The scorn heaped upon BP (BP) Plc following the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history in 2010 wasn’t echoed at the U.S. Defense Department (USBODEFN). It stepped up purchases from the London-based company, making it the Pentagon’s biggest fuel supplier.
To critics, BP’s favored spot at the Pentagon cash window adds insult to the injury caused by the April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The incident killed 11 workers, sullied hundreds of miles of coastline and crippled the region’s fishing and tourism industries.
“When BP still owes billions of dollars in possible fines and penalties for their spill in the Gulf of Mexico, our military shouldn’t renew lucrative contracts” for the company, said Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. It’s time “for our government to stand up to BP,” Markey said in an e- mail.
‘Not Right’
“BP still hasn’t fulfilled its commitment to fund the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico, but they pocketed $26 billion of profits last year, thanks in part to these government contracts, and that’s not right,” Jeremy Symons, senior vice president at the National Wildlife Federation in Reston, Virginia, said in an interview.
the worst industrial accident in the u.s….so far.
Most of the contract money awarded to BP by the Defense Department was subject to full and open competition, according to federal procurement data. The company offered the lowest price, said Michelle McCaskill, a spokeswoman for the Defense Logistics Agency, which buys fuel for the Pentagon.
Government agencies are allowed to suspend or disqualify companies from receiving contracts if they have committed or are suspected of committing wrongdoing.
“BP is neither suspended nor debarred and is therefore eligible to offer on and receive U.S. government contracts,” McCaskill said in an e-mail.
EPA Decision
The Gulf catastrophe may yet cost BP some of its business with the Pentagon, from which the company received $7.06 billion in fuel contracts in the last five years.
The Environmental Protection Agency “has not yet determined whether to take further debarment action against BP as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,” Stacey Dey- Foy, director of EPA’s Suspension and Debarment Division, said in an e-mailed statement. Dey-Foy declined to say when the EPA would make a decision or whether debarment was part of continuing negotiations with the company.
BP has been cited with violations of the federal Clean Water Act, which allows the government to seek fines of $1,100 a barrel of oil spilled automatically, a figure that can rise to as much as $4,300 a barrel if a judge finds the company was grossly negligent in allowing the pollution to occur.
The maximum penalty would be $4.51 billion, using the $1,100-a-barrel fine and the government’s estimate of barrels spilled. A finding of gross negligence would boost that figure to $17.6 billion.
Violations of the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts typically result in the barring of specific facilities where the problems occurred, rather than punishing the company as a whole. The EPA has indefinitely disqualified two BP facilities from doing government work due to other violations.
The agency in 2009 barred the company’s refinery in Texas City, Texas, after an explosion that killed 15 workers and injured 170 others, according to EPA data. In 2008, the EPA disqualified BP’s Prudhoe Bay Unit on the North Slope in Alaska after a leak spilled between 200,000 and 270,000 gallons of crude oil into a nearby lake and tundra area.
i’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, so here it is. sorry it runs on a bit, but i hope you enjoy the music.
this was done in a spirit of public documentation, and the images were all captured over 7 hours, from 11:30 am until 6:30ish.
sometimes the air is so thick with chemtrails, i choke. i’m seriously considering wearing filtering devices outdoors. this area gets hit a lot to take advantage of weather systems moving onto the continent from the pacific.
i might add some notation for this. (done!)
this is a training video for me. i may be old, but i can still pick up new skills.
opening track: the orb, little fluffy clouds
second track: tuxedomoon, km/seeding the clouds
i do not own the rights to the music, but found the tunes appropriate. made with openshot.
this blog powered by linux
i use easy peasy for my netbook. still my device of choice.
the judge rules that, by plugging into to the internet, you voluntarily give up any expectation of privacy. they have all your data anyway…
Privacy, schmivacy
Court re-iterates that, by and large, we have no expectation of digital privacy.
Among other reasons for denial, Judge David Campbell said that Rigmaiden had no “reasonable expectation of privacy” when using a mobile Internet hotspot (“aircard”) from Verizon. And ultimately, that’s how law enforcement agents tracked him down and arrested him.
Virtually everything about Defendant’s actions related to the apartment was fraudulent. Defendant rented the apartment using the name of a deceased individual, provided a forged California driver’s license to support the false identity, used the driver’s license number from another person in support of the forged license, and provided a forged tax return to support his purported ability to pay rent. Defendant used the laptop he had procured through fraud in the apartment, and connected to the Internet with the aircard purchased with a false identity while using the account with Verizon that he maintained using a false identity. Even the electricity that lighted the apartment and powered the computer and aircard was purchased in a false name. What is more, while living in the apartment under false pretenses, Defendant had $70,000 in cash, a false passport, and a copy of his laptop computer in a storage unit (also rented under false pretenses) ready for a quick escape.
One who so thoroughly immerses himself in layers of false identities should not later be heard to argue that society must recognize as legitimate his expectation of privacy in the location and implements of his fraud. The Court concludes that Defendant’s presence in apartment 1122 was akin to the “burglar plying his trade in a summer cabin during the off season.”
Campbell, in his 52-page decision, also cited the 1976 case, United States v. Miller. That decision later helped influence the third-party doctrine:
The reasoning of Miller applies to the historical records obtained by the United States. They are not the customer’s private papers. Once a customer makes a call, communicates over the Internet, leases an apartment, or uses the services of an alarm company, he has no control over the business record made by the business of that transaction. Instead, the record created is a business record of the provider. The choice to create and store the record is made by the provider, and the provider controls the format, content, and duration of the records it chooses to create and retain. . . . Moreover, these records pertain to transactions to which the companies were a participant. The assignment of a particular cell tower to process a call is made by the cell phone company to facilitate the functioning of its network; the ISP uses the IP address to route Internet communications it transmits; the rental company maintains a rental file for each occupant; and an alarm service independently maintains records of the equipment it installs and maintains. Thus, under Miller, the business records obtained by the government are not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
The judge concluded:
Contrary to Defendant’s arguments, federal courts consistently rely on Smith and Miller to hold that defendants have no reasonable expectation of privacy in historical cell-site data because the defendants voluntarily convey their location information to the cell phone company when they initiate a call and transmit their signal to a nearby cell tower, and because the companies maintain that information in the ordinary course of business.
Court Ruling Gives FBI Too Much Leeway on Surveillance Technology
In today’s decision denying the motion to suppress, the judge held that information about how the stingray operates – such as the fact that it scoops up third party data – was merely a “detail of execution which need not be specified.” We respectfully but strongly disagree.
If the government has probable cause to believe a suspect lives at a particular address and wants a search warrant, it obviously needs to tell the court if the address is a 100-unit apartment building and that the government intends to search all 100 units until it finds the suspect. Omitting such information would never be considered a “detail of execution.” Law enforcement should be held to the same standard when they conduct electronic surveillance.
The judge dismissed the significance of the stingray’s impact on third parties because the government deleted and did not review the third-party data after it located Mr. Rigmaiden. But the Fourth Amendment does not include a “no harm, no foul” rule. The violation arises from the fact that the government searched people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. This is a violation even if the government doesn’t later use the information against those third parties. – from the aclu northern california website
THIS IS WIRED.com’s COVERAGE:
A legal fight over the government’s use of a secret surveillance tool has provided new insight into how the controversial tool works and the extent to which Verizon Wireless aided federal agents in using it to track a suspect.
Court documents in a case involving accused identity thief Daniel David Rigmaiden describe how the wireless provider reached out remotely to reprogram an air card the suspect was using in order to make it communicate with the government’s surveillance tool so that he could be located. - Secrets of FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Revealed in Court Fight
Over the course of a three-hour hearing in the U.S. District Court in Arizona, Rigmaiden, 31, asserted that the warrant the government obtained only authorized Verizon Wireless to provide agents with data about the air card but did not authorize agents to use the invasive stingray device. He also asserted that Verizon Wireless “reprogrammed” his air card to make it interact with the FBI’s stingray, something that he says was outside the bounds of the judge’s order.
Rigmaiden and civil liberties groups who have filed amicus briefs in the case also maintain that the government failed its duty to disclose to the judge who issued the warrant that the device they planned to use not only collected data from the target of an investigation but from anyone else in the vicinity who was using an air card or other wireless communication device. - Government Fights for Use of Spy Tool That Spoofs Cell Towers
In order to use the stingray with Rigmaiden’s air card, the defendant asserts in court documents that Verizon reprogrammed his air card so that when an incoming voice call arrived, the card would disconnect from any legitimate cell tower to which it was already connected, and send real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI. This allowed the FBI to position its stingray in the neighborhood where Rigmaiden resided. The stingray then “broadcast a very strong signal” to force the air card into connecting to it, instead of reconnecting to a legitimate cell tower, so that agents could then triangulate signals coming from the air card and zoom-in on Rigmaiden’s location.
To make sure the air card connected to the FBI’s simulator, Rigmaiden says that Verizon altered his air card’s Preferred Roaming List so that it would accept the FBI’s stingray as a legitimate cell site and not a rogue site, and also changed a data table on the air card designating the priority of cell sites so that the FBI’s fake site was at the top of the list. – Judge Allows Evidence Gathered From FBI’s Spoofed Cell Tower
as many doctors continue to push addictive drugs onto their patients for the profits of pharmaceutical companies, doctors with any sense of ethics continue to convince Americans to get off their fat, lazy asses and take care of themselves, rather than expecting pills to make everything better.
meanwhile, politicians use this epidemic to push for more surveillance on doctors and patients…but give pharmaceutical companies a free pass.
Prescription drug-related deaths continue to rise in U.S.
Despite efforts by law enforcement and public health officials to curb prescription drug abuse, drug-related deaths in the United States have continued to rise, the latest data show.
Figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that drug fatalities increased 3% in 2010, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Preliminary data for 2011 indicate the trend has continued.
The figures reflect all drug deaths, but the increase was propelled largely by prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin, according to just-released analyses by CDC researchers.
The numbers were a disappointment for public health officials, who had expressed hope that educational and enforcement programs would stem the rise in fatal overdoses.
“While most things are getting better in the health world, this isn’t,” CDC director Tom Frieden said in an interview. “It’s a big problem, and it’s getting worse.”
Drugs overtook traffic accidents as a cause of death in the country in 2009, and the gap has continued to widen.
Overdose deaths involving prescription painkillers rose to 16,651 in 2010, the CDC researchers found. That was 43% of all fatal overdoses.
The numbers come amid mounting pressure to reduce the use of prescription painkillers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering a proposal to limit daily doses of painkillers and restrict their use to 90 days or less for non-cancer patients. The proposal also would make such drugs available to non-cancer patients only if they suffer from severe pain.
“The data supporting long-term use of opiates for pain, other than cancer pain, is scant to nonexistent,” Frieden said. “These are dangerous drugs. They’re not proven to have long-term benefit for non-cancer pain, and they’re being used to the detriment to hundreds of thousands of people in this country.”
Among the most promising tools to combat the problem, Frieden said, are computerized drug monitoring programs that track prescriptions for painkillers and other commonly abused narcotics from doctor to pharmacy to patient. Frieden said such programs should be used to monitor doctors’ prescribing as well as patients’ use.
“You’ve got to look at the data to see where the problems are,” he said. “You don’t want to be flying blind.”
In California, officials do not use the state’s prescription drug monitoring program, known as CURES, to proactively seek out problem patients or physicians. The state’s medical board initiates investigations of doctors only after receiving a complaint. Legislation awaiting action in Sacramento would increase funding for CURES and provide more investigators to police excessive prescribing, among other measures. – from the l.a. times
How Many are Dying From Prescription Drugs?
Nearly 20 percent of Americans have used prescription drugs for nonmedicinal reasons, three-quarters of whom may be abusing them. Legal prescription drug abuse is a silent epidemic, and is part of the reason why the modern American medical system has become the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. Authored in two parts by Gary Null, PhD, Carolyn Dean, MD ND, Martin Feldman, MD, Debora Rasio, MD, and Dorothy Smith, PhD, the comprehensive Death by Medicine article described in excruciating detail how everything from medical errors to adverse drug reactions to unnecessary procedures caused more harm than good.
In a June 2010 report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, study authors said that in looking over records that spanned from 1976 to 2006 (the most recent year available) they found that, of 62 million death certificates, almost a quarter-million deaths were coded as having occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors.
An estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the U.S. every year.
The costs of adverse drug reactions to society are more than $136 billion annually — greater than the total cost of cardiovascular or diabetic care.
Adverse drug reactions cause injuries or death in 1 of 5 hospital patients.
The reason there are so many adverse drug events in the U.S. is because so many drugs are used and prescribed – and many patients receive multiple prescriptions at varying strengths, some of which may counteract each other or cause more severe reactions when combined.
There are numerous repercussions to a society that eats, breathes and sleeps prescription medications, not the least of which is its impact on children. Between 2001 and 2008, there was a 36 percent increase in hospital admissions, and a 28 percent increase in emergency room visits, among children 5 and younger who had accidentally ingested medication. ER visits for ingestion of prescription opioid painkillers, such as Oxycodone, increased 101 percent!
And in 2009, there were nearly 4.6 million drug-related visits to U.S. emergency rooms nationwide, with more than half due to adverse reactions to prescription medications – most of which were being taken exactly as prescribed. When you add in the growing numbers of people who are using these drugs recreationally or due to addiction, you begin to see the magnitude of the problem that the pharmaceutical industry is propagating.
Unfortunately, this problem is now seriously impacting the next generation. When you were a teenager you may have snuck a beer or two at a party … nowadays teens will mix a variety of prescription pills together in a bowl and take a mouthful of them like candy! The kids think this is a safe way to get high, since they see their parents taking the same medications all the time, but it often turns out to be a literal prescription for disaster that can even be deadly. - from dr. mercola, The New Epidemic Sweeping Across America (and it’s Not a Disease)
The U.S. federal government spends nearly $4 billion on its drug war, the bulk of which is spent fighting cocaine. Nearly 1 million people are arrested each year for marijuana.
rush limbaugh’s famous bust for prescription drug addiction and prescription fraud helped glamorize prescription pill abuse and trivialized the problems because he got away with it.
Both drugs kill only a fraction of its users compared to the killer available at most pharmacies: Prescription painkillers. Since 2003, more overdoses have involved opioid analgesics than heroin and cocaine combined. Scientists have yet to confirm a single overdose of marijuana.
It’s tough to argue. Prescription painkillers are an epidemic. Popular Science recently published a fascinating graphic analyzing overdose deaths since 1999. The findings are alarming. Overdoses have doubled between 1999 and 2010, and half are from opioid pharmaceuticals such as Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet.
In 2010, 38,239 died of overdoses of heroin, cocaine, alcohol, LSD, opium, mescaline, prescription pills and other drugs. Half of those, 16,651, were from opiates that are completely legal with a prescription, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ex-President Clinton’s foundation vows to cut the number of OD deaths over next five years
Last April in East Harlem a retired police officer shot dead an armed gunman who held up a pharmacy looking for Oxycontin and Percocet. The suspect’s accomplice surrendered.
“The NYPD has seen firsthand the destructive power of addiction to Oxycontin,” Kelly said. “One of our own police officers who became addicted to the pills after incurring an injury on the job began robbing drug stores at gunpoint. He, like many others we’ve seen, demanded Oxy by name, but left the cash in an open register untouched.
“If that doesn’t illustrate the power of addiction, nothing does.”
Between 2004 and 2010 the rate of emergency room visits related to painkillers nearly tripled in the city, Kelly said.
In response, the NYPD and the Drug Enforcement Administration has formed a new unit that allows police access to a national database that tracks how controlled substances are distributed.
Police also started “Operation Safety Cap.” The department now has a database of nearly 6,000 area licensed pharmacists, Kelly said.
Officers are visting their businesses to make security recommendations — and many of them have agreed to let police place “bait bottles” on pharmacy shelves.
as always, the rich can get away with drug abuse, while the poor go to prison
Rush Limbaugh and prosecutors in the long-running prescription fraud case against him have reached a deal calling for the only charge against the conservative commentator to be dropped without a guilty plea if he continues treatment, his attorney said Friday.
Limbaugh turned himself in to authorities on a warrant filed Friday charging him with fraud to conceal information to obtain prescriptions, said Teri Barbera, a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Jail. He and his attorney Roy Black left about an hour later, after Limbaugh was photographed and fingerprinted and he posted $3,000 bail, Barbera said.
Prosecutors’ three-year investigation of Limbaugh began after he publicly acknowledged being addicted to pain medication and entered a rehabilitation program. They accused Limbaugh of “doctor shopping,” or illegally deceiving multiple doctors to receive overlapping prescriptions, after learning that he received about 2,000 painkillers, prescribed by four doctors in six months, at a pharmacy near his Palm Beach mansion.\
Limbaugh, who pleaded not guilty Friday, has steadfastly denied doctor shopping. Black said the charge will be dismissed in 18 months if Limbaugh complies with court guidelines. – from cbs news, Rush Limbaugh Arrested On Drug Charges
if people treated themselves with respect and developed healthy habits, they would not feel much need for prescription pills to make them feel better.
Where do we even start with this mess? How did America get to this point – where we are in danger of being over-run by the allies of a rogue intelligence agency that we are powerless against? How did the USA go from being the champion of the free world to being the greatest threat to the peace and security of its own citizens, and instant death from remote-control-in-the-skies for everyone else on earth?
It’s tempting to start out with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but the story starts with the creation of the CIA and the National Security State, founded in 1947 by President Harry Truman to address the fact that, with the war against fascism over, it was time for the US government to rid itself of communists and other socialists who had poured into President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal administration. The fear being that communists loyal to Russia’s revolutionary leader and communist party chairman Joseph Stalin would help him gradually transform the US into a communist state.
Government and business leaders wanted to ensure that there were “trusted people” in charge of things here, behind the scenes. These unaccountable, largely unknown people would be free to pursue their own agenda, without interference from government oversight and regulation. They set up fake businesses and NGOs. They hired CIA operatives to help facilitate business overseas and converted media mouthpieces to their cause.
They justified this by making sure the world knew of the dangers of “creeping socialism.” For years, the world was able to watch the Congress of the United States, along with their partners in business, destroy people’s lives by accusing them of being communists. Sometimes the accusations were merely petty acts of malice against people who had rejected the committee chairman’s homosexual advances – this happening in an era much more judgemental and less accepting of ANY expression of sexuality, much less one which many people could not comprehend.
Despite the fact that several courageous individuals succeeded in exposing the gross abuse of power of the anti-communists (even today, one of the more vocal anti-communists’ name is used to describe persecution for political gain – “McCarthyism.”), several of them retained power, and even increased this power in the decades afterwards – both Richard Nixon (HUAC) and Ronald Reagan (anti-communist president of the Screen Actors Guild) eventually took over the White House (in possession of the CIA since the intelligence/industry coup that had JFK assassinated), largely on the political clout earned in the 1940′s and 50′s anti-communist witch-hunts.
The longterm consequences of the 1963 coup has been a nation in a state of perpetual warfare. At first, the war was against the Communist Menace, anywhere on the globe (Greece, Iran, Guatemala, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, the list goes on…). After the Soviet Union collapsed – as it was always intended to – the old Cold Warriors needed a new boogeyman to seek out and destroy anywhere an oil field or other valuable natural resources were in danger of being stolen from American corporations by foreigners.
However, in the 1970s a glitch in the system developed. The American people had become unwilling to finance and die for wars abroad, being fought for very unclear purposes. Two strategies were developed to compensate for this. First, blue-blood businessmen helped the CIA set up their own drug-running operations. This would give them international contacts, with people who would do just about anything for money. It would also give the CIA a ways of building a “black budget” of money from drug-running operations, with the good people of the United States and their elected representatives none the wiser.
Also, this allowed industries to develop their own private military and intelligence businesses. Both to set up their own smuggling networks, and to deal with those pesky foreigners who kept trying to utilize their nation’s natural resources for the benefit of the local population. How dare they!
This privatization and outsourcing of warfare for the benefit of multinational corporations picked up steam under the guidance of President James Earl Carter, who came up with the brilliant idea of recruiting and arming the most intolerant and violent people to be found on Earth and sending them to fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, rather than risk an outright war if the US were involved in some kind of official capacity. These mujahadeen eventually became the current crop of Afghan warlords and Opium barons. We are allegedly at war with this group, forever. We are currently arming this group. Not the exact same people, of course – but the ideology (or “theology” if you want to legitimize their insane version of Islam) remains the same. They exist to cause violence and chaos in countries not under the direct control of one of “their” Imans. There are no nations that fit this description, and the Holy Terror Army (a name i just made up and will now use to refer to any fundamentalist religion that resorts to extreme violence to impose it’s version of “god’s” law on nonbelievers) is spreading nightmarish violence around the world.
Prior to this current age of holy terror, acting President Ronald Reagan expanded the proxy wars to Angola, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Cambodia, and Grenada. His successor invaded Panama and Kuwait. And dirty old man Bill Clinton gave al Qaeda it’s biggest test, installing the CIA’s Holy Terror Army into the former Yugoslavia.
After that, the CIA/al Qaeda alliance was ready for the big time, and despite having trained, funded, and armed the Holy Terror Army, President Slick Willy justified military actions abroad by claiming they were targeting the workings of Holy Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. This was the reason given for striking a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan being built to provide cheap prescription drugs to a continent being decimated by AIDS. Millions of Africans have died over the years due to this, and not just of AIDS - they’ve died of numerous maladies that could have been treated with pharmaceuticals, but the patent-holders demand prices that few people in Africa can afford.
Which brings us to 9/11/2001, the invasion of a country for fun and profit, and the start of a second perpetual war, the first one being the war on drugs, which the U.S. intentionally escalates by selling arms to drug cartels.
So, the CIA has assassinated an American President, set up an international drug-running operation which employs the most insanely violent people imaginable, and conducts wars with proxy armies which it cannot control, only finance. And the Government continues to use the war on drugs as a pretext to wage war on its own citizens, despite a proven will by the American public to legalize Ganja. But, this isn’t enough.
The war on terror has to be continually justified, despite a proven inability to militarily defeat a state of mind. Otherwise, it could lose its precious funding. Money is hard to come by, with the Government printing it as fast as it can in order to give it to European Banking cartels. There’s nothing left for the rest of us. I guess we are supposed to take solace in the roles left to us – fodder for their highly profitable, never-ending wars – and learn to love Big Brother.
Here in the spring of 2013, it looks as if the cycle has run its course, and the extreme violence of the late 20th century is finally coming back to its spawning grounds in North America. In the past two years, there have been numerous instances of mass shootings that were so obviously orchestrated by someone other than the “fall guy,” who usually ends up dead, that the Government is losing credibility. Washington has lost the Hearts and Minds campaign in the homeland, to the bloggers.
In addition to being nothing more than future collateral damage to our government, Americans are also guinea pigs in Monsanto’s GMO playground. They have been given immunity from prosecution for the damage their poisons are causing.
Our government is unaccountable to us. It is out of control, and the people in the positions of political power can only find solutions to the problems the banks, corporations, Holy War Terrorists, and drug cartel violence create by spreading more of the same.
If the US government continues to escalate the war of attrition it is waging against Americans, there may come a day when we welcome intervention by some foreign power. In the meanwhile, some countries may not wait for an invitation to intervene here. Just as they are saying about Syria, and like they said about Bosnia, the world cannot sit idly by and watch a violent regime continue to slaughter its own people.
It seems like our nation is doomed, and if we don’t want to go down with it, we had damn well better starting envisioning our lives in the ruins of the former United States, and living our lives to accommodate the changing world around us – one that an out-of-control CIA completely fucked over. I doubt the people of Yugoslavia had much of an idea how things would go after Tito died. Their society imploded. NATO intervened. Everything fell apart. Fortunes were lost in the destruction. New fortunes were made in the reconstruction – mostly for foreign corporations. And I don’t see things turning out much differently for us.
rob los ricos
The National Security State
The apparatus of the National Security State, largely established in the National Security Act of 1947, laid the foundations for the extension of American hegemony around the globe. In short, the Act laid the foundations for the apparatus of the American Empire. The National Security Act created the National Security Council (NSC) and position of National Security Adviser, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC) as the Pentagon high command of military leaders, and of course, the CIA.
The first major foreign operation carried out by the National Security State, or rather, the “secret government,” was the overthrowing of a democratically elected government in Iran. In 1952, the British were concerned at the efforts of Iran’s new Prime Minister Mohommad Mossadeq, in nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, taking the monopoly away from British Petroleum. So the British intelligence, the SIS, proposed to the Americans a joint operation, and the CIA obliged.
On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the nation in which he warned America and indeed the world about the growing influence of the National Security State in what he referred to as the “military-industrial complex”:
“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Eisenhower was speaking from the point of view of having first-hand knowledge of this “influence” in the corridors of power, himself as President being unable to challenge it, and unable to do so simply in the first decade of the American Empire. He was warning against the influence of the interconnected relationship and organized power of the military, government, and industry, in that the growing influence of this “complex” was so vast that it threatened to take over the government and subvert democracy itself. It was the functions of this complex that saw profit created through war and empire, and thus, there was a constant drive and impetus towards pursuing empire and resorting to war. If you build a massive military structure, you are going to use it; if it is profitable to go to war, you will go to war.
Prescott Bush, the father of GHW Bush, later wrote Clover Dulles, the widow of Allen Dulles, in 1969, about his meeting with Allen Dulles after JFK had canned him in fall, 1961. “He [Allen] tried to make a pleasant evening of it, but I was rather sick of heart, and angry too, for it was the Kennedys that brought about the fiasco [Bay of Pigs]. And here they were making Allen to be the goat, which he wasn’t and did not deserve. I have never forgiven them.”
Note the last sentence of Prescott Bush. His son George Herbert Walker Bush says he can’t remember where he was on the day of the JFK assassination, despite his being a US Senate candidate staying in the Dallas, TX Sheraton the night of 11/21/63 and being in Dallas on 11/22/63. GHW Bush helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion and I think he was involved in the JFK assassination. – from The LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it wasn’t the Joint Chiefs alone who were trying to push for war, the “CIA also played a dangerous game during the crisis,” as Kennedy had ordered the CIA to halt all raids against Cuba during the crisis, “to make sure that no flying sparks from the agency’s secret operations set off a nuclear conflagration.” However, Bill Harvey, the CIA agent in charge of “Operation Mongoose,” the CIA plan which employed the Mafia to attempt to kill Castro, in brazen defiance of Kennedy’s orders, mobilized “every single team and asset that we could scrape together” and then dropped them into Cuba, “in anticipation of the U.S. invasion that the CIA hoped was soon to follow.”`
Robert Kennedy became the conduit through which the back-channel negotiations took place with the Soviets that ultimately ended the crisis without catastrophe. Nikita Khrushchev recounted the situation in his memoirs, in which he explained that Robert Kennedy “stressed how fragile his brother’s rule was becoming as the crisis dragged on,” which struck Khrushchev as “especially urgent.” Robert Kennedy warned the Soviets that, “If the situation continues much longer, the president is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control.” Khrushchev even later wrote that, “for some time we had felt there was a danger that the president would lose control of his military,” and that, “now he was admitting this to us himself.” Thus:
“Moscow’s fear that Kennedy might be toppled in a coup, Khrushchev suggested in his memoirs, led the Soviets to reach a settlement of the missile crisis with the president. “We could sense from the tone of the message that tension in the United States was indeed reaching a critical point.”
Thirteen days after the crisis began, the Soviets announced that they would remove the missiles from Cuba, with the US agreeing to remove missiles from US bases in Turkey and “pledging not to invade Cuba,” which Kennedy and future presidents would honour. At the announcement of the end to the crisis, General LeMay roared at Kennedy, “It’s the greatest defeat in our history,” and that, “We should invade today!” A defense analyst at the Pentagon, Daniel Ellsberg, who was consulting with Air Force generals and colonels on nuclear strategy at the end of the crisis, remarked that after the settlement was reached, “there was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles,” explaining, “not that I had the fear there was about to be a coup – I just thought it was a mood of hatred and rage. The atmosphere was poisonous, poisonous.” - from lew rockwell, The National Security State and the Assassination of JFK
Zbigniew Brzezinski:
How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
The above has been translated from the French by Bill Blum author of the indispensible, “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” and “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” Portions of the books can be read at: <http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm>
Mujahideen trained and funded by the US are among its deadliest foes
American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.
Since the fall of the Soviet puppet government in 1992, another 2,500 are believed to have passed through the camps. They are now run by an assortment of Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist.- from the gaurdian, Frankenstein the CIA created
CONTROLLING THE ILLEGAL DRUG TRADE
The more one studies the dark history of the US national security state, the more transparent the CIA – Wall Street connections become. The links to the international drug trade are less obvious, but have existed from the beginning, that is, from the days of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Time and again, the same pattern has played out: US military interventions in Southeast Asia, Central America and, since 2001, Afghanistan and Iraq, have been accompanied by a sharp increase in narco-trafficking, with all of the attendant evils. These include the plague of drug addiction, drug-related crime, the devastation of the family and as I hope to show, the corrupting of democratic institutions at home and abroad.
The morally bankrupt policies that are responsible for all of the above have had another deleterious effect: They have crippled our nation’s capacity to play a positive role on the world stage. It is no wonder that foreigners no longer view the United States with admiration and respect, but increasingly with fear and loathing. But US elites are oblivious to such concerns. They do not care, and are quite candid about what they view as the CIA’s pragmatic “need” to associate with unsavory individuals and criminals in the interest of furthering US foreign policy goals. Their realpolitik can be read between the lines of the policy papers. Take, for instance, the 1996 intelligence report, already noted, prepared by Maurice “Hank” Greenberg for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and for which Greenberg was nominated to replace John Deutch as director of the CIA. In the paper Greenberg affirms that “the capability to undertake [covert operations]….constitutes an important national security tool.” Later, in the section titled “Intelligence and Law Enforcement” he insists that foreign policy ought to take precedence over law enforcement when it comes to overseas operations. The bulk of U.S. intelligence efforts overseas is devoted to traditional national security concerns; as a result, law enforcement must ordinarily be a secondary concern. FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents operating abroad should not be allowed to act independently of either the ambassador or the CIA lest pursuit of evidence or individuals for prosecution cause major foreign policy problems or complicate ongoing intelligence and diplomatic activities.
This means, over and above diplomacy, that when criminals are judged to be intelligence assets, they are granted protection from prosecution (emphasis added) for narco-trafficking, money laundering, extortion, rape, even terrorism and murder. In 1982, the CIA and the US Department of Justice actually worked out a secret agreement to this effect. The deal exempted the CIA from having to report drug trafficking by CIA assets, which, notice, made a mockery of then presidential wife Nancy Reagan’s much ballyhooed “just say no” anti-drug campaign. At the time, most Americans trusted Ronald Reagan and believed that his administration was serious about the so-called war on drugs. But hindsight shows that the Reagan White House badly abused the public’s good faith.
The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, with which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high — more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and associated groups included ‘‘extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, ‘disappearances’ and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.’’ As part of President Reagan’s policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses. The United States lost more than 700 soldiers in the war.
The foreign policy advocated by Maurice Greenberg, above, is in large part responsible for the drug-related violence on the streets of our cities, and for the epidemic of narcotic addiction among our children, who have been sacrificed to the false god of national security. But the social carnage is not limited to the United States. Drug addiction in Muslim Iraq was almost unknown prior to the US invasion in 2003; but has since become a major problem. A similar recent explosion of heroin use has occurred in Iran, which, notice, is right next door to Afghanistan, where the poppies are grown with the blessing of the CIA. Such foreign policies are evil, a scourge upon the planet, yet, are intimately associated with US empire building. Quite simply, the US power elite has followed in the footsteps of the British and French who, in their day, also exploited the immensely profitable opium and heroin trade. The writer Chalmers Johnson has termed this descent into darkness the sorrow of empire.
The CIA’s secret collusion with the Department of Justice gave the CIA veto over law enforcement, effectively blunting the capacity of US drug enforcement agencies to interdict the flow of illegal drugs into the US. The timing was no accident. The deal coincided with the start of the CIA’s Contra war in Central America. This explains why, the next year, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), under pressure from the Pentagon, closed its office in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The flow of drugs through Honduras had not diminished; in fact, just the opposite. For years, the country had been a transfer point for illegal drug smuggling into the US, a reality that Contra leaders readily exploited to finance their war against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas; and they did so with the full knowledge and approval of the CIA. For many years after, Langley’s veto blocked legitimate efforts by US law enforcement to curb the drug trade.
I must emphasize that, meanwhile, the American people were kept in the dark about the policy and its effects, at every point in the chain: from the formulation of the policy to its implementation to the phony packaging of the policy for mass consumption. In fact, we only know about it, today, thanks to a courageous journalist named Gary Webb, who published a groundbreaking series of articles in 1996 in the San Jose Mercury News, exposing Contra links and CIA complicity in the crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged the black communities of Los Angeles in the 1980s. The series, appropriately titled “Dark Alliance”, was one of the first big stories to be carried on the Internet; and later, Webb expanded it into an important book by the same name, in which he lays out the voluminous evidence in stark detail. But it was Webb’s series of articles in 1996 that initially focused media attention on the drug issue; and which compelled CIA director John Deutch to announce an internal investigation. Meanwhile, the agency simultaneously launched a disinformation campaign to discredit Webb, whom it viewed as a serious threat.
The campaign against Gary Webb has been called “one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist’s competence in living memory.” The fawning mainstream press, always eager to do the CIA’s bidding, appeared to take pleasure in savaging the messenger, even while tacitly conceding that his facts were basically correct. One of the low points occurred on live TV, on November 15, 1996, when NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, wife of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, referred to Webb’s exhaustively documented expose as “a conspiracy theory,” the kiss of death for any serious journalist. At this same time, as we know, Greenspan was busily engineering the deregulation of Wall Street, setting the stage for the 2008 financial meltdown of the global economy. – from foreign policy journal, Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side Part 3: AIG and the Linkage to the Drug Trade
when assets go bad
Phillip (alternately, “Philip”) Marshall, 54, a career airline pilot who claimed to have once served as a contract pilot for the CIA and DEA during the Iran-Contra affair, shot and killed his two teenage children, and the family dog, then killed himself.
Michael Ruppert. Mike is a former LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) narcotics officer who in the late 1970′s, trained in narcotics by the U.S. Justice Department. The CIA tried to recruit Mike to traffic drugs with them. When Mike tried to expose the corruption that he saw (the moral thing to do), he was fired without cause. As Governor Jesse Ventura says, “Don’t just go along to get along.”
Mike Ruppert has spent the last 25 years fighting the system, trying to expose the lies and tyranny of the CIA (and many other offices of our government). This is no conspiracy theory, Mike Ruppert has presented over 6,000 documents indicting the U.S. government’s involvement in decades of heroin and cocaine drug-trafficking into the cities and towns of the United States. You can subscribe to Mike’s newsletter at www.copvcia.com or go to www.fromthewilderness.com
Sleeping With the Devil: How U.S. and Saudi Backing of Al Qaeda Led to 9/11
Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official, Milt Bearden at a Mujahideen training camp in North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987. (source RAWA)
The CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan … found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to “read” than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.
To this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. “It was worth it,” he said.
“Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union,” he said.
The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings ….
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books ….
John Adams once called the vice presidency, “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” FDR’s VP, John Nance Garner, said the job wasn’t “worth a pitcher of warm piss.”
It’s quotes like these that make Dick Cheney—who pretty much ran his own separate government from the VP’s office—all the more impressive, not to mention terrifying. For not only was Cheney out of control, he was out of control in a job that had no controls attached to it. No one had ever thought them necessary before.
Give the man credit for creativity. Cheney found even more ways to overturn the Constitution, undermine the separation of powers, and possibly make the U.S. government an accessory to murder many times over.
The New York Times broke half the story in Sunday’s paper as Scott Shane explained that “the Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney.” Congress finally found out eight years after Cheney gave the order, when CIA Director Leon E. Panetta informed the House and Senate intelligence committees upon learning of the program himself.
According to current law, when a U.S. intelligence agency is involved in a covert action, at least eight members of Congress—the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees—must be informed in order for the program to be legal.
CIA defenders insist compliance with the law is actually a gray area because “this program never went fully operational” as one official put it. And Panetta terminated the program as soon as he learned of it. But given the history of both Cheney and many in the CIA’s contempt for both Congress and the Constitution, it’s entirely possible that we still don’t know the full story. - from the daily beast
there are some flaws to this video, but it’s a treasury of good information.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the use of contractors reached a level unprecedented in U.S. military operations. As of March 31, 2010, the United States deployed 175,000 troops and 207,000 contractors in the war zones. Contractors represented 50 percent of the Department of Defense (DOD) workforce in Iraq and 59 percent in Afghanistan.
This increase is the logical outcome of a series of decisions going back decades. Force structure reductions ranging from the post-Vietnam decisions that moved most Army logistics support elements to the Army Reserve and Guard4 to the post–Cold War reduction that cut the Army from 18 to 10 divisions with corresponding cuts in support forces greatly reduced the Services’ ability to support long-term operations. Next, a series of decisions in the 1990s led to the employment of contractors in the Balkans for tasks from traditional camp-building to the new concept of “force development” that saw MPRI training the Croatian army. Finally, the decision to invade Iraq with minimum forces left the United States with too few troops in-theater to deal with the disorder that resulted from the removal of Saddam. Thus, it is understandable that the immediate, unanticipated need for large numbers of logistics and security personnel, the shortage of such troops on Active duty, and the precedent for using contractors in the Balkans caused the Pentagon to turn to contractors to fill the immediate operational needs. However, the subsequent failure to conduct a careful analysis of the wisdom of using contractors is less understandable. The executive branch has conducted numerous investigations into fraud, waste, and corruption in the contracting process. Congress has held hearings and established the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the U.S. Government has not systematically explored the essential question: Does using contractors in a conflict zone make strategic sense?
By the end of 2009, contractors reported almost 1,800 dead and 40,000 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the fighting in Afghanistan gets worse, contractors are now suffering more deaths than U.S. forces: “In the first two quarters of 2010 alone, contractor deaths represented more than half—53 percent—of all fatalities. This point bears emphasis: since January 2010, more contractors have died in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. military soldiers.” For practical purposes, these casualties were “off the books” in that they had no real impact on the political discussions about the war. As Peter Singer noted:
there was no outcry whenever contractors were called up and deployed, or even killed. If the gradual death toll among American troops threatened to slowly wear down public support, contractor casualties were not counted in official death tolls and had no impact on these ratings. . . . These figures mean that the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined. The losses are also far more than any single U.S. Army division has experienced.
Contractor casualties are not reported via the Pentagon, but only through the U.S. Department of Labor. Labor’s Web site notes that these are not comprehensive statistics but only represent those injuries and deaths that resulted in insurance claims. Thus, it is difficult if not impossible to determine how many additional casualties were suffered by other nations’ contractors in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
In reality, it is virtually impossible to determine the actual effectiveness of any contractors—armed or unarmed—until they begin to operate in theater (and only then if a member of the U.S. Government can observe the contractors as they operate).
Compounding the problems created by lack of quality control, the government does not control the contractor’s daily contact with abuse, intimidation, and even killing of local civilians such as the DynCorp employee who ran a child sex ring in the Balkans or the September 2007 Blackwater shootings in Nisour Square, Baghdad.
This lack of quality and tactical control greatly increases the impact of the third major problem: the United States is held responsible for everything the contractors do or fail to do. Despite the fact the United States has no effective quality or operational control over the contractors, the local population rightly holds it responsible for all contractor failures.
In addition to undercutting government legitimacy, the use of contractors may actually undercut local government power. In Afghanistan, security and reconstruction contracts have resulted in significant shifts in relative power between competing Afghan qawmsas well as allegations of corruption. Dexter Filkins, writing in the New York Times, notes that the power structure in Orugzan Province, Afghanistan, has changed completely due to the U.S. Government’s selecting Matiullah Khan to provide security for convoys from Kandahar to Tirin Kot:
With his NATO millions, and the American backing, Mr. Matiullah has grown into the strongest political and economic force in the region. He estimates that his salaries support 15,000 people in this impoverished prov ince. . . . This has irritated some local leaders, who say that the line between Mr. Matiullah’s business interest and the government has disappeared. . . . Both General [Nick] Carter [commander of ISAF South] and Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister, said they hoped to disband Mr. Matiullah’s militia soon—or at least to bring it under formal government control. . . . General Carter said that while he had no direct proof in Mr. Matiullah’s case, he harbored more general worries that the legions of unregulated Afghan security companies had a financial interest in prolonging chaos.
Thus, an unacknowledged but serious strategic impact of using contractors is to directly undercut both the legitimacy and the authority of the host nation government. - this article was originally published as Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Forum 260 (NDU Press, November 2010)
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that QinetiQ, a high tech defense contractor specializing in secret satellites drones and software used by U.S. special forces, was the victim of a sustained cybersecurity breach for several years starting in 2007.
According to Bloomberg, documents released in the Anonymous Stratfor hack reveal QinetiQ was compromised as part of a cyber-espionage attack originating in China — and notes the breach was part of a much broader campaign targetting U.S. contractors:
“QinetiQ’s espionage expertise didn’t keep Chinese cyber- spies from outwitting the company. In a three-year operation, hackers linked to China’s military infiltrated QinetiQ’s computers and compromised most if not all of the company’s research. At one point, they logged into the company’s network by taking advantage of a security flaw identified months earlier and never fixed [...]
QinetiQ was only one target in a broader cyberpillage. Beginning at least as early as 2007, Chinese computer spies raided the databanks of almost every major U.S. defense contractor and made off with some of the country’s most closely guarded technological secrets, according to two former Pentagon officials who asked not to be named because damage assessments of the incidents remain classified.“
U.S. intelligence reports ranked cyber threats as the top danger facing the country for the first time in April, but tensions have been running high about the government’s ability to protect digital assets and intelligence for years. A 2011 Department of Justice report noted that only 64 percent of FBI agents assigned to national security-related cyber investigations had the appropriate skills and expertise to handle those types of cases.
Government cybersecurity contracting exploded during the Bush Administration, with many roles traditionally filled by government employees or resources outsourced to external companies over whom the government has less oversight. The Obama Administration has made efforts to curb that trend, but that expansion, combined with a lack of cybersecurity expertise in the military and federal agencies, resulted in many cybersecurity defense operations being outsourced or completed under the heavy supervision of outside contractors. – from think progress, The U.S. Outsources Cybersecurity & Defense To Contractors That Keep Getting Hacked
The Syrian government has called on the United Nations to classify a leading rebel group as a terrorist organisation after its leader pledged allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda.
Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani heads the radical Nusra Front rebel group.
In a message posted online on Wednesday he pledged allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and supported calls for an Islamic state to be created in Syria.
It is now beyond reasonable doubt that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by his own National Security State in what was a violent coup d’état that is, an overthrowing of the legitimate elected government of the United States by force through the use of the clandestine black-ops services of the CIA, elements of the Secret Service, the US military, the FBI and organized crime.
Unless and until the United States publicly discloses to the citizenry that its duly elected government was overthrown in 1963 and that since then the replacement/imposter government has been at least technically/legally speaking illegitimate[12] it will likely be impossible to reverse the increasingly rapid disintegration of America. The reality is that since the murder of President John F. Kennedy, there has been an extra-constitutional imposter “government” in place which prior to that time existed only in the shadows. It has been given many different names including the “war party” the MIMIC (media, intelligence, military, industrial complex) the secret government, the shadow government etc. That entity or “Regime” as a result of the JFK assassination appears to have profoundly altered the trajectory of the United States by placing the country on a constant war footing and building and sustaining an enormous foreign military base presence throughout the world which serves to project American power and enlarge the “empire.” – from jericho rendezvous, After the JFK Assassination–a True Coup d’état: Is the Current US Government Legitimate?
A handful of polls conducted in the days after the Boston Marathon bombings show that US citizens are responding much differently than in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that killed roughly 3,000 people. Not only are Americans more opposed now to giving up personal freedoms for the sake of security than they were after 9/11, but other statistics show that distrust against the federal government continues to climb.
Just one day after the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing, pollsters with Fox News asked a sample of Americans, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce thethreat of terrorism?” Forty-three percent of the respondents said they would, while 45 percent said no. Comparatively, 71 percent of Americans asked a similar question in October 2001 said they’d be willing to give up personal freedoms, while only 20 percent opposed at the time.
A separate poll conducted by the Washington Post just three days after the Boston Marathon bombing reveals that nearly half of those surveyed say that the government will go too far in trying to prevent future acts of terrorism. The Post asked a random national sample of 588 adults, “Which worries you more: that the government (will not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights), or that it (will go too far in compromising constitutional rights in order to investigate terrorism)?” Days after the Boston bombing, 41 percent of respondents said the government will not go far enough, compared to 48 percent saying they’ll go too far. When similar questions were asked in 2006 and 2010, 44 percent and 27 percent said the government will go too far, respectively, signaling that for the first time in years Americans are overly concerned about a misuse of power on the part of Washington.
That isn’t to say that the Boston attack is necessarily inspiring Americans to question authority, though. Two months before Tsarnaev brothers allegedly detonated a pair of explosives near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, 53 percent of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center said the federal government is threatening their personal rights and freedoms. In November 2011, that statistic was only 30 percent. - from russia today, Americans troubled more by governmental abuse than terrorism
Police and private security personel monitor security cameras at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative on April 23, 2013 in New York City. (AFP Photo / John Moore)Police and private security personel monitor security cameras at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative on April 23, 2013 in New York City. (AFP Photo / John Moore)Police and private security personel monitor security cameras at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative on April 23, 2013 in New York City. (AFP Photo / John Moore)Police and private security personel monitor security cameras at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative on April 23, 2013 in New York City. (AFP Photo / John Moore)
The Syrian government has called on the United Nations to classify a leading rebel group as a terrorist organisation after its leader pledged allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda.
The call came as the opposition accused forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad of “savage” killings in the country’s south.
Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani heads the radical Nusra Front rebel group.
In a message posted online on Wednesday he pledged allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and supported calls for an Islamic state to be created in Syria.
The Syrian regime is demanding the UN “fulfil its role and preserve global security” by classing Nursa Front as an Al Qaeda linked entity.
the audacity the ruling powers display in denying the seriousness of the fukushima catastrophe is nothing short of spectacular, as they continue to operate nuclear plants around the world, and are planning for even more in the future.
but make no mistake about this – comparing the chernobyl incident to fukushima’s multiple, full meltdowns is like comparing apples to nuclear bombs. and it is on-going. forever. there’s no way to stop the radioactive slag from burning.
below the fukushima story is an update to the u.s.’s next false flag, the san onofre nuclear power plant, which will go critical and meltdwon if it is restarted in june (2013).
Fukushima is only beginning: whole world irradiated, forever
1. The bottom line about Fukushima Daiichi is an ELE (extinction level event) involving three reactors in meltdown since March 11, 2011, other damaged reactor cores, no efforts by anyone anywhere to contain the global catastrophe, other than ‘media damage control’.
2. (A) The reactor cores were designed to be under water. That means that the reactor cores were designed to be under water. The reactor cores must be put under water immediately, using existing technology, enabling retrieval of the hot cores by an international team of nuclear submarines. Disposal of nuclear waste is a secondary issue. Note: There is no legitimate disposal of nuclear waste possible, ever.
2. (B) As these are crimes perpetuated against all of humanity, willfully and maliciously triggering an uninterrupted ELE (extinction level event) International Criminal Court trials for the perpetrators of these nuclear crimes, and those complicit in the events and cover up are in order, followed by swift justice, which, upon guilty verdicts, requires death by hanging. ‘Extend and Pretend’ is an unacceptable course of non-action for dealing with these nuclear killers.
The International Criminal Court has the authority to hang these individuals until they are quite dead, upon guilty verdicts. Refer also to Nuremberg trials for further reference. You WERE warned, repeatedly, therefore, cease and desist walking quietly in this OPEN AIR AUSCHWITZ. Tell your friends and neighbors; your governments already know.
3. SIMPLICITY: ALL REACTORS LEAK ALL THE TIME.
WE ARE THE MEDIA NOW. WE HAVE BEEN POISONED. WE ARE STILL BEING POISONED. DO NOT WALK QUIETLY IN THIS OPEN AIR AUSCHWITZ.
SPERM COUNTS DOWN, GLOBALLY. IMMUNE SYSTEM DISEASES ESCALATING. MUTATIONS OCCURRING IN ALL LIFE FORMS.
WE SPIT ON THE GRAVES OF THE PRO-NUKERS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FUTURE MAIMINGS AND DEATHS OF BILLIONS.
4. JUST THE FACTS: RADIATION KILLS. 1,946 known lethal isotopes spew from all reactors which leak all the time. Radiation knows no boundaries. Tons of radioactive isotopes spewing from #Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants have already released enough radiation to maim and kill the entire population of earth, more than once.
No international interventions, based on economics….. the anticipated remaining economic life span of Japan is said to be less than 10 years from 3.11.11, therefore, no ROI (return on investment) available to global money marketeers. TEPCO bailout nearing completion and the nuclear money is going to other countries with their lies, deceptions and killing machines. The general populace fails to grasp that nuclear reactors are simply stationary nuclear weapons, designed to profitably maim kill, with plausible deniability.
5. PERSONALIZE THE FACTS: Nobody and Nothing escapes the consequences of #Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Catastrophe. Radiation poisoning is being called by many names, mysterious diseases, wasting diseases, compromised immune systems, heart diseases, cancers, fibromyalgia, diabetes, LOEF and more.
Early radiation poisoning mimics commonly identified immune and inflammatory diseases. Some life forms are dying quickly, others slowly. Smaller species are like the ‘canaries in the mine’ and the message they bring to humanity also goes unheeded. The children and the elderly go first, as well as those singing songs, carrying signs and marching in the streets….anywhere and everywhere.
[Note: Wise ones THINK LOCALLY, ACT GLOBALLY. OCCUPY VIRTUALLY and Use any/all tools to Occupy Virtually.]
ALL REACTORS LEAK ALL THE TIME. It is time to continue to pray for the dead and dying, fight like hell for the living, try the Pro-Nuker perpetrators for High Crimes Against Humanity and bring those of all levels of the cartels to swift justice, without fear or caution. Simultaneously, decommission/SHUT DOWN all existing nuclear reactors and commence trials globally for perpetrators of the industry.
FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS REMAIN IGNORANT. TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND TELL YOUR NEIGHBORS ABOUT FUKUSHIMA. (Your Governments already know.)
Do your own research (recognizing the nuclear propaganda machinery is well armed and funded, and the global internet is being systematically sanitized of truthful information about the Fukushima global disaster and cover up. Never Give Up. Never Give In. WE ARE THE MEDIA NOW.
Southern California Edison has submitted a formal request to federal regulators for a license amendment that would allow the San Onofre nuclear plant to be fired back up for the first time in more than a year.
The request submitted by Edison asks the NRC to make a decision on the proposed license amendment by May 24. The utility is proposing to run the plant at 70% of its current licensed power.
The formal request was similar to a draft request submitted last month, except that the company also committed to submitting a report to the NRC on the steam generators 60 days after every time it shuts down for inspections, instead of the usual 180 days.
NRC staff at last week’s meeting did not commit to meeting Edison’s target date, saying it might be a challenge to do so.
Even if the agency grants a license amendment, it would have to decide separately whether to allow the plant to be fired up again.
Edison has proposed to run the Unit 2 reactor at 70% power for five months before taking it offline for inspections. The company argues that the lower power level would eliminate the conditions that led the tubes to vibrate excessively and knock against each other and against support structures.
A unanimous Los Angeles City Council has demanded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission conduct extended investigations before any restart at the San Onofre atomic power plant.
The move reflects a deep-rooted public opposition to resumed operations at reactors perched in a tsunami zone near earthquake faults that threaten all of southern California.
Meanwhile, yet another top-level atomic insider has told ABC News that San Onofre Units 2 and 3 are not safe to operate.
On April 23, LA’s eleven City Council members approved a resolution directing the NRC to “make no decision about restarting either San Onofre unit” until it conducts a “prudent, transparent and precautionary” investigation. The city wants “ample opportunity” for public comment and confirmation that “mandated repairs, replacements, or other actions” have been completed to guarantee the public safety.
California’s largest city thus joins Del Mar, Encinitas, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Mission Viejo, San Clemente, Santa Monica, Solana Beach, Vista, Berkeley, Fairfax and the San Diego Unified School District board in asking the NRC to take all steps necessary to guarantee the public safety. Some resolutions include the demand that the NRC make utility officials testify under oath in public before San Onofre might be allowed to go back on line.
EITHER Tamerlan Tsarnaev WAS THE GREATEST TERRORIST OF ALL TIME, OR HE WAS AN ACTIVE AGENT OF AN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY IN THE U.S.
despite constant surveillance by the FBI, warnings by russian intelligence, his name appearing on numerous american intelligence agencies’ “watchlists,” and attending college at a public AMERICAN university, RIGHT UNDER THE NOSES of HUNDREDS of police and law enforcement personnel – with their face recognition technology, wireless surveillance, and bomb-sniffing dogs – this ONE KID was able to outsmart the entire, multi-billion dollar american security complex and bomb the boston marathon. Single-handedly. and this is the story they WANT us to believe.
while most news outlets are treating the story of last week’s bombing of the boston marathon as…well…last week’s news, the official story continues to come unravelled.
it seems as if the goal is to justify starting a war against syria and then iran. and, until we get with the program, we can expect more attacks like sandy hook and boston.
it also seems clear that the u.s. government cannot achieve the desired results from their domestic terror incidents while the internet here is unfiltered. it must be locked down BEFORE they can impose some official bullshit story upon the american public. so, they have…
The Shock Doctrine (trailer)
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts…. New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets. – see more about the book and film Shock Doctrine, by naomi klein. there are also several good youtube videos of her speaking about this topic.
The last two weeks have seen a series of victories for the Syrian Army across Syria. It appears that 2 full companies of so-called “Free Syrian Army” fighters have been annihilated near Damascus, while government forces have restored order in parts of Homs and along the previously porous Lebanese-Syrian border.
Time has run out for the West, and it appears that they are desperately seeking any excuse to rescue their failing proxy war. When urgent, but otherwise unjustified military intervention is needed, a “humanitarian” pretext is usually invented – as it was in Libya. Failing that, as the West has already clearly done in Syria, an even more tenuous narrative has been resurrected from its well-earned grave. CNN has reported in their article, “Hagel: Evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria,” that:
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Thursday that the United States has evidence that chemical weapons have been used in Syria.
This comes a couple of days after an Israeli intelligence official said Damascus was using weapons banned under international law against its own people in the country’s civil war. Syria has said rebels have used chemical weapons.
U.S. President Barack Obama has said the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against its own people in the country would be a “game changer.”
Hagel said the intelligence agencies’ assessment was reached with “varying degrees of confidence,” meaning that they lacked proof or overwhelming evidence. He said the conclusion was “reached within the last 24 hours” and that the White House delivered a letter outlining the findings to Congress Thursday morning.
Syrian army seizes strategic town near capital: “The disaster has struck, the army entered Otaiba. The regime has managed to turn off the weapons tap,” a fighter from the town told Reuters via Skype. “The price of a bullet will go from 50 Syrian pounds to 1,000 Syrian pounds (6.5 pounds) now, but we must pay and retake it. It’s the main if not the only route.”
Hundreds of Europeans fighting in Syria, says EU expert: Intelligence agencies are concerned some could join groups linked to al-Qaeda and later return to Europe to launch terrorist attacks. The UK, Ireland and France are among the EU countries estimated to have the highest numbers of fighters in Syria.
Hague warns of new Syrian terror threat: William Hague said there was now “uncontested space” in Syria where Islamist groups were free to establish training camps that would equip and train foreign fighters, including British extremists.
Syria says backing rebels risks new attacks on America: – U.S. support for Syrian rebels may lead to more attacks on American soil like those of September 11, said a senior Syrian official who warned that Islamist fighters would spread “the fire of terrorism” around the world.
‘Confusion and inconsistencies’: How US plans to distract public from real truth about Boston
The initial questions about the Boston bombing are behind us, but former FBI employee Sibel Edmonds believes the pursuit of truth will eventually lead to a far more secret agenda by the US, which she reveals to RT.
RT:We’ve learned in the last hour that Russia warned the FBI about the older Tsarnaev brother and his potential links with radical Islamists, but the FBI found nothing suspicious. How is that possible?
Sibel Edmonds: Actually, we predicted that the unnamed foreign country [Western media didn’t name the source immediately] was in fact Russia, two days ago. We have too little facts, too much false information and speculations. But just look at the period they are talking about. When you listen to the suspect’s mother, she’s talking about a period of three to five years. According to FBI officials, they received this information, this warning, in 2011. So we have that inconsistency right there. The other important inconsistency that we should pay attention to is the mother’s description of FBI mannerisms and conversation with the suspects and the family when they were visiting them for the last three to five years. That fits exactly the recruitment style of the intelligence community. When you go to the suspects, and one moment you’re saying “We know you’re decent, we know you’re doing nothing wrong, we know you’re good”, and the next minute they’re saying “You can be dangerous”, right after receiving that information from the Russian government, to threaten them with that information for what purpose – to recruit them as informants or for other agendas. – see more, including video interview with sibel edmonds, from russia today
Members of a SWAT team search for 19-year-old bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev on April 19, 2013 in Watertown, Massachusetts. (AFP Photo / Mario Tama)
The Shadow Government Of Vice President Dick Cheney Is Only Now Becoming Clear
On Sept. 12, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that ”what we are seeing is the definition of a new battlefield in the world, a twenty-first century battlefield.”
On Sept. 16, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said that America would have to “spend time in the shadows” and work on the “dark side.”
Since then the U.S. has been engaged in a global war on terror, but Americans haven’t known how exactly it is being fought.
As The World Trade Center towers crumbled to the ground, so too did the system of oversight and review of lethal covert ops that had been carefully constructed over the course of the previous decade.
In place of that system, Scahill writes, a “War Council” led by Cheney advisor and fellow neoconservative David Addington developed legal justifications for capturing, torturing, and/or killing any al Qaeda suspect anywhere in the world.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev: experts puzzled as hunt for terror links gleans little
Lack of connections to terrorist groups means experts are increasingly seeing the elder Tsarnaev as a self-radicalised lone wolf – underlining the daunting task of piecing together a motive.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev has become the focal point of a global FBI investigation into whether any organised group or wider conspiracy lay behind last week’s Boston Marathon bombings. The 26-year-old, who has been identified through fingerprinting as the man killed in the shootout with police in the Watertown suburb of Boston, is widely assumed to have been the mastermind of the marathon outrage, with his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly playing the role of junior partner.
Yet so far the hunt for clues as to the motivation of the Tsarnaev brothers has failed to throw up concrete evidence that they were inspired to militancy by any particular extremist cleric or politician. Nor is there any known link to any nationalist or Islamist group in the Caucasus region that they regarded as their homeland, a link which would suggest they were recruited as foot soldiers and given operational instructions to strike the Boston Marathon.
Federal investigators and counter-terrorism experts are increasingly of the view that the brothers were acting alone. They surmise is that the elder Tsarnaev largely provided his own motivation and training, through the internet. – from the guardian, u.k.
CISPA: The House passed it a week ago, but most don’t know what it is
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, more commonly called, CISPA, is a proposed law that would allow the sharing of Internet traffic information between the U.S. government and technology and manufacturing companies. The Bill, known as H.R. 624, was first introduced in 2012; and then reintroduced to Congress in its current form by US Representative Mike Rogers, on February 13, 2013. It was passed by the House of Representatives on April 18th.
Proponents of CISPA say that it is a needed amendment to the National Security Act of 1947, which does not cover cybercrime, and a powerful weapon that the government can use against the growing threat of cyber-terrorism from countries such as China and Iran. The bill’s purpose, they claim, is to allow federal security agencies to notify tech and manufacturing companies of any detected cyber-attack that may do them harm, and in turn, allow those companies to inform those agencies in kind.
Critics of CISPA, however, don’t buy it. They say that CISPA is an affront to American civil liberties, and the privacy of its citizens. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an international non-profit digital rights group based in the U.S., “the bill grants broad new powers, allowing companies to identify and obtain “threat information” by looking at your private information.”
EFF also says that “it (the bill) is written so broadly that it allows companies to hand over large swaths of personal information to the government with no judicial oversight—effectively creating a “cybersecurity” loophole in all existing privacy laws.” – from the washington times
this is like something out of a douglas adams novel, but it seems like the economic model used by banksters to justify austerity measures is mathematically flawed. and the entire world will suffer greatly. thanks to an error in microsoft excel.
An economics paper claiming that high levels of national debt led to low or negative economic growth could turn out to be deeply flawed as a result of, among other things, an incorrect formula in an Excel spreadsheet. Microsoft’s PowerPoint has been considered evil thanks to the proliferation of poorly presented data and dull slides that are created with it. Might Excel also deserve such hyperbolic censure?
The paper, Growth in a Time of Debt, was written by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff and published in 2010. Since publication, it has been cited abundantly by the world’s press politicians, including one-time vice president nominee Paul Ryan (R-WI). The link it draws between high levels of debt and negative average economic growth has been used by right-leaning politicians to justify austerity budgets: slashing government expenditure and reducing budget deficits in a bid to curtail the growth of debt.
This link was always controversial, with many economists proposing that the correlation between high debt and low growth was just as likely to have a causal link in the other direction to that proposed by Reinhart and Rogoff: it’s not that high debt causes low growth, but rather that low growth leads to high debt.
However, the underlying numbers and the existence of the correlation was broadly accepted, due in part to Reinhart and Rogoff’s paper not including the source data they used to draw their inferences.
A new paper, however, suggests that the data itself is in error. Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, tried to reproduce the Reinhart and Rogoff result with their own data, but they couldn’t. So they asked for the original spreadsheets that Reinhart and Rogoff used to better understand what they were doing. Their results, published as “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff,” suggest that the pro-austerity paper was flawed. A comprehensive assessment of the new paper can be found at the Rortybomb economics blog. – from ars technica, Microsoft Excel: The ruiner of global economies?
also see this article, from new york magazine: Meet the 28-Year-Old Grad Student Who Just Shook the Global Austerity Movement
Thomas Herndon, a 28-year-old economics grad student at UMass Amherst, just used part of his spring semester to shake the intellectual foundation of the global austerity movement.
When Herndon and his professors published their study, the reaction was nearly immediate. After Konczal’s blog post went viral, Reinhart and Rogoff — who got a fawning New York Times profile when their book was released — were forced to admit their embarrassing error (although they still defended the basic findings of their survey). And today, another UMass Amherst professor, Arindrajit Dube, followed up on Herndon’s paper with additional proof that there were serious theoretical and causal problems (as opposed to just sloppy Excel work) in the Reinhart-Rogoff study. Observers have been raising serious questions about what Herndon’s work means for the future of austerity politics, and Reinhart and Rogoff’s respectability as scholars. – from new york magazine
The revelation comes in three pages of academic analysis tucked away in the body’s annual report being released in Tokyo today where the IMF and the World Bank are holding their annual congress.
The report says the IMF believed that for every €100 of austerity through higher taxes and spending cuts, the effect on economic growth and unemployment would be the equivalent of €50.
But in reality the effect has been between double and three times that — stripping the economy of €90 to €150 for every €100 taken out in budgets agreed with the troika.
Tom McDonnell of the independent think-tank Tasc said the report called into question the Government’s budgetary strategy.
“It suggests recent budgets have actually been more damaging to the Irish economy than the Government was estimating. It would also help explain why growth has been lower over the last few years than the Government had expected — and why the vaunted ‘return to growth’ has failed to substantively materialise.”
The findings show Ireland had the second highest austerity measures in the developed world in 2010 — Greece had the highest.
i was researching another story when i noticed a much higher radiation level reported for minnesota than across the rest of the u.s. upon further examination, i discovered there had been an incident at the la salle nuclear power plant in lisle, ill. i made a screenshot, but the level had dropped from “69″ when i first viewed it to this:
Emergency declared at U.S. nuclear plant after lightning strike the morning of the 18th — “Venting of Unit 1 primary containment” — ‘Normal’ radiation levels reported — NRC mobilizes response center
Morris Daily Herald: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region III staff is monitoring the La Salle nuclear power plant after a lightning strike knocked out offsite power to both Units 1 and 2. The NRC has mobilized its Incident Response Center in Region III, located in Lisle, Ill., and is monitoring the events along with the resident inspector onsite. [...] An Unusual Event is the lowest levels of the NRC’s four level emergency classification system. [...]
UPDATE AT 0057 EDT ON 04/18/13: “After the Unit 2 primary containment vent and purge system isolated on the Unit 2 containment High Pressure signal, Venting of the Unit 1 primary containment was commenced. At 2005 CDT, Unit 1 primary containment pressure reached the Group 2 primary containment isolation system setpoint (1.77 PSIG) causing the primary containment vent and purge valves being used to vent the Unit 1 containment to isolate. Unit 1 primary containment venting was being performed through the Standby Gas Treatment system which is a filtered system. [...]
Published: April 18th, 2013 at 12:38 pm ET
By ENENews
An accident at a nuclear power plant in the US state of Arkansas has killed one worker and injured three others but did not cause radiation, according to the Arkansas Department of Health.
Around 07:50 on Easter Sunday morning, an accident at the Arkansas Nuclear Power Plant not only killed one worker and injured others it also left the Unit 1 reactor without offsite power. Workers were using the Unit 1 turbine temporary lift device to move the Main Turbine Generator Stator, which weighs over 500 tons, out of the turbine building when it fell. The lift crane failed, dropping the load, which resulted in a crash which was heard by local residents miles from the site, and tripped the Unit 2 reactor. There was one known fatality and 4 known serious injuries to workers.
Entergy Corp’s Arkansas Nuclear One in Russellville (file photo-PressTV)
The event caused a loss of decay heat removal at Unit 1, which was restored some four minutes later. As the Unit 1 lost all off site power, the Emergency Diesel Generators were started and are supplying backup power.
At 10:33, over two and a half hours later, Unit 2 entered a Notification of Unusual Event due to damage in the 2A1 switchgear. Unit 2 entered hot standby mode with decay heat being removed via steam dumps to the atmosphere.
At this time, the full extent of structural damage on Unit 1 is not known, Unit 2 2A1 switchgear was damaged and currently de-energized, but no other equipment at Unit 2 was reported damaged.
THE NRC AND NUCLEAR POWER PLANT SAFETY IN 2012: TOLERATING THE INTOLERABLE
Near-Misses at Nuclear Power Plants in 2012
Brunswick Steam Electric Plant, Unit 2, NC
Byron Station, Unit 2, IL
Catawba Nuclear Station, Unit 1, SC
Farley Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2, AL
Fort Calhoun Station, NE (first incident)
Fort Calhoun Station, NE (second incident)
Harris Nuclear Power Plant, NC
Palisades Nuclear Plant, MI
Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Units 1, 2, and 3, AZ
Perry Nuclear Power Plant, OH
River Bend Station, LA
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, Units 2 and 3, CA
Wolf Creek Generating Station, KS (first incident)
Wolf Creek Generating Station, KS (second incident)
Observations on the Near-Misses in 2012
- from the union of concerned scientists report, online pdf
The original article has an interactive map, where you can click on a plant to see what caused it to have a brush with meltdown in 2012. here’s a screenshot:
…here in the US, there’s no sign of any impending nuclear phaseout, despite the steady parade of meltdown scares reported in a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS dug into public data from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the nuclear industry’s top federal regulator, and found that in 2012 twelve different nuclear power plants experienced “near miss” events, defined as an incident that multiplies the likelihood of a core meltdown by at least a factor of 10. The reasons range from broken coolant pumps to fires to “failures to prevent unauthorized individuals from entering secure areas;” in some cases aging equipment was at fault, and two plants were repeat offenders. One, a California plant, already ranks high in vulnerability to earthquakes. In most cases, the study charges, weak oversight from the NRC was to blame.
The UCS study found nearly 60 such “near misses” over the last three years. Still, the NRC chair told the Associated Press on Sunday that the performance of most nuke plants is “quite good,” and pointed to its own study from last week, which found 99 of the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants to be in top-tier performance.
But UCS Nuclear Safety Program Director Lochbaum isn’t convinced: “Failing to enforce existing safety regulations is literally a gamble that places lives at stake,” he wrote in the study.
Governor: Nuclear waste leaking at an estimated 1,000 gallons a year — “No available technology to plug the leaks” at Hanford
Associated Press, Feb. 27: Radioactive waste tanks may be leaking some 1,000 gallons per year at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Wednesday officials are still evaluating how to effectively remove the remaining material from the problematic tanks. The 1,000-gallon figure is a rough estimate based on the early assessment of six identified leakers. Inslee said the leakage numbers are still being evaluated to determine exactly how much has been lost and how fast the waste is leaving the tanks. Inslee said there’s no available technology to plug the leaks [...]
Businessweek, Feb. 27: The Energy Department has expressed concern that contamination from the single-shell tanks may be making its way toward the Columbia River, which supplies drinking water and agricultural irrigation.
67 tanks are ‘suspected leakers’ at U.S. nuclear site — “The stuff inside melts the instruments… eats rubber and plastic”
[... Hanford's] tanks are big. The largest are the size of a basketball court with a 75-foot wall around it. Inside the tanks are a “stew of different materials” that form a radioactive sludge, from which the liquid was supposed to have been pumped out years ago. [...]
Of the 177 tanks, 149 only have a single wall, or shell, and 67 of those were “suspected leakers”, but the rest were thought to be secure. Thought to be is a relative term, because in a container that big, a drop of even a fraction of an inch can represent many gallons of waste. You can’t just drop a giant dipstick into the tank.
As [Jane Hedges of Washington's Department of Ecology] explained, there’s no easy way to get an extremely accurate measurement because lowering cameras or instruments into the tanks isn’t practical. The stuff inside melts the instruments, and eats rubber and plastic. [...]
The Department of Energy was warned in a letter last September that there were not adequate safeguards in place to prevent build ups of flammable gasses inside nuclear waste storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
The letter from the congressionally appointed Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DFNSB), points out what board members feel are inadequate systems to prevent the possible release of flammable gasses.
According to the (DNFSB), “The current control strategy does not include any measures to periodically release the trapped gases in a controlled manner to preclude the accumulation of flammable concentrations.”
The previously classified report became public Tuesday. It included scenarios it felt could lead to flammable releases that would “have considerable radiological consequences, endanger personnel, contaminate portions of the Tank Farms, and seriously disrupt the waste cleanup mission.”
The report specifically refers to systems on Hanford’s newer, double shelled tanks which hold some of the most hazardous mixtures of nuclear and chemical wastes leftover from production of nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War.
At least one of those tanks is showing signs of leaking from the interior wall. Hydrogen and other gasses are constantly being generated from the waste inside the tanks, which are ventilated to prevent volatile build ups.
Even one atom of uranium undergoing alpha decay has the potential for creating a fatal cancer. – Paul Zimmerman, A Primer in the Art of Deception (1; p. 53)
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous, and its speaker a raving lunatic. – Dresden James (2)
It ain’t what we don’t know that causes all the trouble, it’s what we do know that ain’t so. – a saying from Jim in Texas (Ibid.)
The first rule of holes: when you’re in one, stop digging. – Molly Ivins (3)
The Trouble We Are In
Large-scale nuclear disasters like Chernobyl or Fukushima are comparable with other deadly man-made phenomena. The number of annual global automobile deaths is 1.3 million (4). Terrible though it is, an automobile accident kills just once; radiation breaks down the Earth’s DNA of life. GMOs (genetically modified organisms) threaten to replace that fabric of life with an artificial and diseased template (5). Secret geoengineering programs of atmospheric aerosol spraying (chemtrails) may be causing irreparable harm to the very life cycles of the Earth (6). Deforestation and habitat loss destroy and displace the Earth’s biological and cultural diversity.
The Road To Fukushima Starts In Chernobyl
Much of this article relies on the readings of and quotations from Paul Zimmerman and his book, A Primer In The Art Of Deception (Op. cit.).
Zimmerman states that:
The entire cover-up of the effects of radiation hinges on Chernobyl. This was the most substantial release of radiation into the environment before Fukushima. Verified health effects will accurately depict the true hazard of man-made radiation released amidst populations. This is why Chernobyl effects have to be covered up by [the nuclear establishment by] any and every means (personal communication, February, 2013).
Zimmerman chronicles the wide range of congenital malformations, diseases and types of deaths to children exposed to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster radiation which occurred both in the womb and after being born (from the European Committee on Radiation Risk report, entitled: “Chernobyl: 20 years on”). Most of the data is from the late 1980s up to mid 1990s, indicating the time frame we should be watching for at Fukushima (“A Primer,” pp. 559 – 563).
The nuclear establishment ignores these effects using outdated and phony methods for calculation. Yablokov and colleagues estimated nearly a million deaths due to Chernobyl (7), in contrast to the small handful of deaths the WHO claims occurred or will occur. The World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the United Nations are in cahoots:
A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded. As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004 (8).
How is it that estimates could vary so wildly?
The main reason for this massive conspiracy being foisted on the public is what is referred to as the Chernobyl Forum, which is a coalition of United Nations related agencies (9).
Janette D. Sherman who edited the landmark study carried out by Russian scientists blows the lid off the fraudulent methodology of the Chernobyl Forum. Can something be called “science” if it intentionally ignores relevant empirical data in spades?
Sherman’s findings are worth quoting at length:
On the 20th Anniversary of Chernobyl WHO and the IAEA published the Chernobyl Forum Report, mentioning only 350 sources, mainly from the English literature while in reality there are more than 30,000 publications and up to 170,000 sources that address the consequences of Chernobyl. After waiting two decades for the findings of Chernobyl to be recognized by the United Nations, three scientists, Alexey Yablokov from Russia, and Vasily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko from Belarus undertook the task to collect, abstract and translate some 5000 articles reported by multiple scientists, who observed first-hand the effects from the fallout….
The greatest amount of radioactivity fell outside of Belarus, Ukraine and European Russia, extending across the northern hemisphere as far away as Asia, North Africa, and North America, while the greatest concentrations continue to affect the 13 million living in Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia….
Thus data from multiple scientists estimate the overall mortality from the Chernobyl catastrophe, for the period from April 1986 to the end of 2004, to be 985,000, a hundred times more than the WHO/IAEA estimate….
The human and economic costs are enormous: in the first 25 years the direct economic damage to Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia has exceeded $500 billion. Belarus spends about 20% of its national annual budget, Ukraine up to 6%, and Russia up to 1% to partially mitigate some of the consequences (10).
Zimmerman notes that:
There is an underlying prejudice being played upon here: “our science is good and Russian science is bad.” The conclusions of the Chernobyl Forum are reached by ignoring a huge body of research conducted in Eastern Europe that just happens not to be published in English. Certainly, if the UN was genuinely interested in Chernobyl rather than fabricating results, they could have paid for translations of relevant articles. Basically, it is just propaganda and worthless from a scientific perspective (pers. comm.).
However worthless the Chernobyl Forum studies are, they have become the mainstream scientific consensus and de facto reality, and a deadly lie which now contaminates public consciousness.
graphic from the DAILY MAIL
Japan Mass Media Banned From Reporting Radiation Dangers
How many people will die from Fukushima nuclear meltdown radiation? Two years have passed since Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster. Every day we learn of more evidence of the dangers of low-level radiation from a variety of natural and man-made causes, including medical x-rays and scans (11; 12). Our health, and particularly the health of people in Fukushima, is under increasing distress.
We now see evidence of children with thyroid cancer from the Fukushima area (13). It has also been revealed that the mass media in Japan is unofficially BANNED from discussing radiation issues. Journalists who write about radiation dangers will be fired, whereas they are permitted to debate whether Japan should use nuclear energy or not (14).
The latter debate is permissible because it is long term and changeable depending on the whims of government policy and manipulation of public sentiment. Serious discussion of radiation danger strikes fear in the heart of the public, and may also lead to costly liability payments, and is therefore taboo. Undoubtedly, the ban on discussing the danger of radiation in the media translates into public ignorance about radiation. It is astonishing to me that most of the people I talk to in Tokyo are only dimly aware that radiation is entering their bodies on a daily basis: from public water supply, food, drinks, ongoing air pollution emissions from the FNPP, and the burning of radioactive debris in public incinerators. People think that it is only a small risk.
Radiation biologist, Dr. Ian Fairlie writes that there are many studies which have “good statistical power” showing the increase in danger of cancer from low-level radiation from background radiation and radon; medical CT scans; living in proximity to nuclear plants, etc.
It is dispiriting to read many articles – on both sides of the Atlantic – by media pundits and poorly-informed scientists about low-level radiation risks. These articles commonly assert, with little or no evidence, that there is nothing to worry about radiation and that nuclear projects are encumbered by overly strict safety limits. In particular, they usually state that no risks are seen below 100 mSv [millisieverts]; that the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model is wrong; and that there were only about 50 deaths at Chernobyl with no more expected (15).
Lower End Estimates: Fukushima Related Mortality
As for the defendants of the official position and estimates that minimize nuclear dangers and deaths, we have Stanford University scientists weighing in at 130 cancer deaths (16). Beyea puts the number higher at 1,000 deaths due to gamma radiation ground shine, but Beyea’s calculation appears not to include internal radiation in the model (17). These are the kinds of estimates generally touted in the mainstream science journals which focus on various aspects of exposure but tend to ignore the full extent of constant exposure.
Fairlie is a moderate within the debate and puts the number of deaths “at least a few thousand fatal cancers [that] will occur among those exposed to Fukushima’s radioactive fallout” but does not mention exposure to internal radiation through consumption of food and water. He correctly points out that Japan was lucky that most of the radiation blew out to sea, sparing the land and inhabitants from the greatest portion of radiation exposure:
Fukushima is clearly a serious disaster but it is not as serious as Chernobyl. Radioactive air emissions are much more important than radioactive sea discharges in terms of their radiation doses to people, and the dispersed radioactivity to air from Fukushima has been estimated to be about 10% to 40% of the amount dispersed from Chernobyl. About a thousand square km near the Fukushima were contaminated, but at Chernobyl the area affected was much larger: over 200,000 square km throughout Europe were seriously contaminated by fallout, according to the European Commission (18).
In contrast to official Japanese government policy which allows 20 millisieverts of annual background radiation, a joint French and Japanese NGO project found that “external radiation” continues to cause “unacceptable health risks for hundreds of thousands of citizens” and that government estimates ignore internal consumption of radionuclides through food, water and air.
Dose beyond which the risk of cancer in the long term is considered “unacceptable” by ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) is 1 [millisievert] per year, which corresponds to 17 cancers per 100,000 people exposed (19).
The first large-scale survey of contaminated food done by Japanese scientists found that:
Radiocesium was detected in 25 of 26 samples from Fukushima. The median dietary intake of radiocesium was 4.0 Bq/day. The estimated annual dose from radiocesium was calculated assuming that the daily intake of radiocesium was constant throughout the year. The median estimated dose level was 23 [microsieverts/year]. The estimated dose level of radiocesium was significantly higher in Fukushima than in the Kanto region and western Japan…. The preliminary estimated dietary dose levels among Fukushima residents were much lower than the maximum permissible dose 1 [millisievert/year], based on new Japanese standard limits for radiocesium in foods (100 Bq/kg for general foods) (20).
The problem with many of these surveys and estimates is that they are very rough guesses that average the dose, but how was it calculated and can the methods and data even be trusted? Some people will be getting less than 4 becquerels (bq) per day but others higher. For how many days, weeks, months and years will this rate continue? Over ten years that’s 14,600 bq.
photo from the DAILY MAIL
A More Critical View Of Mortality Rates
Dr. Chris Busby, one of the most outspoken critics of the nuclear status quo, who also specifically studies the affects of radiation on health, offered a more dire scenario in 2011:
[W]ithin 100 km of Fukushima Daiichi, approximately 200,000 excess cancers will occur within the next 50 years with about half of them diagnosed in the next 10 years, if the 3.3 million people in the area remain there for one year. [Busby] estimates over 220,000 excess cancers in the 7.9 million people from 100 to 200 km in the next 50 years, also with about half of them to be diagnosed in the next 10 years (21).
That equates to roughly 420,000 exposed people, not including most of the Tokyo area, or other radiological-associated, non-fatal diseases that could harm and maim.
Retired nuclear engineer and activist Arnie Gundersen bases his estimate on the epidemiological data from the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents, and compared radiation amounts and dispersion with population density in Japan. He estimates a million deaths could occur due to the accident (22).
Shimatsu has pointed out anomalous data that indicates mortality rates have risen in the elder population of Fukushima area residents. This could be related to the weakening of their immune systems due to radiation exposure (23).
Finagling The Fallout
This radiation contamination map of the Fukushima nuclear disaster made by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is startling in its depiction of deposition across the Pacific ocean and throughout North America (24).
Here again is the blandly presented propaganda from the US government that minimizes danger to health. They do not take into account the many variables or hotspots or that not everyone receives an “average” dose. In a sense this is worse than propaganda, and is a huge lie. While revealing the extent of the radiation, the international public is told that the amount is nothing to worry about, as if low-level radiation is safe.
While the USGS does not assess human health risks from exposure to radioactive fallout, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s RadNet confirms that radiation levels in the United States were far below the level of concern for human health impact.
Other mainstream scientists found that the wide dispersal of radiation into the air was due to “at least 80% of the core inventory” having “been released into the atmosphere and indicates a broad meltdown of reactor cores. The radioactivity emitted into the atmosphere could represent 10% of the Chernobyl accident releases for I-131 and Cs-137” (25).
However, this estimate contrasts with an earlier study that found radioactive fallout (not including radiation released into the water) at 50 percent of Chernobyl releases for cesium (26). If radiation released into water is included the total amount released — because no radiation was released into water by the landlocked Chernobyl reactor — could be as high as 90 percent of Chernobyl by some estimates (27). Chernobyl was mainly a one-time event but Fukushima is ongoing, steadily releasing substantial quantities of radiation into the air and water (28).
Anyone not privy to the most technically relevant data must trust the experts. As Arnie Gundersen once said, “it’s a numbers game” when it comes to figuring out how much radiation escaped given the same criminals in charge of the accident, Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company), are in charge of disclosing the data as they see fit. There is now zero public trust in government agencies and what they are reporting when it comes to public safety. Without becoming paranoid the public should always be aware of pat bromides handed out by the nuclear-friendly agents.
As we know, Tepco spokespersons are proven liars and their credibility is less than zero (29; 30).
How Radiation Affects Life
The nuclear establishment would prefer the general public believe that nuclear radiation is essentially nothing to be concerned with. However, their own science and words belie the rhetoric. The Cult of Nuclearists have billions of dollars to devote to propaganda whereas the Nuclear Truth Tellers (NTTers) are marginalized by a whole host of economic and political tricks.
One of the trump cards that the Nuclearists hold is that understanding the science of radiation effects when presented in an intentionally confusing way to mislead is beyond the capabilities of the average person to grasp, and that they have no other choice than to trust the experts. Fortunately there is a large body of literature that debunks the nuclear industry’s powerful lies.
Busby has two important and rigorously researched books on radiation science that are among the most important (31; 32). I also recommend a perusal through longtime activist Russell Hoffman’s incredible library of nuclear related books (33). Hoffman’s Code Killers is an easily understood, exhaustively researched and colorfully presented educational primer on the dangers of nuclear energy. It can be downloaded for free and is an ideal educational tool (34).
Insights Into The Science Of Radiation Biology
Paul Zimmerman’s 778 page book, A Primer In The Art Of Deception: The Cult Of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons And Fraudulent Science (2009) is the equivalent of taking a college-level course — if not an entire curriculum — from the self described “self-educated student of the subject matter” (Op. cit.). For an introduction to his work here is an outstanding audio interview (35).
Since 1938 when the uranium atom was first split, the US has accumulated some “700,000 metric tons” of depleted uranium as a byproduct of weapons manufacture and nuclear power waste. Why is nuclear waste and emissions a problem?
To quote Zimmerman:
All atoms of uranium are radioactive. At some point in their lifetime, they spontaneously undergo radioactive decay and emit subatomic particles and energy from their nuclei. When this process occurs in the crust of the Earth, it is of no consequence to life. Decay while the atom is entrapped within the body of a living organism, however, is altogether different. When radiation from a radioactive atom is released into a biological medium, it creates damage to the molecular structures that make up that living system (p. ii).
There is not a single life-enhancing benefit to be derived from releasing ionizing radiation into the environment…. Ionizing radiation breaks chemical bonds, destroying in living systems biologically significant micromolecules, and as a result, altering biological function. On a planet teeming with life–impossible without the exquisitely precise interplay of biochemical choreography–ionizing radiation, concentrated by humans and then released, is a force of disorder, chaos and death (p. 8).
Another basic point of understanding blurred in the public mind by the nuclear establishment is gauging the effect that natural uranium has on the human body versus uranium that has been concentrated for nuclear technology. The nuclear establishment claims that the effects of eating a banana which may be relatively high in uranium content, is equivalent to an insoluble microparticle of uranium which may become lodged in the lung after a depleted uranium (DU) munition explodes on the battlefield, or when a nuclear accident such as Fukushima releases large amounts of hot particles into the air where they can be swept by the wind and then inhaled.
Another quote from Zimmerman:
The solubility/insolubility of particles released by nuclear weapons or radiation accidents would depend on the chemistry of the the nuclides involved. There is not a blanket answer for all radionuclides and whatever other atoms they might be bound to. Hot particles are particles composed of hundreds/thousands/millions of molecules which contain some quantity of radioactive atoms. How that particle behaves in the human body has a lot to do with how easily is dissolves in body fluid.
Both soluble and insoluble particles of uranium, plutonium, radium, and the other alpha emitters release alpha particles into surrounding tissue. The significance of INSOLUBLE particles is that they can have a much longer residency inside the body, perhaps a person’s entire life. This gives them increased opportunity to successfully target biologically significant macromolecules such as DNA in their vicinity (pers. comm.).
Uranium found in nature is present in the food and water chain, is soluble, consists of about 2 millionths of a gram of daily intake. Since it is widespread throughout many organ systems and is then eliminated through bodily processes, no cluster of cells receives a concentrated dose of radiation. Therefore, Zimmerman notes that uranium from nature “presents an infinitely small hazard to the health of the organism as a whole” (p. 46).
But there is a tricky linguistic distinction to be understood. The nuclear industry calls uranium that has been thoroughly processed into a purified form of uranium as “natural uranium.”
While it is true that originally this uranium was found in nature, it is in fact a man-made uranium product with nothing really natural about it. Just like some food products on the shelves of grocery stores that say “all natural” or “natural flavors” on the label even though there are dozens of artificial food additives in the product.
Natural uranium — uranium that has been concentrated by human beings — represents an enhanced radiological hazard over the uranium found in nature. Since the 1940s, humankind has unearthed millions of tons of uranium-bearing ore, extracted the uranium and concentrated it. this man-made product is a new radiological pollutant that never before existed on the Earth’s surface (p. 46).
The difference between uranium-bearing ore and uranium products that have been refined vary drastically in radioactive concentration. Weapons-grade uranium is the most potent by far, but even yellow cake uranium that has undergone rudimentary refinement, and is used for nuclear reactors, is 300,000 times more radioactive than uranium found in nature when equal volumes are compared.
A main problem for human health are the alpha particles that are released in the process called “ionization.”
Zimmerman notes that:
Ionization is the breakup of an electrically neutral molecule into positive and negative ions. To break the chemical bonds holding together each of the molecules in our body requires the impact of approximately 34 electron-volts (pers. comm.).
Given this possibility:
One alpha particle has the potential of creating–123,000 ionizations. In a cascading effect, the charged particles created in these ionizing events go on to initiate millions more ionizations. An alpha particle is a bull in the proverbial china shop. It massively disrupts the chemical integrity of the molecules that constitute a living system (p. 51).
Although alpha particles do not penetrate great distance, they are “not weak.” Due to the small distance they travel in tissue, they are extremely destructive to the cells through which they traverse. The alpha particle’s ionizing behavior results in “massive assault on the chemical integrity of a small population of cells…” (p. 52).
In the article “Radiation Roulette” by Ron Edwards, reference is made to a study of the effect of alpha radiation on the stem cells of mice. One of the authors of the study, Eric Wright, had this to say in a letter to the journal Nature:
“relative biological effectiveness” — a measure of how damaging low-level radiation can be in the body — for isotopes that emit alpha particles is “effectively infinite” (36).
Particles from uranium munitions contain uranium in vastly greater concentrations than uranium found in nature in uranium ore. When they are released as hot particles into the air from exploding DU munitions which burn, they can be inhaled by populations downwind. Similarly, hot particles which contain a great variety of radionuclides that are released after a nuclear disaster can also be inhaled by humans downwind of the accident.
the radioactive wasteland that was once iraq
this piece originally ran in AWOL magazine.
Two military campaigns of dubious merit, initiated by the former President Bush and his son’s ruling junta, have scattered tons of radioactive material over Iraq. Along with Afghanistan and the nations which once formed Yugoslavia, Iraq has been used as a laboratory to test the long-term effects of depleted uranium munitions on people and the environment. The Bush junta is also using this opportunity to check out how much misinformation it can successfully spew in order to carry out its objectives.
The U.S. military admitted to using 320 tons of DU-enhanced ammunition during the Gulf War. Despite massive evidence about the lethal effects of prolonged exposure to DU residue in Iraq, the Bush junta and its military propagandists still claim DU presents no clear health risks, at any level of exposure. Unless, of course, one is targeted by weapons firing DU projectiles.
There are still no reliable estimates of how much DU was used during the conquest of Iraq. The lower estimates have been 500 tons, while some guesses range as high as 2,000 tons. No doubt, the expanded us of DU in missiles and bombs – much of it carried out in secret – makes it difficult to accurately come up with a reliable figure. There is, however, substantial evidence regarding the effects of DU exposure, as the land and people of Iraq have been so exposed for over 12 years. In the southern city of Basra, for example, radiation levels were 84 times greater than what is considered safe, before the latest war of conquest. Cancer and other ailments associated with exposure to radiation are epidemic throughout southern Iraq, Kuwait and across their borders into Saudi Arabia and Iran. Eight years after the Gulf war, Canadian soldiers who participated in the conflict were still passing uranium 238 in their urine.
Zimmerman confirms that “a comparison can be made between DU and hot particles released from nuclear accidents resulting from fire and/or explosions. It is the burning of DU that turns it into microparticles which produces the internal hazard. The same would be true for hot particles produced in nuclear weapons explosions and accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima. DU is a single radionuclide, uranium, with a tremendously long half-life. A nuclear reactor contains numerous biologically significant radionuclides with variable half-lives. The kinetics/biochemistry of uranium once inside the body is quite different from that of a host of radionuclides targeting different organ systems simultaneously with variable rates of disintegration due to the different rates of decay. The fact that DU is both chemically and radiologically hazardous, which nearly all radiobiologists deny, damns any other more active types of radiation gaining entrance into the interior of the body” (pers. comm.).
In other words, the hot particles that were emitted after the nuclear meltdowns and explosions at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant (FNPP) were every bit as dangerous, if not more so, than what soldiers in Iraq and other illegal war theaters experienced when DU munitions were used. This would especially be true for people living within close vicinity of the FNPP however researchers picked up significant numbers of hot particles in car engine filters as far away as Tokyo (37).
Some industry scams for dealing with nuclear pollution:
Dilute it to “safe” levels before discharging it into the environment. But the same quantity of nuclear pollution is ultimately discharged.
Mask the dangers of low dose radiation as if “low” quantity also means “low” risk.
Averaging of internal doses over an entire organ even though the radioactive particle and alpha radiation may be attacking a very specific spot, a group of cells. Statistical averaging is a way of diluting the danger even though the hot particle is causing pinpoint damage (p. 198 – 203). This is like saying that if someone in a football stadium shoots a gun and kills a handful of people, it is really not that bad given there were 100,000 people in attendance.
Conclusion
Clearly the international public cannot trust the news that comes out of government, the nuclear industry or mainstream media when it comes to protecting public health. The public cannot continue to simply defer to those in positions of authority but must in the future investigate the facts for ourselves to determine our own health and safety, and more importantly to assure the health of generations to follow.
Richard Wilcox has a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from a social science, holistic perspective. He teaches at a number of universities in the Tokyo, Japan area. His articles on environmental topics including the Fukushima nuclear disaster are archived at http://wilcoxrb99.wordpress.com/ and are regularly published at Activist Post and Rense.com. His interviews with Jeff Rense are available at the website http://www.rense.com.
7. Yablokov, V.B. Nesterenko, A. V. Nesterenko (2009). Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. New York Academy of Sciences, 327 pgs.
20. Dietary Intake of Radiocesium in Adult Residents in Fukushima Prefecture and Neighboring Regions after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es304128t
All of us, the millions of enraged and revolted people who met in the squares of this world during the summer 2011, now know for good where the Parliaments and the Corporations are leading our Planet. The humiliation of obligatory work, the privatization and selling out of all common social wealth, the destruction of all Nature, the borders and wars, the social / cultural / political and economic inequality, the massive stupefaction and exploitation are turning this Planet into a massive concentration camp for obedient, “precarious” and hypnotized slaves.
The world’s climate could be hijacked by a rogue country or wealthy individual firing small particles into the stratosphere, claims a warning that comes not from a new Hollywood movie trailer but a sober report from the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The deployment of independent, large-scale “geoengineering” techniques aimed at averting dangerous warming warrants more research because it could lead to an international crisis with unpredictable costs to agriculture, infrastructure and global stability, said the Geneva-based WEF in its annual Global Risks report before the Davos economic summit later this month. It also warned that ongoing economic weakness is sapping the ability of governments to tackle the growing threat of climate change.
“The global climate could, in effect, be hijacked. For example, an island state threatened with rising sea levels may decide they have nothing to lose, or a well-funded individual with good intentions may take matters into their own hands,” the report notes. It said there are “signs that this is already starting to occur”, highlighting the case of a story broken by the Guardian involving the dumping of 100 tonnes of iron sulphate off the Canadian coast in 2012, in a bid to spawn plankton and capture carbon.
U.N. urged to freeze climate geo-engineering projects
By Chisa Fujioka
NAGOYA, Japan | Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:55am EDT
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.”
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.
- from reuters news
“Why in the World are They Spraying?” Documentary HD (multiple language subtitles)
People around the world are noticing that our planet’s weather is dramatically changing. They are also beginning to notice the long lingering trails left behind airplanes that have led millions to accept the reality of chemtrail/geoengineering programs.
Could there be a connection between the trails and our severe weather?
While there are many agendas associated with these damaging programs, evidence is now abundant which proves that geoengineering can be used to control weather. In this documentary you will learn how the aerosols being sprayed into our sky are used in conjunction with other technologies to control our weather.
While geoengineers maintain that their models are only for the mitigation of global warming, it is now clear that they can be used as a way to consolidate an enormous amount of both monetary and political power into the hands of a few by the leverage that weather control gives certain corporations over the Earth’s natural systems. This of course, is being done at the expense of every living thing on the planet. Directed/Produced by Michael J. Murphy and Produced/Edited by Barry Kolsky.. Written by Michael J. Murphy and Barry Kolsky.
from geoengineering watch:
There is a large body of information regarding the types of particles being sprayed into the air. These particles are highly toxic to all human, animal, and plant life. As a result, we are seeing profound damage occur.
scientific information and test results related to geoengineering.
The very idea of geoengineering–large-scale tampering with the planet’s natural climatological or geological systems to produce a desired effect–is brazen enough, but doing so in violation of two UN conventions is flat-out ballsy. That’s the word we would use to describe California businessman Russ George (we’ve profiled George’s thwarted geoengineering efforts previously) who in July dumped more than 100 tons of iron sulfate into the Pacific in an effort to capture carbon from the air and sink it to the depths of the ocean.
Satellite images have confirmed George’s claim that his efforts have created a huge plankton boom across nearly 4,000 square miles of the northern Pacific. The idea–and George is not the first to have it–is that these plankton will absorb carbon dioxide from the air and then sink to the sea bed, lowering the amount of net carbon in the atmosphere and creating valuable carbon credits for George.
Of course, in lab tests researchers have seen such “ocean fertilization” spawning algae that also pump out neurotoxins. And tampering with the natural order of things can disrupt food chains, alter ecosystems in unexpected ways, expedite ocean acidification (accelerating global warming) and otherwise invite the law of unintended consequences to run rampant, marine authorities say. That’s why the United Nations’ convention on biological diversity and the London convention on the dumping of wastes at sea have both prohibited this kind of for-profit ocean manipulation. Nonetheless, George conducted the dump from a fishing boat some 200 nautical miles off the shores of Canada’s Haida Gwaii (or Queen Charlotte Islands), an area known for its complex marine ecosystems. And it appears he did so without asking if anyone objected to the idea.
less than a week later, in the area poisoned by this rich scumbag…
A powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake has shaken the north-central coast of British Columbia in the Haida Gwaii area.
The quake was felt across a wide area that includes Prince Rupert, Quesnel, and Houston.
The agency reports the quake struck just after eight o’clock local time, its epicentre 17 kilometres below ground about 200 kilometres south-southwest of Prince Rupert.
Several aftershocks have been reported, including one 5.8 magnitude tremor.
IS THERE A CONNECTION TO THE IRON SULFATE DUMP AND THE EARTHQUAKE?
What DO we know about the nature of the sun and our electirc universe? Here is a remarkable homemade documentary that demonstrates surprising results when water is electrified. This is wierd stuff, but easily replicated, which is the point to making them. This is not rocket science, but it could lead there rather easily.
The War on Terra – Canada vs Australia [RAP NEWS 17]
It’s 2013 and the world did not end by meteorite or by Mayan calendar. But fear not: we might just be able to get the job done ourselves. Join Robert Foster as he sets out to discover where Civilisation™ is making the fastest progress towards annihilation. In this edition of the Civilisation Report, Robert learns about Australia and Canada – two oft-neglected pioneers of peace, progress and prosperity – in conversation with our antipodean colonial correspondent Ken Oathcarn and his Canuck counterpart, Fagin Heighbard. Dear viewers, consider this a fair warning that in terms of language and affront to the dominant culture this could get fucking messy.
- Written & created by Giordano Nanni & Hugo Farrant in a suburban backyard home-studio in Melbourne, Australia – on Wurundjeri Land.
more, from juice media:
History is happening! Here is information about what some humans are doing right now to help save what’s left of our relationship with this planet.
For more info about Tar Sands, Idle No More; the Kimberleys, Barrier reef, and CSG/Lock the Gate struggles:
- Gratitude to our donors whose generosity has made this episode possible. SUPPORT the creation of new episodes of Juice Rap News, an independent show which relies on private donations: http://thejuicemedia.com/donate
the alberta tar sands – the most polluting project in the history of humankind.
just like international criminal banking cartels are too rich and powerful for the government to touch, so are giant corporations – especially those that provide the precious oil that allows international trade to be possible.
no crime against humanity or nature is so great as to be a punishable offence. not murdering indigenous people who refuse to allow oil exploration in their homelands in the amazon rainforest, the mountainous islands of indonesia, the niger river delta…anyplace the oil companies destroys through their incompetence and evil machinations – well, that’s the price of doing business. evil business.
if their wreckless disregard for life isn’t enough to convince you of oil companies’ inherent evil, the fact that WE DO NOT EVER NEED TO USE PETROCHEMICALS EVER, FOR ANYTHING, EVER should provide the proverbial icing on the evil cake for anyone with even rudimentary intelligence.
the creation of energy through burning things is pre-19th century technology. it was surpassed and made irrelevant by Nicolai Tesla over 100 years ago.
but, just as the banksters are allowed to launder drug cartel billions, while a teenager smoking a joint in his bedroom could be sent to prison for possessing the products the cartels provide, the rich are allowed to do anything – pollute the land and sea, and kill everything and everyone in the way; molest children by the thousands; steal everything that’s not nailed down – while people without huge piles of money to burn can have their lives ruined – either by being between a corporation and their potential profits, or by being incarcerated for having the exact same habits as the country club crowd has, but not having enough money to hire one of them as your lawyer.
we’ve entered a new age of corporate feudalism, with an uber-class of murderous scumbag psychopaths ruling over people too frightened, confused, misled, blinded, and/or crippled by the corporations and their minions.
i, for one, am not a serf, wasn’t born to provide scumbag psychopaths with luxury i cannot even fathom, and will not willingly consent to being treated like i owe the banksters, the government, or any profit-generating entity ANYTHING. i am perfectly able to see all institutions of power crumble to the ground.
and what about the economy? i’ll let you in on a little secret – until about 100 years ago, hardly ANYONE on earth needed money to survive in this world. we still don’t – we just let the media and government tell us we do.
as far as the banksters, their corporate uber-lords, their minions, mouthpieces, and loyal idiots – as we used to say in texas – i wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
below are examples of how the courts look after the interests of foreign corporations, even at the expense of lives and widespread economic damage as a result of their shenanigans.
Three years after the BP Macondo well disaster, the Gulf of Mexico is still covered in oil and barely sustaining visible life above or below the surface. Undisclosed white matter is appearing and leakages with other drill sites appears to be problematic. With such a massive dead zone, it makes you wonder how long oil rigs have negligently been spewing toxins and the rig disaster wasn’t part of a long term plan to expand the dead zone to include the entire Gulf of Mexico; all aimed at turning the entire region into a vast wasteland of oil rigs leaking oil, Corexit and other toxic chemicals into the core engine of the oceans converter belt.
To keep the sheen suppressed under surface water, spraying Corexit is still a daily routine on behalf of BP. So, below where it mentions the Macondo well looks good after one week, it took thousands of gallons of Corexit to break up the sheen and sink the toxic goo below the surface.
Published on Mar 16, 2013
20130316 – On Wings Of Care Gulf Flyover. This video was taken with our belly viewer (the front of the airplane is to the left in this video; that’s our nose wheel showing at the lower left, because the videocamera is tilted slightly forward to give the pilot a short lead time to center the plane over the target. Sorry it looks like we’re flying sideways, that’s how the videocamera fit best into the belly port!). This is the chronic Taylor Energy pollution site, about 12 nm southeast of the Louisiana coast. Lots of rainbow sheen here today, and even some brown weathered crude floating in it near its east end, which is just west of the Nykor Energy platform (unrelated to the sheen). For more photos and videos and discussion, see the article at OnWingsOfCare.org
It’s been labeled the worst environmental disaster in world history, and rightfully so, because the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is like the nightmarish gift that keeps on giving. BP and the United States government would have the public believe that all is well in the Gulf. Nothing could be further from the truth. The crisis is not only ongoing; its effects are worsening
The April 20, 2010 the Deep Water Horizon Explosion will be back in the news again. The explosion of this oil rig represents the biggest false flag event in history; the devastation of this false flag event is still being felt and the worst is yet to come. You may have heard about the explosions near the New Madrid Fault and the thousands of generators being shipped to Louisiana by FEMA. Soon all readers of this series will connect the BP oil spill to these recent current events.
Over 34 months later, the oil spill has destroyed the welfare, livelihoods, health and futures of tens of millions of Gulf Coast residents, not to mention the destruction of the fragile ecology in the Gulf of Mexico.
Originally, BP was ordered to initiate $20 billion in restitution to the Gulf Coast victims. In retrospect, BP has never made full restitution to the victims. The overall physical health of the region has been decimated and the mainstream media and government officials reaching as high as President Obama have been complicit in covering up the geological and medical magnitude of the event. Even to this day, BP is still covertly carpet bombing Corexit in the Gulf and the much of the environmental catastrophe remains untouched by the BP cleanup crews.
BP Urges Government To Halt Gulf Oil Disaster Relief Payments For Future Losses
Oil giant BP is urging the federal government to stop making payments to Gulf Coast residents affected by last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil geyser. BP claims that the improving economic conditions among areas hit the hardest by the oil provide enough evidence to show that they no longer need to be compensated for future losses from the environmental disaster.
To date, roughly $4.5 billion worth of claims have been paid out of the $20 billion fund established by the government and funded by BP to pay victims of the oil catastrophe. Claims continue to be filed with the government seeking compensation for their losses.
BP is not attempting to halt payments to current claimants with recognizable losses – only those who are claiming that their future income will be impacted. The company released a letter to the government and to the press.
To determine if BP’s claims of economic recovery are true, all you have to do is look to the past. The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred more than 20 years ago, yet oil still coats areas of Alaska today. And the difference between the two oil leaks is that with Exxon, we knew exactly how much oil was spilled into Prince William Sound. In that case, it was roughly 11 million gallons of oil.
However, there is no precise measurement of how much oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico, but the best estimates say that it was as much as 184 million gallons of oil. It is highly unlikely that all of this oil disappeared or washed up on beaches. When this oil eventually turns up, claims will continue to be filed by those affected.
But it isn’t just the economy that BP is saying has recovered; they also make the claim that the fishing industry is back to pre-spill health.
BP has sued to block what could be billions of dollars in settlement payouts to businesses over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The London-based oil giant accused the court-appointed administrator for the settlement, Patrick Juneau, of trying to rewrite the terms of the deal. BP said Juneau violated the settlement in the way he used a complex formula to determine the payments to businesses.
Last week, BP warned investors that the settlement’s price tag will be “significantly higher” than initially estimated.
“Although the ultimate exposure is at this time inestimable, it grows daily and could cost BP billions,” the company’s lawyers wrote Friday.
U.S District Judge Carl Barbier appointed Juneau and has upheld his decisions for calculating payments. Juneau’s spokesman declined to comment on BP’s lawsuit.
Attorneys who worked on the class-action settlement with BP said the payments to businesses were spelled out in the agreement.
“Simply put, BP undervalued the settlement and underestimated the number of people and businesses that qualify under the objective formulas that BP agreed to,” attorneys Steve Herman and Jim Roy said in a statement.
“At the same time BP lauds its efforts for restoring the Gulf in the media, it blames others in court for its own mistakes to avoid responsibility for its own conduct,” Strange said in statement Thursday.
Strange said that if BP underestimated how much it would owe under the terms of its agreement, that is BP’s problem, not the citizens’.
“BP cannot undo a settlement it wrote and signed, just to avoid its consequences. The courts should not allow it,” he said.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans has scheduled an April 5 hearing on BP’s request to prevent payments of what the oil company calls fictitious or inflated claims that are being made as part of the settlement.
Separately, BP filed a complaint against the settlement program and its administrator, Patrick Juneau, alleging breach of contract. The complaint doesn’t seek monetary damages, but it does ask that Juneau be ordered to change how he interprets the agreement so that he complies with what BP believes the agreement says.
And Strange said in his statement that “a legion of BP attorneys wrote and negotiated the terms” of the agreement.
“But now, BP is objecting to the terms of the agreement it signed. This challenge is not surprising; it is consistent with BP’s past behavior,” he said.
Multinational security firm Raytheon has secretly built software that they say can not only track you, but predict your movements with accuracy. Annie tells you more about RIOT, and how it uses your social media data to build a profile of your activities
Raytheon’s Rapid Information Overlay Technology (Riot) software extracts location data from photos and comments posted online by individuals, and then analyzes this information to create a variety of spider diagrams to show where the individuals like to go, what they like to do and whom they communicate with.
A video demonstration of the software was recently published online by the Guardian newspaper. In it, Brian Urch of Raytheon shows how Riot can be used to track “Nick” – a company employee – to predict that the best time and place to steal his computer or put spy software on it.
“Six a.m. appears to be the most frequently visited time at the gym,” says Urch in the video which is dated November 2010. “So if you ever did want to try to get a hold of Nick – or maybe get a hold of his laptop – you might want to visit the gym at 6:00 a.m. on Monday.”
Adams says that nobody has bought the software – which is still under development – yet. However, company filings indicate that Riot is classified as an “Export Administration Regulations 99″ item which allows it to be sold or exported to any client.
The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can be transformed into a “Google for spies” and tapped as a means of monitoring and control.
Using Riot it is possible to gain an entire snapshot of a person’s life – their friends, the places they visit charted on a map – in little more than a few clicks of a button.
Riot pulls out this information, showing not only the photographs posted onto social networks by individuals, but also the location at which the photographs were taken.
Riot can display on a spider diagram the associations and relationships between individuals online by looking at who they have communicated with over Twitter. It can also mine data from Facebook and sift GPS location information from Foursquare, a mobile phone app used by more than 25 million people to alert friends of their whereabouts. The Foursquare data can be used to display, in graph form, the top 10 places visited by tracked individuals and the times at which they visited them.
TRILLIONS FOR BANKSTER CRIMINALS, PRISON AND SUFFERING FOR EVERYONE NOT IN ON THE SCHEME
you know we live a time of lawless pillaging when the thieves who stole so much money that they crashed the world’s economy are being given MORE MONEY, as fast as the federal reserve can print it.
as for the people losing their livelihoods, their mobility, their homes, their families – the people who have had everything stolen from them – they will suffer greatly. the ones who go to prison might well be the fortunate ones.
NOTE: this does not include county or municipal jails, nor juvenile detention facilities, nor mental institutions, nor drug rehab centers.
the more we incarcerate, the richer they get (they being the Corrections Corporation of America).
With the exception of the government’s borrowing and spending activities, there are hardly any segments of the US economy that appear to have been inoculated against the recession which began in December 2007. There is one aspect of society however, that has continued to expand despite the difficult economic circumstances: the prison population. Additionally, and contrary to what many believe, the construction and management of jails and prisons are not functions exclusive to the government. In fact, the fourth largest correctional system in the nation is owned and operated by the Corrections Corporation of America (CXW) – only the federal government and two states operate prison systems containing more bed space than CCA.
number of jobs created monthly, from 2008 into 2012
The Gini index is an international measure of income inequality and going up in value is bad, unless of course you’re a super rich and enjoy stepping on the down trodden. According to the CIA ranking:
First, it is absurd to think stopping illegal financial activity would harm the global economy. What does Holder believe the financial crisis was, a help to the global economy?
We’ve known since TARP our government is in bed with the banks and wouldn’t do anything to stop them, including even demanding some executives lose their jobs. Now it’s official. The Obama administration’s policy is to not prosecute financial crime when a financial institution is large claiming it could disrupt the global economy. This policy gives too big to fail financial institutions Carte blanche to do what ever they want to. It’s the wild west in financial land and the sheriff is hiding in the weeds.
Chuck Grassley along with Senator Sherrod Brown have been trying to stop TBTF and have asked Holder in a letter why there are no criminal prosecutions of those who caused the financial crisis of 2008 as well as the money laundering activities of large financial institutions.
Grassley’s opening statement from the hearing says it all We have a leadership problem at the Department of Justice in not going after financial crime, fraud and putting those responsible in jail.
Failure to Prosecute Banks Deemed “Too Big to Fail”:
The Department continues to follow through with an unfortunate policy of continually entering into civil or criminal settlements with large financial institutions that include large fines, but no jail time for the individuals who perpetrate these frauds and wreak havoc on the financial sector and individual lives. As a result, these companies settle for pennies on the dollar and the cost of these fines simply becomes the cost of doing business for these institutions. It has led many to believe that financial institutions deemed “too big to fail” by the Treasury Department are also “too big to jail”.
What is even more disturbing is that while this distinction was mostly reserved for financial crimes—a position I find flawed in its own regard—this policy appears to have seeped into other misconduct enforced by the Department. For example, in December 2012, the Department entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with HSBC, a global bank that admitted to violating federal laws designed to prevent drug lords and terrorists from laundering money in the United States. Let me repeat that, a deferred prosecution agreement for a company involved in money laundering for DRUG LORDS AND TERRORISTS.
What’s worse is that the Department publicly proclaimed a “record” settlement in this case where HSBC paid $1.92 billion to the federal government, improved its internal anti-money laundering controls, and submitted to the oversight of an outside monitor for five years. Despite the fact that this is a “record” settlement, for a bank as gigantic as HSBC, this amounts to less than 11% of HBSC’s profits last year alone, and is a bare fraction of the sums left unmonitored. Many believe that HSBC may have made a profit from the DPA because it actually made more than $1.92 billion by providing services to drug kingpins and terrorists.
I sent a letter to Attorney General Holder expressing my outrage at this DPA on December 13 asking why no employees—not even the ones who turned off the anti-money laundering filters—were prosecuted. Further, Senator Brown and I sent a letter in January seeking the rationale for why no individuals at these large financial institutions are prosecuted. The response was woeful and failed to answer our questions, leading us to question whether the Department has something to hide.
Simply put, this is a leadership problem and one that needs to be fixed quickly and will be a big part of any effort to confirm a new Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division.
the original post includes a video replay of holder’s testimony…sickening. you can almost see a circle of goldman-sachs current and former brokers shitting all over him and hear their fiendish cackling as holder speaks. his toadying is sickening.
what else can be said – better learn to do more with less – pronto!
As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored
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![Prescott Bush, the father of GHW Bush, later wrote Clover Dulles, the widow of Allen Dulles, in 1969, about his meeting with Allen Dulles after JFK had canned him in fall, 1961. "He [Allen] tried to make a pleasant evening of it, but I was rather sick of heart, and angry too, for it was the Kennedys that brought about the fiasco [Bay of Pigs]. And here they were making Allen to be the goat, which he wasn't and did not deserve. I have never forgiven them." Note the last sentence of Prescott Bush. His son George Herbert Walker Bush says he can't remember where he was on the day of the JFK assassination, despite his being a US Senate candidate staying in the Dallas, TX Sheraton the night of 11/21/63 and being in Dallas on 11/22/63. GHW Bush helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion and I think he was involved in the JFK assassination.](http://roblosricos.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bushjfkbookdepo2.jpg?w=593&h=619)
This lack of quality and tactical control greatly increases the impact of the third major problem: the United States is held responsible for everything the contractors do or fail to do. Despite the fact the United States has no effective quality or operational control over the contractors, the local population rightly holds it responsible for all contractor failures.
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.
scientific information and test results related to geoengineering.
but, just as the banksters are allowed to launder drug cartel billions, while a teenager smoking a joint in his bedroom could be sent to prison for possessing the products the cartels provide, the rich are allowed to do anything – pollute the land and sea, and kill everything and everyone in the way; molest children by the thousands; steal everything that’s not nailed down – while people without huge piles of money to burn can have their lives ruined – either by being between a corporation and their potential profits, or by being incarcerated for having the exact same habits as the country club crowd has, but not having enough money to hire one of them as your lawyer.
“Six a.m. appears to be the most frequently visited time at the gym,” says Urch in the video which is dated November 2010. “So if you ever did want to try to get a hold of Nick – or maybe get a hold of his laptop – you might want to visit the gym at 6:00 a.m. on Monday.”
Riot can display on a spider diagram the associations and relationships between individuals online by looking at who they have communicated with over Twitter. It can also mine data from Facebook and sift GPS location information from Foursquare, a mobile phone app used by more than 25 million people to alert friends of their whereabouts. The Foursquare data can be used to display, in graph form, the top 10 places visited by tracked individuals and the times at which they visited them.
