When building 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi plant exploded last month, those who saw the video footage were left to wonder why it was more severe than the other explosions. Adding to the mystery were reports that the containment and reactor in building 3 were still intact. Gundersen discusses several known facts about Fukushima 3 and theorizes on a possible scenario leading to the explosion.
Photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington, director and producer of the documentary film “Restrepo,” and photojournalist Chris Hondros were killed in the Libyan city of Misurata on Wednesday when a group of four photojournalists were attacked.Photographer, Guy Martin, suffered severe injuries. A fourth photographer, Michael Christopher Brown, is reported to have shrapnel injuries.
Democracy Now! interviewed Hondros April 5, 2007, about the graphic photographs he took in the northwestern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005 when U.S. troops opened fire on a family of eight approaching a checkpoint in a car. Both parents were killed while the six children in the backseat looked on. His photos were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Since the arrival of the first non-Natives in the state, California Indigenous peoples have been betrayed, abused, enslaved, pursued, hounded and corralled onto reservations. Most chillingly, the slaughter of Native Americans was actually financed by the government here, who found plenty of vigilante-type thugs amongst prospectors and interlopers who took money in exchange for massacres. The end result of this violence was that the Indigenous populations who had managed to survive the Spanish/Mexican occupation were then reduced by an estimated 90% over the course of a few decades. This is the story of ‘sunny’ and ‘golden’ California that is still not being properly taught to residents, leaving too many people with a deficit of wisdom when it comes to understanding the things that Native Americans are organizing and working for today.
We have a perfect example of the lack of education and resultant poor decision making going on right now in Northern California, in a place called Glen Cove in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can read about this issue in depth at ProtectGlenCove.org, but here, I will summarize my understanding of what is taking place and how you can help California to make a much needed right move.
Glen Cove (Sogorea Te in the local Ohlone language) has been a sacred site and burial place for resident Native Americans since at least 1500 BC. There are hundreds of people buried there by the waterside. Imagine a large and important cemetery you have visited where your family going back many generations has received an honorable burial, and you have a good picture of Glen Cove. Glen Cove also contains some of the last ancient shell mounds left in the Bay Area. Most have been demolished in the name of city planning and development. This site continues to be of great spiritual importance to California Indigenous Peoples today.
Unfortunately, the city of Vallejo and the Greater Vallejo Recreation District have laid plans to turn the burial grounds at Glen Cove into a public park, complete with parking lot, restrooms and picnic tables. The plan includes re-grading the earth and installing paved trails. This will involve much digging, of course. The final insult is that the plan includes intensive applications of toxic herbicides for years to come, and this last point should be of significant concern to all Californians who have yet to recover from the LBAM spray disaster.
