Reblogged from : Earth First News Wire
They sat down in chairs in front of the tents, wearing headbands and happi coats.
“We are not removing the tents,” they announced in a statement. “We are against the restart of nuclear power reactors.”
“People who are fighting for the end of nuclear power generation meet here and get information here,” said Setsuko Kuroda, 62, of Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, who frequently visits the tents.
Reblogged from : Earth First News Wire
Cross Posted from Huffington Post
The State Department, still with “egg on its face” from its statement that Keystone XL would have little impact on climate change, sunk a little lower today as the most respected elders, and chiefs of 10 sovereign nations turned their backs on State Department representatives and walked out during a meeting. The meeting, which was a failed attempt at a “nation to nation” tribal consultation concerning the Northen leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline neglected to address any legitimate concerns being raised by First Nations Leaders (or leading scientific experts for that matter).
Tribal nations added probably the most critical danger of the pipeline which is to the water. Their statement is below:
On this historic day of May 16, 2013, ten sovereign Indigenous nations maintain that the proposed TransCanada/Keystone XL pipeline does not serve the national interest and in fact would be detrimental not only to the collected sovereigns but all future generations on planet earth. This morning the following sovereigns informed the Department of State Tribal Consultation effort at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rapid City, SD, that the gathering was not recognized as a valid consultation on a “nation to nation” level:
Southern Ponca
Pawnee Nation
Nez Perce Nation
And the following Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires People):
Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate
Ihanktonwan Dakota (Yankton Sioux)
Rosebud Sioux Tribe
Oglala Sioux Tribe
Standing Rock Tribe
Lower Brule Sioux Tribe
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
Crow Creek Sioux Tribe
The Great Plains Tribal Chairmans Association supports this position, which is in solidarity with elected leaders, Treaty Councils and the grassroots community, and is guided by spiritual leaders. On Saturday, May 18, the Sacred Pipe Bundle of the Oceti Sakowin will be brought out to pray with the people to stop the KXL pipeline, and other tribal nation prayer circles will gather to do the same.
Pursuant to Executive Order 13175, the above sovereigns directed the DOS to invite President Obama to engage in “true Nation to Nation” consultation with them at the nearest date, at a designated location to be communicated by each of the above sovereigns. After delivering that message, the large contingent of tribal people walked out of the DOS meeting and asked the other tribal people present to support this effort and to leave the meeting. Eventually all remaining tribal representatives and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers left the meeting at the direct urging of the grassroots organization Owe Aku. Owe Aku, Moccasins on the Ground, and Protect the Sacred are preparing communities to resist the Keystone XL pipeline through Keystone Blockade Training.
….
| 15.05.2013 | Nuclear Event | USA | State of South Carolina, [Catawba Nuclear Station] |  |
 |
….
| Description | |
| Federal regulators say more than 100 gallons of water with traces of a radioactive hydrogen isotope have leaked at a nuclear power plant in South Carolina. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that the tritium leak isn’t an emergency, but says the leak could reach groundwater. The NRC says the leak was found late Tuesday in a fiberglass discharge pipe. Duke Energy, which runs the plant, has started taking steps to fix the problem. The NRC says Duke is putting in a temporary sump pump to try to isolate the leak. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says drinking water that contains tritium can increase the risk of developing cancer. |
….
….
Traces of radioactive hydrogen isotope have turned up in more than 100 gallons of
water after a South Carolina nuclear plant sprung a leak.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reported Wednesday (May 15) that
the leak was discovered in a fiberglass discharge pipe around 11:23 p.m.EDT Tuesday
at the Catawba Nuclear Station.
The NRC states that a “leak greater than 100 gallons containing tritium has the
potential to reach groundwater.”
Duke Energy, which runs the plant, has started taking steps to fix the problem. The
NRC says Duke is putting in a temporary sump pump to try to isolate the leak.
…..
….
| 15.05.2013 | HAZMAT | Germany | State of Hesse, Frankfurt |  |
|
….
| Description | |
| A poisonous cloud containing a potentially cancer-causing chemical was accidentally released over Frankfurt on Tuesday, with residents of two districts warned to stay indoors throughout the afternoon. The cloud of nitrobenzene escaped after an accident at a chemical plant belonging to the firm Clariant in an industrial park near the Hochst district of the city. The leak was only stopped after half an hour, a spokesman for the Frankfurt fire brigade said, adding that measurements outside the park suggested there were no immediate health risks. Nevertheless, a spokesman for the industrial park operator Infraserv said the cloud drifted over the Hochst and Unterliederbach districts, where residents were told to stay at home and keep doors and windows shut during the afternoon. Police also closed off the centre of Hochst and shut down a local railway station. Many people in the area were seen holding their hands or cloth in front of their mouths. The all-clear was only given in the early evening. Nitrobenzene, a substance used in the production of car paint, is considered highly dangerous if breathed in or swallowed, and can easily be absorbed through the skin. It is also considered carcinogenic and prolonged exposure can damage the liver, lungs, and central nervous system. Both the cause of the accident and the exact quantity of the chemical released were not initially revealed, though the Infraserv spokesman spoke of a “small amount.” The fire brigade sprayed water onto the chemical in an attempt to contain the leak. |
….
….
Published: 15 May 13 11:12 CET
A poisonous cloud containing a potentially cancer-causing chemical was accidentally released over Frankfurt on Tuesday, with residents of two districts warned to stay indoors throughout the afternoon.
The cloud of nitrobenzene escaped after an accident at a chemical plant belonging to the firm Clariant in an industrial park near the Höchst district of the city.
The leak was only stopped after half an hour, a spokesman for the Frankfurt fire brigade said, adding that measurements outside the park suggested there were no immediate health risks.
Nevertheless, a spokesman for the industrial park operator Infraserv said the cloud drifted over the Höchst and Unterliederbach districts, where residents were told to stay at home and keep doors and windows shut during the afternoon. Police also closed off the centre of Höchst and shut down a local railway station. Many people in the area were seen holding their hands or cloth in front of their mouths.
The all-clear was only given in the early evening.
….
by Staff Writers
Cancun, Mexico (SPX) May 15, 2013
 A new study finds a decline in snow and ice on Mount Everest (second peak from left) and the national park surrounding it. (Credit: Pavel Novak) |
Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world’s tallest peak is shedding its frozen cloak. The scientists have also been studying temperature and precipitation trends in the area and found that the Everest region has been warming while snowfall has been declining since the early 1990s.
Members of the team conducting these studies will present their findings on May 14 at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico – a scientific conference organized and co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union.
Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters (590 feet), according to Sudeep Thakuri, who is leading the research as part of his PhD graduate studies at the University of Milan in Italy.
Glaciers smaller than one square kilometer are disappearing the fastest and have experienced a 43 percent decrease in surface area since the 1960s. Because the glaciers are melting faster than they are replenished by ice and snow, they are revealing rocks and debris that were previously hidden deep under the ice.
These debris-covered sections of the glaciers have increased by about 17 percent since the 1960s, according to Thakuri. The ends of the glaciers have also retreated by an average of 400 meters since 1962, his team found.
The researchers suspect that the decline of snow and ice in the Everest region is from human-generated greenhouse gases altering global climate. However, they have not yet established a firm connection between the mountains’ changes and climate change, Thakuri said.
Jon Rappoport
Activist Post
Tom Laskawy, writing at Grist, points out how the next generation of GMOs is following in the track of present disasters:
“…the growing pest and weed problems for GMOs have caused farmers to turn to seeds that are coated with a different pesticide—a neonicotinoid. If that name rings a bell, it’s because these pesticides… have been implicated in the increasing epidemic of bee deaths.
“And that’s aside from the evidence that biotech’s ‘next big thing’ —seeds that emit multiple pesticides—may be doomed to fail. An international team of researchers, including USDA and biotech scientists, found what they termed ‘cross-resistance’ to these pesticides in [predatory] bugs exposed to the next-generation GMO seeds. Evidence, in other words, that GMO seeds are hitting a bug-covered wall.” The seeds don’t knock out the plant pests.
Yet the venerable journal Nature recently urged patience, because just over the next hill, the biotech giants will surely succeed in bringing us better GMO crops.
This reveals an underlying assumption about technology: when scientists discover a new way of doing things, it can never be retracted; it will eventually work well; improvements will come.
That false assumption sustains a tremendous amount of false science, as well as profits, of course, for the companies involved.
“Wait, better developments are being made.”
If scientists can shoot genes into plants, that’s a step that can never be taken back. It’s automatically a sign of progress. To admit defeat would be equivalent to admitting science can be wrong.
This is the insanity we are dealing with.
We’ve seen it in the field of psychiatric drugs, all of which carry heavy toxicity. If you push a researcher up against the wall, where he has to admit problems with the drugs, he’ll say, “But we’re working on next-generation chemicals. It’ll be different. We’re just starting to understand how the brain really works. Be patient. Help is on the way.”
In recent days, we’ve seen the US National Institute of Mental Health and its British counterpart defect from orthodox psychiatry in the interpretation of what a mental disorder is. Some people have taken this as a positive development. But that’s not the case.
The defectors intend to push brain research to new dangerous heights. Even though they have no baseline for “normal brain activity,” they are racing along the track of discovering “abnormal chemical imbalances.” In other words, their better science is no science at all.
They will invent new names for mental disorders, and there will be more drugs to treat patients, and the whole edifice will be founded on lies.
In the field of gene research, scientists are advancing on a road of manipulation of the human genome. This, they say, is yielding one breakthrough after another. New humans, better humans, more talented and healthy and intelligent humans will be the result.
But really, this translates into: we can shift genes around, we can substitute new genes for old genes, we can silence genes and provoke dormant genes to express themselves—therefore, we have to keep doing it. It’s science. We have to expand our work.
No they don’t. In the same way they don’t have to build even more destructive H-bombs, they don’t have to play roulette with the human body and brain.
Just because medical researchers can come up with new chemo drugs that kill cells and destroy immune systems, it doesn’t mean they have to.
Despite failures along every front of GMO-crop production, despite the fact that predictions of higher crop yields and reduced use of pesticides and herbicides have failed to materialize, Monsanto pushes on.
Monsanto lies and pretends their work is an enormous success. Their researchers, many of whom know the catastrophic failure they are dealing with, nevertheless keep going, keep telling themselves that this is science, and therefore it will ultimately succeed.
Translation: The seven billion people of earth are the guinea pigs in a vast corporate experiment.
Technocrats who envision trans-humans, a combine of brain and computerized brain, pin faith on the idea that, since brains can be hooked up to machines, they should be. It’s “scientific progress,” and therefore it has to happen.
All this used to be called scientism, a massive overreach of misplaced faith, but now the word is largely defunct. It was too accurate. It nailed the obsession and showed how crazy it was.
Years ago, I was invited to give a lecture to an atheist group in Los Angeles. The topic was HIV research, because I had written a book about it, AIDS INC.
I described the line of HIV research, and made a detailed case for the fact that researchers had never proved HIV caused a condition that was being called AIDS.
My analysis was met with strong opposition. The group was unhappy.
No problem. But it turned out their unhappiness was based on the notion that I was attacking science itself. And since they believed that’s what I was doing, they were angry because, get this, if I was against science, I must be for God. And they were atheists.
Therefore, I had to be wrong.
Their reaction mirrored 19th century attitudes about the rise of science. Its proponents felt they’d finally found an antidote to religion, and therefore, anyone who criticized science on any terms (e.g, flawed reasoning, bad data, bogus experiments) must be demanding a return to the Church, the Inquisition, and burning at the stake.
There’s a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It’s invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as “rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer.” Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. “It smells like dead bodies,” observes another local.
On a Saturday morning in March, one mile south of the landfill, several Bridgeton residents have gathered at a small home in a blue-collar subdivision called Spanish Village. Concerned citizens Karen Nickel and Dawn Chapman are here to answer questions posed by four of their neighbors. “How will I ever sell my house?” “Am I going to end up with cancer 20 years down the road?” “Is there even a solution?”
In February, the landfill’s owner, Republic Services, sent glossy fliers to residents within stink radius claiming the noxious odor posed no safety risk. But official reports say otherwise. Temperature probes reveal the fire has already surpassed normal heat levels. Reports from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) indicate dangerously high levels of benzene and hydrogen sulfide in the air. In March, Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) – which has jurisdiction over Bridgeton Landfill – quietly posted an Internet notice cautioning citizens with chronic respiratory diseases to limit time outdoors. A month after Republic distributed its potentially misleading flier, the state attorney general sued the company on eight counts of environmental violations, including pollution and public nuisance. And this week, as part of a settlement set to be announced Tuesday, Republic sent another round of fliers offering to move local families to hotels during a period of increased odor related to remediation efforts.
Nickel and Chapman are stay-at-home moms; Chapman has three special-needs kids. Neither of them wants to spend her time worrying about a damn landfill fire. But until someone higher up the power chain intervenes, they have sworn to call municipal offices, file Sunshine requests and post notices to the community’s Facebook group, no matter how unsettling the facts they uncover. Scariest of all: The Bridgeton landfill fire is burning close to at least 8,700 tons of nuclear weapons wastes.
“To have somebody call you at 11 P.M., and they’re in tears, concerned for their family, that’s heartbreaking,” Chapman tells Rolling Stone. “We’re doing this because we don’t have a choice. If we don’t come together as a community and fight, no one’s going to do it for us.”
West Lake Landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site that’s home to some of the oldest radioactive wastes in the world. A six-foot chain-link fence surrounds the perimeter, plastered with bright yellow hazard signs that warn of the dangers within. On one corner stands a rusty gas pump. About 1,200 feet south of the radioactive EPA site, the fire at Bridgeton Landfill spreads out like hot barbeque coals. No one knows for sure what happens when an underground inferno meets a pool of atomic waste, but residents aren’t eager to find out.
At a March 15th press conference, Peter Anderson – an economist who has studied landfills for over 20 years – raised the worst-case scenario of a “dirty bomb,” meaning a non-detonated, mass release of floating radioactive particles in metro St. Louis. “Now, to be clear, a dirty bomb is not nuclear fission, it’s not an atomic bomb, it’s not a weapon of mass destruction,” Anderson assured meeting attendants in Bridgeton’s Machinists Union Hall. “But the dispersal of that radioactive material in air that could reach – depending upon weather conditions – as far as 10 miles from the site could make it impossible to have economic activity continue.”
*****************************************************************************
Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill, where underground fire has been smoldering since December 2010
ST. LOUIS–(KMOX)–A judge says he’ll decide by morning whether a plan to put out the fire and end the smell at the Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill is workable.
The plan — crafted by the Missouri Attorney General and the landfill owner, Republic Services Inc. — has not yet been made public. It’s now in the hands of Circuit Court Judge Michael Jamison, who met in his chambers with lawyers from both sides on a day he was scheduled to hold a hearing on the Attorney General’s lawsuit against the landfill.
“It’s not exactly a settlement,” Jamison told Bridgeton residents, reporters and environmentalists waiting in his courtroom, “But it’s something that would address the smoldering issue and what the sate may be able to do.”
The lawsuit filed by the state calls for an aggressive plan to put out the fire, which has been smoldering since December 2010 — and for fines upwards of tens-of-thousand a dollars a day for alleged violations of Missouri environmental laws. Koster’s suit claims the burning landfill is billowing benzene and other hazardous chemicals into the air, and leaking a black ooze into ground water.
Koster’s office declined to comment. The Attorney General has scheduled a news conference for 10:30 Tuesday morning in downtown St. Louis to reveal details of the proposed next step.
Already, complaints are rising that the apparent deal was made without input from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, from area businesses or from Bridgeton residents.
“The community needs to be at the table,” said the coalition’s Kat Logan Smith, “The property owners, the families and businesses here need to be at the table, because they need to decide what the bottom line is.”
****************************************************************************
Sunday, May 12th 2013 at 8:00 am
Last September, the causal link between cancer and genetically modified food was confirmed in a French study, the first independent long-term animal feeding study not commissioned by the biotech corporations themselves. The disturbing details can be found here: New Study Finds GM Corn and Roundup Causes Cancer In Rats
Now, a new study published in the Journal of Hematology & Thromboembolic Diseases indicates that the biopesticides engineered into GM crops known as Bacillus Thuringensis (Bt) or Cry-toxins, may also contribute to blood abnormalities from anemia to hematological malignancies (blood cancers) such as leukemia.[i]
A group of scientists from the Department of Genetics and Morphology, Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Brasilia, Brasilia/DF, Brazil set out to test the purported human and environmental biosafety of GM crops, looking particularly at the role that the Bt toxin found within virtually all GM food crops plays on non-target or non-insect animal species.
The research was spurned by the Brazilian Collegiate Board of Directors of the National Sanitary Surveillance Agency (ANVISA), who advocated in 2005 for evaluations of toxicity and pathogenicity of microbiological control agents such as Bt toxins, given that little is known about their toxicological potential in non-target organisms, including humans.
While Bacillus Thurigensis spore-crystals have been used since the late 1960′s in agriculture as a foliar insecticide, it was only after the advent of recombinant DNA biotechnology that these toxin-producing genes (known as delta endotoxins) were first inserted into the plants themselves and released into commercial production in the mid-90′s, making their presence in the US food supply and the bodies of exposed populations ubiquitous.
What the new study revealed is that various binary combinations and doses of Bt toxins are capable of targeting mammalian cells, particularly the erythroid (red blood cell) lineage, resulting in red blood cell changes indicative of significant damage, such as anemia. In addition, the study found that Bt toxins suppressed bone marrow proliferation creating abnormal lymphocyte patterns consistent with some types of leukemia.
The researchers also found that one of the prevailing myths about the selective toxicity of Bt to insects, the target species, no longer holds true:
It has been reported that Cry toxins exert their toxicity when activated at alkaline pH of the digestive tract of susceptible larvae, and, because the physiology of the mammalian digestive system does not allow their activation, and no known specific receptors in mammalian intestinal cells have been reported, the toxicity these MCAs to mammals would negligible [8,22,23]. However, our study demonstrated that Bt spore-crystals genetically modified to express individually Cry1Aa, Cry1Ab, Cry1Ac or Cry2A induced hematotoxicity, particularly to the erythroid lineage. This finding corroborates literature that demonstrated that alkali-solubilized Bt spore-crystals caused in vitro hemolysis in cell lines of rat, mouse, sheep, horse, and human erythrocytes and suggested that the plasma membrane of susceptible cells (erythrocytes, in this case) may be the primary target for these toxins [33]
1) That Cry toxins are capable of exerting their adverse effects when suspended in distilled water, not requiring alkalinization via insect physiology to become activated as formerly believed.
2) That a dose of Cry1Ab as low as 27 mg/kg, their lowest tested dose, was capable of inducing hypochromic anemia in mice – the very toxin has been detected in blood of non-pregnant women, pregnant women and their fetuses in Canada, supposedly exposed through diet.
3) Whereas past reports have found that Bt toxins are generally nontoxic and do not bioaccumulate in fatty tissue or persist in the environment, the new study demonstrated that all Cry toxins tested had a more pronounced effect from 72 hours of exposure onwards, indicating the opposite is true.
4) That high-dose Cry toxin doses caused blood changes indicative of bone marrow damage (damage to “hematopoietic stem cell or bone marrow stroma”).
The authors noted their results “demonstrate leukemogenic activity for other spore-crystals not yet reported in the literature.”
Things are heating up in Baraboo, Wisconsin as a long awaited food rights trial approaches.
Raw milk drinkers are outraged that Wisconsin DATCP is bringing criminal charges against a farmer who serves a private buying club. Do citizens have a right to contract with a producer and grow food to their own standards? That is what is at stake in this case. – Kimberly Hartke, Publicist Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
Customers and Other Supporters to Attend Court with Farmer
Food rights activists from around North America will meet at the Sauk County Courthouse in this tiny town on May 20 to support Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger and food sovereignty. Hershberger, whose trial begins that day, is charged with four criminal misdemeanors that could land this husband and father in county jail for up to 30 months with fines of over $10,000…
The Wisconsin Department of Agricultural Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) targeted Hershberger for supplying a private buying club with fresh milk and other farm products.
DATCP has charged Hershberger with, among other things, operating a retail food establishment without a license. Hershberger repeatedly rejects this, citing that he provides foods only to paid members in a private buying club and is not subject to state food regulations.
Hershberger says:
There is more at stake here than just a farmer and his few customers — this is about the fundamental right of farmers and consumers to engage in peaceful, private, mutually consenting agreements for food, without additional oversight.
~ Desert Rose ~
***************************************************************************
Julie Beal
Activist Post
I’ve got a very important story to tell, so listen closely. Fed a diet of ‘alternative reactions to the mainstream news’, you probably won’t know about any of this, because it’s not had much of a public airing. The final push of Agenda 21 is to unite us all, mainstream and alternative alike – an end to the current system, and the institution of the ‘fair sounding’ new world order: green and caring.
There have been several attempts to co-opt the Occupy movement to advance this agenda, which is neither green nor caring. In fact, it intends to exploit nature and people to the fullest extent.
We need to expose this agenda. Otherwise, the next time you’re out on the street protesting, you’ll be accosted by a Happiness Angel, who just wants to make you better, so that we can all be happy……
These are the elements of my story:
1. The New Economics (especially George Soros) – natural capital + complexity
2. The UN’s cult of happiness, which includes the responsibility to make everyone else happy, and to live ‘sustainably’.
3. Identity providers ……….. trust facilitators
4. Mobile finance
5. Mobile everything – TELEHEALTH – electronic records
6. Quantified self / BIOSTAMP – transhumanism ……… metrics for social and human capital
7. Global to local currencies, all track-able.
8. The science of complex adaptive systems (CAS) eg Purdue’s social simulation…….analysis/control
9. Narrative science / controlling the conversation eg ‘Hollywood, Health and Society’……memes/ nudging
10. Communitarianism / Agenda 21……….ideology, the global zeitgeist
