GMOs Are Destroying Our Food Security (and Heirloom Seed Treasures)

TruthStream Media | Feb 24, 2015 | Aaron Dykes

A report from Baker Creek Heirloom Rare Seed's catalog explains how the genetic engineering of crops is having real life consequences for business, as well as food security.

Just from the perspective of a medium sized business, Baker Creek and its partners in the seed industry have lost literally hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of GMO corn contamination.

Baker Creek began testing their Heirloom corn varieties for GMO contamination, and found that more than 50% of their more than a dozen varieties were contaminated. Those varieties, most of which were hand passed down through countless generations, have now been lost – forever, unless a clean source is found and recovered.

Meanwhile, Monsanto has been accused of suing farmers, often financially ruining small farmers, for infringing patent laws when non-GMO varieties become unintentionally cross-pollinated.

Baker Creek reports that Monsanto's lawyers downplayed the effects of contamination as 'hypothetical' and low level, as in the OSGATA et al. vs. Monsanto court case, while their real world experience is massive financial loss.

The proliferation of further GMO crop and vegetable stables will destroy diversity irrevocably and undermine food freedom and security to feed the world.

http://www.osgata.org/osgata-et-al-v-...
http://www.rareseeds.com/osgata-presi...
http://www.osgata.org/2011/a-band-of-...

Camping in Amerika: How the System Does Not Protect You

TruthStream Media | Feb 17, 2015

This video is a rant of sorts filmed half an hour after we confronted someone who had drunkenly tried to break into our tent (and subsequently, our car) at Garner State Park in the middle of the previous night at 3 am. Authorities, however pointless, got involved.

All their rules and regulations, all the police state security theater and when it really counted, could they protect us? Nope. And the fact that it was a gun free zone only left us and our children that much more vulnerable to a very real and potentially deadly threat.

Discourses on an Alien Sky | Cosmic Catastrophe & Cultural Obsession

Thunderbolts Project | Feb 15, 2015 | David Talbot

In this third of the Discourses series, Dave Talbott offers a few glimpses of the mythic subject matter and the reasoning protocol for drawing reliable conclusions from ancient witnesses.


See the three full documentaries in the Symbols of an Alien Sky series:

Episode 1, Symbols of an Alien Sky documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7EAl...

Episode 2, Symbols of an Alien Sky: The Lightning-Scarred Planet, Mars documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRV1e...

Episode 3, Symbols of an Alien Sky: The Electric Comet documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt...

Citizens worldwide mobilize against corporate water grabs

Water is Life! - Milwaukee in solidarity with
those fighting water shutoffs in Detroit.
Photo: OccupyRiverWest.com.

The Ecologist | Feb 15, 2015 | Victoria Collier

The US and other governments are pushing a failed model of water privatization, writes Victoria Collier - but water is a human right, not just a commodity to be traded for profit or monopolized by corporations, and citizens and communities worldwide are fighting back, from Detroit to Cochabamba, from Berlin to Malaysia, to reclaim their water commons. 

"The last 15 years have seen at least 180 cases of water 'remunicipalization' in 35 countries, according to the Transnational Institute, and the trend is growing."

Earlier this month on 5th February, New Jersey became the latest state to subvert democracy by authorizing the fast-track sale or lease of water utilities without public notice, comment, or approval.

The controversial decision highlights the intensifying struggle over who owns, controls, and profits from the most precious - and threatened - resource on Earth.

We tend to associate corrupt water privatization schemes with the developing world, where according to the World Health Organization, nearly 2.6 billion people still lack a latrine and 1.1 billion people have no access to any type of improved drinking source of water.

In this crisis environment, the World Bank and IMF have spent decades imposing water privatization as a condition of their exploitative loans, profiting a handful of transnational water corporations. But according to renowned food and water rights advocate Maude Barlow,

"The performance of these companies in Europe and the developing world has been well documented: huge profits, higher prices for water, cut-offs to customers who cannot pay, little transparency in their dealings, reduced water quality, bribery, and corruption."

Double diasaster for impacted communities

Water privatization has also followed on the heels of war and natural disaster in devastated regions where massive reconstruction projects are needed. These are the largely unregulated profit-centers of what journalist Naomi Klein coined the "disaster capitalism complex".

But now, disaster capitalism has come home to the United States. Private corporations are taking advantage of lucrative opportunities created by the intentionally crippled tax base of American states.

Decades of neo-liberal policies have bled the public sector to the point of collapse: deregulation, outsourcing, tax cuts for the one percent, and trillions lost annually to war spending, corporate welfare and off-shore tax-havens.

Cash-strapped governments can finally no longer repair crumbling infrastructure or meet future development needs. Offering to "fill the budget gap", the private sector is grabbing public assets and resources, particularly water, blinding public officials to the consequences of long-term contracts with substantial up-front payments.

The fast-growing 'public-private-partnership' or PPP model is a friendly marketing euphemism for privatization. PPPs facilitate the transfer of public utilities, like water, to profit-driven private corporations. This is proving a slippery slope as laws are constantly changing, always further acceding to corporate demands.

In June 2014, water investment advisors Bluefield Research praised the "revised regulatory landscape" and cheered a "major step forward for the market" when President Obama signed the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) into federal law, which among many other provisions seeks to expand private financing for water projects.

Private sector groups like the American Water Works Company (AWWC), Water Environment Federation (WEF), and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA) began lobbying to further weaken WRRDA's public protections and to force tax-free Private Activity Bonds (PABs) so private investors can pocket more money at the expense of public coffers.

Meanwhile, investment banks including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, the Carlyle Group, Allianz and many others are aggressively buying up the world's declining fresh water supply and infrastructure in what is being called a "liquid gold rush".

The global water fightback

But water is not a commodity; it is a human right. As climate change, population growth, industry use and pollution threatens the world's dwindling fresh water supplies, the onslaught of privatization is being countered by a powerful backlash to reclaim that precious resource for the public sphere.

The last 15 years have seen at least 180 cases of water 'remunicipalization' in 35 countries, according to the Transnational Institute, and the trend is growing.

In France, which had the longest history of water privatization, numerous cities have recently reclaimed their water, including Paris in 2010. From Spain to Buenos Aires, Cochabamba to Kazakhstan, Berlin to Malaysia, water privatization is being aggressively rejected.

Yet, because water privatization is notoriously at odds with democracy, citizens often find they must take to the streets in nonviolent marches and civil disobedience in order to defend their rights and reclaim control of this vital resource.

In Bolivia, a historic public uprising literally drove Bechtel from Cochabamba in 2000. In Ireland, nearly 100,000 people took to the streets in December 2014, to protest the right-wing government's plans to privatize water services. India and Nigeria are also launching campaigns against dangerous and undemocratic privatization schemes.

In the Unites States, residents of Detroit, Michigan spent the summer of 2014 fighting mass water shut-offs to tens of thousands of low-income, mostly African American residents. More than 3,000 protesters marched and citizens - including the elderly and disabled - engaged in direct action to block the trucks sent to disconnect water without notice. Detroiters will now have to mobilize against the water privatization expected through their new regional authority.

In Portland, Oregon, residents are mobilizing now to oppose the costly and unnecessary water system to be built by CH2M Hill, the notoriously corrupt mega-developer and privatization pioneer. CH2M Hill has also planned a mass-privatization scheme for California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, called the West Coast Infrastructure Exchange.

Public-Public Partnerships (PUPs) are emerging frameworks for preventing corporate takeovers of natural resources and developing non-profit, public-driven solutions for water infrastructure needs.

PUPs are partnerships between "two or more public authorities or organizations based on solidarity, to improve the capacity and effectiveness of one partner in providing public water or sanitation services", according to the Public Services International Research Unit.

Such solidarity partnerships are underway in Japan, the Netherlands, India, Costa Rica, Brazil, and many other countries.

We must continue to organize in the United States around similar, pro-active democratic solutions, to prepare for a future increasingly defined by resource scarcity, and fundamentally threatened by the corporate imperative of profits over people and democracy.

---

Victoria Collier is the Education Director of the National Election Integrity Coalition, the co-founder of Girasol, a center for sustainable ecology and economy in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

Monsanto’s Roundup system threatens extinction of monarch butterflies - report

Reuters / Michael Fiala

RT | Feb 5, 2015

Monsanto’s Roundup Ready system – a potent herbicide combined with genetically-modified seeds that can withstand it – has decimated the monarch butterfly’s only source of food in the Midwest, putting it on the edge of extinction, according to a new study.

Biotechnology conglomerate Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup has become the most common herbicide in American agriculture today, used in tandem with the company’s genetically-engineered Roundup Ready crops.

Since its heavy proliferation began in the 1990s, glyphosate has been a leading killer of 99 percent of milkweed in the Midwest’s corn and soybean fields. Glyphosate-sensitive milkweed plants are the only spots where monarchs lay eggs, as the plant is the only food source for monarch larvae.

According to the Center for Food Safety’s new report, “Monarchs in Peril: Herbicide-Resistant Crops and the Decline of Monarch Butterflies in North America,” these conditions have contributed to a drastic 90-percent drop in population for monarchs in their main habitat, crop fields in the Midwest.

“This report is a wake-up call. This iconic species is on the verge of extinction because of Monsanto's Roundup Ready crop system,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director for the Center for Food Safety.

“To let the monarch butterfly die out in order to allow Monsanto to sell its signature herbicide for a few more years is simply shameful.”

As Monsanto is on the precipice of receiving US government approval for its next generation of the Roundup Ready system, the report raises the question of how much longer will the monarch survive?

“Milkweed growing in Midwest cropland is essential to the monarch’s continued survival. Without milkweed, we'll have no monarchs,” said Dr. Martha Crouch, a biologist for the Center for Food Safety and a co-author of the report.

“Very few of us fully understand the ecological impacts of our food system, but we need to pay attention. The decline of the monarch is a stark reminder that the way we farm matters.”
The Center for Food Safety said it was presenting the new report “to Congress today at an expert briefing on the decline of monarchs.”

In December, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said it may designate the monarch as a threatened species under the US Endangered Species Act. The agency review comes in response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation to list the subspecies of monarch (Danaus plexippus plexippus).

Disregarding their natural beauty, monarch butterflies play an important role in ecology. They carry pollen from plant to plant, helping fruits and flowers to produce new seeds. In their caterpillar stage, they are a food source for birds, mammals, and other insects.

While milkweed can grow away from main cropland, there is an increasingly low amount of habitat that can support monarchs. Herbicide spraying over corn and soybeans fields that dominate the Midwestern Corn Belt leave monarchs to search for milkweed in other areas like roadsides and pastures, according to the report. Monarchs also produce four times more eggs per plant on milkweed growing in a crop field as opposed to milkweed sprouting elsewhere, the Center for Food Safety claimed.

Monarchs are also threatened by global climate change, drought and heat waves, other pesticides, urban sprawl, and logging on their Mexican wintering grounds. Scientists have predicted that the monarch's entire winter range in Mexico and large parts of its summer range in the states could become unsuitable due to these threats.

The report said that as monarch population sinks, they will likely become more susceptible to remarkable weather events.

The Center for Food Safety listed a host of policy recommendations in the report, including that the US Department of Agriculture should “reject applications to approve new herbicide-resistant crops, and [US Environmental Protection Agency] should deny registrations of herbicides for use on them, unless or until appropriate restrictions are enacted to ameliorate their harms to milkweeds, monarchs and pollinators.”

“Glyphosate is the monarch’s enemy number one. To save this remarkable species, we must quickly boost milkweed populations and curtail the use of herbicide-resistant crop systems,” said Bill Freese, a co-author of the report.

As RT reported last month, the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service approved Monsanto’s new GMO cotton and soybean plants. The company now awaits approval from the Environmental Protection Agency for it latest herbicide – a mix of the formidable chemical dicamba and glyphosate, which the company has developed for use on the newly-approved GMO crops.

The new GMO crops – coupled with the dicamba/glyphosate cocktail – make up what Monsanto has dubbed the 'Roundup Ready Xtend crop system,' designed to trump super weeds that have evolved along with its Roundup biocide.

For its part, Monsanto says it is seeking alternatives for the monarch.

"At Monsanto, we’re committed to doing our part to protect these amazing butterflies. That’s why we are collaborating with experts from universities, nonprofits, and government agencies to help the monarch by restoring their habitat in Crop Reserve Program land, on-farm buffer strips, roadsides, utility rights-of way and government-owned land."

How the Super Bowl Promotes Empire, War & Taxpayer Theft

Breaking the Set | Feb 2, 2015

Abby Martin discusses how the Super Bowl promotes the ideals of military intervention and allows the NFL to fleece tax payers for millions of dollars.

New Mexico Nuclear Waste Dump Shows Extended Stuctural Failure

Daboo777 | Jan 23, 2015

Dept. of Energy, Jan 21, 2015 (emphasis added): Roof Separation Highlights Bolting Priority — January 15 [we] discovered that a portion of the ceiling in the Panel 3 access drift had fallen… The roof fall… was estimated to be approximately 8’ long by 8’wide and 24” thick… no WIPP personnel were present at the time of the fall. The area where the fall occurred is also known to contain low levels of radioactive contamination… WIPP geotechnical inspections conducted in November 2014 identified seven areas… where access was restricted due to significant bolt loss… The area where the roof fall occurred was one of the seven locations…

http://enenews.com/ap-ceiling-collaps...

http://wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/r...

Obama "dramatically" increases allowable levels of radiation in drinking water

© Natural News

Natural News | Jan 17, 2015 | Jonathan Benson

As radioactive pollution continues to accumulate throughout the environment as a result of nuclear incidents like Fukushima, the U.S. government's response is not to try to mitigate this threat to public health but rather to increase the official maximum exposure levels and basically redefine how much radiation is considered safe.

The Obama Administration recently did this with regard to radiation in drinking water, dramatically increasing allowable levels in response to "radiological incidents" that make it impossible to keep radiation levels below the previously established thresholds. So, the new approach is to continually raise these thresholds so that water can be considered safe.

It isn't, of course, but that's the illusion that the American plutocracy would have us all accept as reality -- or what the nuclear industry describes as the "new normal," according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The goal is to maintain the ruse for as long as possible, or until so many people are ill and dying of cancer that nothing can be done to stop this runaway train.

According to a press release from PEER, the White House's decision to allow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to alter its official radiation guides, known as Protective Action Guides (PAGs), make radiation cleanup mandates more lax than they have ever been in the history of the agency's existence.

"In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems," explains the press release. "This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period."

Allowable levels of radiation in drinking water are basically undefined at this point 

For drinking water, the requirements are even more obscured. According to the same report, the EPA's new standard is undefined in this regard as the agency "continues to seek input." But the gist of it allows for indeterminable "flexibility" in discarding the previously established limits for drinking water and basically allowing whatever radiation is present in water to be considered "safe."

There's obviously nothing scientific about this "new normal" policy, but most of the "sheeple" probably won't even take a second look at it. PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said it right when he told some in the media that the Obama Sdministration's new guidelines are something that "only Dr. Strangelove could embrace."

"If this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms. McCarthy," he stated, referring to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, "then [the] EPA is in for a long, dirty slog. No compelling justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold."

Interestingly, the guidelines in the new PAGs for how to handle "radiological emergencies," which include evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions, seem to fit the bill for what the world currently faces with Fukushima. Radiation releases from the shuttered plant are still so high that a Japanese government official recently reported that there is no other option but to continue dumping contaminated releases into the ocean.

This tainted ocean water will obviously continue circulating around the world, polluting ocean life, soils, and other ecosystems encountered by humans. And this will result in even higher levels of radiation for which the EPA will have to cover up the truth and pretend as though everything is just fine.

"We have to dispose of the water," stated Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan, in a public comment after expressing that he was "overwhelmed" by the number of tanks holding radioactive water.

Sources:

http://www.globalresearch.ca

http://www.peer.org

http://enenews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

What’s to Blame for Our Dying Planet?

Activist Post | Jan 18, 2015 | Catherine J. Frompovich

Anthony Freda Art

What a question even to ask! But – someone, something—perhaps conspiracies—as many are encouraged by the global media to believe – truly have brought the planet and humankind out of mediaeval misery, but equally into profoundly dangerous circumstances. However, not many who, apparently, are responsible for Planet Earth, aka Mother Earth—Gaia, being trashed before our very eyes, either are fessing up or getting their respective or collective recognition, and all while continuing to profit from poisoning our dying planet.

Every day, commonplace humans who live, work, and try to make ends meet are being blamed for ruining Planet Earth. Why?

We, the ‘seeming-low-life’ in the elite’s minds, are saddled with being responsible for all the ills that plague the planet, if you listen to the media. Yet, that deflection is nowhere near fact, in this writer’s opinion. My reasoning: Who really is it that, manufacturers, finances, operates, and mainstreams the money-making technologies that have been touted and allowed to run without checks and balances on how they negatively impact Planet Earth, the environment, and all living matter?

Who controls business and industry?

Aren’t moguls such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller responsible for setting the corporate paradigm while creating industrial and economic dynasties that, in essence, have overtaken science, the environment, and created vested interest lobbying practices that make certain 99% of non-elites comply with their fascist-like quest for wealth through influencing government?

Read more..

Humans Have Brought World's Oceans to Brink of 'Major Extinction Event'

"Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans
than on land, our effects on marine animals are
increasing in pace and impact," the researchers write.
(Photo: Phil's 1stPix/flickr/cc)

Common Dreams | Jan 16, 2015 | Deirdre Fulton

But 'proactive intervention' could still avert marine disaster, researchers find

Marine wildlife at all levels of the food chain has been badly damaged by human activity, says a new report that urges immediate and "meaningful rehabilitation" if we are to avert mass extinction in the world's oceans.

"We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event," Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an author of the study, told the New York Times.

The report, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that habitat loss, mismanagement of oceanic resources, climate change, and the overall "footprint of human ocean use" have resulted in a phenomenon known as "defaunation"—a decline in animal species diversity and abundance.

"Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans than on land, our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact," reads the study abstract. "Humans have caused few complete extinctions in the sea, but we are responsible for many ecological, commercial, and local extinctions. Despite our late start, humans have already powerfully changed virtually all major marine ecosystems."

"Humans have profoundly decreased the abundance of both large (e.g., whales) and small (e.g., anchovies) marine fauna," it continues. "Such declines can generate waves of ecological change that travel both up and down ma­rine food webs and can alter ocean ecosystem functioning."

Just as the Industrial Revolution during the 1800s decimated the huge tracts of forests, driving many terrestrial species to extinction, industrial use of the oceans threatens to destroy marine habitats and in turn damage the health of marine wildlife populations.

Report co-author Steve Palumbi of Stanford University listed several emerging threats to the oceans: "There are factory farms in the sea and cattle-ranch-style feed lots for tuna. Shrimp farms are eating up mangroves with an appetite akin to that of terrestrial farming, which consumed native prairies and forest. Stakes for seafloor mining claims are being pursued with gold-rush-like fervor, and 300-ton ocean mining machines and 750-foot fishing boats are now rolling off the assembly line to do this work."

Timeline (log scale) of marine and terrestrial defaunation. If left unmanaged, the authors predict that marine habitat alteration, along with climate change (colored bar: IPCC warming), will exacerbate marine defaunation. (Credit: Science)

"Human activities are negatively impacting the ocean at an ever increasing and unsustainable rate, and we must freeze the footprints of industrial activities and commercial fishing," Oceana marine scientist Amanda Keledjian told Common Dreams. "Oceana applauds these researchers for their work, because assessing the oceans from a holistic perspective is the only way to understand the scope at which we must act to reverse collapsing fisheries and continued habitat degradation."

According to the Times:

Scientific assessments of the oceans’ health are dogged by uncertainty: It’s much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land. And changes that scientists observe in particular ocean ecosystems may not reflect trends across the planet.

Dr. [Malin L.] Pinsky, Dr. McCauley and their colleagues sought a clearer picture of the oceans’ health by pulling together data from an enormous range of sources, from discoveries in the fossil record to statistics on modern container shipping, fish catches and seabed mining. While many of the findings already existed, they had never been juxtaposed in such a way.

A number of experts said the result was a remarkable synthesis, along with a nuanced and encouraging prognosis.

"I see this as a call for action to close the gap between conservation on land and in the sea," said Loren McClenachan of Colby College, who was not involved in the study.

The report authors say the effects of human activity in the ocean are still reversible: "Proactive intervention can avert a marine defaunation disaster of the magnitude observed on land."

Oceana's Keledjian echoed that appeal. "This study reminds us that it is critical to do everything we can to protect vulnerable species and the ocean ecosystems on which they depend," she said. "While much remains unknown about the state of the oceans, we cannot wait to act until we know with 100 percent certainty that extinctions and devastation are upon us, because that will already be far too late.

Comment: The emphasis on humans leaves out the fact that humans are controlled by corporations and military interests, and these powers are the primary problem, not individuals.

Over 1,200 seabirds mysteriously die on Pacific Coast

© Natural News

Natural News | Jan 15, 2015 | J.D. Heyes

Officials on the Pacific Coast are puzzled by the deaths of hundreds of small, white-bellied seabirds since October.

The birds, called Cassin's auklets, are mostly gray in color and have blue feet. Media reports say they have been steadily washing ashore all along the Pacific Coast, from Northern California to the coast of the state of Washington, and that, naturally, is concerning wildlife and other experts because thus far they have yet to determine an exact cause for the massive deaths.

"To be this lengthy and geographically widespread, I think is kind of unprecedented," Phillip Johnson, the executive director of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, told the Pierce Pioneer, in its online edition. "It's an interesting and somewhat mysterious event."

At the time of publication, the Pierce Pioneer (PP) noted that the University of Washington's Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COSST) had gathered as many as 1,200 birds that have washed ashore over the past few months.

COSST volunteer Diane Bilderback commented that she had not found any dead auklets until the beginning of this past fall, pointing to a very recent phenomenon.

Wasting away - but why?

Other residents along the Pacific Coast have also said they have encountered scores of dead auklets in recent months, including Ken and Cathy Denton.

"We've seen a lot of common murres, but those are common," Ken Denton told the PP. "This is the most we've seen of something else."

Julie Parrish, the COSST executive director, said the large number of deaths, which appear to be continuing to rise, is definitely a cause for concern. She told the PP that the bulk of the birds appear to have starved to death, which she said could be caused by an unusually prolific mating season.

"Almost every breeding pair laid an egg, and as the young birds fly south for the winter they may not all be finding the small fish and shrimp they normally feed on," she said.

That claim was backed up by Julia Burco, a veterinarian for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; she, along with other experts, believes that the birds are starving and that no toxin is responsible for their deaths.

Bird deaths follow a pattern of other mass deaths of sea life

The deaths of so many auklets comes on the heels of other mass deaths of sea-faring animals, as Natural News has documented:

-- In September, we reported that millions of sea stars were dying -- again, along the Pacific Coast -- stretching from Alaska to Mexico. The creatures, which belong to the class of animals known as Asteroidea, have been on Earth for some 450 million years, and more than 20 species of them have been affected. Experts say dead sea stars are exhibiting signs of "wasting syndrome," a condition which causes their limbs to disintegrate.

-- The BBC reported in December that 500 dead sea lions had been discovered along the northern coastline of Peru, for no inherently obvious reason. As we reported:

The latest of several mass die-offs in recent years, the rotting corpses were found on Anconcillo Beach, located in Peru's Ancash region. Both young and old sea lions were found at the site, which the local governor blamed on fishermen who may have poisoned them while they searched for food at the shoreline. Others like the environmental group Orca, however, say oil exploration is probably the cause.

However, a more likely cause for these deaths and others is rising levels of radiation from the disabled nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. As The Christian Science Monitor reported, the levels of radiation in seawater from the damaged plant should peak along the U.S. Pacific Coast some time this year. That report is here.

Sources:

http://www.piercepioneer.com

http://www.spokesman.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.csmonitor.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

How The Elite Stay In Power

We Are Change | Dec 30, 2014

In this video we break down in simple terms a very complex game that is happening behind the scenes that many do not notice. A complex game played by the very few against everyone else.

New Mexico fines federal government after nuclear waste radiation leaks

Aerial view of Los Alamos National Laboratory
(Image from wikipedia.org/lanl.gov)

RT | Dec 7, 2014

The state of New Mexico has fined the federal government a record of more than $54 million for violations at a nuclear waste facility where two incidents in February caused radiation release and human exposure.
The fine – the biggest ever by the state on US Department of Energy – was issued for 37 violations of hazardous waste permits at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

New Mexico Environment Department said that a thorough nine months investigation found 13 violations at WIPP, resulting in civil penalties of $17,746,250; and 24 violations at LANL, resulting in civil penalties of $36,604,649.

The probe confirms “the existence of major procedural problems that contributed to these events, and also found a less than adequate response,” a press release read.

Facilities used to store low-level radioactive
waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
(AFP Photo/Paul Buck)

New Mexico said the Feds’ actions led to an improperly maintained salt truck catching fire at the Carlsbad plant in early February and a rupture of an improperly packaged LANL barrel of waste a week later stored at WIPP, leading to non-life-threatening low level radiation exposure of 22 workers.

The latter incident led to the closure of the facility, the only underground nuclear waste storage in the US, which is crucial for the country’s effort to eradicate Cold War era waste.

The state says it’s continuing to investigate and more fines are possible.

“The health and safety of New Mexicans will always be our priority and we have to hold federal agencies accountable for safe operations in the state,” New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez said in a statement.

Federal officials are expected to release their own assessment reports into the accidents before the end of the year. The price tag for the clean-up effort has been estimated a half-billion dollars and will take years, AP reports.

‘Millions of liters’ of oil spilled in Israel, flooding nature reserve (PHOTOS)

Crude oil streams through the desert in south Israel,
near the village of Beer Ora, north of Eilat
December 4, 2014.(Reuters / Yehuda Ben Itach)

RT | Dec 4, 2014

A pipeline breach near the Israel-Jordan border has flooded a nature reserve in what authorities call one of Israel’s worst environmental disasters, causing large amounts of potentially poisonous gas to be released near Aqaba, raising health concerns.

The Eilat-Ashkelon crude oil pipeline near the Evrona reserve in the south of Israel accidentally ruptured Wednesday night spewing a river of oil across the desert. Israeli environment officials predict that the clean-up effort could take years.

“The full scope of the incident is still not clear to us, but it is certainly a matter of millions of liters of crude oil, which is dangerous both to animals and to the nature reserve itself," Environment Ministry representative Guy Samet was quoted as saying in Globes, as Israeli financial news daily.

Samet has said that an estimated 4.3 mile-oil stream is flowing through the reserve, which is home to a large gazelle population and the world’s northernmost doum palms, a rare type of branching palm tree.

Read more..

Drone's Eye View Offers Eerie Glimpse of Nuclear Desolation in Chernobyl's Shadow

'A camera mounted on a drone has revealed the eerie
post-apocalyptic landscape of a town abandoned after
the nuclear power station at Chernobyl exploded nearly
three decades ago,' writes the Guardian's Chris Johnston.
(Image: Screenshot / Danny Cooke footage)

Common Dreams | Nov 29, 2014 | Jon Queally

Filmmaker Danny Cooke filmed city of Pripyat, once home to 50,000 people before nuclear disaster in 1986

A short documentary offering an aerial view of a city that once thrived in the shadow of the former Soviet Union's most notorious nuclear power plant offers a devastating critique of atomic power without uttering a single word.

Employing a remote-controlled drone over and amid the abandoned Ukrainian city of Pripyat, filmmaker Danny Cooke explores the contours of rusted-out amusement park rides and empty buildings left to crumble in the wake of the meltdown at the Chernobyl plant on April 26, 1986. Cooke shot the footage recently while on assignment for CBS News.

Watch:


Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.
As the Guardian reports on Cooke's project:

The Devon-based film-maker also sent the drone into a crumbling indoor swimming pool and over factories and apartment buildings where the only sign of life is the weeds growing on the roof.

“Chernobyl is one of the most interesting and dangerous places I’ve been,” Cooke said. “There was something serene, yet highly disturbing about this place. Time has stood still and there are memories of past happenings floating around us.”

It is not until the drone is sent rising above the treetops that viewers can see the vast dome being built to place over the damaged reactor.

Fukushima fallout on vegetation in South Florida exceeded gov’t notification limit by over 1,000% — Nearly triple the highest level reported anywhere on West Coast

ENE News | Nov 27, 2014

Florida Power & Light Company, St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 & 2 (St. Lucie, FL) — 2011 Annual Radiological Environmental Operating Report, submitted to U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

BROADLEAF VEGETATION: Brazilian Pepper from location H59 — 10-20 miles S/SSE of reactors on south end of Hutchinson Island, [30 miles north of Palm Beach]

• Iodine-131 on 22-Mar: 1,220 pCi/kg (wet weight)
  
• Iodine-131 on 29-Mar: 605 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 06-Apr: 242 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 13-Apr: 136 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 20-Apr: 79 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 26-Apr: 45 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 03-May: 21 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 is “attributed to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants event. Elevated levels of radioiodine were measured through-out the U.S.”

NRC Reporting Level for Vegetation = 100 pCi/kg (wet weight)

NRC Reporting Level: “The concentration value in an environmental sample, if exceeded, which must be reported to the NRC.”

The highest I-131 level reported in vegetation from the West Coast is 462 pCi/kg in Central California.  The March 22 South Florida sample is nearly triple that amount.
 
See also: Emergency radiation testing used at Democrat and Republican conventions after Fukushima; Also for Obama Inauguration -- Seafood, meat, vegetables, milk, water checked for nuclear waste, while top officials agree to publicly downplay crisis -- 80% of milk samples by Orlando, FL had 'significant' Cs-137

US Navy to kill, injure ‘thousands’ of whales, dolphins during drills – activists

AFP Photo / Ishara S. Kidikara

RT | Nov 10, 2014

As the US Navy conducts war games off the coasts of California and Hawaii over the next four years, environmentalists are fighting back with legal action over concerns that hundreds, if not thousands, of marine animals will be injured or killed.

The Conservation Council for Hawaii has recently asked a judge to put an end to the naval exercises in the region on the grounds that they violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the Washington Post reports. The group previously filed a lawsuit against the war games last year before the exercises began, arguing the drills should not have been approved in the first place.

At the center of the controversy are the lives and health of potentially millions of marine mammals, which can suffer hearing loss or damaged lungs from powerful sonar and death from underwater explosions.

The Council’s representatives in the lawsuit, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), argue that the use of sonar and explosives in the war games will kill too many blue whales, dolphins and seals to justify the training plans.

Environmentalists specifically point to the Navy’s own numbers in making their case. Back in 2013, the Navy projected that 155 marine mammals would be killed between 2014 and 2019 as a result of the war games. Thousands of animals would face permanent injuries, while almost 10 million would suffer temporary hearing loss or have their normal routines and behaviors disrupted.

“The more we look at the Navy’s activities, the more we’re finding the potential for harm,” said NRDC’s Michael Jasny to the Post.

Read more..

Bowling for Meltdowns: Throwing Gas on a Radioactive Fire

© Courtesy ZenGardner.com

CounterPunch | Nov 2, 2014 | John LaForge

Weakening radiation standards; a cap on accident liability; reactor propaganda vs improvements; old units running past expiration dates; revving the engines beyond design specs …. You’d think we were itching for a meltdown.

The Environmental Protection Agency has recommended increased radiation exposure limits following major releases. It would save the industry a bundle to permit large human exposures then, rather than shut down rickety reactors now.

The EPA proposal is a knock-off prompted by Fukushima, because after the triple meltdown started three years ago, Japan increased — by 20 times — the allowable radiation exposures deemed tolerable for humans. Prior to the meltdowns of March 2011, Japan allowed only 1 milliSievert of radiation per year in an individual’s personal space. Now, the limit is 20 milliSieverts per year. This is not safe, it’s just allowable, or, rather, affordable, since the cost of decontaminating 1,000 square miles of Japan to the stricter standard could bust the bank.

The Price Anderson Act provides US reactor owners with a liability cap and a tax-payer bailout in the event of serious accidents or attacks. The law relieves utilities of hundreds of billions in financial risk posed by our ongoing meltdown roulette game. The owners won’t be bankrupted by the next loss-of-coolant disaster, but the US might.

Fukushima has spewed more long-lived radioactive chemicals to the air, the soil and the ocean than any catastrophe in history. But the chant heard round the world is: “The dose is low, there’s no immediate danger.” Promoters of nuclear power repeat this mantra at every opportunity, hoping to dodge Germany’s answer to Fukushima — a permanent reactor phase-out — and it has nearly drowned out all warnings of radiation’s health and environmental effects.

Have you heard of PSR’s March 2011 “Health risks of the releases of radioactivity from the Fukushima reactors: Are they a concern for residents of the US?”; or IPPNW’s June 2014 “Critical Analysis of the UNSCEAR Report”; or the Nov. 2012 “Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health within the context of the nuclear accident at Fukushima”; or Greenpeace’s two major reports, “Lessons from Fukushima,” and “Fukushima Fallout”? No, the feds would rather you read the UN Scientific Committee’s exec. summary which claims Fukushima’s effects are “unlikely to be observable.” This conclusion was made before any research was done.

The chances of radiation disasters will increase further if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows US reactors to run for 80 years. This is what Duke Power, Dominion Power and Exelon suggest for seven of their 40-year-old rattle traps now operating in Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina.

These seven reactors were designed and licensed to be shut down in the current decade. However, since 1991 the nuclear industry has been granted 70 “license extensions” that have generally added 20 years. Now the owners want to push their units an extra 40 years.

Former NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis wasn’t apoplectic when the commission considered the idea, but, according to the New York Times, he said, “I don’t know how we would explain to the public that these designs, 90-year-old designs, 100-year-old designs, are still safe to operate.” The NRC has yet to rule on the 80-year option, but it’s never denied a single license extension request.

Gunning old Fukushima-type engines

Captured by the industry it’s supposed to govern, the NRC has approved 149 reactor “power uprate” applications and has denied exactly one. Power uprates boost the output of old reactors beyond what their original licenses permit. It’s done by packing reactor cores with extra fuel rods and, feeling lucky, running them harder.

Chillingly, 23 operating US reactors are duplicates of the Fukushima-type General Electric Mark 1. Fifteen of these clunkers have been granted power uprates, and seven of these 15 have been granted a second power uprate. (See chart) Susquehanna’s two 31-year-old Fukushima clones in Pennsylvania were granted a hair-raising three power uprates.

With the radiation industry and the NRC working to deny or delay post-Fukushima safety improvements, how do you feel about reactor operators stomping the accelerator while they run their geriatric uranium jalopies toward the cliff?

John LaForge works for Nukewatch and lives on the Plowshares Land Trust near Luck, Wisc.

Health expert: Fracking in the U.S. extremely dangerous, leads to cancer and other ailments

© Bryan Thomas/Getty Images/AFP
Anti-fracking demonstrators protest on 51st
Street and 7th Avenue as President Obama arrives
at the Sheraton Hotel, at 52nd Street, on
September 23, 2014 in New York City

SOTT | Oct 31, 2014

The way that oil and gas fracking is practiced in the US is dangerous to public health exposing people living around wells to respiratory infections, cancer and a reduction in brain activity, David O. Carpenter, environmental health expert, told RT.

Scientists have discovered dangerously high level of cancer-causing chemicals in the air around fracking wells in five different states in the US. A report revealed that levels of benzene, hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde were many times above American air pollution limits and were detected within residential areas near to fracking sites.

RT spoke with David O. Carpenter, author of the study to find out how dangerous fracking is for health.

David Carpenter: I don't think fracking has to be dangerous to our health but fracking in the way it's practiced right now in the US - at least in these five states - is extraordinary dangerous. We focused a lot in our report on two chemicals that cause cancer - benzene and formaldehyde - and their levels were sky high, much higher than it is regulated in other industries. They are both known human carcinogens, according to the World Health Organization. They should not be released in this fashion. It isn't that the fracking per say is something that is necessarily dangerous but clearly there is a release of all of these organic chemicals, including these carcinogens, benzene is released, formaldehyde is formed. That's just not acceptable because these [chemicals] are very dangerous for public health.

RT: Why are they still doing it then?

DC: I think it's because they are careless. There are leaks in the system. That's not for the benefit of the industry either because they want to capture this natural gas and sell it. One of the problems in the US is our Congress because they wanted to promote energy self-sufficiency, and has exempted oil and gas industry from most of our federal regulations. No other industry would be allowed to release benzene, formaldehyde in these concentrations. It is contrary to the Clean Air Act.

RT: How much do you hope your study will break ground in terms of convincing governments of the perils of fracking?

DC: I think that our study alone won't accomplish that. But I hope that it helps moving in that direction. We are caught in this bind between the benefits of something that helps the economy and the risk to human health. That's always a debate and politicians are usually more interested in short-term benefits than long-term risks. Cancer isn't going to occur tomorrow, it is going to occur 10-20-30 years from now in people that are exposed to those dangerous contaminants. What we are seeing right now are respiratory infections and nose bleeds. Think about formaldehyde, that's basically an embalming fluid, if you breathe it in 24 hours a day - and are samples from formaldehyde were taken over eight-hour periods - you are going to pickle epithelium in your nose. Many of the people living around these sites have nose bleeds. Is it surprising? Not at all.

RT: Isn't it surprising that government isn't listening to you?

DC: There hasn't been much evidence like this and again, that's one of the problems because the federal government doesn't support much research in that area. The health agencies have been intimidated because the US Congress exempted the industry from regulation. So they have shied away from founding research. I do hope that our study and others that are being done demonstrating health risk in these communities will tighten up the regulation.

I'm not just philosophically opposed to fracking, I would certainly rather have renewable energy - wind and solar and so on. We are a long way from meeting those needs. Natural gas is a healthier fuel even than oil, but to take natural gas from the ground in a way that exposes people living near those wells to cancer, respiratory infections... I didn't mention but these chemical also act on the brain, they reduce mental functioning. And this is simply not correct; it's not acceptable and should be stopped.

Source: RT

Britain's nuclear WMD programme: Leaked Sellafield photos reveal 'massive radioactive release' threat

The B30 pond showing a full loading
with fuel rods. Photo: unknown.

The Ecologist | Oct 27, 2014 | Oliver Tickell

"...if the ponds drain, the Magnox fuel will ignite and that would lead to a massive release of radioactive material."

The Ecologist has received a shocking set of leaked images showing decrepit and grossly inadequate storage facilities for high level nuclear waste at the Sellafield nuclear plant.

The images (right), from an anonymous source, show the state of spent nuclear fuel storage ponds that were commissioned in 1952, and used until the mid-1970's as short term storage for spent fuel until it could be re-processed, producing plutonium for military use. However they were completely abandoned in the mid-1970s and have been left derelict for almost 40 years.

The photographs show cracked concrete tanks holding water contaminated with high levels of radiation, seagulls bathing on the water, broken equipment, a dangerous mess of discarded items on elevated walkways, and weeds growing around the tanks.

Read more..