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I think we're going in the wrong direction, here.. From MSNBC..
The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.
The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power.
On Friday, American jets killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel Qaeda operative, and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Weeks earlier, drone aircraft fired missiles aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who the United States government has tried to kill for more than a year. Mr. Awlaki survived.
Worse than meltdown, government report says devastating 'melt-through' has occurred at Fukushima; Official suggests Japan could become 'uninhabitable' Natural News via Before It's News. Excerpts:
And senior political official Ichiro Ozawa suggested in an interview with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that the Fukushima situation could make the entire country of Japan "unlivable."
Unlivable.
Wait: What? #Fukushima II's Contaminated Water: Cobalt-60, Cesium-134, Cesium-137 Ex-SKF via Rense. Excerpts:
More on the earlier post on 3,000 tons of contaminated water at Fukushima II Nuke Plant.
From Yomiuri Shinbun
TEPCO disclosed on June 8 that it has entered into negotiations with the government agencies and local municipalities to treat the contaminated water in the basements of the buildings at Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant and release it into the ocean.
The water is from the tsunami [on March 11], and it contains radioactive cobalt-60 which probably came from the rusty pipes, and cesium-137 and cesium-134 which are considered to have flown from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant 10 kilometers north. The level of contamination is 10 to 30 times the limit allowed for the discharge into the ocean.
Hmmm. So, in a normal operation, radioactive cesium will fly from a nearby nuke plant and somehow land on the basement of the enclosed reactor building. Right.
It's Official: "Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through Base of Fukushima Plant" ... “The Findings of the Report, Which has Been Given to the International Atomic Energy Agency ... Described a 'Melt-Through' as Being 'Far Worse than a Core Meltdown' and 'The Worst Possibility In a Nuclear Accident' Comprehensive roundup from Washington's Blog.
#Radiation in Tokyo: It's Already a Secondary Radiation Contamination in Koto-Ku From Ex-SKF via Rense.
So the Tokyo Metropolitan government finally admitted to the high air radiation level in "Nanbu Sludge Plant" in Ota-ku in Tokyo, after, it turns out, a Tokyo Metropolitan Assemblyman from Ota-ku went inside the plant and measured the radiation.
"Tobu" or Eastern, Sludge Plant in Koto-ku in Tokyo has an even higher level of radioactive cesium, and the plant may have been spewing radioactive cesium from the incinerator where the radioactive sewage sludge is burned, and has been contaminating the air and the soil in the areas around the plant and downwind (upstream) areas along the Arakawa River.
So it's a secondary radiation contamination.
The eastern part of Tokyo has been registering higher air radiation levels than the western part of Tokyo. Unchecked cesium dispersion from the sludge plant ever since the start of the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident may be good part of the reason.
Ordinarily, this would freak me out, but since Fukushima's pretty much done us in, who cares, right? After Japan, where's next nuke weak link? Short answer: Vietnam.
Frustration rises three months after Japan disaster Agence France-Presse via Vancouver Sun. Excerpts:
Three months after Japan's March 11 quake and tsunami disaster, frustration is growing as the nuclear crisis shows no sign of abating and nearly 100,000 evacuees remain holed up in crowded shelters.
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Yet as Japan struggles with its worst postwar crisis, a plunge back into recession and a growing debt mountain, its political leadership is in turmoil, with its fifth premier in five years expected to resign soon.
Bills to finance reconstruction are being held hostage by the conservative opposition(The very definition of "playing politics during disaster."), which demands that centre-left Prime Minister Naoto Kan quit first, accusing him of bungling Japan's post-disaster management.
The death toll from the quake — the world's fourth largest tectonic event since 1900 and Japan's biggest since records started 130 years ago — reached 15,401 on Friday, with 8,146 people reported missing, presumed dead.
More than 90,000 people still live in over 2,400 shelters — most of them jobless and miserable as they spend their days eating donated meals, watching TV and sleeping on tatami mats behind cardboard partitions.
"We are so disappointed with the politicians playing their power games without thinking about us," said Tomie Shiga, a 59-year-old housewife turned radiation refugee who spent months in a Fukushima prefecture shelter.
Toyota sees net profit fall 31% France 24. Excerpts:
Japanese auto giant Toyota on Friday said it expected to book a net profit of 280 billion yen this fiscal year, 31 percent lower than last year after the March 11 quake and tsunami hit production.
The automaker had delayed its estimate for the current year to assess the full scale of impact of the quake on production and sales.
Japan mulls closure of N-reactors by April Oman Tribune.
TOKYO All 54 of Japan’s nuclear reactors may be shut by next April, adding more than $30 billion a year to the country’s energy costs, if communities object to plant operating plans due to safety concerns, trade ministry officials said on Wednesday.
Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which triggered a radiation crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant north of Tokyo, concern among local authorities has kept nuclear generators from restarting at least four reactors that had been expected to come online after routine maintenance and inspection. ..
Japan Sinking ! Seabed Off Miyagi Sank Before March 11. The actual report is less hysterical than this title suggests..
Unemployed Japanese Get Work at Radiation Contaminated Fukushima! Found these first two on Before It's News.
Laborers are traveling from all over Japan to rebuild the Tsunami devastated region of Fukushima. They are driven here by a poor economy, not national pride. Many workers accept low-paying jobs as general laborers because jobs in this devastated area are secure and abundant. Others join the cleanup because they lost everything in the tsunami and have nowhere else to go.
“Nuclear fuel has melted through base of Fukushima plant” -Telegraph Found it at Godlike Productions.
The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.
Japan 'unprepared' for nuclear disaster From Delmarva Now. Without comment.
Japan admitted Tuesday it was unprepared for a severe nuclear accident like the tsunami-caused Fukushima disaster and said damage to the reactors and radiation leakage were worse than it previously thought.
In a report being submitted to the U.N. nuclear agency, the government also acknowledged reactor design inadequacies and a need for greater independence for the country's nuclear regulators.
The report said the nuclear fuel in three reactors likely melted through the inner containment vessels, not just the core, after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant's power and cooling systems. Fuel in the Unit 1 reactor started melting hours earlier than previously estimated.
Wadioactive Wabbit.
Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen talks to CNN's John King about the dangers of the radiation situation in Japan.
From Associated Content/Yahoo(!) Pictures at the link.
Situated at the landing site of the Apollo 14 Moon Expedition there seems to be something a little out of the ordinary happening. Is this an image of an underground base that has been built by NASA?
And:
It seems there is something to hide on the Moon as censoring is quite abundant on Google Earth (Moon Viewer). Image Two is just one example of blatant censoring or covering up of objects and areas of the Moon. Why is this censoring happening and what is there on the Moon that needs to be hidden from our eyes?
Couple discoveries on the moon with "The oldest Metropolis on Earth was built by the Anunnaki!"
and you've got yourself a heady mix of reality tweaking concepts..
Something amazing has been discovered in an area of South Africa, about 150 miles inland, west of the port of Maputo. It is the remains of a huge metropolis that measures, in conservative estimates, about 1500 square miles. It's part of an even larger community that is about 10,000 square miles and appears to have been constructed -- are you ready -- from 160,000 to 200,000 BCE!
"When Johan first introduced me to the ancient stone ruins of southern Africa, I had no idea of the incredible discoveries we would make in the year or two that followed. The photographs, artifacts and evidence we have accumulated points unquestionably to a lost and never-before-seen civilization that predates all others -- not by just a few hundred years, or a few thousand years... but many thousands of years. These discoveries are so staggering that they will not be easily digested by the mainstream historical and archaeological fraternity, as we have already experienced. It will require a complete paradigm shift in how we view our human history. " - Tellinger
To reiterate: Newly discovered information from all points of the spectrum continues to change our perception of what is our history here on earth, and where our future might lead. With more sophisticated technological developments, we are able to have a larger, clearer view of our surroundings, micro to macro. And A Lot of this new information will invalidate some deeply held truisms as a bigger vision of Who and What We Are emerges. A great many people will have a difficult time adapting to these events. How we as a society handle these upcoming shockwaves (in whatever form in which they arrive..)will determine whether we: are destroyed, survive, prosper during crisis, or continue towards an unknown apex.
The future stands still, unwritten, as we all continue waiting for the Universe's Great Exhale to commence. "Listen; can you feel it? It's getting closer.."
Totally “Fukushima‘ed” Continues Great post from George Ure's Urban Survival..
Slowly, but surely, the officialdumb in Japan is leaking out what anyone with a good Geiger counter and knowledge of reactors has already concluded: Yes, there were three – count ‘em three meltdowns in Japan.
As we’ve reported before, a lot of fast-track Japanese execs who have been in places like Ohio and Fremont (to name just two) doing their equivalent to ‘time in the colonies” are now rethinking whether to return when time’s up here.
What we haven’t previously discussed, however, is the flip side which are the American exec’s in Japan. Like this reader who’s heading out – deciding as the subject line of his email put it – figure it’s now time to be “Pulling Up Stakes in Tokyo…”
“George:
Buy high, sell low. WTF? Yup, that’s how it works if you are getting back a security deposit on a foreign home. Five years ago we bought a boatload of yen at Y117/$ for our downtown Tokyo rental. Getting the deposit back this week at Y83/$. That’s an annual yield of about 7.2% Don’t think I could have played the stock market any better, especially during the past five years! Of course it’s a bit sadder when you change the perspective to realize that the dollar has lost over 7% per year in buying power.
We’re sad to leave Japan, minus the Fukushima fallout. This week the government released a model showing that Tokyo probably got a serious dusting of Fukushima fallout on the 15th of March. I remember that day, specifically, because it was clear and sunny, but quite breezy, two days before we were told to bug out. We had the windows open at work, and we got a bunch of very unusual debris that blew in and settled all over our desks and shelves. Having been a Scoutmaster for over 10 years, I’ve been around plenty of campfires when asshattery happens with plastic garbage. The fallout is a grayish snow that sticks to everything. That’s what blew in our window. Except instead of the normal campfire crap, which with all the di-methyl chickenwire dioxin is bad enough, this stuff was probably hotter and nastier. Wonder if my household goods shipment will trip a portal monitor in customs?
Ultimate irony is that that the kanji characters for Fukushima (??) mean “lucky-island.” Fukushima is neither, nor will Honshu be, if the meltdown drama continues.”
Much as we would like otherwise, I just don’t see any way around it continuing. Bummer.
Summer Brings New Problems Affecting Japan And World: Will Fukushima Cause International Higher Mortality Rates? From Before It's News.. Excerpts:
Over the last fifty years it has become apparent that nuclear energy is full of dangers, some of which carry repercussions even greater than those produced by a nuclear weapon. By way of their response to the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear industry, regulatory oversight committees, nuclear engineers, and leading scientific experts have failed the global community. Their actions have proved that they continually underestimated the situation, and did not fully understand it before making crucial decisions.
The quantities of radiation released to date are unprecedented, say the Japanese government, and they are very sorry for having withheld important information. They will also likely claim it “unprecedented” as people across the island nation and northern hemisphere are subjected to short and long term exposure to radioactive materials emitted from the power plants 3 reactors in full meltdown.
Melted Fuel at Fukushima May Have Leaked Through, Yomiuri Says From Bloomberg via Rense. Excerpts:
The melted fuel at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station may have leaked through the pressure vessels of the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.
The Japanese government will submit a report to the International Atomic Energy Agency that raises the possibility the fuel dropped through the bottom of the pressure vessels, a situation described as a “melt through” and considered more serious than a “meltdown,” according to the report, which cited the document.
5.77 Microsieverts/hr On Street Pavement Near Tokyo You Tube via Before It's News.
Japan Plans Fundamental Change in Nuclear Rules, Regulator Bloomberg. Excerpts:
Japan plans a “fundamental revision” of its nuclear safety rules and will create an independent regulator to prevent a repeat of the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi atomic power station.
A report by the government last night also said a national debate is needed on the “whole concept of nuclear power generation,” indicating an energy policy that powered Japan after World War II into the ranks of the world’s leading economies is being questioned.
White House & NRC Recommend 50 Mile Fukushima Evacuation, Yet Insist US Safe With Only 10 Latest video from Arnie Gundersen, via Rense.
Independent probe launched into Japan's nuclear disaster From New Kerala.
According to the Japan Times, the panel headed by Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, will analyze the incident with the objective of unveiling the "the true nature of the accident."
Huh.. Wait; what? Cause, Impact, or Ramifications: What exactly are they talking about?
Wow.. The Scumbaggery is right out in the open now, and the Race To The Bottom quickens.
I'm always amazed at the 20's movie-style evil displayed by the Koch brothers. So Snidely Whiplash, but on a global level, with real world implications. Their actions are despicable to decent people, but the relentless, singleminded Service-to-Self behavior these people display is nothing less than an Anthropological amazement: How will people behave who are at once, all consumed by the obsession of Pursuit of Power, and CAPABLE of following that obsession to its fullest access? It is fascinating to watch! It's pointless to ask "How are they gonna top this one(Insert X situation here..)?" They always find a way to sink lower.. No matter how large or small the fight might be, they always show up packin' nukes.
I wonder what will be their(and others like them) penultimate karmic comeuppance. I don't think it will be at the hands of those they've oppressed and maligned, though. The debt is so large, the wound so gaping and diseased, I can't imagine what form will bring about their/our collective re-alignment, but it'll have to be HUGE. Solar Flare? Asteroid? Comet/Planet Elenin? Infinite Novelty? Or maybe it's Nuclear, and it's already begun. However The Reckoning manifests, rest assured it will. It's unstoppable.
I just hope mine comes after theirs. I want to know: How will their arc descend?
3 nuclear reactors melted down after quake, Japan confirms From CNN via Rense.
Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
The announcement will not change plans for how to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the agency said.
Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.
The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted last month that nuclear fuel rods in reactors 2 and 3 probably melted during the first week of the nuclear crisis.
Much better perspective from Washington's Blog
Fukushima: Twice As Bad As Thought via Rense.
One recurring theme that has emerged after Fukushima is the tendency of nuclear experts to underestimate (publicly at least) the severity of the disaster. Today we received further proof of this when the Japanese government more than doubled the estimate for the amount of radiation released from the plant in the immediate aftermath of the crisis in March.
Government watchdog The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency also said that the meltdowns of the plant's reactor cores--at least one of which we now know suffered a total meltdown—happened much more quickly than Tepco has previously suggested, making it clear that the plant operators' desperate attempts to cool the reactors by dumping sea water on them were largely unsuccessful.
The Breakdown from Xymphora:
There are two kinds of 'Arab spring' revolutions:
those that start somewhere, perhaps for purely local reasons, but quickly spread throughout the entire country due to a wide-spread desire for radical change (e.g., Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen); and
those that are based in some areas of the country and, despite the fact there are perfectly good reasons for the whole country to revolt, are based solely on local problems, are ethnically or religiously grounded, and refuse to spread (Syria, Libya).
"While the regime of President Bashar Assad has cracked down on smaller cities in Syria, residents of the nation's large cities, including Aleppo and the capital Damascus, seem ambivalent about staging mass protests." 'Ambivalent' is a funny way of putting it. They have been given every encouragement to revolt, and yet have weighed the possible outcomes, and clearly prefer the current regime to the possible replacements.
Let's talk about Yemen, man..
The Arab Spring Six Months Later Gallery at link.
But where does the so-called Arab Spring stand? Full-on revolutions are remaking such regional heavyweights as Egypt and smaller states like Tunisia. But even as it grows harder and harder with every passing week to keep track of the proliferating unrest and revolt, it's clear that we are still only witnessing the earliest stages of what will undoubtedly mark a watershed episode in the history of the Arab world. And as such political moments go, much of the scene today is vicious, bloody, and uncertain.
The bombs keep falling in Libya.
Just in case you've forgotten about Palestine, Israel, and Syria..
First man ‘functionally cured’ of HIV. Found it through Americablog. Cool on several levels. Someone has been "cured" of HIV--Really good for him, right? This result provides new pathways of research and medical direction in future conventional treatment. And score another victory for stem cell research! All good.
It also establishes, rather firmly, too, that a percentage of people have some-to-possibly-total resistance. From Wired's article Genetic HIV Resistance Deciphered
Studies released this week and last year suggest that the roots of AIDS immunity extend back for centuries, long before the disease even existed. Our ethnic backgrounds and the illnesses suffered by our distant ancestors appear to play a crucial role in determining whether our genes will allow HIV to take hold in our bodies.
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All those with the highest level of HIV immunity share a pair of mutated genes -- one in each chromosome -- that prevent their immune cells from developing a "receptor" that lets the AIDS virus break in. If the so-called CCR5 receptor -- which scientists say is akin to a lock -- isn't there, the virus can't break into the cell and take it over.
To be protected, people must inherit the genes from both parents; those who inherit a mutated gene from just one parent will end up with greater resistance against HIV than other people, but they won't be immune. An estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of those descended from Northern Europeans have the lesser protection.
This foundational assumption which is integral to this new development's understanding, contradicts some of the conventional wisdom associated with the virus: All are equal in the cross hairs of HIV. Heterosexuals never fully bought into the epidemic panic (not for themselves, anyway..), but mainstream medicine scoffed at alternative theories, and suppressed information by not financially backing any data not in line with "HIV=AIDS," including theories about HIV having Nothing To Do with AIDS..
This information is not new. From 1992:
Another possibility is that HIV doesn't have anything to do with AIDS. This is what Peter Duesberg of UC Berkeley has been saying for five years: that HIV doesn't attack the immune system, doesn't cause AIDS, and is in fact harmless. A professor of molecular biology, Duesberg is one of the world's leading experts on retroviruses. I called him at his Berkeley lab and asked what he thought of the news from Amsterdam, and the possibility that we may now have one more lethal virus to worry about.
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Duesberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was the first to map the genetic structure of retroviruses. He is not popular with the National Institutes of Health, the government agency that has been funding and policing AIDS research for the last decade. For years he was supported by an NIH "outstanding investigator" grant, but after he attacked the HIV theory of AIDS, his grant was cut off.
Down the hall from Duesberg at Berkeley's Stanley Hall is the lab of Professor Harry Rubin, another skeptic. He also believes that HIV has not been shown to be the cause of AIDS. I spoke to Bryan Ellison, a doctoral candidate with Rubin. Retroviruses have never been observed to kill cells, he told me. If you microscopically examine healthy cells in a dish, and a virus such as polio is added to them, the virus multiplies inside the cells and bursts them open in a matter of hours. Soon you can see nothing but "debris and garbage and dead cells," he said. But if you put HIV, or any other retrovirus, into the same dish with healthy cells-an environment where the body's immune system cannot interfere-the cells just sit there and continue healthy growth.
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Something has been attacking the immune system, he agrees. The T-cells of AIDS patients do dwindle away, and there has been an increase in such opportunistic diseases as pneumocystis in the past decade. But HIV has never been shown physically to attack T-cells. The virus in fact is very difficult to find, even in patients dying of AIDS. Usually only antibodies can be detected-which is why an antibody test is used for HIV. Indications are that HIV is swiftly neutralized by the body's defenses. Yet it is said to kill after a ten-year (average) latency period. This has been lengthened to account for the failure of AIDS cases to keep pace with projections. Another oddity: researchers still have no "animal model" for AIDS. Over one hundred chimps have been infected with HIV since 1985 -- and the virus does "take," or replicate within them-but none has yet come down with AIDS.
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Duesberg also makes the following claims: there are no cases in the medical literature of health-care workers contracting AIDS through accidental needle-stick. In a footnote to its latest AIDS report, the CDC says there have been four such cases, but they have not been identified or described. There are a few disputed cases in the courts "and they want their money," Duesberg says. By contrast, about 15,000 cases of needle-stick hepatitis infection are reported every year.
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About 75 per cent of the 20,000 U.S. hemophiliacs are HIV-positive, but there has still not been a properly controlled study of them. Do those with HIV come down with more AIDS diseases, or die sooner, than those without? It has been found that hemophiliacs in general are living longer than ever, even though three-fourths are now infected with the "deadly virus" and virtually all of these have been infected for eight years or more. Since the relevant data are already in place and await only statisticians, perhaps NIH could spend some of its research billions on a hemophiliac study.
"There is not a single controlled epidemiological study to confirm the postulated viral etiology of AIDS," Duesberg wrote in 1990. True? San Francisco's Project Inform recently put out a discussion paper, very critical of Duesberg, referring to "studies" comparing HIV-infected homosexuals with uninfected controls with "similar patterns of drug use and frequency of sexual contacts." None of the latter came down with AIDS, apparently. These studies were not identified or footnoted, so I phoned Martin Delaney, the executive director of Project Inform, and asked for the reference.
His "source," it turned out, was a person, not a paper. He gave me the name of a doctor who is identified in Randy Shilts's book, And the Band Played On, as having helped persuade CDC a decade ago that AIDS was caused by a virus. I phoned him but so far haven't heard back.
Delaney seemed dismayed that journalists were interested in Duesberg. I mentioned the series of articles that came out recently in the (London) Sunday Times about Duesberg and his critics. "When the Sunday Times publicizes what Duesberg says," Delaney replied, paradoxically, "it has an obligation to ask, 'What is your source for this?' They don't apply skepticism."
I spoke to Neville Hodgkinson, the Sunday Times's science correspondent and author of the series. He said he had never checked anything so carefully before publication. He was concerned that there might be a study he didn't know about. "What was the response?" I asked.
"Anger and indignation, but no factual rebuttal," he said. "I've never seen anything like it." He was solemnly told that there is a "consensus" that HIV causes AIDS, and it shouldn't be challenged.
Ultimately, we're closer to a cure to whatever AIDS is because of doctors and scientists who couldn't accept the Official Story, those strong enough to follow the data through through the shitrain opposition that is Institutionalized Thought Under Attack. Those strong enough to continue their work for the truth of it.
Maybe this is the beginning of Their time.
This Vitamin Can Radically Reduce Damage from Radioactivity from Fukushima Via Rense. Excerpts:
As understanding of Vitamin D increases, it is becoming apparent that its most active form, Vitamin D3 (calcitriol), may offer protection against a variety of radiation-induced damages. Vitamin D’s protective action is carried by a wide variety of mechanisms, including cell cycle regulation and proliferation, cellular differentiation and communication, and programmed cell death (apoptosis).
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The report found that the most active molecular form of vitamin D -- D3 (also known as calcitriol) -- may offer protection against a variety of radiation-induced damages, including those caused by background radiation or a low-level nuclear incident, through the following mechanisms:
Cell cycle regulation and proliferation
Cellular differentiation and communication
Programmed Cell Death (PCD)
Anti-angiogenesis (a process that stops tumors from making new blood vessels, which means they stop growing)
The protective mechanisms are so strong that researchers suggested vitamin D3 should be considered among the prime (if not the primary) non-pharmacological agents to protect against sub-lethal low radiation damage and, particularly, radiation-induced cancer.
It's unclear how much vitamin D is necessary to protect against radiation-induced cancer, but researchers have found that daily intakes of vitamin D by adults in the range of 4,000-8,000 IU are needed to maintain blood levels of vitamin D metabolites in the range needed to reduce the risk of breast and colon cancers by about half.
I sense the answer is "Yes." Are Nuclear Reactions Still Occurring at Fukushima?
720,000 Terabecquerels of Radioactive Materials in 100,000 Tonnes of Contaminated Water Ex-SKF via Rense. Excerpts:
When I posted the news about 100,000 tonnes of highly contaminated water at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, I forgot to mention this. (You can read about it in the Businessweek article here.)
That water is estimated to contain 720,000 terabecquerels of radioactive iodine and cesium.
That's another "Level 7" right there.
That's more than what has been released into the atmosphere, which the Nuclear Safety Commission estimates to be about 630,000 terabecquerels and Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency estimates to be about 370,000 terabecquerels.
Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers Of Fukushima Are Worse And Longer-lived Than We Think From Zero Hedge. Excerpts:
"I have said it's worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind and blowing in-land. It could very well have brought the nation of Japan to its knees. I mean, there is so much contamination that luckily wound up in the Pacific Ocean as compared to across the nation of Japan - it could have cut Japan in half. But now the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends that if there is a severe aftershock and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed."
So cautions Arnie Gundersen, widely-regarded to be the best nuclear analyst covering Japan's Fukushima disaster. The situation on the ground at the crippled reactors remains precarious and at a minimum it will be years before it can be hoped to be truly contained. In the near term, the reactors remain particularly vulnerable to sizable aftershocks, which still have decent probability of occurring. On top of this is a growing threat of 'hot particle' contamination risk to more populated areas as weather patterns shift with the typhoon season and groundwater seepage.
Precarious.
Europhrenia Excerpts:
According to the dictionary, schizophrenia is “a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.”
In Europe, they’re having the same thing—only writ large: It’s not that the political/financial leadership of Europe is at odds with the people—it’s that they’re two minds locked in a single body, struggling for control.
In the one hemisphere of this divided brain, the political/financial leadership is convinced the European union is something devoutly to be wished—no matter what the costs, no matter what fortune and the people throw up in opposition.
In the other hemisphere of the europhrenic brain, the people of Europe overwhelmingly do not want integration “at all costs”. In some parts (a lot of parts) of Europe, they don’t want integration at all.
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No country ever voted for monetary union—ever. European monetary integration only ever happened by either government diktat or the legislature overriding the will of the people.
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The people of Europe never wanted total European integration, not even in the best of times—whereas the European leadership adamantly insisted upon it.
And:
The basic problem of the current crisis is, countries of the European periphery—Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy—took on too much cheap debt from banks in the core eurozone countries—France, Germany and Holland—and now are unable to pay for it. It’s not more complicated than that.
(One could argue that the reason the European nations overspent was that the leaders were basically bribing the people with a false sense of affluence, bought and paid for via debt, so that they would acquiesce to the European Union and the eurozone. But that’s for another post.)
And remember: The real crisis has yet to begin! The unrest so far is in response to the first wave of official responses towards keeping the Euro solvent and restarting the economy. The real pain hasn't even started yet. In Greece, they're protesting, and Portugal just threw out their government. How long will it be before alienation and anger at the new government's inability to correct begins to rise?
The immediate question: How quickly (and to what scale) will this crisis bloom?
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