I urge mothers to keep breast-feeding their babies," Yamashita said.

(May. 2, 2011)

Libya: It’s Not About Oil, It’s About Currency and Loans

2011-04-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

John Perkins
April 27, 2011
World Bank President Robert Zoellick Thursday said he hopes the institution will have a role rebuilding Libya as it emerges from current unrest.
Zoellick at a panel discussion noted the bank’s early role in the reconstruction of France, Japan and other nations after World War II.
“Reconstruction now means (Ivory Coast), it means southern Sudan, it means Liberia, it means Sri Lanka, I hope it will mean Libya,” Zoellick said.
On Ivory Coast, Zoellick said he hoped that within “a couple weeks” the bank would move forward with “some hundred millions of dollars of emergency support.”

We listen to U.S. spokespeople try to explain why we’re suddenly now entangled in another Middle East war. Many of us find ourselves questioning the official justifications. We are aware that the true causes of our engagement are rarely discussed in the media or by our government.
While many of the rationalizations describe resources, especially oil, as the reasons why we should be in that country, there are also an increasing number of dissenting voices. For the most part, these revolve around Libya’s financial relationship with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and multinational corporations.
According to the IMF, Libya’s Central Bank is 100% state owned. The IMF estimates that the bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. It is significant that in the months running up to the UN resolution that allowed the US and its allies to send troops into Libya, Muammar al-Qaddafi was openly advocating the creation of a new currency that would rival the dollar and the euro. In fact, he called upon African and Muslim nations to join an alliance that would make this new currency, the gold dinar, their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil and other resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.
The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Qaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq.
In my talks, I often find it necessary to remind audiences of a point that seems obvious to me but is misunderstood by so many: that the World Bank is not really a world bank at all; it is, rather a U. S. bank. Ditto, its closest sibling, the IMF. In fact, if one looks at the World Bank and IMF executive boards and the votes each member of the board has, one sees that the United States controls about 16 percent of the votes in the World Bank – (Compared with Japan at about 7%, the second largest member, China at 4.5%, Germany with 4.00%, and the United Kingdom and France with about 3.8% each), nearly 17% of the IMF votes (Compared with Japan and Germany at about 6% and UK and France at nearly 5%),and the US holds veto power over all major decisions. Furthermore, the United States President appoints the World Bank President.
So, we might ask ourselves: What happens when a “rogue” country threatens to bring the banking system that benefits the corporatocracy to its knees? What happens to an “empire” when it can no longer effectively be overtly imperialistic?
One definition of “Empire” (per my book The Secret History of the American Empire) states that an empire is a nation that dominates other nations by imposing its own currency on the lands under its control. The empire maintains a large standing military that is ready to protect the currency and the entire economic system that depends on it through extreme violence, if necessary. The ancient Romans did this. So did the Spanish and the British during their days of empire-building. Now, the US or, more to the point, the corporatocracy, is doing it and is determined to punish any individual who tries to stop them. Qaddafi is but the latest example.
Understanding the war against Quaddafi as a war in defense of empire is another step in the direction of helping us ask ourselves whether we want to continue along this path of empire-building. Or do we instead want to honor the democratic principles we are taught to believe are the foundations of our country?
History teaches that empires do not endure; they collapse or are overthrown. Wars ensue and another empire fills the vacuum.
The past sends a compelling message. We must change. We cannot afford to watch history repeat itself.
Let us not allow this empire to collapse and be replaced by another. Instead, let us all vow to create a new consciousness. Let the grass-roots movements in the Middle East – fostered by the young who must live with the future and are fueled through social networks – inspire us to demand that our country, our financial institutions and the corporations that depend on us to buy their goods and services commit themselves to fashioning a world that is sustainable, just, peaceful, and prosperous for all.
We stand at the threshold. It is time for you and me to step across that threshold, to move out of the dark void of brutal exploitation and greed into the light of compassion and cooperation.
John Perkins is an Ex-economic hitman turned social activist. He is the author of MUST READ books like Confessions of an Economic Hitman and The Secret History of the American Empire. Please visit Perkins at his sites JohnPerkins.org and DreamChange.org.

cops admit that cigs are dangerous ..but only the conterfit ones hahahaha

2011-04-25T04:57:00.000-07:00

like in the previous post...industry only cares about making profits here is more on that....

People intent on purchasing contraband tobacco making its way into New Brunswick from Quebec and Ontario could be in danger, say RCMP.
Cpl. Robert Fullerton of RCMP J Division's customs and excise unit said smokers are being exposed to the unknown.
"Certainly they (cigarettes) are cancer-causing, everybody knows that," Fullerton said.
"The problem with these cigarettes is that you literally don't know what you are buying. You are buying from individuals who are there to make a profit, and a profit only, and they don't care what they put in there."
Fullerton said some of the legislated features of regular cigarettes aren't present in the contraband version.
Commercially bought cigarettes are normally ripped so that they can't burn completely if someone falls asleep and they will go out on their own, how caring..they don't care about all teh toxins just the insurance industry he said.
"With these (illegal) cigarettes, you don't know," Fullerton said. "The protection is definitely not there for the public. There is nobody they are going to be able to sue at the end of this."like who sues an dwins against the tobacco cos anyway? anymore?

Barbara MacKinnon, president and CEO of the New Brunswick Lung Association, said Health Canada studies indicate that commercial and contraband cigarettes have much the same chemical component. But, she said, not knowing who's making them and the process involved leaves questions.
"To me the real risk is, even if they have the same components, that they are encouraging young people to smoke because they can afford them," MacKinnon said.
Fullerton said it's unclear what impact last month's provincial budget tax increase on tobacco may have on those intent on dealing contraband cigarettes.
The tobacco tax has jumped by 45 per cent. The rise is equivalent to 5.25 cents per cigarette, an increase of $1.31 per pack, $10.50 per carton and an extra $25 million in provincial revenue.
Fullerton said the RCMP is aware the price of cigarettes has increased, which is always an incentive for the criminal element to look for further ways to make money.
"The highway traffic patrol units are extremely vigilant and maintaining a strong presence to deter those people considering transferring contraband tobacco."
On April 8, members of the RCMP's traffic services unit executed a pair of stops on the Trans-Canada Highway in the Edmundston area, resulting in the seizure of hundreds of thousands of illegal cigarettes.
The checks resulted in 200,000 contraband smokes being taken from one vehicle and 150,000 from another.
In both cases, the cigarettes and the vehicles used to transport them were seized and will be forfeited to the Crown.
Investigators believe all of the cigarettes were destined for the Halifax area.
On April 2, members of the District 8 Acadian Peninsula RCMP seized 124 cartons of illegal cigarettes estimated to be worth more than $3,000 from a residence in Tracadie-Sheila.

fukushima = chernobyl

2011-04-25T04:53:00.001-07:00

and here's why...they (govt) have no real idea how much radiation is being released...they just guess based on models (comp) now where have I heard BS based on faulty computer models before? Oh right CRU and climategate and just about any "science" of the modern area. let's be honest the Nuclear industry, like all industry, is FOR PROFIT only and they will do whatever to keep the profits rollin.

Atmospheric radiation leak underestimated

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Data released by the government indicates radioactive material was leaking into the atmosphere from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in early April in greater quantities than previously estimated.
Radioactive material was being released into the atmosphere from the plant at an estimated rate of 154 terabecquerels per day as of April 5, according to data released by the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission on Saturday.
The NSC previously estimated radiation leakage on April 5 at "less than 1 terabecquerel per hour."
Iodine-131 and cesium-137 were released into the atmosphere that day at the estimated rates of 0.69 terabecquerel per hour and 0.14 terabecquerel per hour, respectively, the NSC said.
Emissions are converted into iodine-131 equivalents for assessment on the international nuclear event scale (INES), to arrive at the total 154 terabecquerels per day, the nuclear safety watchdog said.

One terabecquerel equals 1 trillion becquerels.
On April 17, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said in its plan for stabilization of the crippled reactors it would not start to get radiation leakage under control until the plan's fourth month of implementation.
This would mean 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances would be released into the atmosphere from the plant during the coming three months, according to simple calculations based on the estimated emission rate as of April 5.
Emissions in that three-month period alone would therefore exceed the level necessary for a Level 6 severity rating on the INES, the globally accepted measure for evaluating nuclear accidents.
The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima plant has been rated a maximum Level 7 on the scale, which was established by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1992.
The total amount of radioactive material discharged from the plant from March 11 to early April was estimated between 370,000 and 630,000 terabecquerels, according to government sources.
The commission, however, said the figures were estimates only, "with a considerable margin of error." Radiation levels around the six-reactor complex have been slowly falling, it said.

syrian problems caused by...guess who the US as USual

2011-04-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Cables Reveal State Department, CIA NGOs Fomented Syrian Unrest

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 18, 2011
Following the false flag attack on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration announced it planned to go after the so-called “axis of evil,” specifically Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Following Bush’s January 2002 speech, United Nations ambassador John Bolton quietly added three countries to the list – Syria, Libya and Cuba.

CIA, State Department organized demonstrations grow in Syria.

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For a time, Libya was removed from the hit list after Muammar Gaddafi agreed to abandon his WMD program. Gaddafi’s announcement was treated with much fanfare and touted as an accomplishment in the bogus war on manufactured terror. The Libyan dictator has wanted diplomatic relations with the United States since U.N. sanctions were imposed on the country in 1992. In fact, Libya has struggled for international legitimacy since 1986 when transnational oil corporations began abandoning the country, at least publicly.
Syria cooperated with the United States following the September attacks, but this did not prevent a propaganda campaign against the country, including the assertion (cooked up by the Israelis) that Iraq’s missing WMD were moved to Syria.

The Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 was part of the effort to demonize the country and its leader, Bashar al-Assad.
In 2006, while speaking in Alabama, Gen. Wesley Clark recounted his conversation with a general at the Pentagon in November, 2001.
Gary Leupp quotes Clark:

I said, “Are we still going to invade Iraq?” “Yes, Sir,” he said, “but it’s worse than that.” I said, “How do you mean?” He held up this piece of paper. He said, “I just got this memo today or yesterday from the office of the Secretary of Defense upstairs. It’s a, it’s a five-year plan. We’re going to take down seven countries in five years. We’re going to start with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, then Libya, Somalia, Sudan, we’re going to come back and get Iran in five years. I said, “Is that classified, that paper?” He said, “Yes Sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me, because I want to be able to talk about it.”

The Bush neocon clique considered the overthrow of Syria an important element in its war against Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East.
In late 2005, Richard Perle, at the time described as the Prince of Darkness, attended a meeting at the home of Farid Ghadry, the head of the Syrian Reform Party. Ghadry had met with Dick Cheney to strategize about regime change in Syria. He told the Wall Street Journal that Perle’s pal Ahmad Chalabi “paved the way in Iraq for what we want to do in Syria.” Ghadry was close to major players in the neocon think-tanks and foundations.
Or put more frankly, the Bush neocons and their “thinkers” (as Bush called them), envisioned the same sort of widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, social support sytems and staggering loss of human life in Syria as they had successfully inflicted on Iraq.
Now we learn that this concerted effort to violate Syria’s national sovereignty and meddle in its internal affairs was passed on from the Bush neocons to apparatchiks in the Obama administration.
“The State Department has secretly funded Syrian opposition groups, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks,” the Washington Post reports today.
The cables reveal the State Department has funneled around $6 million since 2006 to a group of Syrian exiles to operate a London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, and finance activities inside Syria, according to the newspaper.

Syria is the next piece on the geopolitical chessboard.

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Barada TV began broadcasting in April, 2009, and ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria that began last month as part of a campaign by intelligence agencies to overthrow regimes in the Middle East. These color revolutions are supported by establishment NGOs and the CIA through USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Freedom House. NED and NGOs are now used by the CIA as the preferred way to overthrow governments. Others claim Freedom House is a tool for the CIA and terrorists.
“What happened in Georgia with the Rose Revolution and Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2003-2004 was part of a long-term strategy orchestrated by the Pentagon, the State Department and various US-financed NGOs like Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy to create pro-NATO regime change in those former Soviet Union areas and to literally encircle Russia,” author and researcher William Engdahl told RT in January.
”What is going on in the Middle East with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that we saw a few days ago, and now in Egypt with Mubarak in his 80s, and obviously a regime that is not exactly the most stable one, we have a food crisis taking place as a backdrop and the IMF coming and telling these countries to eliminate their state food subsidies so you have, of course, the explosive background for popular unrest. Within that you have these NGOs, like Freedom House, training activists and trade unions and various other organizations to demand democracy, demand human rights and so forth,” he added.
The Wikileaks cables reveal an intimate relationship between several Syrian exile groups and the State Department through a program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative. The State Department funneled money through the Democracy Council, a Los Angeles-based NGO. The group is praised by folks associated with the United Nations and RAND corporation.
According to the cables, the Democracy Council received $6.3 million from the State Department to run a Syria-related program called the “Civil Society Strengthening Initiative.” That program is described as “a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy Council and local partners” to produce, among other things, “various broadcast concepts.” Other cables make clear that one of those concepts was Barada TV, according to the Post.
In late March, Secretary of Defense Gates instructed the Syrian military to depose leader Bashar al-Assad and “empower a revolution.”

“I’ve just come from Egypt, where the Egyptian army stood on the sidelines and allowed people to demonstrate and in fact empowered a revolution. The Syrians might take a lesson from that,” Gates added.
A CNN Arabic poll conducted in 2009 revealed that Syrian leader Assad is one of the most popular leaders in the Arab world.

aging and supplements

2011-04-17T17:58:00.001-07:00

Newsmaxhealth.com

Aging's Cellular Energy CrisisThursday, April 14, 2011 10:29 AM

There is growing evidence that one of the most common effects of aging is a progressive loss of mitochondrial function — that is, our cells have more and more difficulty making energy efficiently. When this occurs, the mitochondria begin to produce enormous numbers of free radicals.

A breakdown in mitochondrial function is strongly linked to free-radical generation, which damages cells. Mitochondria are the cell’s energy powerhouses and produce about 90 percent of all energy. They are also the source of most free radicals, which is the cost of energy production.

Ironically, chronic inflammation has been shown to be a major cause for mitochondrial failure. In addition, we are all exposed to a great number of mitochondrial poisons:

• Pesticides

• Herbicides

• Fungicides

• Industrial chemicals

• Vaccinations

• MSG (and other forms of glutamate food additives)

• Mercury

• Lead

• Cadmium

• Aluminum

• Fluoride

Most of us are exposed to all of these, and many of these poisons have synergistic toxicity. Many of these produce mitochondrial damage by triggering inflammation. (For a detailed discussion on inflammation and its role in many diseases, see my newsletter "Inflammation: The Real Cause of Most Diseases.")

When our cells begin to have difficulty making energy, we become weak and listless — we sleep a lot during the day and tire easily. Also, our organs begin to fail and are increasingly subject to disease and toxins from the environment, as well as toxic foods.

Mitochondrial failure in our brain is even more ominous. A number of studies have shown that when the mitochondrial energy production falls, even modestly, the brain cells become hypersensitive to the toxic effect of glutamate (excitotoxicity).

Even normal levels of brain glutamate can cause destruction of brain connections and actual brain cells. We see elevated brain glutamate with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, migraine headaches, multiple sclerosis, strokes, and head injuries.

In all of these conditions, brain energy levels are low because of mitochondrial malfunction, and they malfunction long before symptoms develop. Our mitochondria also contain DNA, and this DNA is more sensitive to damage by free radicals and lipid peroxidation products because mitochondrial DNA has very few repair enzymes.

It has been shown that at age 70 our nuclear DNA oxidizes 10 times faster and mitochondrial DNA oxidizes 15 times faster than when we were young. So, not only do we produce more free radicals as we age, we are more vulnerable to damage by these radicals.

This is why we should increase the strength of our antioxidant network as we age. The antioxidant network is a collection of chemicals and enzymes found in every cell in the body. The network neutralizes free radicals and things that can become free radicals, such as hydrogen peroxide.

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to boost mitochondrial function, which has been shown to protect the brain and body from free radical damage. These supplements do just that:

• Vitamins B1, B6, B12

• Niacinamide

• Riboflavin

• Folate

• Vitamin K

• R-lipoic acid

• Acetyl-L-carnitine

• CoQ10

• Magnesium

• Zinc

• Pyruvate

Antioxidants also protect the mitochondria from damage by the free radicals it produces. Of particular concern are the lipid peroxidation products, such as acrolein and 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE), which are very destructive. We see high levels of these lipid peroxidation products in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, heart failure, head injuries, and strokes.

Learn even more about the benefits of supplements by reading my special report "Key Vitamins That Save Your Heart, Prevent Cancer and Keep You Living Long."

These caustic oxidized fats are resistant to most antioxidant vitamins, but are neutralized by flavonoids such as curcumin, quercetin, ellagic acid, luteolin, and proanthocyanidins (from grape seed extract). Most of these are available as supplements, and the others can be taken as vegetable blends.

For more of Dr. Blaylock’s weekly tips, go here to view the archive.

Special Links

dr. busby on the radiation danger from the beginning

2011-04-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

'Japan careless about radiation dangers'

Interview with Professor Chris Busby from the European committee on radiation, London

Thu Mar 24, 2011 9:4AM

Japanese authorities have played down the nuclear reactor leak and the significance of informing citizens of minimal danger, but in fact the opposite is the case.

Press TV interviews Professor Chris Busby from the European committee on radiation in London who has tried to warn the Japanese that the facts point to risk at the level of Chernobyl or even greater and that Tokyo is at risk.

Press TV: How serious is the situation regarding a radiation leak from the nuclear plant that is taking place in Japan?

Professor Busby: This situation is very similar to Chernobyl in the way in which at the beginning everyone said it was not a big problem, and then they said there was no much radiation; and then along the line we see them backing away from that position as it is getting more and more serious.

At the present time my feeling is that it is probably getting very close to that of Chernobyl. I don't believe a lot of the communiques coming out and there is enough factual information from these; however, for me to be able to estimate that a huge amount of radioactivity has already come out of that plant.

For example, on the IAEA website last night a bulletin said the concentration of contamination has spread 58 kilometers from the plant. That level is about twice as high as the level of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The Chernobyl exclusion zone was only 30 kilometers. So we're talking about levels of that in comparison are greater already.

Press TV: The communiques you say you don't believe them - Why is there disinformation then coming out of the Japanese media and why is there not more information coming from the IAEA on this?

Professor Busby: I don't think the IAEA really knows what's going on. To some extent they have to listen to what they're being told by Japanese authorities. People are not able to tell what is actually happening inside the reactors because the radiation levels are so high you just can't approach the reactors without dying. That's the problem.

And all the instrumentation - the stuff you have in the control room that measures what's going on in the reactor of course is all destroyed. So there is no way to know what is going on.

They have been making desperate attempts to cool both the fuel rods and the reactors themselves just by tipping water on them, which means they can't get water into the reactors it seems.

These are concentrations the IAEA have been publishing. So it's not a question of not believing; it's a question of deducing what's happened on the basis of what facts are available. And the two bits of facts which are available are that the radiation levels are extremely high; quite a distance from the plant, and secondly, the contamination level on the ground is extremely high within at least 50 kilometers from the plant.

Press TV: You are saying that you think the situation is as major or almost as major as Chernobyl. At this point in time what do you think they can do? Is there anything they can do to stop this from deteriorating even further?

Professor Busby: I can't think of anything. It seems to me that the fuel has actually melted inside the reactor pressure vessels and so there is a pool of molten fuel in the bottom of at least three of those pressure vessels - so that's the first problem.

And it's not possible to cool that just by pouring water on it. You can cool reactor rods, which are separate, by circulating water through them, but you can't water down a great hot lump of metal. And the other problem I believe is the spent fuel on top of reactors 1, 2 and 3 have already been blown up into the air- so that's something they can't do anything about- littering the plant all around the area; it's probably in the sea; the sea is contaminated.

No one has ever seen this happen before and it's hard to know quite what they can do. I don't have any solutions except to pray.

Press TV: What has been taking place is black smoke coming out of reactor three and white smoke coming out elsewhere. What does it mean - the different color of the smoke?

Professor Busby: I can only guess. All we know is that there is white smoke and black smoke. What I can say for sure is that both the white and black smoke are intensely radioactive; there is no question about that. And my feeling is that some of this smoke consists of very hot radioactive particles - So, very small particles that reflect the light and will float away over the sea or whichever direction the wind is blowing.

In the European Committee on Radiation for about five days now we've been modeling the air flows, which took the first and third reactor explosions out to sea and then back over Tokyo. We can see that it goes out and around in a big circle over Tokyo and then it goes north over the country.

Before it turned around it had clipped Okinawa and that's why they thought that the power plant there was melting down because they got a sudden hit of radiation there.

So these radioactive materials such as Uranium and Tritium and Iodine of course and others are now contaminating the island of Honshu, which is a large distance from the plant and this will have significant effects on the health of the population there.

Press TV: Evacuation orders were carried out within 20 kilometers of the plant. If you were in a position of decision making inside Japan, would you have ordered the evacuation to cover a greater area?

Professor Busby: Yes and right from the beginning. In fact I did advise them - we put advice on various websites including the European Committee's website to take it more than 100 kilometers. Now I believe they should consider taking people out of Tokyo. I don't know where they're going to put them, this is problem- it's a nightmare.

Tokyo itself is certainly under risk from radioactivity not just from the iodine, but from a host of other radioactive components including those that are not easy to detect. Tritium will be all over the place and that causes genetic defects, cancer and all sorts of diseases.

To try and play it down in order to establish that the nuclear industry is still viable and that they can still go on building nuclear power stations and so on and to try and talk up the uranium share prices and all that, I think that is criminal. People are going to die as a result of this and they should get people out of there as quickly as possible.

Press TV: You say people are going to die from this. Japanese officials have admitted that there are higher radiation levels in the environment, but say it is nothing more than regular x-rays that people would be exposed to and nothing of significant importance. What would you say to that?

Professor Busby: Criminally irresponsible. After the Chernobyl accident there have been huge increases in cancer and other forms of ill health. And for instance, in Sweden, a study done in 2004 showed there was an 11% increase in cancer in northern Sweden in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl accident. We could get double the amount of cancer in those areas of contamination even without considering the future.

The problem is that the risk model being used in order to make all of these statements is out of date and incorrect. The secretary of the International Commission of Radiological protection has admitted that this risk model is in error by up to 900 fold.

So we know from all sorts of studies that the model is false and doesn't work for the kinds of exposures taking place in Japan now and they should get people away because people are going to get cancer at a much higher rate than is predicted from the risk model.

Press TV: There are reports that iodine will help protect people from the effects of radiation. Does it help and should the Japanese people be taking it?

Professor Busby: Yes. The people should take stable iodine as it will block the absorption of the thyroid gland by radioactive iodine and that will mitigate a lot of the effects of the iodine on causing increases in thyroid cancer. There was a large increase in thyroid cancer in Chernobyl, which has been blamed on iodine. It does help keep the radiation out if you fill yourself up with ordinary iodine. But that's only important for thyroid cancer, which is quite rare.

The cancers that are going to come about as a result of these sorts of releases are going to be increases in breast cancer, leukemia, a whole range of cancers and other ill health as well as congenital malformation and fertility problems that we've seen in the ex-Soviet territories affected by the Chernobyl accident.

Press TV: What about the food aspect? We're getting news about different vegetables and products from the sea that has had radiation detected. The US has banned imports from the area and the EU is trying to control that also.

Professor Busby: What I have to say here will save lives and is very important. People should get stable iodine tablets and give it to the children. Secondly they should try and drink bottled water, bottled before the crisis, or to bring water up from the south, which is pure. Milk should not be drunk. They should not eat any seafood or fresh vegetables, and the food that they do eat should be out of cans.

As long as this crisis lasts, those actions will save a lot of lives.

Press TV: What is the worst scenario?

Professor Busby: That there is an explosion - that enough of this stuff gets together that it forces an explosion and I believe it is possible for that to happen. Other scientists may not agree, but I see it as being possible. There was an explosion in the Mayak facility at KyshTym in the Soviet Union in 1957. It was a nuclear explosion in a spent fuel tank where the same situation happened- the water boiled away, the fuel melted into a lump and then it exploded. And that caused the contamination of about 1,000 square miles of land. This land has been radioactive ever since. If that happens then the material outburst will go all over the place and we have already suspected that some of this material has reached the US.

The best scenario is if it melts and dissipates into the ground, doesn't explode, but makes it very very contaminated. Then they have to pile a load of sand and slate etc on it and fence it off about 100 kilometers away somewhere.

But the problem is that they (Japanese authorities) are saying the radiation levels are low and that people can live outside the 30 kilometer zone. They want to continue making nuclear power stations, mining uranium and making lots of money. It's criminally irresponsible.

SC/AZ/HRF

Fukushima radiation taints US milk supplies at levels 300% higher than EPA maximums

2011-04-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

Fukushima radiation taints US milk supplies at levels 300% higher than EPA maximums

Ethan A. Huff,
Natural News
April 12, 2011
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to release new data showing that various milk and water supply samples from across the US are testing increasingly high for radioactive elements such as Iodine-131, Cesium-134, and Cesium-137, all of which are being emitted from the ongoing Fukushima Daiichia nuclear fallout. As of April 10, 2011, 23 US water supplies have tested positive for radioactive Iodine-131 (http://opendata.socrata.com/w/4ig7-…), and worst of all, milk samples from at least three US locations have tested positive for Iodine-131 at levelsexceeding EPA maximum containment levels(MCL) (http://opendata.socrata.com/w/pkfj-…).
As far as the water supplies are concerned, it is important to note that the EPA isonlytesting for radioactive Iodine-131. There are no readings or data available for cesium, uranium, or plutonium — all of which are being continuously emitted from Fukushima, as far as we know — even though these elements are all much more deadly than Iodine-131.

Even so, the following water supplies have thus far tested positive for Iodine-131, with the dates they were collected in parenthesis to the right:
Los Angeles, Calif. – 0.39 pCi/l (4/4/11)
Philadelphia (Baxter), Penn. – 0.46 pCi/l (4/4/11)
Philadelphia (Belmont), Penn. – 1.3 pCi/l (4/4/11)
Philadelphia (Queen), Penn. – 2.2 pCi/l (4/4/11)
Muscle Shoals, Al. – 0.16 pCi/l (3/31/11)
Niagara Falls, NY – 0.14 pCi/l (3/31/11)
Denver, Colo. – 0.17 pCi/l (3/31/11)
Detroit, Mich. – 0.28 pCi/l (3/31/11)
East Liverpool, Oh. – 0.42 pCi/l (3/30/11)
Trenton, NJ – 0.38 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Painesville, Oh. – 0.43 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Columbia, Penn. – 0.20 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Oak Ridge (4442), Tenn. – 0.28 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Oak Ridge (772), Tenn. – 0.20 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Oak Ridge (360), Tenn. – 0.18 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Helena, Mont. – 0.18 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Waretown, NJ – 0.38 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Cincinnati, Oh. – 0.13 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Pittsburgh, Penn. – 0.36 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Oak Ridge (371), Tenn. – 0.63 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Chattanooga, Tenn. – 1.6 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Boise, Id. – 0.2 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Richland, Wash. – 0.23 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Again, these figures donotinclude the other radioactive elements being spread by Fukushima, so there is no telling what theactualcumulative radiation levels really were in these samples. The figures were also takentwo weeks ago, and were only just recently reported. If current samples were taken at even more cities, and if the tests conducted included the many other radioactive elements besides Iodine-131, actual contamination levels would likely be frighteningly higher.

But in typical government fashion, the EPAstillinsists that everything is just fine, even though an increasing amount of US water supplies are turning up positive for even just the radioactive elements for which the agency is testing — and these levels seem to be increasing as a direct result of the situation at the Fukushima plant, which continues to worsen with no end in sight (http://www.naturalnews.com/032035_F…).
Water may be the least of our problems, however. New EPA data just released on Sunday shows that at least three different milk samples — all from different parts of the US — have tested positive for radioactive Iodine-131 at levels thatexceed the EPA maximum thresholds for safety, which is currently set at 3.0 pico Curies per Liter (pCi/l).
In Phoenix, Ariz., a milk sample taken on March 28, 2011, tested at 3.2 pCi/l. In Little Rock, Ark., a milk sample taken on March 30, 2011, tested at 8.9 pCi/l, which is almostthree times the EPA limit. And in Hilo, Hawaii, a milk sample collected on April 4, 2011, tested at 18 pCi/l, a levelsix times the EPA maximum safety threshold. The same Hawaii sample also tested at19 pCi/l for Cesium-137, which has a half life of 30 years(http://www.naturalnews.com/031992_r…), and a shocking24 pCi/l for Cesium-134, which has a half life of just over two years (http://opendata.socrata.com/w/pkfj-…).
Why is this milk contamination significant? Milk, of course, typically represents the overall condition of the food chain because cows consume grass and are exposed to the same elements as food crops and water supplies. In other words, when cows’ milk starts testing positive for high levels of radioactive elements, this is indicative ofradioactive contamination of the entire food supply.
And even with the milk samples, the EPA insanely says not to worry as its 3.0 pCi/l threshold is allegedly only for long-term exposure. But the sad fact of the matter is that the Fukushima situation isalready a long-term situation. Not only does it appear that the Fukushima reactor cores are continuing to melt, since conditions at the plant have not gotten any better since the earthquake and tsunami, but many of the radioactive elements that havealready been releasedin previous weeks have long half lives, and have spread halfway around the world.
The other problem with the EPA’s empty reassurances that radiation levels are too low to have a negative impact on humans is the fact thatthe agency does not even have an accurate grasp on the actual aggregate exposure to radiation from all sources (water, food, air, rain, etc.). When you combine perpetual exposure from multiple sources with just the figures that have already been released, there is a very real threat of serious harm as a result of exposure.
The EPA and other government agencies are constantly comparing Fukushima radiation to background and airplane radiation in an attempt to minimize the severity of exposure, even though these aretwo completely different kinds of radiation exposure.

No safe level of radiation from nuclear fallout

Background and airplane radiation is an external emitter of radiation, while Fukushima-induced radiation in food and water is an internal emitter. The former, which is considered “normal” radiation, hits your body from the outside, while the lattergoes directly inside your body and into your digestive tract. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the immense difference between the two, and the much more severe consequences associated with literally ingesting radiation verses having it hit your skin.
In reality,there really is no safe level of radiation. No matter how many times the EPA and others repeat the lie that radiation levels are too low to have any significant impact,the statement itself is patently false. Many experts, including Jeff Patterson, DO, former President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, have stated that radiation exposure at any level is unsafe, and they are correct.
“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Patterson. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as Iodine-131 and Cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.”
And now that radioactive levels in some areas have actually exceeded EPA maximums, Patterson’s statement is even more chilling. So while the mainstream media continues its near-total blackout on Fukushima, the situation is actually becoming more severe than it has ever been. Time will tell how severe the long-term effects of this disaster will be, but one thing is for sure –Fukushima radiation cannot and should not be taken lightly..
Sources for this story include:
http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon…

more on the new chernobyl

2011-04-14T06:33:00.001-07:00

One crisis after another harried TEPCO's response

The Yomiuri Shimbun

This is the third installment in a series focusing on delays in implementing emergency steps by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. to deal with the unprecedented nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
TEPCO's venting of radioactive steam from a reactor at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant came too late, but even after the utility acted, a series of hydrogen explosions at the plant's reactor buildings quickly turned the situation into a nightmare the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had never anticipated.

Under ordinary circumstances, reactor containment vessels that cover pressure vessels contain nearly no oxygen, making it almost impossible for the substance to chemically react with hydrogen and set off a blast. Even if hydrogen is generated in a reactor, it should not leak from the containment vessel. But after the disaster damaged pipe joints in the reactor building, hydrogen from inside the reactor leaked into the outer structure.
The first blast occurred at the No. 1 reactor at 3:36 p.m. on March 12, about five hours after the radioactive steam was released. The event violently shook an earthquake-resistant building nearby that was housing the crisis headquarters in the compound.
An employee of a TEPCO partner company said he was sitting on the floor when the explosion hit and it tossed him about 10 centimeters up in the air. "I thought an earthquake had hit nearby," he said. People around him started shouting, "Check the [radiation] dose!"
TEPCO officials at the crisis headquarters became seriously alarmed. They feared another explosion could rock the No. 3 reactor.
On the night of March 12, workers from the headquarters tried to lay power cable from No. 4 reactor's turbine building to the No. 3 reactor's cooling motor, hoping No. 4's power supply was still functioning. But the door to the turbine building had been warped by the tsunami and was stuck shut. It took the workers about three hours to remove the door, but they soon saw their work had been for nothing. The No. 4 reactor's power supply was dead.
Slowly, workers at the power station were realizing the tsunami had caused destruction beyond their imagination.
At 11 a.m. on March 14, the No. 3 reactor building exploded and again the headquarters in the quake-resistant structure was given a violent shake.
These two explosions--on March 12 and 14--underlined the severity of the nuclear crisis for Defense Ministry officials in Tokyo.
After the blast at the No. 1 reactor on March 12, the officials received a report from the nuclear safety agency saying, "The No. 2 reactor is unstable." But the only action TEPCO's crisis headquarters said it would take was to "respond to rising pressure [at the No. 3 reactor] by venting the reactor."
Even after the blast at No. 3 reactor, the nuclear safety agency continued to say the reactor vessel was sound and the container was filled with water.
At 6:10 a.m. on March 15, an explosion was heard from the No. 2 reactor. This was followed by a fire near a storage pool for spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor at 9:38 a.m. Radiation in excess of 400 milisieverts per hour was detected in the vicinity.
Until this point, the nuclear safety agency had been saying the No. 4 reactor was relatively stable. TEPCO had repeatedly said the No. 4 reactor had been stopped and as long as there was water in the spent fuel storage pool, things would be fine. The firm had been frantically trying to deal with the crises that kept erupting at the Nos. 1-3 reactors, like a deadly game of whack-a-mole.
It was starting to dawn on government officials, including Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, that the nuclear safety agency and TEPCO lacked the ability to make appropriate decisions. They were becoming frustrated by what they saw as constant changes to explanations about what was happening at the power station. Distrust in the agency and TEPCO was soaring.
But TEPCO and the nuclear safety agency had their hands full responding to the volatile situation surrounding the No. 2 reactor after the blast at the No. 1 reactor. Dealing with one urgent crisis after another, they had no time to take actions that would have averted the more serious situation that was to develop.
The situation at the Fukushima complex had grown from simply out-of-hand into a disaster of unimaginable dimensions.

(Apr. 14, 2011)

more on level 7

2011-04-14T06:32:00.001-07:00

Huge radiation release led to severity hike

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The government upgraded the severity of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to Level 7. But what exactly does this rating mean? And was the decision made too slowly?
The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised its provisional evaluation of the seriousness of the accident to the maximum of Level 7 in the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) because of the large quantity of radioactive substances that have been discharged from the plant's damaged reactors.
INES is designed to show how serious a nuclear accident is in an easily understandable way.

The scale was introduced in 1992 by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in the wake of the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The scale is from zero to seven and takes into account three factors:
-- Degree of damage to functions that contain radioactive material.
-- Effects inside nuclear facilities, such as workers exposed to radiation.
-- Amount of radioactive material discharged into the atmosphere.
In accidents Level 5 or higher, the amount of radioactive material released plays a major role in the evaluation process. In a Level 7 accident, the quantity is at least several tens of thousands of terabecquerels.
The IAEA defines Level 7 as a "major accident" that is a "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."
Level 6, classified as a "serious accident," involves a "significant release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures." Level 5 is an accident with wide consequences and is a "limited release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures" with "several deaths from radiation."
The seriousness, therefore, of a Level 7 accident is incredibly high.
The nuclear safety agency said the amount of radioactive material released from the Fukushima plant is about 10 percent of that discharged during the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union, which is the only other nuclear accident to be rated Level 7.
But the quantity of radiation released in the Chernobyl accident took place in the 10 days it took for the radiation leak to be contained.
According to the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission, about one terabecquerel per hour of radiation is currently being discharged into the air. If this situation continues for months, thousands of terabecquerels will be released, putting the Fukushima crisis on par with the world's only other major nuclear accident.
Junichi Matsumoto, acting head of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Nuclear Power & Plant Siting Division, acknowledged the seriousness of the Fukushima accident at a press conference Tuesday. "Although the details of the [Chernobyl and Fukushima] accidents are different, from the standpoint of how much radiation has been released, [Fukushima] is equal to or more serious than Chernobyl."
Taichi Maki, guest professor of climatic environmental studies at the University of Tsukuba, said, "It's significant the discharge is still going on. As long as the reactors are unstable, we have to worry about an increase in the quantity of radiation released. I assume the increase to Level 7 took that into consideration."
The nuclear safety agency and the Nuclear Safety Commission on Tuesday announced separately their calculations of how much radioactive material has been released from the Fukushima plant.
The commission, which is in charge of measuring radiation, made its calculations based on air measurements taken at 33 locations near the plant and data from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, which forecasts the spread of radioactive material. The commission concluded the total amount released was 630,000 terabecquerels of iodine-131 and cesium-137, which was converted into iodine-131 to make the calculations.
The agency, which monitors nuclear reactors, calculated the total quantity of radioactive material that was in the Nos. 1-3 reactors when the crisis began and how much leaked when steam in the containment vessels was released into the air. The agency concluded that 370,000 terabecquerels of radioactive iodine and cesium have been released.
According to TEPCO, at the time of the March 11 earthquake, 660 million terabecquerels of radioactive material was in the Nos. 1-4 reactors.
Comparing this figure with the calculation made by the nuclear safety commission and agency, about one-500th of the reactors' radioactive material has been released. This means most of the radioactive material likely is still in the reactors.
But where did the discharged radioactive substances go?
Atsushi Kasai, former senior official of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, said the material has three major destinations--air, soil and seawater.
Of the radioactive material discharged into the atmosphere, including the large quantity released at the beginning of the accident, Kasai said more than half was probably still floating around in the air.
"Though these substances don't pose a hazard to human health in the short term, if radioactive material keeps being discharged, the likelihood of it entering people's bodies through the food chain will increase," Kasai said.
===
Was the nuclear crisis deliberately downplayed?
The government may have been trying to downplay the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant by setting its initial severity rating at Level 4 on an international scale, according to specialists.
The initial assessment was made immediately after the emergency erupted on March 12. A week later, the rating was raised to Level 5--and eventually to Level 7 on Tuesday, more than 20 days after the second assessment.
According to the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC), most of the radioactive substances released from the nuclear complex had escaped by around March 15 after a series of hydrogen explosions and fires at the Nos. 1-4 reactors.
The amount of radioactive materials being emitted into the air skyrocketed on March 15 and 16. The NSC believes the increase was due to a massive discharge of radioactivity after the pressure suppression chamber at the No. 2 reactor was damaged.
In mid-March, the French Nuclear Safety Authority rated the Fukushima crisis as Level 6, while the U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said it was Level 6 or 7. But the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency left its rating unchanged, saying, "The crisis will not harm people's health."
But the agency hiked the crisis to Level 5 on March 18, seeming to cave to international opinion. According to agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama, "It was difficult to make an evaluation because the pressure and temperature [in the reactors] was changing drastically."
Up until Tuesday, Nishiyama insisted it was "too early to raise it to Level 6."
The agency announced radiation forecasts by the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) only once on March 23. These results serve as the basis for severity assessments. The data showed 30,000 to 1,100,000 terabecquerels of radiation were emitted over the 12 days immediately following the disaster.
In a press conference Tuesday, NSC member Seiji Shiroya distanced himself from the decision to raise the severity level. "I thought it might've been a Level 7 at the time, but it's the agency that makes the call," he said.
Hirotada Hirose, a disaster expert and former professor at Tokyo Woman's Christian University, said, "I wonder if the government treated the [nuclear crisis] as a political matter just to try to prevent causing panic and further problems. It's possible political considerations drove them to downplay the situation in the early stages."
"The government might've wanted to ease people into the harshness of the reality. But if reassuring information is the main priority, people won't be able to properly prepare for a disaster and distrust in the government will grow," he said.

(Apr. 14, 2011)

manbi-idiot: can't see the same argument for not believing one report is the same for AGW

2011-04-12T06:27:00.001-07:00

How nuclear apologists mislead the world over radiation

George Monbiot and others at best misinform and at worst distort evidence of the dangers of atomic energy

Helen Caldicott
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 April 2011 12.10 BST
Article history

A girl is screened in Iitate, about 40km from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, where high levels of radiation have been detected. Photograph: Takumi Harada/AP

Soon after the Fukushima accident last month, I stated publicly that a nuclear event of this size and catastrophic potential could present a medical problem of very large dimensions. Events have proven this observation to be true despite the nuclear industry's campaign about the "minimal" health effects of so-called low-level radiation. That billions of its dollars are at stake if the Fukushima event causes the "nuclear renaissance" to slow down appears to be evident from the industry's attacks on its critics, even in the face of an unresolved and escalating disaster at the reactor complex at Fukushima.Proponents of nuclear power – including George Monbiot, who has had a mysterious road-to-Damascus conversion to its supposedly benign effects – accuse me and others who call attention to the potential serious medical consequences of the accident of "cherry-picking" data and overstating the health effects of radiation from the radioactive fuel in the destroyed reactors and their cooling pools. Yet by reassuring the public that things aren't too bad, Monbiot and others at best misinform, and at worst misrepresent or distort, the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation exposure – and they play a predictable shoot-the-messenger game in the process.To wit:1) Mr Monbiot, who is a journalist not a scientist, appears unaware of the difference between external and internal radiationLet me educate him.The former is what populations were exposed to when the atomic bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; their profound and on-going medical effects are well documented. [1]Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). [2] After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.The grave effects of internal emitters are of the most profound concern at Fukushima. It is inaccurate and misleading to use the term "acceptable levels of external radiation" in assessing internal radiation exposures. To do so, as Monbiot has done, is to propagate inaccuracies and to mislead the public worldwide (not to mention other journalists) who are seeking the truth about radiation's hazards.2) Nuclear industry proponents often assert that low doses of radiation (eg below 100mSV) produce no ill effects and are therefore safe. But , as the US National Academy of Sciences BEIR VII report has concluded, no dose of radiation is safe, however small, including background radiation; exposure is cumulative and adds to an individual's risk of developing cancer.3) Now let's turn to Chernobyl. Various seemingly reputable groups have issued differing reports on the morbidity and mortalities resulting from the 1986 radiation catastrophe. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2005 issued a report attributing only 43 human deaths directly to the Chernobyl disaster and estimating an additional 4,000 fatal cancers. In contrast, the 2009 report, "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment", published by the New York Academy of Sciences, comes to a very different conclusion. The three scientist authors – Alexey V Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V Nesterenko – provide in its pages a translated synthesis and compilation of hundreds of scientific articles on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster that have appeared in Slavic language publications over the past 20 years. They estimate the number of deaths attributable to the Chernobyl meltdown at about 980,000.Monbiot dismisses the report as worthless, but to do so – to ignore and denigrate an entire body of literature, collectively hundreds of studies that provide evidence of large and significant impacts on human health and the environment – is arrogant and irresponsible. Scientists can and should argue over such things, for example, as confidence intervals around individual estimates (which signal the reliability of estimates), but to consign out of hand the entire report into a metaphorical dustbin is shameful.Further, as Prof Dimitro Godzinsky, of the Ukranian National Academy of Sciences, states in his introduction to the report: "Against this background of such persuasive data some defenders of atomic energy look specious as they deny the obvious negative effects of radiation upon populations. In fact, their reactions include almost complete refusal to fund medical and biological studies, even liquidating government bodies that were in charge of the 'affairs of Chernobyl'. Under pressure from the nuclear lobby, officials have also diverted scientific personnel away from studying the problems caused by Chernobyl."4) Monbiot expresses surprise that a UN-affiliated body such as WHOmight be under the influence of the nuclear power industry, causing its reporting on nuclear power matters to be biased. And yet that is precisely the case.In the early days of nuclear power, WHO issued forthright statements on radiation risks such as its 1956 warning: "Genetic heritage is the most precious property for human beings. It determines the lives of our progeny, health and harmonious development of future generations. As experts, we affirm that the health of future generations is threatened by increasing development of the atomic industry and sources of radiation … We also believe that new mutations that occur in humans are harmful to them and their offspring."After 1959, WHO made no more statements on health and radioactivity. What happened? On 28 May 1959, at the 12th World Health Assembly, WHO drew up an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); clause 12.40 of this agreement says: "Whenever either organisation [the WHO or the IAEA] proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organisation has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement." In other words, the WHO grants the right of prior approval over any research it might undertake or report on to the IAEA – a group that many people, including journalists, think is a neutral watchdog, but which is, in fact, an advocate for the nuclear power industry. The IAEA's founding papers state: "The agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity through the world."Monbiot appears ignorant about the WHO's subjugation to the IAEA, yet this is widely known within the scientific radiation community. But it is clearly not the only matter on which he is ignorant after his apparent three-day perusal of the vast body of scientific information on radiation and radioactivity. As we have seen, he and other nuclear industry apologists sow confusion about radiation risks, and, in my view, in much the same way that the tobacco industry did in previous decades about the risks of smoking. Despite their claims, it is they, not the "anti-nuclear movement" who are "misleading the world about the impacts of radiation on human health."• Helen Caldicott is president of the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear-Free Planet and the author of Nuclear Power is Not the Answer[1] See, for example, WJ Schull, Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Half-Century of Studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (New York: Wiley-Lis, 1995) and DE Thompson, K Mabuchi, E Ron, M Soda, M Tokunaga, S Ochikubo, S Sugimoto, T Ikeda, M Terasaki, S Izumi et al. "Cancer incidence in atomic bomb survivors, Part I: Solid tumors, 1958-1987" in Radiat Res 137:S17-S67 (1994).[2] This process is called bioaccumulation and comes in two subtypes as well, bioconcentration and biomagnification. For more information see: J.U. Clark and V.A. McFarland, Assessing Bioaccumulation in Aquatic Organisms Exposed to Contaminated Sediments, Miscellaneous Paper D-91-2 (1991), Environmental Laboratory, Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg, MS and H.A. Vanderplog, D.C. Parzyck, W.H. Wilcox, J.R. Kercher, and S.V. Kaye, Bioaccumulation Factors for Radionuclides in Freshwater Biota, ORNL-5002 (1975), Environmental Sciences Division Publication, Number 783, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN.

tepco sucks --but so does reporting that is one sided (govt sponsored)

2011-04-11T23:25:00.001-07:00

TEPCO tardy on N-plant emergency

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's blood must have run cold around 10 p.m. on March 11, the day of the Great East Japan Earthquake, when he received the first report on the terrible situation at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The report from the Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry predicted reactor cores at the nuclear power plant--where power and all functions to cool the reactors were lost in the quake and tsunami--would be exposed to air, and that extreme heat generated by fuel rods would damage their encasing tubes later that night.
Fuel rods would melt down, and the following morning the pressure inside the reactors' containment vessels would reach the maximum allowed for by the facilities' designers, the report predicted.

Kan and everyone at the Prime Minister's Office understood the seriousness of the situation described by the report.
There were only two options that might prevent a meltdown of the reactors--either restore the plant's power supply and cooling functions immediately, or pour water directly into the reactors. If neither course of action could be taken, the pressure inside the reactors would become so great that they would be destroyed.
The report concluded that valves in the containment vessels would have to be opened, to release radioactive steam and reduce the pressure inside.
However, opening the valves was considered a last resort. Although it could prevent the reactors from breaking apart, it would release steam with high levels of radioactive materials into the atmosphere.
Such a step had never been taken at a nuclear power plant in Japan.
===
Countdown to power loss
The Prime Minister's Office, the nuclear safety agency and even Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant, were filled with relief immediately after the earthquake. They had been told backup diesel generators would provide sufficient support to stabilize the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors, which were in operation when the quake hit.
However, subsequent tsunami destroyed 12 of the 13 emergency generators.
"Round up all the power-supply cars and send them to the plant right now!" shouted a TEPCO supervisor at the utility's head office in Tokyo.
Nuclear reactors have emergency cooling systems that channel water into the reactor, using a turbine that can be powered by residual heat. However, the systems rely on emergency batteries to power the water intake valves.
The emergency batteries at the Fukushima plant were expected to run out of power around midnight.
===
Options exhausted
TEPCO dispatched power-supply vehicles from various power stations around the country to the crippled nuclear plant. However, the vehicles had to travel very slowly because of damage to roads in northeastern Japan. The first power-supply car did not reach the plant until 9 p.m. on March 11.
Once at the site, the lack of preparation became apparent. Cables needed to connect the vehicles' high-voltage electricity to plant facilities were not long enough. TEPCO immediately ordered additional cables, but precious time had been wasted. Power would not be restored at the plant by midnight.
The pressure inside the containment vessels rose above the maximum allowed for by the facilities' design, and radiation levels at the plant increased sharply. No option was left but to open the valves.
===
Anger rose as TEPCO dithered
TEPCO began preparations for opening the valves around 7 p.m. on March 11. Pressure inside the No. 1 reactor was particularly high.
"Soon, the reactor won't be able to withstand the pressure," said an official of the accident headquarters at the plant, which was keeping in touch with TEPCO's head office via video phone. "We have to vent the pressure immediately."
"Pressure inside the containment vessel of the No. 1 reactor has gone up dramatically," the agency told Banri Kaieda, economy, trade and industry minister, at 12:45 a.m. on March 12. In fact, it had reached 1.5 times the designed maximum, meaning the condition of the reactor was critical.
"To get things under control, we have to pour water into the reactors and then vent the steam that is generated," Haruki Madarame, chairman of the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission, told Kaieda.
At 1:30 a.m. on March 12, Kan, Kaieda and Madarame gathered at the crisis management center in the basement of the Prime Minister's Office.
The three urged TEPCO officials to vent the steam as soon as possible. But TEPCO officials said there was no way of opening the valves because there was no power supply.
Exasperated, Kaieda called the utility's head office in Tokyo and the accident headquarters at the plant every hour, pressuring them to open the valves immediately.
TEPCO workers tried to open the valves by manually overriding the automatic system, but struggled to make progress because they had to work in darkness.
At dawn, pressure inside the No. 1 reactor was more than twice the designed maximum.
Eventually, at 6:50 a.m., the government ordered the utility to open the valves under the Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law.
When Kan visited the accident site shortly after 7 a.m. and found TEPCO had not opened the valves yet, he reprimanded company officials. The officials replied they would like to have another hour to make a decision on what to do.
Kan blew his stack.
"Now's not the time to make such lackadaisical comments!" the prime minister told the TEPCO officials.
Yet even still, the utility spent three more hours discussing the matter before finally opening the valves at 10:17 a.m.
Five hours after that, a hydrogen explosion occurred at the No. 1 reactor, blowing apart its outer building.

(Apr. 12, 2011)

fukushima is chernobyl!!

2011-04-11T23:24:00.001-07:00

HOME

The Japan Times Printer Friendly Articles

High radiation well past no-go zone: Greenpeace

By JUN HONGO

Staff writer

Radiology experts from Greenpeace urged the government to revise their evacuation protocol Monday after they found high levels of radiation around the greater Fukushima area and in the region's fresh produce.

A team of radiologists and safety advisers of the nongovernmental organization said a survey conducted from April 4 through Sunday detected radiation levels of 4 microsieverts per hour at a playground in the city of Fukushima. That would translate into a potential annual exposure of 5 millisieverts, Greenpeace expert Rianne Teule said, explaining that the level was the threshold for evacuation at Chernobyl.

The group also said that all 11 samples of local vegetables from gardens and small farms within the prefecture contained radioactivity exceeding the legal limit of 2,000 becquerels per kilogram set by the farm ministry. For example, 152,340 becquerels were found in spinach from a small patch on the outskirts of the city of Fukushima, the group said.

"This is 75 times higher than the limit by the government," Teule told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo.

Most leafy vegetables from Fukushima Prefecture have been banned from circulation since March 21, but some are being sold directly to consumers from local farmers. The government should provide more information to local residents, the NGO warned.

Radiologist Jan van de Putte told the same news conference that areas with high levels of radioactivity were concentrated in northwestern Fukushima Prefecture, especially in areas between the villages of Iitate and Tsushima, which registered 48 microsieverts per hour.

"This is really dangerous and a very high level," van de Putte said.

Considering the 4 microsieverts detected at a playground in the heart of the city of Fukushima — which has a population of 300,000 — van de Putte and Greenpeace urged the government postpone the start of the school year until decontamination is complete and safety is confirmed.

Greenpeace began surveying areas affected by the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis and revealed late last month that a sample taken on a road between the villages of Iitate and Tsushima had a radiation level of 100 microsieverts per hour, despite being outside the evacuation area.

That survey, however, was downplayed last month by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which claimed the results "could not be considered reliable." Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said separately he will ask Greenpeace to provide more details.

"We've been very cooperative (with the government) and have been providing all the data that we gathered," Junichi Sato, executive director of Greenpeace Japan, said Monday.

"But although we have been handing everything to the prime minister's office, they are not giving us any response."

The Japan Times: Tuesday, April 12, 2011

are you serious cancer rates (in the developed world) are close to 50% and no one gives a rats ass, the percentage is way too fuckin high to be by accident.

2011-04-02T05:24:00.001-07:00

General cancer statistics for 2010

An estimated 173,800 new cases of cancer (excluding about 75,500 non-melanoma skin cancers) and 76,200 deaths will occur in Canada in 2010.

· Approximately 83,900 Canadian women will be diagnosed with cancer and an estimated 36,200 women will die of cancer.

· Approximately 90,000 Canadian men will be diagnosed with cancer and an estimated 40,000 men will die of cancer.

· On average, 3,340 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer every week.

· On average, 1,470 Canadians will die of cancer every week.

The risk of cancer increases with age: 43% of new cancer cases and 61% of cancer deaths will occur among those who are at least 70 years old. However, cancer can occur at all ages.

· Lung, prostate, breast and colorectal cancer account for 50% of all new cancer cases every year.

· Lung cancer accounts for over a quarter (27%) of all cancer deaths each year.

· Breast cancer accounts for over a quarter (28%) of new cancer cases in women.

· Prostate cancer accounts for over a quarter (27%) of new cancer cases in men.

Probability of developing or dying from cancer

Based on 2009 incidence rates, 40% of Canadian women and 45% of men will develop cancer during their lifetimes.

An estimated 1 out of every 4 Canadians are expected to die from cancer.

Cancer is the leading cause of premature death in Canada: 1,026,600 years of life were lost in 2004 as a result of cancer. This represents 32% of the potential years of life lost resulting from all causes of death.

Prevalence

At the beginning of the year 2005, there were approximately 723,000 cases of cancer that had been diagnosed in the previous 10 years.

Survival

Based on 2002-2004 estimates, 62% of people are expected to survive for 5 years after their cancer diagnosis compared to the general population of the same age and sex. Survival rates differ according to the type of cancer.

we dont inhale it when we fly or visit the dentist, but we can nowadays

2011-03-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

ncreased emissions bring on cancer

Doctors say ever-growing exposure could eventually harm human health

By Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver SunMarch 26, 2011 2:07 AM

An official in a radiation protection suit scans dogs with a Geiger counter at a shelter in Koriyama in Fukushima prefecture, 60 kms west from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, on March 20, 2011.

Photograph by: KEN SHIMIZU, AFP/Getty Images

Although officials say there are no immediate health risks to British Columbians due to radiation from the damaged Japanese nuclear power plant, a group of doctors says the emissions will increase background radiation in the long term, which could harm human health.
“There is no doubt in the minds of medical experts ... that increasing the global burden of radioactivity will increase the incidence of cancer,” Physicians for Global Survival said in a news release.

Dr. Perry Kendall, British Columbia’s provincial health officer, reiterated Wednesday that British Columbians have no immediate cause for concern after radiation from Japan was detected on the coast of B.C.
“I would like to be clear that the levels noted are very low. In fact, radiation levels so far have all been within the normal range of variability, and are below what a person on a long-distance flight may be exposed to,” Kendall said in a statement.
The health risks are not immediate at such low doses, but this accident will mean future generations live in a world with higher background radiation, said Dale Dewar, a practicing physician and the executive director of Physicians for Global Survival, an Ottawa organization formed to oppose nuclear weapons.
“Your hair won’t fall out because you’ve got a little bit of radioactivity, but ‘no immediate danger’ is an easy way for the nuclear industry to duck the long-term effects,” Dewar said in an interview.
Twelve days after the Fukushima Daiichi power plant was disabled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the reactors are still not stabilized. High levels of Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 have been found in foods from the region, and in sea water, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported, saying Wednesday afternoon that “the overall situation remains of serious concern.”
Both Dewar and Kendall told The Sun that scientists assume there is no low limit of exposure to iodizing radiation that is safe and that higher exposure to radiation leads to an increased risk of cancer.
“With radiation, you have to assume that there is no safe level. It’s a linear relationship; the more you’re exposed to, the more the risk,” Kendall explained.
“The radiation we have on the coast is less than what you see in the Interior, which is a lot less than what you see in Denver, Colo., for background radiation,” Kendall said. “Statistically there’s an increased risk if you live in Denver, Colo., than if you live on the coast of B.C. because they have higher background radiation.”
Kendall said the small increases being seen in B.C. will not make a statistical difference in the number of cancers.
“The point at which you start seeing a statistical increase in cancers is around about 100 millisieverts a year, and we’re not seeing anything like that for the Japanese population, and for us it’s nowhere near that.”
Although the amounts may be very small, they do leave traces in the human body, Dewar said.
“Cesium-137 is used in forensics to find out how long a body has been lying in a grave. If a person died before the 1950s they will have no Cesium-137 in their body,” Dewar said. “Everyone now has Cesium-137 in their bodies, but it’s a totally man-made radioactive substance that we’ve been adding to our environment since they started exploding nuclear bombs.
“We also all have markers from Chernobyl. A little bit of Chernobyl is in everybody.”
(The Chernobyl nuclear plant in what is now Ukraine had a meltdown in 1986.)
Dewar could not say exactly how much background radiation has risen since before the first nuclear testing, but she said there is no doubt that it is going up.
“We can be very confident that background radiation is increasing, and it’s increasing at different levels in different places around the world,” Dewar said.
Iodine-131, one of the radioactive products emitted in Japan, releases gamma rays as it decays, Dewar said.
“Gamma radiation is little bursts of energy that knock electrons, and sometimes protons, out of the sphere that they are in our bodies, so that you may have an enzyme that loses a few molecules and can no longer function,” Dewar said. “At a low dose, you’ll only have a couple of enzymes affected. However, all of our cells have built-in longevity, a way in which the cell will stop growing. If that is knocked out, that’s when cancer occurs because the cell doesn’t know how to stop replicating itself.”
Ionizing radiation may also play a role in auto-immune diseases.
“Many physicians believe that radiation plays a role in the less obvious diseases like diabetes or gluten sensitivity or arthritis, which we’re now seeing younger,” Dewar said. “There’s so much that we just don’t know. We do know that as soon as we increase the background radiation very slightly — for example suntanning — we increase the potential cellular damage.”
Today, the average Canadian is exposed to between two and three millisieverts of radiation annually from background radiation.
Whether it is absorbed into the human body through food, water or the air, radiation is essentially silent. You can’t taste it, see it or smell it, Dewar said.
Kendall reminded people that there is no need to take potassium iodide tablets at this time and that they can cause health problems because of potential side effects.
tsherlock@vancouversun.com

recycled cardboard Cereal Boxes Linked to Cancer

2011-03-10T05:25:00.001-08:00

Some recycled cardboard cereal boxes sold in Europe have been found to contain dangerous levels of mineral oils — types of petroleum hydrocarbons. The oils, which may be carcinogenic, are even leaching through the plastic bags inside the boxes and onto the cereal.

A few of the brands implicated in the new study, which was conducted by toxicologists in Switzerland, also sell in the United States. This raises an urgent question: Could cereal boxes give you or your children cancer?
The mineral oils probably trace back to ink in the newspaper used to make the recycled cardboard. A cereal brand called Jordan's has decided to stop boxing its goods in recycled cardboard altogether, and Kellogg's and Weetabix are both considering switching to environmentally friendly options that don't pose the health risk.
If you buy your cereal stateside, though, you're probably in the clear, and shouldn't steer away from brands that use recycled cardboard packaging. Deborah White, executive director of the Recycled Paperboard Technical Association, a non-profit organization that works to improve the quality and standards of the recycled paperboard industry, said mineral oils are not a problem in recycled cardboard packaging in the United States.
"There is a real difference in that, in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration sets certain standards for mineral oils, and our recycling industry has a very rigorous program for making sure food packaging materials meet those standards," White told Life's Little Mysteries. "The European Union hasn't yet established a safety level for these substances. The members of the Confederation of European Paper Industries are definitely looking into it and considering what to do."
Certain mineral oils are permitted by the FDA for use in food packaging, White explained; they don't all pose health risks. But dangerous hydrocarbons are not allowed to make their way into recycled materials sold in the United States. According to White, "dangerous mineral oils have never been found in U.S. recycled cardboard."
White encourages consumers to continue using recycled cardboard. "It is an important part of our sustainability solution," she said, "and I certainly don't want people to get sidetracked from the clear benefits of recycling by this study."
According to a March 7 report commissioned by the American Forest and Products Association, 74 percent of U.S. communities accept paperboard in their recycling systems. Paper and cardboard recycling is flourishing here, and need not be dampened by research conducted elsewhere.
This article was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover

gmo via govt tyranny what does democracy have to do with anything?

2011-03-09T20:48:00.003-08:00

After 20 years, nearly everyone still wants GM food to be labeled

March 5th, 2011

By Rady Ananda

At this MSNBC poll, over 40,000 people have voted strongly in favor of labeling genetically modified foods: 96% of all respondents.
But, a review of several polls going back to 1994 reveals that the numbers have always been high -- the vast majority of people have always wanted GM labels. That biotech foods have remained unlabeled for nearly 20 years in the US reveals a deliberate and willful refusal by regulatory agencies to serve the will of the people, instead opting to abet industry profits through public deception.

The 96% rating from MSNBC's casual survey does represent a jump from a scientific poll conducted in 2003 by University of Maine and The Ohio State University (and partly funded by the US Dept. of Agriculture), where 85% of respondents said they wanted GM foods labeled. Researchers also noted:

"Polls have emphasized that a majority of consumers in the United States (US) desire GMFs to be labeled (Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, 2001), and legislation has been entered at both the federal and state levels. For example, HR 3377 and S 2080—the "Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Acts"—were introduced into the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. In addition, at least seven states have debated labeling and marketing requirements for GM foods (Pollack, 2001). Further, the current lack of harmonization of policies across countries also makes GM food labeling an international trade issue."

More in line with that 2003 study, a few weeks ago, a CBS/New York Times poll found that 87% want GM foods labeled. This prompted food columnist Mark Bittman to ask, "Why Aren't G.M.O. Foods Labeled?" He finds it "unbelievable ... that the F.D.A. and the U.S.D.A. will not require any of these products, or foods containing them, to be labeled as genetically engineered, because they don’t want to 'suggest or imply' that these foods are 'different.'”
But they are, Blanche, they are. That's part of what goes into the difference between organic and not.
The European Commission on Agriculture reports that a full:

"84% of the respondents favoured [GM labels] in a 1995 USDA survey in New Jersey; 93% in the 1997 Novartis survey; and 81% in the Time magazine poll. In Canada, a 1994 survey showed that 83% to 94% of Canadians polled want labelling on foods that are produced using biotechnology."

It should be no big surprise that since the introduction of GM foods, the majority of people want GM labeling. Who wouldn't want to know how their food's been adulterated? It's simply a matter of ethics. Even if all the GMO naysayers are wrong and transgenic food (and the chemicals used to grow it) causes no harm to the biosphere, we have the right to know what's in our food. We have the right to choose to eat what we want, and reject what we don't want to eat.
More importantly, if governments fail to abide the wishes of free people who created them, does that not define tyranny?

big surprise another product is full of crap---Cancer causing chemicals found in cola coloring ingredient

2011-02-25T06:16:00.000-08:00

Cancer causing chemicals found in cola coloring ingredient

Posted By admin On February 17, 2011 @ 10:48 am In Commentary | 33 Comments

Mike Adams
Natural News ^[1]
Thursday, February 17, 2011
(NaturalNews) The “caramel coloring” used to color all the top cola brands isn’t natural caramel coloring at all. Instead, it’s made by reacting sugars with ammonia and sulfites at high temperatures. This reaction results in the formation of 2-methylimidazole and 4-methylimidazole, both of which are chemicals documented by the U.S. government to cause cancer in mammals.
This is all coming to light thanks to an effort by the CSPI, which has now filed a regulatory petition to ban these chemicals ^[2] from colas (http://www.cspinet.org/new/20110216… ^[3]).
The National Toxicology Program has conducted animal studies ^[4] on these toxic chemicals found in colas, concluding there is “clear evidence” that 2-MI and 4-MI are animal carcinogens.
The call to ban these chemicals from use in foods was joined by five carcinogenesis experts who said, “The American public should not be exposed to any cancer ^[5] risk whatsoever as a result of consuming such chemicals, especially when they serve a non-essential, cosmetic purpose.”

(http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/experts-… ^[6])
That letter explains:
4-methylimidazole (4-MI) causes lung tumors ^[7] in male and female mice and mononuclear cell leukemia in female rats. Other NTP studies found that 2-methylimidazole caused liver tumors in male and female mice, thyroid ^[8] tumors in male mice, and precancerous thyroid changes in female mice. In rats, 4-MI caused an increased rate of tumors in thyroid follicular cells in females and an increased rate of hyperplasia in thyroid follicular cells in males.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
^[9]
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (AD) ^[10]
Even the term “caramel coloring” is extremely misleading to consumers, because most people think it’s related to caramel candy, which is made by browning sugar under heat. But the “caramel coloring” used in colas is made by exposing sugars ^[11] to industrial chemicals (ammonia and sulfites), resulting in a cocktail of cancer-causing chemicals.

Coke and Pepsi products ^[12] may soon bear cancer warnings in California ^[13]

California’s Proposition 65 law limits the consumption ^[14] of 4-MI to no more than 16 micrograms per day from a single product. Yet colas contain roughly 200 micrograms of 4-MI in a 20-ounce bottle.
That’s over 12 times the allowable limit under Proposition 65, and that’s in every bottle! Many people drink several bottles a day, further multiplying their exposure to this potential carcinogen.
If cola ^[15] companies are going to continue to sell their products in California, then, they must now carry cancer warning labels in order to be in compliance with Prop 65. You can bet that a desperate effort is now under way by the cola industry to lobby California regulators and make sure 4-MI gets removed from any enforcement of Prop 65.
The cola industry wants everybody to think its products are wholesome and natural while forgetting about the health effects of phosphoric acid, aspartame and high-fructose corn syrup ^[16]. Now, with 2-methylimidazole and 4-methylimidazole in the picture, there’s yet another potentially cancer-causing chemical to worry about in colas.
Obviously, 2-MI and 4-MI can be avoided by drinking non-colored soft drinks, but those still contain phosphoric acid, high-fructose corn syrup ^[17], caffeine and even aspartame in diet sodas.
It turns out, there’s no such thing as a perfectly safe soda. All sodas and soft drinks carry health risks related to their ingredients. I have no doubt that this era of diabetes, obesity and cancer we’re living through right now is due in large part to the widespread consumption of sodas and soft drinks.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031383_caramel_coloring_cola.html#ixzz1EEug6syD ^[18]

Article printed from Prison Planet.com: http://www.prisonplanet.com
URL to article: http://www.prisonplanet.com/cancer-causing-chemicals-found-in-cola-coloring-ingredient.html
URLs in this post:

[1] Natural News: http://www.naturalnews.com/031383_caramel_coloring_cola.html

[2] chemicals: http://www.naturalnews.com/chemicals.html

[3] http://www.cspinet.org/new/20110216…: http://www.cspinet.org/new/201102161.html

[4] studies: http://www.naturalnews.com/studies.html

[5] cancer: http://www.naturalnews.com/cancer.html

[6] http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/experts-…: http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/experts-letter-caramel-coloring.pdf

[7] tumors: http://www.naturalnews.com/tumors.html

[8] thyroid: http://www.naturalnews.com/thyroid.html

[9] Image: http://purewaterfreedom.com/

[10] Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (AD): http://www.efoodsdirect.com/

[11] sugars: http://www.naturalnews.com/sugars.html

[12] products: http://www.naturalnews.com/products.html

[13] California: http://www.naturalnews.com/California.html

[14] consumption: http://www.naturalnews.com/consumption.html

[15] cola: http://www.naturalnews.com/cola.html

[16] high-fructose corn syrup: http://www.naturalnews.com/high-fructose_corn_syrup.html

[17] corn syrup: http://www.naturalnews.com/corn_syrup.html

[18] http://www.naturalnews.com/031383_caramel_coloring_cola.html#ixzz1EEug6syD: http://www.naturalnews.com/031383_caramel_coloring_cola.html#ixzz1EEug6syD

Wikileaks Bombshell Points To 9/11 Stand Down

2011-02-03T05:45:00.000-08:00

Wikileaks Bombshell Points To 9/11 Stand Down

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 2, 2011

Image: US State Department
Newly released Wikileaks documents concerning the activities of three Qatari men who conducted surveillance of the World Trade Center and boarded flights on the eve of the 9/11 attacks adds to the plethora of evidence that at the very least US authorities were aware of the plot and deliberately stood down.

“The FBI has launched a manhunt for a previously unknown team of men suspected to be part of the 9/11 attacks,” reports the Daily Telegraph.
Secret documents reveal that the three Qatari men conducted surveillance on the targets, provided “support” to the plotters and had tickets for a flight to Washington on the eve of the atrocities.
Ten days later they flew to Los Angeles, where they stationed themselves in a hotel near the airport which the FBI has now established was paid for by a “convicted terrorist”, who also paid for their airline tickets.
Hotel staff have told investigators they saw pilot uniforms in their room along with computer print outs detailing pilot names, flight numbers and times and packages addressed to Syria, Afghanistan, Jerusalem and Jordan.

The revelation that these men may have been involved in the pre-planning for 9/11 again highlights the fact that the plot was known ahead of time. Whether they were double agents laying a trail for the attack to be later blamed on Muslim patsies or they were genuinely part of the plot is immaterial, the fact that their behavior, amidst a myriad of other obvious indications that an attack was imminent, was not acted upon by US authorities, provides yet more evidence of a stand down.
The US Special Operations Command’s Able Danger program identified the hijackers and their accomplices long before 9/11, but when the head of the program, Colonel Anthony Shaffer, tried to pass the information on to the 9/11 Commission, he was gagged and slandered and the vital information his team had passed on was ignored and buried.
Curt Weldon, Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, documented how the US government tracked the hijackers’ movements before 9/11.
Louai al-Sakka, the man who trained six of the hijackers, was a CIA informant. A number of the other alleged hijackers were trained at US air bases. In the months prior to 9/11, alleged hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi were renting rooms in a house owned and lived in by an FBI informant

In a 2002 article entitled The Hijackers We Let Escape, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman documented how, “The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to a Qaeda summit in Malaysia in January 2000, then looked on as they re-entered America and began preparations for September 11.”
The fact that there were numerous Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists involved in the pre-planning stages of 9/11 is unsurprising given former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds’ testimony that Bin Laden was working for the US right up until the day of 9/11.
On the very morning of 9/11, the money man behind the alleged hijackers, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with U.S. government and intelligence officials.
Indeed, even after 9/11, the so-called spiritual leader of the very hijackers who allegedly slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Anwar al-Awlaki, was himself invited to dine with Pentagon top brass mere months after the attack.
Al-Awlaki was later involved in directing the underwear bomber, who was allowed to board the plane by order of the US State Department aided by a well-dressed man who got Abdulmutallab on the airliner despite the fact that he was on a terror watch list and had no passport. Eyewitness and Delta 253 passenger Kurt Haskell subsequently blew the whistle to state that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was given the bomb by the US government to create a pretext for the implementation of naked body scanners and boost the TSA’s budget.
While there has been plenty of focus on possible connections between other Muslim terror suspects and the alleged 9/11 hijackers, little has been said about the role of the infamous “dancing Israelis” who brazenly displayed their foreknowledge of the plot after they were witnessed setting up camera equipment pointed at the World Trade Center before the attack unfolded.
When the planes slammed into the towers, the men were seen dancing, cheering and congratulating each other.
The details of these new Wikileaks documents only serve to confirm that there were numerous drills and preparatory actions taking place immediately prior to 9/11 indicating that an attack was imminent. What the Telegraph and the rest of the establishment media will refuse to mention in any of these reports is the confirmed fact that through Able Danger and other intelligence operations, these events were being closely tracked by US authorities.

Add to this the complete reversal of standard operating procedure on the day of 9/11 in relation to NORAD’s failure to intercept any of the hijacked airliners, and the evidence for a government and military stand down which at the very least allowed the attack to take place is abundant.
—
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

Online news service promotes false climate change study

2011-01-22T05:01:00.001-08:00

Online news service promotes false climate change study

EurekAlert! carried a study with unfounded global warming claims that the planet would warm by 2.4C by 2020

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 January 2011 11.22 GMT
Article history

EurekAlert!, an online news service, carried a study that made false claims about climate change. Photograph: Vinay Dithajohn/EPA An online news service sponsored by the world's premier scientific association unwittingly promoted a study making the false claim that catastrophic global warming would occur within nine years, the Guardian has learned.The study, by an NGO based in Argentina, claimed the planet would warm by 2.4C by 2020 and projected dire consequences for global food supply. A press release for the Food Gap study was carried by EurekAlert!, the news service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) , and the story was picked up by a number of international news organisations on Tuesday."This is happening much faster than we expected," Liliana Hisas, executive director of the Universal Ecological Fund (UEF) and author of the study, said of her findings.But, in an episode recalling criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), when the UN climate science body wrongly claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035• , the UEF claims about rising temperatures over the next decade were unfounded.Climate change is happening much faster than previously thought. But warming at such a rapid rate over the next decade is impossible, climate scientists said.In an email, Gavin Schmidt, a Nasa climatologist wrote: "2.4C by 2020 (which is 1.4C in the next 10 years – something like six to seven times the projected rate of warming) has no basis in fact."The AAAS, which runs the EurekAlert! News service, removed reference to the study from its website on Tuesday afternoon."We primarily rely on the submitting organisation to ensure the veracity of the scientific content of the news release," Ginger Pinholster, director of the office of public programmes for AAAS said."In this case, we immediately contacted a climate-change expert after receiving your query. That expert has confirmed for us that the information indeed raises many questions in his mind, and therefore we have removed the news release from EurekAlert!"But by then the study had been picked up by a number of international news organisations including the French news agency AFP, Spain's EFE news agency, the Canadian CTV television network and the Vancouver Sun, and the Press Trust of India.For some climate scientists, the false claims made by the UEF paper recalled the highly damaging episode in which the IPCC, the UN's climate science body, included the false information about melting of the Himalayan glaciers in its 2007 report.The mistake was a public relations disaster for the IPCC and led to calls for the resignation of its chair, Rajendra Pachauri.It was also exploited by climate sceptics to undermine the science of climate change, and is seen by some as having set back efforts in the US for action on climate change.In this instance, climate scientists said it appeared Hisas had overlooked the influence exerted by the oceans, which absorb heat, thus delaying the effects of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.Ray Weymann, a founder of a volunteer rapid-response force aimed at countering misconceptions about climate science, said: "The author has a fundamental misunderstanding."Hisas, for her part, said her findings had been endorsed by an Argentine scientist, Osvaldo Canziani, who had worked on the IPCC's fourth assessment report on the state of climate science, and was credited as an adviser to the UEF.Hisas's main finding, that climate change would disrupt the supply of basic staples such as wheat and rice, was largely in line with other recent reports.She said the UEF did not intend to withdraw the report. "We are just going to go ahead with it. I don't have a choice now," she said. "The scientist I have been working with checked everything and according to him it's not wrong."Marshall Hoffman, owner of the PR agency which placed the notice on the AAAS website, argued the a number of recent studies had all shown warming at a much faster rate than predicted by the IPCC in its most recent report. "The thing is, we have already put it on the internet and we had already got a lot of calls on it," he said. "This study is going to be bantered around for months. It doesn't make any difference whether it is released now, or we try to pull it back."Canziani did not immediately respond to email. Hisas and sources in Buenos Aires said he was ill.Canziani was co-chair of the IPCC's working group 2, which looked at the effects of climate change. The erroneous claim on Himalayan glaciers in the 2007 report was in the section overseen by working group 2.

Antidepressants found in fish-AGAIN IT IS NOW COMMON PLACE THE WORLD OVER TO FIND THEM IN SEA LIFE

2011-01-22T04:59:00.000-08:00

Antidepressants found in fish

Drugs not removed by sewage treatment

By WILLIAM MARSDEN, The GazetteJanuary 22, 2011 4:03 AM

St. Lawrence River fish are loaded with antidepressant drugs such as Prozac, leading scientists to wonder if the "happy hormone" is altering the lifestyle of the chronically grumpy-looking marine animals.
Researchers at the Universite de Montreal and Environment Canada have discovered large quantities of antidepressants in the liver, muscle and brain tissues of brook trout exposed to three months of various levels of treated effluent from Montreal's sewage treatment plant.

According to the peer-reviewed study, which is published this week in the journal Chemosphere, most of the drug was found in liver tissue. Slightly less was found in the brain. The least amount was found in muscle, which is the filet eaten by humans.
UdeM professor Sebastien Sauve, a co-author of the study, said that because relatively small amounts are found in meat tissue, he is not worried that these fish pose a danger to humans.
Research during the last two decades has revealed that pharmaceutical drugs and personal care products are a major source of pollution in the marine environment. Even in very low concentrations, they have altered the ecosystems.
Sauve said drugs such as chemotherapy medicines, hormones and antibiotics have been found in fish and they pose a greater danger to human health than antidepressants.
"My real concern is the effects on the fish," he said, adding that they "could be quite serious."
He said the study shows that fish exposed to the effluent have changes in their brains's nerve activity. "We don't know if these are positive or not."
The problem is how to measure behavioural changes in fish.
"It's very hard," Sauve said. "The question itself is quite interesting. You can't ask a fish whether it is happier or not. One of things they can do is use cameras to look at the male behaviour. Will it have the same behaviour in mating or feeding? Then you have to go back and look at its normal behaviour. It's quite tedious work and difficult."
Quebecers purchase about 555 million antidepressants a year. That works out to about one in four Quebecers taking one pill a day. That does not include the amount prescribed by psychiatric hospitals.
Residue from antidepressants leaves through bodily waste and ends up in our waterways. Sauve said that his study indicates that the problem of antidepressants contaminating marine animals is probably global.
Most treatment plants are not equipped to deal with pharmaceutical drugs. Montreal's sewage treatment plant treats only solids and does not remove chemicals.
"The chemical structure of antidepressants makes them extremely difficult to remove from sewage, even with the most sophisticated systems available," Sauve said.
The research team found eight different kinds of antidepressants in the fish. The highest concentrations came from Prozac.
The study is a result of a controlled experiment. The volume of antidepressants that can be found in river fauna will vary greatly depending on the kind of fish and its habitat.

Big Pharma Vilified Researcher for Threatening Vaccine Program

2011-01-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

Blaylock: Big Pharma Vilified Researcher for Threatening Vaccine Program

Thursday, January 13, 2011 10:52 AM

By Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.

I find it ironic that the media, the British government, and leaders in medical academia jumped on board attacking and destroying Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s reputation based on “fraud” charges related to a study he conducted about the link between the measles vaccine and autism.

It is ironic for a number of reasons. How can the British government, itself drowning in deception at every level, dare accuse anyone of fraud?

The panel assembled by the government and academia to judge Wakefield, ironically, dares to speak of fraud, yet their main complaint is that his findings “might endanger the 'sacrosanct' vaccine program,” not that his principal findings were wrong. In fact, several independent researchers found the same measles vaccine-related colitis that he described.

A recently released charge by the BMJ editors is that Wakefield was poised to get huge profits from a product stemming from his research results. I am not here to defend Wakefield, rather, I demonstrate the double standard regularly practiced by his vocal critics.

Virtually every paper published on drugs, such as statins, is authored by individuals having financial links to as many as three to four pharmaceutical companies each. The same is true of papers published by major journals extolling vaccine efficacy and safety. They know these papers violate every ethical principle known, yet they are published in some of the most prestigious journals.

Abundant evidence has shown that these very same people destroy the reputations of anyone producing evidence, no matter how well researched and of the highest ethical standards, if it in any way endangers this vaccine program. It is ironic that these accusers speak of “blatant fraud,” when virtually all of the vaccine safety evidence they use abundantly is fraudulent by careful design.

Scare Tactics

Ironically, even their outcry of the effect of Wakefield’s paper is deceitful. They scream that it caused vaccine rates to fall below the 80 percent level needed for “herd immunity,” when they know that no one has ever proven his paper was the cause.

A growing number of British have suffered from vaccine complications, and they are rightly concerned about vaccine safety. When there was a small outbreak of measles in this country, as few as 300 cases, they screamed it was an epidemic and millions were at risk of dying. In fact, in similar outbreaks studies found that 90 percent of the affected children had been fully or partially vaccinated, and most had mild infections.

When I grew up there was no measles vaccine and everyone in my class got the measles and no one died or suffered serious harm. To imply our society is at risk of millions of deaths should vaccine rates drop is a blatant lie used to scare parents into over-vaccinating their children. They use the same scare tactics based on manipulated data to terrify the elderly into getting a flu shot every year.

Even this year, after we witnessed a 20-fold increase in miscarriages and stillbirths among women vaccinated with the H1N1 vaccine last year, public heath officials are strongly suggesting that pregnant women be vaccinated with both the H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines. Dr. Garry Goldman, who has done a comprehensive analysis of this event, calls the government’s actions “an act of willful misconduct.” (Go here to read his report.)

Manipulating ‘Safety’ Studies

Anyone analyzing the “vaccine safety studies” done by vaccine makers and vaccine proponents can see that they were purposely designed to show safety by omitting people in the study who truly reflected the population being vaccinated and who were, by all standards of science, at risk of harm by the vaccines.

They do studies that use as placebo controls people injected with a vaccine adjuvant. Placebos are supposed to be completely inert. The evidence shows that the greatest danger from vaccines is from the vaccine adjuvant — so, how can they use adjuvant-injected people as controls? Yet, all of their studies used such vaccinated controls — this is blatantly manipulated, and they know it.

The studies that are quoted endlessly by these elite members of academia and government agencies and used to close the door on the vaccine connection to neurodevelopmental problems are purposefully designed so as to suggest no link between vaccines and any complication.

This falsified research is protected by academia, the media, and government agencies. Yet, they have the audacity to stand in judgment of Wakefield. This is not to say that Wakefield should be free of scrutiny — all researchers should be carefully scrutinized for bias.

Yet, why is there no open disclosure as to the connections between the rabid media, the investigating panel, the Lancet and BMJ journal editors, reporter Brian Deer, the British government, and the manufacturers of vaccines? When one examines these articles professing to prove the lack of a connection between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders, it is shocking to see that virtually all of the authors have extensive financial connections to the pharmaceutical vaccine makers.

These same companies advertise heavily on all of the major media outlets and the media understands very well that reports endangering vaccine sales can mean a huge loss of advertising revenue. This constitutes deception on a grand scale — and it is practiced every day in this country and the UK.

So, why is Wakefield being attacked and his reputation ruined — especially for an article written 13 years ago? For several reasons, all of which involved the makers of vaccines. Vaccines generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for pharmaceutical manufacturers every year.

The H1N1 vaccine alone generated $1.5 billion in addition to the $1 billion generated by the seasonal flu vaccine, neither of which has been shown to be either effective or safe. You have been told this safety and efficacy has been scientifically shown, when this is a shocking, provable lie.

Silencing the Dissenters

By careful manipulation of the media, the pharmaceutical companies have created the illusion that the entire link between vaccines and neurodevelopmental brain damage is hinged solely on Wakefield’s article, implying there is no other evidence suggesting a powerful link.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have written seven peer-reviewed articles and co-authored a recent ebook that makes a powerful scientific case for such a link. A growing number of researchers have also supplied hard data from very carefully done research that strongly suggest a link.

The defenders of vaccine policy used in the United States and the UK have used poorly done, obviously manipulated studies to make their case. If we use the same judgmental standards they used against Wakefield, they would be seen to be guilty of gross misconduct and, most importantly, of endangering the public at large.

Now, by destroying Wakefield’s reputation and accusing him of “crimes against humanity,” they hope to silence any further research in this area. It has the ring of old Soviet-style intimidation and the fear tactics the KGB used against dissidents.

The Case Against Vaccines

The truth is that the Wakefield article’s main theme was that they found bowel inflammation (colitis) in a small number of children vaccinated with the live measles vaccine and that the inflammation was caused by the measles virus from the vaccine itself.

He only proposed, almost in passing, that there might be a link between such bowel inflammation and autism, which is perfectly reasonable, ethical, and supported by other neuroscience research. I can cite hundreds of reputable articles in the medical literature that make similar proposals about less-controversial issues and are never questioned because they do not endanger pharmaceutical company profits.

The truth is that the case against the present vaccine schedule is very powerful and built on the findings of some of the most prestigious researchers in the world. The problem is the media and academia are so controlled by the pharmaceutical giants that the general public has no idea that this research even exists.

It is now known in the research world that questioning vaccine safety is a career killer. Researchers who dare to do so have been fired, denied research grants, their articles are rejected by the more “prestigious” science journals, and they are no longer invited to speak at national meetings. The atmosphere of fear is pervasive — all generated by the pharmaceutical giants and their minions.

By destroying reputations and stopping further research, pharmaceutical-controlled vaccine proponents hope to have a national law mandating all people receive every vaccine recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is under the absolute control of the vaccine manufacturers.

The data demonstrates that millions of people are seriously injured and thousands die as a result of vaccine complications every year. In many cases the damage caused by the vaccines exceed the risk of the disease being vaccinated against — such as is the case with the chickenpox, tetanus, measles, mumps, hepatitis B, and HPV vaccines.

The United States is the most over-vaccinated country in the world and evidence is growing that we are trading an “illusion of protection” by vaccines for a massive increase in vaccine-related chronic diseases.

The entire vaccine program is based on massive fraud. The so-called H1N1 “pandemic” is a case in point. Even the World Health Organization declared there was a “huge amount” of uncertainty in the seriousness of the “pandemic,” which turned out to be far less deadly than initially feared.

The WHO admitted it mishandled the so-called pandemic and failed to convey its uncertainty to the public. Yet the CDC, the media, medical academia, and the pharmaceutical vaccine manufacturers all participated in this deception.

It is time to wake up and call for some accountability; otherwise the vaccine program will never be safe.

Sibel Edmonds

2011-01-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

The “Exceptionally “Redacted 9/11 Commission Interview

Thursday, 6. January 2011

Newly Released 9/11 Commission Files at Cryptome.Org Last week John Young’s information site Cryptome.Org began publishing documents related to the interviews conducted by the 9/11 Commission which were released for the first time. On January 3, Cryptome posted the 9/11 Commission’s report on my interview (the infamous Sibel Edmonds Case), and aptly titled this particular file as “Sibel Edmonds Censored Yet Again.” Once you read the PDF document you’ll quickly see the reason for Cryptome’s appropriate label. The entire report, by that I mean the entire report, is blacked out (actually, whited-out;-). It took me less than one minute to scan the entire document; basically, scrolling down the white pages-one white page after another. Initially, I was not a bit surprised. Hey, I’ve been declared the most gagged and classified person in US history, after all- State Secrets Privilege invocation twice, gagging the entire Congress for the first (and only) time in US history, hundreds of pages of blacked out DOJ-IG report… So, as I said, I didn’t find it a bit surprising. However, after the minute it took to go over these blank pages, I started clicking and scanning all the other files (interviews by the 9/11 Commission), and that’s where I was truly surprised:
Despite some redactions here and there, and in a few cases fairly extensive redaction, there were no interviews where the entire interview (and the report on the interview) was blacked out in its entirety. Mine was the only one privileged and honored to such degree!

Why? I mean, come on, we are talking about interviews with: FBI Special Agent in Charge on Counterterrorism, CIA Officers with Directorate of Intelligence with a Specific Focus on Drugs & Thugs, The Chairman of National Intelligence Council, NSA Chief of Counterintelligence & SIGNIT Support, Senior CIA Analysts…Yet, none of these interviews was redacted in its entirety. None. Please be my guest and make your own comparison; My 9/11 Commission interview document here, and the rest, here, here, here, here, here…You can check out the rest published by Cryptome here, and if you want more here for thousands of them.
I e-mailed Mr. Young to get his opinion and ask whether he had noticed the same interesting phenomena. He confirmed my observation and we shared the exact same conclusion: This particular interview was ‘exceptionally’ redacted.
Next, I started all over again, and this time I checked for the location of these interviews conducted by the 9/11 Commission. Why? Because after checking with the DOJ/FBI/State Department/DOD, the 9/11 Commissioners insisted that my interview to be conducted in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility). I was stuck inside one of these almost airless highly claustrophobic dungeons for over three hours for my interview. I was told by the commission staff that this was due to the ‘extreme secret and sensitive nature of Ms. Edmonds’ information.’ Yet, none of the high-level counterterrorism officials, CIA operatives and agents, senior analysts…(at least all the ones I’ve scanned so far) were required to give their interviews inside a SCIF, or even a cleared room (they have specialists come and declare the room/facility clear & free of bugs). When you go to my interview document (here), look at the top of the page, find ‘location’ and see what it says. For mine it says: GSA SCIF. Now, if you were to go to all the other documents and check the interviewees’ location for the interview, you’ll see No SCIF, and locations like: Commission’s K Street Office (regular meeting room), or, regular offices or meeting rooms within various government agencies & HQs.
Another interesting point that came to me later had to do with the length of the Commission’s redacted interview with me. I know I was in there for over three hours, and at the top of the report they actually confirm that. I know I didn’t waste time talking about the employment and whistle blowing aspects of my case, instead I asked them to get that info from the IG or various congressional offices. I spent over three hours talking, answering questions, and writing for the 9/11 Commission investigators, with no break, no interruptions, and not even a pause for side conversations. I have transcribed interviews, I have typed many pages of phone/recorded conversations at the FBI while a translator, I have prepared many reports based on interviews, and I know that there is no way in this world you can transcribe or report on three hours of nonstop interview, especially mine, in less than 10-12 pages (single spaced!). Yet, the total number of redacted pages released by the 9/11 Commission totals about 5 pages. What else did they do with my interview besides redacting? This is what I call ‘sending it to a never-to-be retrieved Black Hole.’
I wonder what the US media has to say on this; especially the ones who’ve done their share of censoring and redacting on this particular case. Any ideas?

nationalpost.--lawrence-solomon-75-climate-scientists-think-humans-contribute-to-global-warming

2010-12-31T06:40:00.000-08:00

How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2500 – that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position.
To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered that they were mistaken – those 2500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently.
The upshot? The punditry looked for and recently found an alternate number to tout — “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus, articles in the Washington Post and elsewhere have begun to claim.

This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers – in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.
The two researchers started by altogether excluding from their survey the thousands of scientists most likely to think that the Sun, or planetary movements, might have something to do with climate on Earth – out were the solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists and astronomers. That left the 10,257 scientists in disciplines like geology, oceanography, paleontology, and geochemistry that were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided that scientific accomplishment should not be a factor in who could answer – those surveyed were determined by their place of employment (an academic or a governmental institution). Neither was academic qualification a factor – about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.
To encourage a high participation among these remaining disciplines, the two researchers decided on a quickie survey that would take less than two minutes to complete, and would be done online, saving the respondents the hassle of mailing a reply. Nevertheless, most didn’t consider the quickie survey worthy of response –just 3146, or 30.7%, answered the two questions on the survey:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
The questions were actually non-questions. From my discussions with literally hundreds of skeptical scientists over the past few years, I know of none who claims that the planet hasn’t warmed since the 1700s, and almost none who think that humans haven’t contributed in some way to the recent warming – quite apart from carbon dioxide emissions, few would doubt that the creation of cities and the clearing of forests for agricultural lands have affected the climate. When pressed for a figure, global warming skeptics might say that human are responsible for 10% or 15% of the warming; some skeptics place the upper bound of man’s contribution at 35%. The skeptics only deny that humans played a dominant role in Earth’s warming.
Surprisingly, just 90% of those who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen – I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. But perhaps some of the responders interpreted the question to include the past 1000 years, when Earth was in the Medieval Warm Period, generally thought to be warmer than today.
As for the second question, 82% of the earth scientists replied that that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. Here the vagueness of the question comes into play. Since skeptics believe that human activity been a contributing factor, their answer would have turned on whether they consider a 10% or 15% or 35% increase to be a significant contributing factor. Some would, some wouldn’t.
In any case, the two researchers must have feared that an 82% figure would fall short of a convincing consensus – almost one in five wasn’t blaming humans for global warming — so they looked for subsets that would yield a higher percentage. They found it – almost — in those whose recent published peer-reviewed research fell primarily in the climate change field. But the percentage still fell short of the researchers’ ideal. So they made another cut, allowing only the research conducted by those earth scientists who identified themselves as climate scientists.
Once all these cuts were made, 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers were then satisfied with their findings. Are you?
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and the author of The Deniers.

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/30/lawrence-solomon-75-climate-scientists-think-humans-contribute-to-global-warming/#ixzz19hSucnkT

Associated Press gone wild: 2010 disaster article is unadulterated trash

2010-12-20T05:16:00.000-08:00

Associated Press gone wild: 2010 disaster article is unadulterated trash

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Ryan Maue

2010′s world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards: The Associated Press has published one of the most biased pieces of environmental science journalism in a long time, and that’s quite a feat in itself. Indeed, there are some serious journalistic integrity issues with this clearly biased piece: the authors intersperse anecdotes with specific scientists’ quotations while playing fast and loose with the facts in order to push an agenda. Undoubtedly, there is a considerable amount of scientific ignorance on the part of the authors, but using the human suffering associated with 2010′s natural disasters as talking points in this narrative is a new low for the Associated Press.
This article by Seth Borenstein and Julie Reed Bell deserves a thorough fact-checking and deconstruction. Keep your vomit bags and pitchforks at the ready, and hold onto your seats on this Pulitzer-prize winning fictional roller coaster…
This is an absolute masterpiece: quotations are in the boxes, comments are mine.

This was the year that the Earth struck back. Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 – the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

What purpose does this statement serve? Is there a moral equivalence between suicide bombers and the heartbreaking suffering associated with Haiti’s earthquake, the resulting mysteriously-caused cholera epidemic, or the devastation associated with the Pakistani floods? Apparently there is, as the authors make that case that it is either human-caused or exacerbated.

And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.

That didn’t take long.

Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.

There is no doubt that the impoverished around the world suffer disproportionately from natural disasters: their ability to mitigate is very limited with poorly constructed buildings and standards of living that could further unravel by nature’s tragic pulling on the threads of survival. Earthquakes occur without regard to the dwellers above the ground. Tropical cyclones occur without regard to the topography in their path. Weather and seismic activity cannot be controlled; it can only be adapted to with the best possible disaster prevention. This fact is not ground breaking or in any way controversial, yet it is seemingly brought up, acknowledged, and summarily dismissed while Borenstein and Bell get to work on blaming humanity for the ills of the Earth.

Climate scientists say Earth’s climate also is changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.

Some climate scientists perhaps, but there is current NO peer reviewed literature that DIRECTLY connects the floods in Pakistan or the heat wave in Russia definitively to anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, there are scant scientifically diligent explanations available for the weather/climate events of 2010, but here’s one from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory Climate Attribution or CSI outfit on the Russian heat wave. Note, this is also a draft document, and not peer reviewed (yet), but with the extent of the data analysis from inside, it has a helluva lot more weight than the word of scientists who have not demonstrated or presented similar data analysis on the Russian heat waves or the floods. Instead, as Borenstein and Bell helpfully intersperse in the article, scientists are giving expert testimony on the events without tangible evidence, but perhaps intuition, feelings, or political motivations, which are superfluous anyways to the situation at hand.
Here is NOAA’s explanation by Dr. Martin Hoerling, which has received almost no media mention anywhere, and definitely not a press-release from NOAA.

Despite this strong evidence for a warming planet, greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave. It is not known whether, or to what exent, greenhouse gas emissions may affect the frequency or intensity of blocking during summer.

AP continues:

In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined.

What in tarnation does the number of casualties associated with plane crashes have to do with anything? Simply making an academic comparison here for the readers? WUWT!

Expert Quote #1

“It’s a form of suicide, isn’t it?” Professor Roger Bilham, geological sciences University of Colorado.

Anecdote #1

“I think it is the end of the world,” she said. “Our planet warns us against what would happen if we don’t care about nature.” Mask wearing Vera Savinova, a 52-year-old administrator in a dental clinic who in August took refuge from Moscow’s record heat, smog and wildfires.

Expert Quote #2

“These (weather) events would not have happened without global warming,” said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Where’s that missing heat? It’s a travesty…

How Extreme?

The article lists a series of weather events which seemingly are examples of events contemporaneously associated with the “season”, aka winter or summer aka cold/snowy, hot/dry, and some comments in parentheses. Here’s the rundown of extreme events: blizzards over the eastern-US, Russia, and China ( always happened, still happening, and will happen again & again ) | record heat in Los Angeles on one day (Urban Heat Island effects?) | freezes in Florida (yup, happened in January 2010 and December 2010) | tropical floods in tropical Australia, and desert droughts in desert Australia | Amazon drought (though flooding in nearby Venezuela must have been missed).

Anecdote #2 (How costly?)

Ghulam Ali’s three-bedroom, one-story house in northwestern Pakistan collapsed during the floods. To rebuild, he had to borrow 50,000 rupees ($583) from friends and family.

An attempt at scientific knowledge:

Even the extremes were extreme. This year started with a good sized El Nino weather oscillation that causes all sorts of extremes worldwide. Then later in the year, the world got the mirror image weather system with a strong La Nina, which causes a different set of extremes. Having a year with both a strong El Nino and La Nina is unusual.

Almost, but not quite. Okay, it’s just untrue. La Nina is NOT the mirror image weather system of El Nino. El Nino is one mode of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is a 2-7 year period coupled atmosphere-ocean phenomena — it modulates the world’s weather — it is NOT weather. It is the number one mode of variability in the tropics. Someone please get these folks at the AP Wikipedia or Google or perhaps one of the experts can help them understand this. It’s like the fact checking / preparation that Larry King is known for! Here, Jerry Seinfeld talks to King who seriously thought Seinfeld’s show was canceled. Anyways, look at the graphic from that pesky government-run NOAA website again: when the red switches to blue, that’s when El Nino goes to La Nina, happens a lot — and if we had more than a hundred years of data, we’d see it goes back and forth, without any concern for the “human hand”.

MEI (ENSO index): El Nino red, La Nina blue

Another attempt at scientific knowledge:

The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave – setting a national record of 111 degrees – would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.

This one is a a steaming-pile of who know what. Borenstein and Bell really screw the pooch in the facts department on this one: the climate scientists he is referring to is ONE blogger at Jeff Master’s Weather Underground (no, not Bill Ayers’), Rob Carver. You’ll see from my comment #13 (RyanFSU), which is not responded to, that his interpretation of the “normalized anomaly” is woefully inadequate and should be removed as it is, uh, statistical rubbish. But, Carver is cited as “climate scientists” — the AP and the drive-by media is known for these mystery quotations of plural groups: “some people say“.

Expert Quote #3

“The extremes are changed in an extreme fashion,” said Greg Holland, director of the Earth System Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Please, someone publish a peer-reviewed transliteration of that statement, using the evidence contained in this article.

Expert Quote #4

“The science is clear that we can expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until society’s emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles are sharply reduced.” Ecoscience author, and Science Czar John Holdren.

And, almost a the end, the AP writers manage to throw in the BP oil spill, and declare the Chilean mining crew’s 69-day ordeal as the “feel good story of the year.” WUWT!
Here’s a clue AP: if you really want to understand the world’s weather and climate, don’t look to global warming. It is an absolute pittance compared to the global reorganziation of the world’s weather due to El Nino, and it will be for the foreseeable future. So, if you want the easiest, best, and most correct expert explanation for what happened in 2010 here it is:
The transition from a strong El Nino to a strong La Nina (ENSO), hardly unprecedented, dramatically changes the tropical Pacific ocean temperatures. The atmosphere and ocean, acting together in a coupled fashion, teleconnect these tropical changes to the rest of the globe — both hemispheres. Storm tracks including tropical and extratropical cyclones, large-scale weather regimes such as blocks and Rossby-wave breaking cut-off lows, and shorter-time scale oscillations such as the PNA, NAO, and AO are all NON-LINEARLY associated with ENSO.
Academically, we have only begun to scratch the surface in understanding atmospheric/climate variability — and no matter what the experts on 2010 quoted in this article purport to understand about this year’s weather, it is only hand-wavy testimony that is actually at odds with some researchers at their own government labs!
The Associated Press and agenda-driven journalists without much evidence of scientific knowledge (especially in terms of climate variability) do the entire planet a disservice by conflating anecdotes, expert testimony, political appointees’ nonsense, and real-world suffering by those afflicted by natural disasters into a self-serving, blame humanity, anti-progress screed.

avoid coloured foods, duh

2010-12-18T05:59:00.000-08:00

Warning: Christmas colored chips, cookies and treats may be poisoning your children

Mike Adams
Natural News
Dec 17, 2010

Those Christmas-colored snack chips and store-bought cookies may look festive, but watch out: Eating them may cause side effects such as hyperactivity, especially in children. That’s because nearly all Christmas-colored foods achieve their colors through the use of artificial coloring chemicals, including Red #40.
These artificial coloring chemicals are derived from coal tars. They’re synthesized in chemical reactions in laboratories, then shipped to food manufacturers to be dripped into commercial food recipes. Nearly all “guacamole” products sold at the grocery stores — such as guacamole chips and dips — use artificial green coloring chemicals in order to trick consumers into thinking they’re buying products made with real avocados.

Chemicals cause ADHD

The problem with all this is that scientific studies have linked artificial food coloring chemicals to behavioral disorders in children that can be diagnosed as ADHD (http://www.naturalnews.com/artifici…). This means food coloring chemicals alter human brain function. When combined with the other refined sugars and wheat ingredients typically used in holiday treats and sweets, artificial colors can cause both children and adults to become hyperactive, moody and highly emotional. (Sounds just like Christmas with the family, doesn’t it?)
If you really want peace on Earth this holiday season, avoid buying (or consuming) Christmas-colored snack chips, cookies, treats or other manufactured food items. They are almost all made with artificial red and green food coloring chemicals.
And while you’re at it, remember to avoid Christmas meat gifts because virtually all processed meat is made with sodium nitrite to make it appear red (the sodium nitrite acts sort of like a chemical color preservative and enhancer). What’s wrong with that? Sodium nitrite sharply increases the risk of colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, brain cancer and leukemia (http://naturalnews.com/sodium_nitri…).
Please share this story with friends and family members so they can also avoid consuming coal tar chemicals in their holiday foods this year.
Have a wonderful (and healthy) holiday season! And please avoid the Christmas-colored poisons in the food supply.

What do you mean, where are my papers?

2010-12-09T04:22:00.000-08:00

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/cbc-article.aspx?cp-documentid=26673839

Here comes all the finger pointing now on who knew what and when.
And to think it only cost the taxpayers $675 million dollars to have the rights of Canadians suspended for a two day meeting, of course that is just the initial cost because now we will have to pay for a public inquiry to find out who is responsible for this rights violation.

I guess our government feels as Bush did when he said to the American people "the constitution is just a god damned piece of paper".

I say this because our Bill of Rights clearly says that "they" are NOT allowed to do what they did during the G/20. The Police claim that they were acting under the Public Works Act of 1939 during the G/20 meeting yet the Act in question does not have a five meter clause as they claim and in fact is only applicable to those that are entering the buildings that are defined in that Act. The police acted unlawfully and with deception in this regard.

Asking someone to produce ID arbitrarily is a violation of your rights as is clearly outlined in the criminal code. Unless a Peace Officer has seen you breach the peace or commit a crime or has reasonable suspicion (you fit the description of someone that has been accused of a crime) that you have committed a crime or have a warrant against you. Then you are free to walk the public streets without interference.

I have copied the Canadian Bill of Rights below for those interested. I only do so because if we remain ignorant of our rights then we really don't have any.

I have highlighted some of the provisions for quick reference. I chose to copy the 1960 version because it is easy to understand and is still in effect as the 1982 Charter states in section 26 of that Charter:

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

26. The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Canadian Bill of Rights

1960, c. 44

C-12.3

[Assented to August 10th, 1960]

An Act for the Recognition and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

Preamble

The Parliament of Canada, affirming that the Canadian Nation is founded upon principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God, the dignity and worth of the human person and the position of the family in a society of free men and free institutions;

Affirming also that men and institutions remain free only when freedom is founded upon respect for moral and spiritual values and the rule of law;

And being desirous of enshrining these principles and the human rights and fundamental freedoms derived from them, in a Bill of Rights which shall reflect the respect of Parliament for its constitutional authority and which shall ensure the protection of these rights and freedoms in Canada:

Therefore Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:

Part I

BILL OF RIGHTS

Recognition and declaration of rights and freedoms

1. It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,

(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;

(b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law;

(d) freedom of speech;

(e) freedom of assembly and association; and

(f) freedom of the press.

Construction of law

2. Every law of Canada shall, unless it is expressly declared by an Act of the Parliament of Canada that it shall operate notwithstanding the Canadian Bill of Rights, be so construed and applied as not to abrogate, abridge or infringe or to authorize the abrogation, abridgment or infringement of any of the rights or freedoms herein recognized and declared, and in particular, no law of Canada shall be construed or applied so as to

(a) authorize or effect the arbitrary detention, imprisonment or exile of any person;

(b) impose or authorize the imposition of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment;

(i) of the right to be informed promptly of the reason for his arrest or detention,

(ii) of the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay, or

(iii) of the remedy by way of habeas corpus for the determination of the validity of his detention and for his release if the detention is not lawful;

(d) authorize a court, tribunal, commission, board or other authority to compel a person to give evidence if he is denied counsel, protection against self crimination or other constitutional safeguards;

(e) deprive a person of the right to a fair hearing in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice for the determination of his rights and obligations;

(f) deprive a person charged with a criminal offence of the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, or of the right to reasonable bail without just cause; or

(g) deprive a person of the right to the assistance of an interpreter in any proceedings in which he is involved or in which he is a party or a witness, before a court, commission, board or other tribunal, if he does not understand or speak the language in which such proceedings are conducted.

Duties of Minister of Justice

3. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the Minister of Justice shall, in accordance with such regulations as may be prescribed by the Governor in Council, examine every regulation transmitted to the Clerk of the Privy Council for registration pursuant to the Statutory Instruments Act and every Bill introduced in or presented to the House of Commons by a Minister of the Crown, in order to ascertain whether any of the provisions thereof are inconsistent with the purposes and provisions of this Part and he shall report any such inconsistency to the House of Commons at the first convenient opportunity.

Exception

(2) A regulation need not be examined in accordance with subsection (1) if prior to being made it was examined as a proposed regulation in accordance with section 3 of the Statutory Instruments Act to ensure that it was not inconsistent with the purposes and provisions of this Part.

1960, c. 44, s. 3; 1970-71-72, c. 38, s. 29; 1985, c. 26, s. 105; 1992, c. 1, s. 144(F).

Short title

4. The provisions of this Part shall be known as the Canadian Bill of Rights.

PART II

Savings

5. (1) Nothing in Part I shall be construed to abrogate or abridge any human right or fundamental freedom not enumerated therein that may have existed in Canada at the commencement of this Act.

"Law of Canada" defined

(2) The expression "law of Canada" in Part I means an Act of the Parliament of Canada enacted before or after the coming into force of this Act, any order, rule or regulation thereunder, and any law in force in Canada or in any part of Canada at the commencement of this Act that is subject to be repealed, abolished or altered by the Parliament of Canada.

Jurisdiction of Parliament

(3) The provisions of Part I shall be construed as extending only to matters coming within the legislative authority of the Parliament of Canada.

A related you tube video:
Entitled "BEWARE OF COMING POLICE STATE" SAYS SENIOR LAWYER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9GwuRjxU-Y

Hope all find this entertaining and informative.
Brad

orwell (1984) in Toronto

2010-12-08T05:46:00.000-08:00

Cops Violate Private Property, Leave Behind Propaganda

Posted By kurtnimmo On December 7, 2010 @ 7:21 pm In Featured Stories |

Chris Jewell
Infowars.com
December 7, 2010

It’s the holiday season; the time of year when the trees come alive with lights and colors; families come together to share love and joy with one another; the time of year that all the troubles of the world should vanish and peace should reign supreme. Maybe that’s why when the police broke into my car while I was out shopping. Nobody, even my family, didn’t want to hear it.

It was a busy day at the mall. I and my wife, had spent the morning fighting the Christmas crowds in order to buy a little December 25th love. After an exhausting three hours we returned to our car to find a note on the drivers seat.

At first, I was alarmed at the fact someone had opened my car to leave, what I thought, was an advertisement. I felt as if my privacy had been invaded! “The nerve of someone going in my car, my private property, to leave me an unsolicited ad,” I thought. When I looked at the laminated pamphlet, I was even more shocked to see it was from the Toronto Police services and the Insurance Bureau of Canada! It was a note, from Toronto Police Services–which included an issuing officer’s badge number–telling me that that my car door was left unlocked and that it would have taken 30 seconds to steal my car! The note had several other boxes which the officers were to visually search for, such as keys in plain view and valuables in plain view. If the car was locked, without keys in it, the officer was to check the congratulatory box and leave the note on your windshield. I looked around and didn’t see any notes on any windshields. The cars around me didn’t have notes inside. So essentially, the police singled out my car, illegally entered it, did a visual search of it for “ the keys” and “valuables” and left me a note. Not to detract from the seriousness of the situation and my own anger but the officer didn’t even lock the doors behind him! If my car was in danger of being stolen at any minute–so in danger that he felt the need to open my car, check for the keys and leave me a note–he could have at least locked the door!

My mind instantly recalled a story that I heard about a year ago where the police checked front doors in England to see if the doors were locked. If they found one that was open they entered the house to inform the residents that they may be at risk of unwanted people entering their house… like the police. Some may say, “well it’s a house and they just entered your car.” This is true, I thankfully, don’t live in my car, however, it is still my private property. They have now set the precedent that they can, at any time, enter your private property, for “your own protection.”

My wife and I were furious. We weren’t sure what to do, but thought we should at least file a complaint and let them know that what they did was wrong. So the following day, I phoned Toronto Police Services to report a crime.

After being transferred around, I was put through to an officer that worked out of the note issuing branch. I told him, “I would like to report a crime.”

“What exactly happened sir?”

“On Sunday, someone entered my car and left me a note telling me how easy it was to steal it.” The officer began to laugh. He then went on to explain to me how we’d had a rash of car thefts in the area and how this was a new crime prevention initiative.

“Is this not a crime though, am I wrong? Could I do this to someone else’s car?” What he told me, may be some of the most chilling words which I have ever heard.

“Better us than a criminal. It’s for your own protection” chilling words followed by, “I don’t have time to talk about this anymore, if you have a problem talk to a lawyer.” That says it all.

It sent shivers up my spine. To rephrase what he said, “yes it is a crime but it’s ok, we’re the police. We will commit this crime to protect you from crime; violate your rights to save them; ignorance is strength” The Orwellian-ness of his argument is astounding.

I wish I had myself a little more together for this because I would have shot back that it’s worse for the police to break the law than criminals! God help us if the people that are supposed to be the benchmark for justice and lawfulness–no matter how small the crime–break the law themselves.

I wasn’t finished though because I had one more question that needed to be asked, “what if you found something in my car when you opened the door?” This was followed by an accusing back and fourth about what I have in my car that I don’t want police to see.

“I don’t have anything in my car but if I did have something, anything illegal what would happen? Would you just leave a note?”

“No sir, we’d wait for you to return and arrest you.” Needless to say, I was shocked by his honesty but not surprised by the answer.

“How is this legal? You entered my vehicle, without my consent or a warrant and would arrest me if you found anything?” To which I was, again, kindly told to get a lawyer and our conversation ended.

So to recap and to let all the Canadian’s out there know, and our American tourists, the police in Canada can now enter your car “for safety reasons,” do a visual search for “keys” and arrest you if they happen to find anything illegal (which in Canada could mean something as simple as a pocket knife that’s too long!) This is for our safety!

The last twist in the story for me is simple the fact that it’s Christmas. You know why they are doing it now? They are doing it because of people like my mother. I love her to death, but when I called her to let her know what happened, she yelled at me and told me, “It’s Christmas! Why can’t you be happy and let me be happy?” That is, unfortunately, the dominant ideology and why Christmas is the perfect time for tyranny to creep one step closer. I’m sure it also factored into why December was chosen as a good time to violate our rights! Moreover, I’m seen as “the bad guy” for bringing people down!

You know, I’m the same as everyone else. I don’t want to deal with it because it’s Christmas after all! I spent my whole day following the officer’s advice and looking for lawyers instead of Christmas presents; writing the press instead of writing Christmas cards! You know what I want for Christmas? I want my rights back and the true safety and protection that those rights afford me.

Article printed from Infowars: http://www.infowars.com
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/cops-violate-private-property-leave-behind-propaganda/

more US GOV WAR CRIMES

2010-12-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

Cable reveals US behind airstrike that killed 21 children in Yemen

By Eric W. Dolan
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 -- 12:46 pm

A diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks shows that the US military covered up the killing of dozens of civilians during a cruise missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009.
The secret cable from January 2010 corroborated images released earlier this year by Amnesty International, implicating the US in the use of cluster bombs. The cable was sent by Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh to US General David Petraeus, saying his government would "continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours."
Read it Raw: WikiLeaks.org domain taken down, DNS host cites 'mass attacks'
According to the cable, this prompted Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alimi "to joke that he had just 'lied' by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG [Republic of Yemen Government]."
"The cable appears to confirm Amnesty International's finding that the Abyan strike was carried out by the US military, not Yemeni government forces," Philip Luther, a Deputy Director for Amnesty International, said.

On December 17, 2009, an alleged al-Qaeda training camp in Abyan was hit by a cruise missile, killing 41 local residents, including 14 women, 21 children, and 14 alleged al-Qaeda members.
According to the leaked cable, President Saleh praised the strikes, "but said that 'mistakes were made' in the killing of civilians in Abyan." Gen. Petraeus responded that only three civilians, the wife and two children of an al-Qaeda member, were killed.
After the attack, Amnesty International requested information from the Pentagon about US involvement in the missile attack, but received no response. The Pentagon later released a statement saying
that questions on operations against al-Qaeda should be posed to the Yemeni government.
The leaked cable revealed that Gen. Petraeus proposed abandoning the use of cruise missiles and instead using fixed-wing bombers circling outside of Yemeni territory to strike at targets using precision-guided bombs "when actionable intelligence became available." The proposal was welcomed by President Saleh.
Security assistance to Yemen may substantially increase, if Gen. Petraeus has his way.
"The General told Saleh that he had requested USD 150 million in security assistance for 2010, a substantial increase over the 2009 amount of USD 67 million," the cable states.
Amnesty International is calling on the US to investigate the use of drones by US forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen.
"There must be an immediate investigation into the dozens of deaths of local residents in the Abyan air strike, including into the extent of US involvement," Luther said. "Those responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice."
US Attorney General Eric Holder said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is currently under investigation and would be pursued if he were found to have broken the law.
Republican Congressman Peter King, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, went so far as to say that the website should be deemed a "foreign terrorist organization."
Rep. King's call for prosecution was echoed by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Clair McCaskill (D-MO) and former State Department official Liz Cheney.
"We're deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea," Hina Shamsi, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, said. "The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information. Prosecuting WikiLeaks would be no different from prosecuting the media outlets that also published classified documents."
"Prosecuting publishers of classified information threatens investigative journalism that is necessary to an informed public debate about government conduct, and that is an unthinkable outcome."

US war crimes

2010-12-03T06:10:00.000-08:00

US soldier admits to sport killing

Thu Dec 2, 2010 6:43AM

US soldiers in Afghanistan

A US military court has spared an American soldier from an early discharge from the US Army after he admitted to shooting unarmed Afghan civilians for fun.

Staff Sergeant Robert Stevens, 25, an Army medic from the State of Oregon, was only sentenced to nine months in prison on Wednesday for killing Afghan civilians, after pleading guilty.

He confessed to opening fire on two Afghan farmers in March 2010 for no apparent reason. He and other US troops were acting on orders from a squad leader during a patrol in March, Reuters reported.

The case began as an investigation into hashish use among US soldiers who were part of an infantry unit then known as the 5th Stryker Brigade. But the investigation has grown into the most serious prosecution of alleged atrocities by US military personnel in nearly nine years of conflict in war-torn Afghanistan.

Four more US soldiers are implicated in the case. The soldiers have been charged with other crimes, including mutilating bodies and keeping body parts as trophies.

Stevens has agreed to testify against the other members of the group.

SZH/MB/HRF

biofuels are bullshit

2010-11-29T04:52:00.000-08:00

Biofuels worse than fossil fuels, says expert

Ethan A. Huff
Natural News
Nov 28, 2010
Biofuels have become all the rage among many environmental and sustainably-minded advocacy groups as a way to end dependence on foreign oil, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and create a “greener” tomorrow. But Andreas Spath, PhD, an expert in the field of geochemistry, says that biofuels are actually worse for the environment than conventional fossil fuels are.
It is widely believed that fossil fuel reserves will eventually be depleted, and that a viable, renewable alternative is urgently needed in order to avoid the worldwide collapse of a transportation and commerce infrastructure that depends on oil to function. And since biofuels are renewable, largely plant-based and work right now in existing vehicles, proponents say they are an excellent alternative.
But in reality, biofuel production requires massive amounts of land to produce additional fuel crops, and the entire growing, harvesting and refining process ends up ruining the environment and causing more greenhouse gas production than if the world simply continued on with fossil fuels. And biofuel production has also increased food prices across the board.

Corn ethanol, for instance, has shifted much of the U.S. corn production away from food crops and towards fuel crops. The result has been increased food prices, as the monetary incentive to grow biofuel corn is higher than it is to grow food corn. The same is true for sugar, soy, and other crops used around the world for biofuels.
A 2007 study comparing fossil fuels to biofuels found that, because of the chemical fertilizers used, biofuel production end up releasing twice as much greenhouse gas as fossil fuels do. The study actually found that continuing with conventional diesel production is better for the environment.
Another study conducted by the Institute for European Environmental Policy found that in order for the European Union (EU) to meet its biofuel goals, it will have to convert roughly 7 million hectares (more than 17 million acres) of land into biofuel cropland, which will destroy many natural ecosystems in the process.
Sources for this story include:
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listi…

russia today journalists arrested for the crime of protesting the School of the Americas, otherwise known as the School of Latin American Dictators and Death Squads.

2010-11-24T06:07:00.000-08:00

RT Crew Arrested for Reporting Pentagon’s Dirty Laundry

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 24, 2010
More than two dozen people were arrested over the weekend outside Fort Benning, Georgia, for the crime of protesting the School of the Americas, otherwise known as the School of Latin American Dictators and Death Squads.

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Two members of a Russia Today television crew were arrested along with the protesters, even though they had presented press credentials. “They were held as protestors even though they presented valid press credentials to the court,” RT reported earlier today. “Currently out on bail after 32 hours in custody, [correspondent Kaelyn Forde and cameraman Jon Conway] were eventually charged with partaking in an illegal protest and disobeying the orders of law enforcement officers.”

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Of course, if Forde and Conway worked for the New York Times or the crown jewel of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, the Washington Post, this would not have happened to them. On the other hand, the New York Times and the Washington Post are not in the habit of covering protests at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, aka the School of the Americas. The Pentagon changed the name a few years ago after it was associated with psychotic thugs raping and killing nuns and disappearing political activists.
It is Job One of the corporate media to make sure the American people remain oblivious to the ramifications of U.S. foreign policy.
Since RT is not part of the Operation Mockingbird club, it will not be permitted to exercise the First Amendment. It will be treated the same way members of the alternative media are routinely treated in America – dismissively, with contempt, and often with violence.

CDA warns against fluoride supplements

2010-11-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

To avoid permanent tooth discoloration, the Canadian Dental Association (CDA) is now advising AGAINST fluoride supplement use for children before their permanent teeth have erupted, usually at about 6 or 7 years of age.
The CDA states in its revised guidlines:

There is "...weak scientific evidence supporting the effectiveness of fluoride supplements."
"The use of fluoride supplements before the eruption of the first permanent tooth is generally not recommended,"

Anti-fluoridation forces had plenty to say on the matter. Lawyer Paul Beeber is President of the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation.

"Studies show that tooth decay is declining in both fluoridated and non- fluoridated areas while dental fluorosis (white spotted, yellow or brown stained and sometimes crumbly teeth) is increasing, more so in fluoridated areas. Furthermore, fluoride poses harmful systemic damage as well as dental damage," he states.
The American Dental Association (ADA), which still recommends fluoride supplements for children from 6 months to 16 years old in non or low-fluoridated communities, "is clinging to outmoded ideas," says Beeber. "And they are trailing behind the CDA by failing to protect our children."
"Fluoride supplements and water fluoridation must stop immediately," says Beeber.

One of Canada's leading fluoride authorities is dentist Hardy Limeback, head of the Department of Preventive Dentistry, University of Toronto, and past-president of the Canadian Association for Dental Research.

"New research shows that swallowed fluoride carries little, if any, benefit. Fluoride's enamel strengthening effects are primarily topical, or when fluoride touches the outside of the tooth," Limeback states.
Additionally, "Fluoride's adverse effects occur upon ingestion. Fluoride gets into every cell of the body and can especially damage the bones and teeth."
"Half of all ingested fluoride remains in the skeletal system and accumulates with age," says Limeback.
"Studies have linked fluoridation to hip fractures and high levels of naturally-occurring water fluoride to crippling skeletal fluorosis, a bone deforming arthritic-type disease endemic to India," says Limeback.
A study in progress by Limeback shows that residents of fluoridated Toronto have double the fluoride in their hip bones than residents of non- fluoridated Montreal.
"Worse, we discovered that fluoride is actually altering the basic architecture of human bones," says Limeback. Ironically, "Here in Toronto we've been fluoridating for 36 years. Yet Vancouver, which has never fluoridated, has a cavity rate lower than Toronto's," says Limeback.
"We are now spending more money treating dental fluorosis than we would spend treating new decay if water fluoridation halted," says Limeback.
"The safety of long-term fluoride ingestion has not been proven. The notion that systemic fluorides are needed in non-fluoridated areas is an outdated one that should be abandoned altogether." says Limeback.

Children may get fluoride from many different sources:

food and beverages made in fluoridated cities
fluoridated dental products
fluoride containing pesticide residues in food
industrial fluoride air emissions
fluoride-containing medicines, anesthetics and other products.

Fluoride is also inhaled via ocean mist, showers and humidifiers and is found naturally in some foods such as tea.
Canadian Dental Association Board of Governors March, 2000 and other information obtained from the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation

Other Fluoride News

Ireland considering ending mandatory water fluoridation

Ireland is considering relaxing current laws that require the fluoridation of all drinking water due to mounting controversy and growing public concern over the possible health risks.
Michael Martin, the Irish health minister, has appointed a committee of environmental and health specialists to examine the evidence on fluoridation and make recommendations.
If Ireland does decide to changs it's fluoridation practices, it will not be alone:

Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland banned water fluoridation during the 1970s and 1980s because not enough was known about the long term health effects.
Germany rejected the practice in 1975 as "foreign to nature, unnecessary, inefficient, irresponsible and harmful to the environment."
A year later, the Dutch rewrote their constitution to outlaw fluoridation. France's chief of public health declared in 1980 that fluoridation was "too dangerous."

Ireland is currently one of the only countries in the European Union to insist on mandatory fluoridation of piped water supplies

NY Times finally reports something truthful- YOU should be worried as to why they did it as they are fully controlled by the Bilderberger group.

2010-11-20T06:14:00.000-08:00

NYT reports Paperclip CIA Nazi link

November 14th, 2010 3:56 am ET

The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century
The Justice Department report, describing what it calls “the government’s collaboration with persecutors,” says that O.S.I investigators learned that some of the Nazis “were indeed knowingly granted entry” to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. “America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well,” - New York Times
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The New York Times obtained the full 600-page Justice Department, report without the many redactions, on Operation Paperclip and has reported about it on November 13 calling the most damning aspect of it the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazis brought into the US.
The strong Nazi history in the United States has been suppressed until the NYT report that states, "Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations."

The report names some of the most infamous Nazi scientists and doctor responsible for the Jewish holocaust and then brought to the US: Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, Arthur L. Rudolph, and Otto Von Bolschwing, "an associate of Adolph Eichmann who had helped develop the initial plans “to purge Germany of the Jews” and who later worked for the C.I.A."
The NYT report reveals that only some 300 of the 10,000 Nazis brought into the US were ever deported and that the "Justice Department itself sometimes concealed what American officials knew about Nazis in this country..."
Despite the long suppression of the Nazi infuence on Americans and the Obama administration's attempts to keep the report from he public, because of determination of the late Mark Richard, a senior Justice Department lawyer, this major part of US history is now revealed.
NYT reports that in 1999, Richard convinced Attorney General Janet Reno to begin a detailed look at the US Nazi history, assigned career prosecutor, Judith Feigin, to the job and he edited the final version in 2006. He "urged senior officials to make it public but was rebuffed, colleagues said."
"When Mr. Richard became ill with cancer, he told a gathering of friends and family that the report’s publication was one of three things he hoped to see before he died, the colleagues said. He died in June 2009, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. spoke at his funeral.
“'I spoke to him the week before he died, and he was still trying to get it released,” Ms. Feigin said. “It broke his heart.”
"After Mr. Richard’s death, David Sobel, a Washington lawyer, and the National Security Archive sued for the report’s release under the Freedom of Information Act.
Thanks to Mr. Richard, Ms Feigin, Mr, Sobel plus to Eric Lichblau's NYT reporting, roots of the most sordid US policies and practices today such as non-consensual human experimentation, torture and eugenics can finally be seen by those who will look at the Nazi-CIA partnership revealed in the report.
Those roots are deep, alive and strong. They have supported the growth of what has been aptly called the Nazi Hydra in America after over 60 years in fertile ground. The hydra has its tentacles in every level of society, including America's medical system with the military to continue Nazi Germany's experimentation on humans.(See: Today's US medicos and military Nazi human experimentation, Dupre, Examiner, June 7, 2010)
The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century exposes how the Dulles brothers and U.S. tycoons launched Hitler and brought Nazi assets, including concentration camp scientists and “doctors” to the U.S. It details the the Nazis - OSS merger to create the CIA and NSA for the purpose of laying the foundation of the modern police state presently controlling Americans and the nation.
If this "no longer seem like America," and instead resembles Nazi Germany, this Justice Department report, according to the NYT, explains why.

wtf british lord admits laundering money for the bank of england to aid IRA?

2010-11-12T05:27:00.000-08:00

Staged Government Terror: An Open Admission Within The British House of Lords

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
November 11, 2010
If there was any doubt that governments fund terror and stage false flag attacks against themselves, that doubt should be erased by a recent exchange within the British House of Lords. In addressing his peers in the House, Lord James of Blackheath revealed that he had been involved in the laundering of billions of pounds of terrorist money, specifically that of the IRA and various North African terrorists at the behest of the Bank of England. James also explained that he had been contacted by a secretive organization that was offering to help Britain pay off its extraordinary debt.

The debt question was actually what prompted such an unbelievable admission of guilt by Lord James in the first place. Initially, he announced that he had been contacted by a very “strange” and secretive organization that wanted to “make a great deal of money available to assist the recovery of the economy” in England. After relaying this to a colleague in the House of Lords, Lord James was apparently told he was not important enough to be contacted by this organization, a statement which James evidently took personally. In response to his fellow Lord’s statement that he didn’t have the experience to deal with this agency, which is apparently secret to everyone except those deep in the Know, James’ response was remarkable.
“Yes I do,” he said. “I have had one of the biggest experiences in the laundering of terrorist money and funny money that anyone has had in the City. I have handled billions of pounds of terrorist money.”
When asked by the Baroness Hollis of Heigham where the money went to, he explained further:

Not into my pocket. My biggest terrorist client was the IRA and I am pleased to say that I managed to write off more than #1 billion of its money. I have also had extensive connections with North African terrorists, but that was of a far nastier nature, and I do not want to talk about that because it is still a security issue.

James went even further after making these remarks, implicating the Bank of England in the funding of terrorists as well. “I hasten to add that it is no good getting the police in, because I shall immediately call the Bank of England as my defense witness, given that it put me in to deal with these problems.”
While the idea that the Bank of England, the House of Lords, and other governmental institutions fund the very terrorists they claim to be so afraid of is not surprising at all; it is only surprising to see such open discussion of it in public. Britain has devolved into a police state in recent years under the guise of fighting terrorism, yet their own governmental and banking institutions openly admit to funding these terrorists. This is a clear case of the Problem-Reaction-Solution technique that has been so successful for governments and societal leaders for thousands of years.

But James’ comments do not end there. “The point is,” he says, “that when I was in the course of doing this strange activity, I had an interesting set of phone numbers and references that I could go to for help when I needed it. So people in the City have known that if they want to check out anything that looks at all odd, they can come to me and I can press a few phone numbers to obtain a reference.” James does not expound upon who these contacts actually are, but they are undoubtedly very well-connected and powerful people if they can be called upon to corroborate and provide references for such internal affairs such as those being discussed by Lord James.
Yet James’ comments reveal even more secretive activity when he begins to discuss the shadowy organization, Foundation X as he calls it, that allegedly contacted him with the proposal to aid England in the payment of its debt. Undoubtedly, the stature of Foundation X ranks higher than any organization we are currently aware of. As Lord James attempted to connect Foundation X with the appropriate individuals within the House of Lords and the Bank of England he says, “I found myself between a rock and a hard place that were totally paranoid about each other, because the foundation X people have an amazing obsession with their own security. They expect to be contacted only by someone equal to head of state status or someone with an international security rating equal to the top six people in the world.”

James is clearly describing some very powerful movers and shakers with tendencies toward elitism. They are obviously accustomed to being contacted by individuals very high up in the social structure and they are unappreciative when addressed by the lower stratum. Yet when members of the Bank of England and the British House of Lords are considered lower members of society, just how high do the Foundation X people go? While bloggers have suggested that the mystery organization may be the United Nations Office of International Treasury Control (UNOITC), and some have even hinted at the Vatican, Lord James has made it clear that Foundation X, whoever they may be, are “still effectively on the gold standard from back in the 1920s and that their entire currency holdings throughout the world, which were very large, were backed by bullion.” This means that “a figure for the amount of bullion that would be needed to cover their currency reserves, as claimed, which would be more than the entire value of bullion that had ever been mined in the history of the world.” According to Lord James, Foundation X is willing to loan the British government billions of pounds for projects as diverse as hospitals, schools, and crossrails.
Regardless of the final outcome of the Foundation X loan discussion, its offer has at the very least provoked an astonishing admission from a member of the British House of Lords. A government that openly admits funding terrorism, which is aimed at its own population, and then considers business deals with shadowy financial organizations without informing them should provoke widespread outrage. But, given the current state of affairs in England, it probably won’t.
Works Cited
“Conservative Peer Lord James of Blackheath: I’m a money washer, not a money launderer.” Belfastetelegraph.co.uk. November 4, 2010. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/conservative-peer-lord-james-of-blackheath-im-a-money-washer-not-a-money-launderer-14995248.html
Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University where he earned the Pee Dee Electric Scholar’s Award as an undergraduate. He has had numerous articles published dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, and civil liberties. He also the author of Codex Alimentarius – The End of Health Freedom

Big surprise Noam CHomshy finally admits that Afganistan has nothing to do with 9/11.

2010-11-08T05:31:00.000-08:00

And as Bin Laden is a CIA asset (check Sibel Edmonds and etc) It's no wonder they didn't want him "turned over" by the Taliban.
The real truth is that the US government is the most evil government in the world. Death squads, torture child prostitution, CIA rendition Flights, kidnapping, murder for hire, secret experiments, operation paperclip and the list goes on and on to this very day and tomorrow. But I guess OBama is nice so why do anything.?

Noam Chomsky: No Evidence that Al-Qaeda Carried Out the 9/11 Attacks

Washington’s Blog
November 6, 2010

Leading liberal intellectual Noam Chomsky just told Press TV:

“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program a Simple Question.
“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”
The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.
“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably implemented in the United Arab Emirates and Germany.”

Chomsky added that three weeks into the war, “a British officer announced that the US and Britain would continue bombing, until the people of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban… That was later turned into the official justification for the war.”
“All of this was totally illegal. It was more, criminal,” Chomsky said.

As Wired wrote on September 27, 2001:

President Bush has said he has evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks, so it would seem obvious that the FBI would include him and other suspects on its 10 most wanted fugitives Web page.
Think again.
Bin Laden is listed, but only for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. There is no mention of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the attacks on the USS Cole in October 2000, both of which he is widely believed to have orchestrated. And forget about Sept. 11.
The reason? Fugitives on the list must be formally charged with a crime, and bin Laden is still only a suspect in the recent attacks in New York City and Washington.
“There’s going to be a considerable amount of time before anyone associated with the attacks is actually charged,” said Rex Tomb, who is head of the FBI’s chief fugitive publicity unit and helps decide which fugitives appear on the list. “To be charged with a crime, this means we have found evidence to confirm our suspicions, and a prosecutor has said we will pursue this case in court.”
Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA officer who was deputy director of the U.S. State Department Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993, said in a Sept. 12 interview conducted by Frontline that there is no concrete proof that bin Laden is responsible for the USS Cole and the 1993 WTC attacks, but bin Laden celebrates those attacks and associates himself with people who are responsible for it.
President Bush promises to reveal evidence linking bin Laden to the suicide hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Bin Laden has applauded the attacks but denies direct involvement.

The Bush administration never provided such evidence.
As I wrote last December:

President Obama said Tuesday night as justification for the surge in troops in Afghanistan:
We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people.
Al Qaeda’s base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban”, who refused to turn over Osama bin Laden.
Is that true?
On October 14, 2001, the Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted bombing if the Taliban were given evidence of Bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11.
Specifically, as the Guardian writes:
Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban “turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over.” He added, “There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty” …
Afghanistan’s deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
“If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved” and the bombing campaign stopped, “we would be ready to hand him over to a third country”, Mr Kabir added.
However, as the Guardian subsequently points out:
A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night.
For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan’s military leadership said.
And yet … the U.S. turned down the offer and instead prosecuted war.

And in 2006, FBI agent Rex Tomb told reporter Ed Haas that the FBI still did not have enough evidence:

The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.

In fact, many leading liberals have expressed doubts about 9/11, including Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern, William Blum, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Lewis Lapham, Dan Hamburg, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Marc Crispin Miller, Howard Zinn, Robert McChesney, Gore Vidal, Chris Floyd, Robert Fisk, Medea Benjamin, Doris “Granny D” Haddock, Paul Hawken, David Cobb, Randy Hayes, Ernest Callenbach, Dennis Bernstein, Paul H. Ray, Michael Franti, Janeane Garafalo and Ed Asner.
As have many prominent old-fashioned conservatives. And the 9/11 Commissioners themselves. See this.

why can't we WAKE UP?

2010-11-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

Why does renowned researcher Jordan Maxwell think we are doomed? In his own words he states that he is here to help and to reveal something of great importance but even he doesn't believe we can be saved. Why?
Why when I or my fellows tell people even an iota of the truth of what is going on, why, why do they get angry and try to argue and fight? We are trying to help and they can't hear. It must sound like we are insulting their mothers or something.

Here in JM's own words he lays it down why the end is near for the good ol usa and the rest of the planet :

JM: I categorically say No. I do not believe there is any reasonable evidence of anything of hope for America or for the world. That’s my personal opinion. I think that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train coming.
There’s no doubt in my mind, for myself. I do not believe America or the world at large is going to be able to extricate itself out of this situation. No. I do not believe it’s possible.

And the reason why is because the people are too stupid. They’re too ill-informed, ignorant, ill-informed, un-read, self-centered, egotistical, materialistic, and down-right stupid. And they don’t care. Basically speaking, people don’t care.

Ludwig von Mises in one of these books, the great European economist, Ludwig von Mises said -- and he’s right-on as far as I’m concerned -- he said that in every age and in every country, the people of every nation have always supported a dictator. The people have always supported a dictator and they always will.
There’s never been a time in the history of the human race that you can show me where the people of a nation rose up and demanded their freedom, liberty, and justice for all, not even in America. Ninety-seven percent of the male population in America at the time of the American Revolution did nothing. Only 3 percent took up arms against the British masters and gave us a modicum of freedom. But happily that will never happen again. America is finished.

JM: I do not believe the human race can be extricated or saved from what is coming. I do not believe that my mission here is to save anybody. I believe what I am doing is to help those who want to know, those handful of people who are awakening and who sincerely spiritually understand the dynamics of what’s going on and who want to know and want to change and want the protection of the spirit... That’s a small modicum of people, a very small niche.

I do not believe America can be saved. I’m doing what I’m doing only to help those who want to know.

Another example of media whores pretending to be open and honest but are actually despicable humans

2010-10-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

Matt Meyer
We Are Change.org
October 28, 2010
It has been remarked that “all the world loves a clown”. Thinking back to Stephen King’s Pennywise or John Wayne Gacy’s Pogo that might be debatable, but it is probably at least true that most people enjoy some form of well crafted humor or good satire. With that in mind many people may scratch their heads wondering why comedic talk show host Jon Stewart would be the recipient of serious questions regarding his stance on the events of September 11, 2001. Those same people may also scratch their heads wondering how, or even become angry at the suggestion that Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is simply another layer of misinformation laid out by the corporatocracy to be mindlessly absorbed by the zombified “moderate liberal” segment of the well-trained population. The theses submitted for your approval here are that 1.) Jon Stewart is a well entrenched member of the establishment’s mainstream media propaganda machine. 2.) The people putting on the “Rally to Restore Sanity” are the complete antithesis of what they claim to be – peaceful moderates who would rather talk things out and listen to the ideas of others. And, 3.) the Daily Show actually employs angry, sometimes violent, anti-American radicals and globalists who peddle the REAL conspiracy theories concerning U.S. domestic and foreign policy, geopolitics and science. Their conspiracy theories are then given a humorous spin and represented by funny pictures or captions on The Daily Show. These “funny” graphics are then placed next to Jon Stewart’s face so he can proceed to mug, smirk and feign outrage, ultimately resulting in applause and laughter from his obedient audience. But in the end it’s not real news, it’s not fake news, it’s propaganda peppered with jokes.

One month ago I was punched in the face by the executive producer of the Daily Show. I also had my camera damaged by another Daily Show writer, and had my shirt torn by Jon Stewart’s security guard. Jon Stewart and the writers and staff of the Daily Show were appearing at a popular book store in Manhattan to present and sign copies of their new book of humorous pictures and captions. I was moved to peacefully confront Jon and ask him a few questions after watching his show a few nights earlier. On the September 16th installment of The Daily Show, before a gushing and edge-free interview with notorious criminal Bill Clinton, Jon announced his “Rally to Restore Sanity”. He billed this as a rally for which people should “use indoor voices” and “take it down a notch for America”. It was clear that this “Rally to Restore Sanity” was, in part, to be a mockery of the now co-opted and neo-conned Tea Party movement and its successful rallies featuring Glenn “the Judas Goat” Beck and the Palin the Pied Piper of soccer moms. It was also designed to poke fun at the more vocal elements of the anti-war movement. Essentially, the Daily Show had cooked up a rally for wishy-washy people who believed that other people were “insane” for being enraged by a corrupt and out-of-control government that increasingly ignores We the People, while bowing to Wall Street bankers, corporate interests and the military-industrial complex. Jon’s rally was to be for those who think injustice, theft and mass murder should just be laughed off (and that sarcasm is what should pass for humor). Getting upset and then vocalizing it using the first amendment, apparently, were the actions of lunatics. Once again a mainstream media talking head was reminding us that the first amendment should really be used to express popular and benign ideas, not controversial ones. These stand-down orders disturbed me, especially in the wake of a watered-down liberty movement, but the “joke” that encouraged me to take action was Jon’s mock protest sign suggesting that “9/11 was an OUTSIDE job”. He was not, by the way, suggesting Israeli Mossad or British MI6 involvement. He was goofing on the many concerned, often credible individuals who reject the ridiculous and impossible “official story” of 9/11. Again, it was “insane” to question 9/11’s official fable about cavemen with box cutters defeating a multibillion dollar defense, defying the laws of physics in the process. Yes, the hundreds of well-known military, intelligence service, and government officials, the engineers and architects, the pilots and professors, the members of media, artists and entertainers, the family members and survivors who rejected this nonsense – were all insane according to him. This was quite a dismissive and insulting statement by the diminutive comedian, but to his credit he did not launch into a clichéd “tin foil hat” reference. Still, I decided that I would question Jon when the opportunity came about.

The Incident
In the past I have peacefully confronted a number of well-known politicians and members of the mainstream media on both sides of the false left-right political spectrum about 9/11(Michael Moore, Sean Hannity, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, Jimmy Carter, etc..). I’ve been shoved by cops and security, but never punched in the face before. On the evening of September 27th, 2010, I left work and headed alone to the Manhattan book store where Jon and the Daily Show writers were signing their new book. I happened to run into Luke Rudkowski and some other fellow members of We Are Change NYC in the bookstore, also hoping to question Jon. When I got the opportunity I asked Jon a polite, albeit unpopular question about his take on 9/11 truth. He and the crowd mocked me and I left, heading down the escalator and outside the store. Some We Are Change NYC acquaintances and I were outside the store, hoping to ask Jon Stewart a follow up question. Instead, The Daily Show staff and writers came out before Jon. The executive producer of the Daily Show, Rory Albanese, was belligerent and taunted us. He immediately used a common tactic of those who want to defeat the 9/11 truth argument without actually using facts – he used emotional appeal, telling us that we were disrespecting the victims’ families. Like many who use this ad hominem approach he ignored the fact that 9/11 victims’ families started the 9/11 truth movement. It is important to note that Albanese put his hands on me twice by this point, lightly shoving my body as well as my hand holding a camera. He stated that he would put his hands on me if he so chose. He was also looking to fight with others, and mentioned that he wanted to punch a We Are Change member’s face because of his “knowledge”. Soon after, another writer for the show, named J.R. Havlan, was engaged in a heated exchange with another We Are Change member, Matt Lepacek. I was videotaping with my handheld camera as Havlan suddenly reached past two people to grab it – and proceeded to press and twist the viewfinder. He succeeded in damaging the camera, so I repeatedly asked him why he did it and suggested that he might have to pay for the damaged property. He walked briskly away.
Believing that the camera was irreparably broken, I put it in my pocket. Luke and the others with cameras had not made their way down the block just yet. I was walking along with Havlan and a few other writers as we all made our way down the sidewalk. There was some general body bumping made towards me by some of the staff and writers, telling me to “just walk away” (although admittedly, they were not as physically imposing as the bad guys from The Road Warrior). Once again, the aforementioned Rory Albanese was before me, blocking my path as Havlan crossed the street. I did nudge him out of my personal space without much force, as I reached into my pocket to once again inspect my camera and see if I could use it. Without warning Albanese landed a right handed, closed fist to the side of my face, which I did not see coming. By all definitions it was a “sucker punch”. I was stunned momentarily and when I came to, he had moved down the block, about twenty feet away. I did react defensively at first and did suggest that I was going to hit him back, but Jon Stewart’s security guard “Brian” grabbed me in a bear hug from behind. I threw him off and he grabbed me again, ripping my shirt in the front. Two other men stood between me and Albanese telling me to “just walk away”. At this point Luke arrived, helped calm me down and urged me to not hit Albanese, which I agreed to. (I was reminded of the arrest and false charges put on We Are Change’s Gary Talis, who was eventually cleared of the charge of assaulting a woman in a wheel chair, as well as the false terrorist charges placed against We Are Change L.A.’s Bruno Bruhwiler.) As I saw Albanese making his way around the corner I told an acquaintance to call the cops to report the assault, which was done.
My face was bruised and cut and I had a scratch on my nose. Albanese, I was told, made his way to a local bar. A while later he returned, right before the cops arrived. We both approached the police – reporting different stories. His consisted of me pushing him with two hands for no reason, when the reality was that he had already put his hands on me, had been harassing me, was blocking my path so his fellow Daily Show writer could leave, invaded my personal space, and then sucker punched me before taking off. Albanese was put in handcuffs and brought to the 14th street precinct. I was brought separately, where I gave my statement and a photo of my wounds was taken. Although I was told I would hear from the D.A. I never did.

One month later my cuts and bruises have healed, and I have realized it would be fruitless and a waste of time and money to pursue the matter. The important fact was that this incident was documented, and the NYPD (whose general attitude toward We Are Change is completely different than it was five years ago) helped make that happen. This is about a much larger point. The people holding the “Rally to Restore Sanity” are not moderate, rational or sane. Allow me to present that case.
The Reality About the People Who Want to “Restore Sanity”
Since 1999, Political satirist Jon Stewart has hosted The Daily Show on Comedy Central, owned by Viacom – the fourth largest media conglomerate in the U.S. Jon has gained considerable attention and respect for his ability to “deliver truth through humor”. Many articles have been written about how his Daily Show delivers and assesses the news more accurately than the networks and cable. In recent times Jon was credited by the Huffington Post, NPR and other left-leaning outlets for his “hard hitting” interview with Mad Money’s Jim Cramer. Now to be sure, Cramer is a suspect individual who is alleged to have used his show to “pump and dump” stocks (not mentioned by Jon). However, while Stewart took on Cramer for putting entertainment before journalism, did we ever hear Jon mention the Chief Operating Officer of the NYSE who presided over the infamous “flash crash” of May, 2010 – who just happened to be his brother, Larry Leibowitz? (Jon changed his last name.) Certainly not. On the day of that “flash crash” Jon had some pretty good zingers about “fat fingers”, but alas an opportunity for some real insight from a real insider – his brother – was passed over. Larry Leibowitz is a former international investment banker who has served on a number of market and industrial committees, and again – is the current COO of the NYSE.
It is openly admitted that chicken hawk neoconservatives like William Kristol love doing The Daily Show, where Stewart might make them mildly uncomfortable for a minute, before jumping past the really hard hitting questions and shaking their hands with a smile. In the spirit of his “moderate liberalism” he has given a pass on real issues and war crimes to the likes of Doug Feith, John Bolton and Condoleeza Rice among others. How could a “sane” person joke around with the architects of an illegal, unjustified war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of innocent people being dead? If neocons love doing his show, one can only imagine how the eugenics loving globalists who pose as concerned liberals on his show feel about it (Clinton, Gates, Gore, etc.). For proof of a globalist connection to the Daily Show, one need go no further than one of the show’s Emmy Award winning writers, Kevin Bleyer, who is a member of the globalist round table group known as the Council on Foreign Relations, whose stated mission can only be described as the erosion of U.S. sovereignty. His Wikipedia entry proudly boasted about his CFR membership until recently, but it can still be confirmed elsewhere, like on the CFR’s own website and Bleyer’s Facebook page in which two of his five “likes” are the CFR and Foreign Affairs, the CFR’s publication. In addition, Bleyer (who was one of the writers present on the night I was assaulted) is a Truman National Security Fellow, an organization that “recruits, trains, and positions progressives across America to lead on national security”. It appears that Bleyer is positioned nicely. One of the Truman National Security Project’s objectives is Operation Free, a particular project that “organizes military veterans to speak out on issues of climate change and sustainable energy security”. One can assume that Bleyer will not be writing any comedic exposes of “Climate Gate” anytime soon. He may, though, continue to write jokes for Barack Obama as he has done in the past – another instance that makes one consider possible conflicts of interest for The Daily Show and its true range of political satire.
Certainly, there is nothing wrong with the peaceful assembly of individuals to support any cause. However, as individuals it is important to closely inspect those who are “rallying the troops”, whether it’s Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or even Jon Stewart. The establishment loves to make reference to Hitler and the Nazis, but it may be appropriate here to point out that the people standing and saluting at Nazi rallies actually adored Hitler – and by no means were they all evil people. They were just misled. I believe the people attending the “Rally to Restore Sanity” are being misled – once again. What is being advertised as a gathering of moderate and sensible people to laugh away the implosion of the Constitution and the dollar, has actually been designed to dull the senses so as to repress the most sane reactions to looking at the state of our Union, which should be anger, frustration and a steadfast resolve to fight.
In April of 2009 Jon Stewart was completely honest, before retreating back behind the flashing, pixilated curtain he helps hold in place. In an interview with CFR and Project for a New American Century member Clifford May, Jon rebutted the neocon’s defense of George W. Bush by stating that Harry S Truman was in fact a war criminal for his part in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Considering the thousands of innocent Japanese civilians who were vaporized or radiated to death, it is difficult for any “sane” person to argue that Truman was anything less than a mass murderer, let alone a war criminal. Yet only a couple of days later in a cringe-worthy display, Jon pathetically apologized for calling Harry a war criminal, explaining that it was a “dumb” and “stupid” thing to say. Even Robert McNamara admits that the only thing that saved Harry and his crew from not being labeled “war criminals” was that they won the war. Never the less, maybe Jon really had a change of heart, or maybe he didn’t want to insult his writer Kevin Bleyer, the Truman National Security Fellow. I guess only an insane conspiracy theorist would ponder such things.

U.N. urged to freeze climate geo-engineering projects

2010-10-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

And you thought chemtrails were not real, just a bunch of BS - right, well think again. Governments are doing it and poisoning us at the same time.

U.N. urged to freeze climate geo-engineering projects

Thu, Oct 21 2010

By Chisa Fujioka
NAGOYA, Japan (Reuters) - The United Nations should impose a moratorium on "geo-engineering" projects such as artificial volcanoes and vast cloud-seeding schemes to fight climate change, green groups say, fearing they could harm nature and mankind.

The risks were too great because the impacts of manipulating nature on a vast scale were not fully known, the groups said at a major U.N. meeting in Japan aimed at combating increasing losses of plant and animal species.
Envoys from nearly 200 countries are gathered in Nagoya, Japan, to agree targets to fight the destruction of forests, rivers and coral reefs that provide resources and services central to livelihoods and economies.
A major cause for the rapid losses in nature is climate change, the United Nations says, raising the urgency for the world to do whatever it can to curb global warming and prevent extreme droughts, floods and rising sea levels.
Some countries regard geo-engineering projects costing billions of dollars as a way to control climate change by cutting the amount of sunlight hitting the earth or soaking up excess greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide.
"It's absolutely inappropriate for a handful of governments in industrialized countries to make a decision to try geo-engineering without the approval of all the world's support," Pat Mooney, from Canada-headquartered advocacy organization ETC Group, told Reuters on the sidelines of the October 18-29 meeting.
"They shouldn't proceed with real-life, in-the-environment experimentation or the deployment of any geo-engineering until there is a consensus in the United Nations that this is okay."
Some conservation groups say geo-engineering is a way for some governments and companies to get out of taking steps to slash planet-warming emissions.
The U.N. climate panel says a review of geo-engineering will be part of its next major report in 2013.
SOLAR REFLECTORS
Some of the geo-engineering schemes proposed include:
-- Ocean fertilization. Large areas are sprinkled with iron or other nutrients to artificially spur growth of phytoplankton, which soak up carbon dioxide. But this could trigger harmful algal blooms, soak up nutrients and kill fish and other animals.
-- Spray seawater into the atmosphere to increase the reflectivity and condensation of clouds so they bounce more sunlight back into space.
-- Placing trillions of tiny solar reflectors out in space to cut the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth.
-- Artificial volcanoes. Tiny sulfate particles or other materials are released into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, simulating the effect of a major volcanic eruption.
-- Carbon capture and storage. Supported by a number of governments and involves capturing CO2 from power stations, refineries and natural gas wells and pumping it deep underground.
Mooney said the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) should expand its de-facto moratorium on ocean fertilization agreed in 2008 to all geo-engineering, although the proposal was resisted by some countries, including Canada, earlier this year.
Canada said in Nagoya that it would work with the CBD.
"Canada was simply concerned about the lack of clarity on definitions including what activities are included in 'geo-engineering'," Cynthia Wright, head of the delegation, said in an email response.
"Canada shares concerns of the international community about potential negative impacts of geo-engineering on biodiversity and is willing to work with other CBD Parties to avoid these impacts," she said.
Environmentalists said geo-engineering went against the spirit of the Nagoya talks, which aims to set new targets for 2020 to protect nature, such as setting up more land and marine protected areas, cutting pollution and managing fishing.
"We are certainly in favor of more (geo-engineering) research, as in all fields, but not any implementation for the time being because it's too dangerous. We don't know what the effects can be," said Francois Simard of conservation group IUCN.
"Improving nature conservation is what we should do in order to fight climate change, not trying to change nature."
(Reporting by Chisa Fujioka; Editing by David Fogarty)

Cambodians beaten, raped and killed at illegal detention camp funded by UN

2010-10-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

Cambodians beaten, raped and killed at illegal detention camp funded by UN

'Undesirables' are swept from the streets before being detained without trial, say human rights groups

Ben Doherty in Phnom Penh
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 October 2010 18.38 BST
Article history

Detainees and guards at Cambodia's Prey Speu detention centre. The government says it is a welfare centre, but human rights groups claim it is a brutal, clandestine, prison. Photograph: Ben Doherty UN funding is being used to run a brutal internment camp for the destitute in Cambodia where detainees are held for months without trial, raped and beaten, sometimes to death, former inmates have told the Guardian.The Prey Speu facility, 12 miles from Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, is officially described as a "social affairs centre" offering education and healthcare to vulnerable people.But human rights groups and former inmates say the centre is an illegal, clandestine prison, where people deemed "undesirable" by the government – usually drug users, sex workers and the homeless – are held for months without charge.Men, women and children are housed together in a single building and are regularly beaten with planks, whipped with wires or threatened with weapons, according to witnesses.It is alleged that guards have beaten three detainees to death and gang-rapes by the same body of men are reportedly common.The UN's own Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has described the conditions at Prey Speu as "appalling" with people "illegally confined and subject to a variety of abuses of power by the staff that included sub-humane conditions of detention, extortion, beating, rape, sometimes resulting in death and suicide".But the department that runs Prey Speu still gets money directly from the UN's children's fund, Unicef and the centre is also supported by several international NGOs.Sok Chandara (not his real name) was picked up off the streets of the capital and taken to Prey Speu, "they said because it looked bad for the city to have people sleeping on the streets". While police told him he was under arrest, he was never charged with an offence nor brought to court.He was held with more than 100 men, women and children in a bare room and allowed out for just an hour a day. Some inmates were violent and abusive while others were seriously ill or injured.Detainees were forced to go to the toilet in a bucket and medical care was irregular. Drinking water came from a fetid pond in which untreated sewage was emptied. Inmates were expected to bathe and wash their clothes in the same pond."It was like a hell. Many people were sick, people had diarrhoea, stomach aches because they were drinking dirty water, and there were no doctors," Sok said.Prey Speu has a daily food budget of 3,000 riels (47p) for each detainee. Generally, they are fed a watery rice gruel in a plastic bag twice a day.Violence was a daily occurrence, Sok said. A guard beat him with a plank when he intervened to stop the guard hitting another man. "Sometimes, the guards just open the doors and come in and just beat people up, for no reason. They know no one can complain about the way they are being treated."According to the Cambodian human rights advocacy group LICADHO, three Prey Speu detainees have been beaten to death in front of other inmates.Another five detainees have killed themselves, including two women who had been separated from their children.Sok escaped by jumping over a wall and fleeing through rice paddies. He is still homeless, and fears being re-arrested and sent back. "Only the people who are locked up there know how bad it is, how scary it is. It doesn't help people."The usual way out of Prey Speu is for detainees or their families to bribe the guards with sums from $50 to $200 (£32 to £125).Visiting Prey Speu, the Guardian saw about 100 detainees being allowed out of the main building. There was no separation of men and women and most of the detainees were barefoot. At least 20 were children, some as young as four.Guards at three-metre gates said the facility was a voluntary welfare centre and detainees were free to leave whenever they wanted. Asked why the gates were padlocked, guards said it was to keep people out.Reports by Human Rights Watch document numerous rapes by guards and police there.One sex worker told HRW she was raped by five police officers on her first night in detention, and by six officers the next evening. When she resisted, she was beaten.Elaine Pearson, HRW's Asia division deputy director, said the Cambodian government and donors had failed to act to close Prey Speu despite overwhelming evidence of abuse. "For years, there have been credible reports of rape, beatings and even deaths in custody by guards at Prey Speu, but nothing has been done to hold these abusers to account."She said international funding for the ministry of social affairs must be withdrawn.The OHCHR still funds Cambodia's transcultural psychosocial organisation to conduct psychological assessments in the centre. Mental health workers find many inmates are severely depressed and some are suffering psychosis, the organisation's executive director, Dr Chhim Sotheara, said.In July, Unicef called a meeting of concerned parties where international donors outlined the support they were providing to Prey Speu.Richard Bridle, Unicef's country director for Cambodia, declined an interview with the Guardian.But in a statement Unicef said that it "technically and financially supports the ministry of social affairs, veterans and youth rehabilitation (MoSAVY) and related institutions to regulate, oversee and monitor child welfare and ensure provision of social and child protection".Last year, Unicef gave £390,000 to the ministry of social affairs. When similar criticisms of the Choam Chao youth rehabilitation centre emerged this year, Unicef withdrew £17,750 in funding and the centre immediately closed.But Unicef says no direct assistance is given to Prey Speu.The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, spent two days in Cambodia this week. During a brief press conference in Bangkok in advance of the visit, the Guardian submitted a question to Ban about the UN's role in supporting the centres, but the request was rejected.Cambodia's ministry of social affairs has previously denied all allegations of abuse, saying that centres such as Prey Speu offer rehabilitation and vocational training. It defends its policy of "street sweeps" – removing beggars, the homeless and sex workers from the streets of the capital – saying they "provoke public disorder and affect [the] dignity and morality of Cambodian society".

Al Gore a F@#$ING Liar! remember he invented the Internet?

2010-10-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

Remember this is the sam eguy who invented the Internet, said all scientists agree with AGW, and said that the earth was MILLIONS of degrees under the crust?

Gore leaves car idling for one hour during speech; Opts for Swedish government jet over public transportation

‘Local legislation prohibits any car engine running for more than 60 seconds’ — But Gore Not Fined

Marc Morano
Climate Depot
Thursday, October 28, 2010
FLASHBACK: Al Gore Buys Another Mansion
FLASHBACK: Gore Leaves Comfort Of 20-Bedroom Power Guzzling Mansion To Fearmonger About Polar Ice Caps
Reprinted from CFACT.EU
Frankly Sir, You Are an Embarrassment

Posted: 27 Oct 2010 10:35 AM PDT
By Einar Du Rietz
Al Gore — He did it again.
Recently, Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore toured again. Or maybe he does that all the time. This time, he turned up in Gothenburg (Sweden) for the usual alarmist talk. In advance, all distinguished guests were politely advised to – if possible – use any form of public transportation to go to the event, in order to minimize CO2 emissions.
Intriguingly, the Master of World Climate himself arrived in a rental car (with or without driver is unclear), from the airport, and subsequently left the engine running for the entire lecture. That is to say, about one hour. Incidentally, local legislation prohibits – for very good environmental reasons, i e pollution – any car engine running on empty for more than 60 seconds. Fines are severe. As far as I know, he was not fined.
It starts to form a pattern.

After the ceremony in the Norwegian capital Oslo, it is customary that the laureate is invited to the Swedish capital Stockholm, for a cordial visit. The train ride, supposedly the environmental choice according to Mr. Gore, is approximately four hours. However, he opted for the cosier ride with one of the Swedish government aircrafts. As these can, according to the rules, only be used when a cabinet member is on board – and as the Swedish government after a short ceremonial visit – offered to fly him to Frankfurt (Germany) for his flight to the US, you can calculate both the manpower and the fuel used for this grand tour against man’s destruction of the planet.
Stupidity and hypocracy – as well as vanity – are, like it or not common human traits. I admit to some of them occasionally, but I don’t demand taxpayers to finance my stupid talks at dinner (yes, I love doing that). Here’s the deal Mr Gore: get out of my way, and I will keep out of yours.
[About the Author: Einar Du Rietz is a journalist and communications consultant based in Europe. He has authored several environmental reports for the Electrolux Group and loads of blogs for the Center for the New Europe at CNE Environment.]

another example of why we shouldn't "use drugs" at least not the kind from big pharma

2010-10-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

Glaxo to pay $760m over tainted drugs

Boston
October 28, 2010 - 3:00AM

GLAXOSMITHKLINE, the British drug giant, has agreed to pay $US750 million ($A759.5 million) to settle criminal and civil complaints that the company for years knowingly sold contaminated baby ointment and an ineffective antidepressant.
The case is the latest in a growing number of whistle-blower lawsuits that drug makers have settled with multimillion-dollar fines.

Cheryl Eckard, the company's quality manager, asserted in her whistle-blower suit that she had warned Glaxo of the problems at its Puerto Rico plant, but the company fired her instead of addressing them. Among the drugs affected were Paxil, an antidepressant; Bactroban, an ointment; Avandia, a troubled diabetes drug; Coreg, a heart drug; and Tagamet, an acid reflux drug. No patients were known to have been affected although such cases would be difficult to trace.
US Justice Department officials announced the settlement on Tuesday, saying a $US150 million payment to settle criminal charges was the largest such payment by a manufacturer of adulterated drugs.
GlaxoSmithKline released a statement saying it regretted operating the Puerto Rico plant in violation of good manufacturing practices. It said the problem had involved only one plant. The settlement includes $US600 million in civil penalties and a $US150 million criminal fine.
Recent lawsuits have asserted drug makers misled patients and defrauded federal and state governments that pay for much of health care.
Using claims from industry insiders, federal prosecutors are not only demanding record fines but are hinting at more severe actions.
NEW YORK TIMES

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/world/glaxo-to-pay-760m-over-tainted-drugs-20101027-173sm.html

start thinking of how things are. stop supporting death

2010-10-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

Obama's Finest Hour: Killing Innocent People For "Made-Up Crap"

Written by Chris Floyd

Monday, 18 October 2010 17:03

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque
Oct 22, 2010
If ever I am tempted by the siren songs of my tribal past as a deep-fried, yellow-dawg Democrat, and begin to feel any faint, atavistic stirrings of sympathy for the old gang, I simply think of things like the scenario below, sketched last week by Johann Hari, and those wispy ghosts of partisanship past go howling back to the depths:

Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and blasted it to pieces. The plane has no pilot. It is controlled with a joystick from 7,000 miles away, sent by the Pakistani military to kill you. It blows up all the houses in your street, and so barbecues your family and your neighbours until there is nothing left to bury but a few charred slops. Why? They refuse to comment. They don’t even admit the robot-planes belong to them. But they tell the Pakistani newspapers back home it is because one of you was planning to attack Pakistan. How do they know? Somebody told them. Who? You don’t know, and there are no appeals against the robot.
Now imagine it doesn’t end there: these attacks are happening every week somewhere in your country. They blow up funerals and family dinners and children. The number of robot-planes in the sky is increasing every week. You discover they are named “Predators”, or “Reapers” – after the Grim Reaper. No matter how much you plead, no matter how much you make it clear you are a peaceful civilian getting on with your life, it won’t stop. What do you do? If there was a group arguing that Pakistan was an evil nation that deserved to be violently attacked, would you now start to listen?

…[This] is in fact an accurate description of life in much of Pakistan today, with the sides flipped. The Predators and Reapers are being sent by Barack Obama’s CIA, with the support of other Western governments, and they killed more than 700 civilians in 2009 alone – 14 times the number killed in the 7/7 attacks in London. The floods were seen as an opportunity to increase the attacks, and last month saw the largest number of robot-plane bombings ever: 22. Over the next decade, spending on drones is set to increase by 700 per cent.

Friends, it’s very simple: if you support Barack Obama and the Democrats — even if reluctantly, even if you’re just being all sophisticatedly super-savvy and blogospherically strategic about it, playing the “long game” or eleven-dimensional chess or what have you — you are supporting the outright murder of innocent people who have never done anything against you or yours. You have walked into a house, battered down the bedroom door, put the barrel of a gun against the temple of a sleeping child, and pulled the trigger. That is what you are supporting, that is what you are complicit in, that is what you yourself are doing.

ut hey, let's be all super-savvy and eleventh-dimensional ourselves here for a moment. Let's be pragmatic, and technocratic, let's be grown-ups, let's not get sidetracked by a bunch of jejune, dorm-room, hippy-dippy moralizing. No, let's concentrate on practicalities, let's get down to brass tacks, let's be serious and focus on "what works" to protect our national security. OK, so here's the practical result of the illegal campaign of mass murder that Obama is waging on the sovereign territory of one of America's allies:

... Drone technology was developed by the Israelis, who routinely use it to bomb the Gaza Strip. I've been in Gaza during some of these attacks. The people there were terrified – and radicalised. A young woman I know who had been averse to political violence and an advocate of peaceful protest saw a drone blow up a car full of people – and she started supporting Islamic Jihad and crying for the worst possible revenge against Israel. Robot-drones have successfully bombed much of Gaza, from secular Fatah to Islamist Hamas, to the brink of jihad.

Is the same thing happening in Pakistan? David Kilcullen is a counter-insurgency expert who worked for General Petraeus in Iraq and now advises the State Department. He has shown that two per cent of the people killed by the robot-planes in Pakistan are jihadis. The remaining 98 per cent are as innocent as the victims of 9/11. He says: "It's not moral." And it gets worse: "Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially as drone strikes have increased. ... It could be poised to get even worse: Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars says the US has an immediate plan to bomb 150 targets in Pakistan if there is a jihadi attack inside America.

Why, it's almost as if the drone campaign was designed to create more and more enemies -- and more and more contracts for war profiteers to build more and more drones, which can then be used to create more and more enemies, which means more and more contracts for .... say, it is a practical plan, after all! A practical plan to create terrorism, not quell it.

And what is the "evidence" used by the Administration militarists as they draw up their target lists for the defenseless villages in Pakistan? What is the "intelligence" produced by the $75 billion lavished on our 200,000 security apparatchiks every year? On what basis is Barack Obama killing people in Pakistan? Hari reports:

..[The] press releases uncritically repeated by the press after a bombing always brag about "senior al-Qa'ida commanders" killed – but some people within the CIA admit how arbitrary their choice of targets is. One of their senior figures told The New Yorker: "Sometimes you're dealing with tribal chiefs. Often they say an enemy of theirs is al-Qa'ida because they want to get rid of somebody, or they made crap up because they wanted to prove they were valuable so they could make money."

That's right: Barack Obama is killing hundreds of innocent civilians in Pakistan on the basis of crap made up for money. Made-up crap. For money. That's why a child who is just as precious as your child is to a parent who is just as real a person as you are was killed this week, by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party and the entire bipartisan foreign policy establishment of the United States of America: crap made up for money.

And of course, it's not just tribal chiefs making up crap for blood money: the entire aforementioned bipartisan foreign policy establishment is now and has for years been making up crap "so they could make money" -- for themselves, for their corporate patrons, for their government agencies, for their defense and "security" stockholdings, for the perpetuation of their bloated, belligerent, pig-ignorant domination of world affairs and American society -- by killing innocent people all over the world.

"But oh my gosh, oh my lord, we have to support Obama! What if those Tea Party Republicans get into power? What would happen then?" What would happen? The same goddamned thing that's happening right now, that's what. More and more war, more and more murder, more and more domination by a militarist kleptocracy. As Glenn Greenwald notes this week, Obama and the Tea Partiers (and the neocons, and the liberal hawks, and the Bush Regime war criminals) are in lockstep (even goosestep) on keeping the War Machine stoked and rolling.

That's why the opposition to the Tea Party Republicans has been so anemic, focused almost entirely on personality flaws or asinine comments or resume padding or stupid things they did in college. The Democrats can't possibly attack them on substance -- i.e., the fact that the Tea Partiers are rabid warmongers who delight in murder, torture and repression and believe that the poor, the sick, the old, the weak, the unlucky, and the vulnerable should just eat shit and die already -- because these are the same positions the Democrats hold! Who "reformed" health care into a gargantuan, guaranteed boondoggle for rapacious conglomerates? Who bailed out the bankers and left millions in the hands of savage "robo-signers?" Who set up the "Catfood Commission" and stocked it from top to bottom with long-time, deep-dyed haters of the poor and the weak? It wasn't Dick Cheney, bub.

I don't want to see the Tea Partiers in power. But I'm not going to support one faction of murderers and plunderers just to keep out another faction of murderers and plunderers. Hari makes this good analogy about the drone program:

Yet many people defend the drones by saying: "We have to do something." If your friend suffered terrible third-degree burns, would you urge her to set fire to her hair because "you have to do something"? Would you give a poisoning victim another, worse poison, on the grounds that any action is better than none?

Similarly, I say: would you support one murderer -- who likes to break into children's bedrooms and blow their brains out -- in order to stop another murderer, who would do the same thing, from taking over a vicious gang of murderers? What would be the basis, the reason for your support? That the first murderer wears nicer suits? Digs cooler music? Throws better street parties? Leaves a pretty little flower next to the blown-out brains?

For a system sunk so deeply in evil, there is no "lesser" evil to choose. The militarist kleptocracy itself is evil, and every political faction that does not denounce it and seek to dismantle it is complicit in this evil. The choice is to stand outside such factions; the choice is non-cooperation with evil, as advocated by Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King. I'm not going to spend my brief time here on earth standing with blood-soaked killers, no matter what factional name they give themselves, or what loyalties they might claim on our myth-clouded memories of the past. I'm not going to teach my children that all we can do is to grovel before one child-murdering maniac or another, to keep quiet, to never speak the truth, to sell their votes, their dignity and their souls to murderers who would pervert every good instinct -- and every bad instinct -- every worthy hope and every nasty fear, to keep themselves in power.

Dead children. Made-up crap. For money. That's what our leading "dissidents" want us to support. There is much that could be said about the utterly puerile arguments being offered for this murder-abetting stance; but in the interests of brevity, and civility -- and my own sanity -- I will forbear, and simply say: no thanks.

want some lead with your drink kids?

2010-10-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

the following were tested by FDA approved labs and found to have high levels of lead which accumulates in the body causing all sorts of problems--not the least of which is lowered IQ--Brave New World is really here!

Apple Juice
For the following products, one or more samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of
lead per serving:
Beech Nut 100% Apple Juice
Earth's Best Organics Apple Juice
First Street 100% Apple Cider from concentrate
First Street Apple Juice from concentrate 100% juice
Full Circle Organic Apple Juice
Gerber 100% Juice Apple Juice
Great Value 100% No Sugar Added Apple Juice
Hansen's Natural Apple Juice
Kroger 100% Juice Apple Juice
Langers Apple Juice 100% Juice
Minute Maid Juice Apple - 100% Apple Juice
Motts 100% Apple Juice
O Organics Organic Unfiltered Apple Juice Not From Concentrate
Old Orchard 100% Apple Juice
Parade 100% Juice Apple
Raley's Premium 100% Apple Juice not from Concentrate
Safeway 100% Juice Apple Cider
Safeway 100% Juice Apple Juice
Stater Bros. 100% Juice Apple Juice
Sunny Select 100% Apple Juice
Trader Joe's Certified Organic Apple Juice, pasteurized

Tree Top 100% Juice Apple Cider
Walgreens Apple Juice from concentrate 100% juice
Walnut Grove Market 100% Apple Juice
For the following products, NO samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of lead per
serving:
Great Value 100% Apple Juice not from concentrate
Harvest Day 100% Apple Juice from Concentrate
Kirkland Fresh Pressed Apple Juice Pasteurized
Martinelli's Gold Medal Apple Juice 100% pure from US grown fresh apples
R.W. Knudsen Organic Apple Juice unfiltered
Raley's Everyday 100% Apple Juice
Sunny Select 100% Unfiltered Apple Juice
Trader Joe's Fresh Pressed Apple Juice all natural pasteurized, 100% juice
Tree Top 100% Apple Juice
Tree Top Three Apple Blend 100% Fresh Pressed Juice
Grape Juice
For the following products, one or more samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of
lead per serving:
365 Everyday Value Organic 100% Juice Concord Grapes
First Street Grape Juice from concentrate 100% juice
Gerber 100% Juice - White Grape Juice
Great Value 100% Grape Juice
Kedem Concord Grape Juice 100% pure grape juice
Kroger Grape Juice 100% Juice
Langers Grape Juice (Concord)
Langers Red Grape Juice
O Organics Organic Grape Juice from concentrate
R.W. Knudsen Just Concord Grape Juice
R.W. Knudsen Organic Just Concord
Raley's 100% Grape Juice
Safeway 100% Juice Grape Juice
Safeway Organic Grape Juice
Santa Cruz Organic Concord Grape Juice
Stater Bros. 100% Juice Grape Juice
Stater Bros. 100% Juice White Grape Juice
Sunny Select 100% Grape Juice
Trader Joe's Concord Grape Juice made from fress pressed organic concord grapes
Tree Top 100% Juice, Grape
Valu Time Grape Drink from Concentrate
Walgreens Grape Juice from concentrate 100% juice
Walnut Acres Organic Concord Grape
Walnut Grove Market Grape Juice
Welch's 100% Grape Juice (from Welch's Concord Grapes)
Welch's 100% Red Grape Juice from Concentrate
For the following products, NO samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of lead per
serving:
Old Orchard Healthy Balance Grape
Packaged Pears
For the following products, one or more samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of
lead per serving:
Best Yet Bartlett Pear Halves in Heavy Syrup
Del Monte Diced Pears in Light Syrup
Del Monte Pear Halves in Heavy Syrup
Del Monte Pear Halves, Bartlett Pears in 100% real fruit juice from concentrate
Dole Pear Halves in Juice
First Street Diced Pears
First Street Sliced Bartlett
Full Circle Organic Bartlett Pear Slices
Gerber 3rd Foods Pears [Baby Food]
Great Value Bartlett Pear Halves in 100% Juice
Great Value Bartlett Sliced Pears in Heavy Syrup
Market Pantry Diced Pears in Light syrup
Maxx Value Pear Pieces in Light Syrup
Polar Pear Halves in light syrup
S&W Natural Style Pear Slices in Juice
S&W Sun Pears Premium
Safeway Lite Bartlett Pear Halves in Pear Juice
Safeway Pear Halves in Light Juice
Sunny Select Pear Halves in Pear Juice
Trader Joe's Pear Halves in white grape juice
Truitt Brothers Pacific NorthWest Bartlett Pear Halves, in pear juice from concentrate
Valu Time Irregular Bartlett Pear Slices
Walnut Grove Market Natural Pear Halves in Heavy Syrup
For the following products, NO samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of lead per
serving:
Eating Right Kids Diced Pears Fruit Cups
Stater Bros. Diced Pears Snack Bowl
Packaged Peaches
For the following products, one or more samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of
lead per serving:
Best Yet Yellow Cling Peach Halves in Heavy Syrup
Del Monte Freestone Peach Slices in 100 % Juice
Del Monte Sliced Yellow Cling Peaches in 100 % Juice
Del Monte Sliced Yellow Cling Peaches in heavy syrup
Dole Diced Peaches, Yellow Cling in light syrup
First Street Yellow Cling Peaches in heavy syrup
Gerber 3rd Foods Peaches [Baby Food]
Golden Star Peach Halves in Heavy Syrup
Great Value Yellow Cling Sliced Peaches
Libby's Yellow Cling Peach Slices No Sugar Added (Sweetened with Splenda)
Market Pantry Diced Peaches in light syrup
Polar Peach Slices
Raley's Sliced Yellow Cling Peaches in Heavy Syrup
S&W Natural Style Yellow Cling Peach Slices in Lightly Sweetened Juice
S&W Premium Peach Halves Yellow Cling Peaches in light syrup
Safeway Diced Peaches in Light Syrup
Safeway Yellow Cling Peach Slices in Pear Juice
Simple Value Yellow Cling Peaches in light syrup
Stater Bros. Yellow Cling Peach Halves
Stater Bros. Yellow Cling Sliced Peaches in heavy syrup
Sunny Select Yellow Cling Sliced Peaches in Pear Juice
Trader Joe's Yellow Cling Peach Halves in while grape juice
Valu Time Yellow Cling Peach Slices
Walnut Grove Market Natural Peaches Sliced Yellow Cling in Light Syrup
For the following products, NO samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of lead per
serving:
Dole Diced Peaches, Cling in Light Syrup
Dole Diced Peaches, Freestone in Light Syrup
Dole Sliced Peaches
Eating Right Kids Diced Peaches in Extra Light Syrup
Stater Bros. Diced Peaches Snack Bowl
Fruit Cocktail
For the following products, one or more samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of
lead per serving:
Best Yet Chunky Mixed Fruit in Pear Juice
Chef's Review Fruit Cocktail
Del Monte 100% Juice Fruit Cocktail
Del Monte Chunky Mixed Fruit in 100 % Juice (peach, pear, grape, etc.)
Del Monte Fruit Cocktail in Heavy Syrup (peach, pear, grapes)
Del Monte Fruit Cocktail No Sugar Added
Del Monte Lite Fruit Cocktail in Extra Light Syrup
Dole Mixed Fruit in Light Syrup
Eating Right Fruit Cocktail packed in Sucralose
Eating Right No Sugar Fruit Cocktail
First Street Fruit Cocktail in heavy syrup
Golden Star Mixed Fruit in Light Syrup (peach, pineapple, pears)
Great Value No Sugar Added Fruit Cocktail
Kroger Fruit Cocktail in Heavy Syrup
Kroger Lite Fruit Cocktail in Pear Juice
Kroger Value Fruit Mix (Peaches, pears, grapes)
Libby's Fruit Cocktail No Sugar Added (Sweetened with Splenda)
Market Pantry Mixed Fruit in light syrup
Maxx Value Fruit Mix in Light Syrup (peach, pear, grape)
Mrs. Brown's Fruit Cocktail in Heavy Syrup (peaches, pears, grapes)
Polar Mixed Fruit
Raley's Fruit Cocktail in Heavy Syrup
S&W Natural Style Fruit Cocktail in Lightly Sweetened Juice
Safeway Fruit Cocktail in Heavy Syrup
Safeway Light Sugar Fruit Cocktail
Safeway Lite Fruit Cocktail in Pear Juice
Stater Bros. Fruit Cocktail in Heavy Syrup
Sunny Select Fruit Cocktail in Juice
For the following products, NO samples exceeded the Prop 65 limit of 0.5 micrograms of lead per
serving:
Del Monte Mixed Fruit

us government gets the pass from the NY Times to kill whomever it wishes.

2010-10-19T17:21:00.000-07:00

The New York Times Defends Assassinations. The Right of US Government “to assassinate anyone it pleases”

Posted By aaron On October 14, 2010

Patrick Martin
Global Research
October 14, 2010
In its main editorial Sunday, the New York Times, the major voice of what passes for liberalism in America, openly defends the right of the US government to assassinate anyone it pleases. The only restriction the Times suggests is that the president should be required to have his selection of murder victims rubber-stamped by a secret court like the one that now approves 99.99 percent of all electronic eavesdropping requests.
The apologia for killing begins with a blatant lie about the US assassination program using missiles fired from CIA-operated drone aircraft flying along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Times claims, citing official US government sources: “The drone program has been effective, killing more than 400 Al Qaeda militants this year alone, according to American officials, but fewer than 10 noncombatants.”
Actually, Pakistani government officials estimated the number of civilians killed by drone attacks in 2009 alone at more than 700, with an even higher figure this year, as the Obama administration has rained missiles and bombs on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.(See “US drone missiles slaughtered 700 Pakistani civilians in 2009” .)

A report in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn concluded, “For each Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities.”
The Times editors cannot be unaware of these well-established figures, since their own journalists have reported a civilian death toll from US missile strikes in Pakistan of some 500 by April 2009, and 100 to 500 more through April 2010. They lie shamelessly and deliberately in order to conceal the significance of their endorsement of such widespread killing.
The editorial claims that US drone missile attacks are legal under international law as self-defense, but this is flatly rejected by human rights groups and legal experts, except those who work as paid apologists for the CIA and Pentagon. The United States is not at war with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, but US missiles have struck the territory of all these countries and annihilated their citizens.
In a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in June, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, rejected the doctrine of “preemptive self-defense” employed by the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as the state of Israel, and declared that a targeted killing outside actual warfare “is almost never likely to be legal.”
In an accompanying statement, Alston pointed out the consequences if such a doctrine were to become universal. He declared: “If invoked by other states, in pursuit of those they deem to be terrorists and to have attacked them, it would cause chaos.”
The Times concedes, “it is not within the power of a commander in chief to simply declare anyone anywhere a combatant and kill them, without the slightest advance independent oversight.” The editorial argues that such arbitrary killings can be prevented through procedural safeguards of a purely cosmetic character.
These would include the Obama administration making public “its standards for putting people on terrorist or assassination lists,” limiting targets to “only people who are actively planning or participating in terror, or who are leaders of Al Qaeda or the Taliban”; capturing instead of killing, where possible; and “oversight outside the administration,” i.e., the aforementioned judicial review by a body like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Yes, if only the Nazis had followed “proper procedures.”
In the mealymouthed language that has become typical of the Times as it provides “liberal” justifications for the crimes of US imperialism, the editors insist that in the case of US citizens, “the government needs to employ some due process before depriving someone of life,” adding that, “If practical, the United States should get permission from a foreign government before carrying out an attack on its soil.”
The Times editorial admits that in the much-publicized case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born Muslim cleric now living in Yemen, the Obama administration has acted in a manner diametrically opposed to the procedure the newspaper claims to favor. Awlaki has been targeted for assassination, based on criteria that are secret and unreviewable. The Justice Department has gone to court to assert the “state secrets” privilege to quash a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of Awlaki’s father, seeking to compel the government to justify or rescind its death sentence.
No evidence has been presented that Awlaki, a longtime publicist for Islamic fundamentalism, has engaged in actual terrorist actions. And as the Timesitself admits, “If the United States starts killing every Islamic radical who has called for jihad, there will be no end to the violence.” But the editors are nonetheless willing to place their confidence in the Obama administration, even to the point of giving it powers of life and death over citizens of the US and other countries alike.

The Times editorial reeks of cynicism. It advances arguments that convince no one, and are not intended to convince, only to provide a screen of words for a policy of imperialist barbarism and reaction. It is one more demonstration that, within the US financial aristocracy, there is no constituency whatsoever for the defense of democratic rights.
The open reactionaries like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News display their bloodlust unashamedly. The “liberals” like the Times prefer a dose of hypocritical moralizing and legalistic quibbling. The consequences for humanity are the same.
Patrick Martin is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

ignorance is never blissful

more admission from the liars at TEPCO

fukushima quickly becoming chernobyl on roids....

Holes in reactor 1 mean road map needs major overhaul

fukushima more BS

Reactor 1 fuel rods melted, sank to bottom

Coolant water much lower than Tepco had been estimating

Paul Craig Roberts: osama bin laden's useful death

U.S. doctors hit Tokyo radiation limit for kids

U.S. doctors hit Tokyo radiation limit for kids

Nuclear Adviser to Japanese President Resigns Over Radiation Levels

Radioactive traces found in Tohoku, Kanto breast milk

Libya: It’s Not About Oil, It’s About Currency and Loans

cops admit that cigs are dangerous ..but only the conterfit ones hahahaha

fukushima = chernobyl

Atmospheric radiation leak underestimated

syrian problems caused by...guess who the US as USual

aging and supplements

Newsmaxhealth.com

dr. busby on the radiation danger from the beginning

Fukushima radiation taints US milk supplies at levels 300% higher than EPA maximums

No safe level of radiation from nuclear fallout

more on the new chernobyl

One crisis after another harried TEPCO's response

more on level 7

Huge radiation release led to severity hike

manbi-idiot: can't see the same argument for not believing one report is the same for AGW

How nuclear apologists mislead the world over radiation

tepco sucks --but so does reporting that is one sided (govt sponsored)

TEPCO tardy on N-plant emergency

fukushima is chernobyl!!

are you serious cancer rates (in the developed world) are close to 50% and no one gives a rats ass, the percentage is way too fuckin high to be by accident.

Probability of developing or dying from cancer

Prevalence

Survival

we dont inhale it when we fly or visit the dentist, but we can nowadays

ncreased emissions bring on cancer

Doctors say ever-growing exposure could eventually harm human health

An official in a radiation protection suit scans dogs with a Geiger counter at a shelter in Koriyama in Fukushima prefecture, 60 kms west from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, on March 20, 2011.

Photograph by: KEN SHIMIZU, AFP/Getty Images

recycled cardboard Cereal Boxes Linked to Cancer

gmo via govt tyranny what does democracy have to do with anything?

After 20 years, nearly everyone still wants GM food to be labeled

big surprise another product is full of crap---Cancer causing chemicals found in cola coloring ingredient

Coke and Pepsi products [12] may soon bear cancer warnings in California [13]

Wikileaks Bombshell Points To 9/11 Stand Down

Wikileaks Bombshell Points To 9/11 Stand Down

Online news service promotes false climate change study

Online news service promotes false climate change study

Antidepressants found in fish-AGAIN IT IS NOW COMMON PLACE THE WORLD OVER TO FIND THEM IN SEA LIFE

Antidepressants found in fish

Drugs not removed by sewage treatment

Big Pharma Vilified Researcher for Threatening Vaccine Program

Sibel Edmonds

nationalpost.--lawrence-solomon-75-climate-scientists-think-humans-contribute-to-global-warming

Associated Press gone wild: 2010 disaster article is unadulterated trash

Associated Press gone wild: 2010 disaster article is unadulterated trash

Expert Quote #1

Anecdote #1

Expert Quote #2

How Extreme?

Anecdote #2 (How costly?)

An attempt at scientific knowledge:

Another attempt at scientific knowledge:

Expert Quote #3

Expert Quote #4

avoid coloured foods, duh

Chemicals cause ADHD

What do you mean, where are my papers?

Part I

BILL OF RIGHTS

PART II

orwell (1984) in Toronto

more US GOV WAR CRIMES

Cable reveals US behind airstrike that killed 21 children in Yemen

US war crimes

biofuels are bullshit

russia today journalists arrested for the crime of protesting the School of the Americas, otherwise known as the School of Latin American Dictators and Death Squads.

CDA warns against fluoride supplements

Other Fluoride News

Coke and Pepsi products ^[12] may soon bear cancer warnings in California ^[13]