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Fukushima Debacle Risks Chernobyl ‘Dead Zone’ as Radiation in Soil Soars | Bloomberg

By Yuriy Humber and Stuart Biggs

Radioactive soil in pockets of areas near Japan’s crippled nuclear plant have reached the same level as Chernobyl, where a “dead zone” remains 25 years after the reactor in the former Soviet Union exploded.

Soil samples in areas outside the 20-kilometer (12 miles) exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant measured more than 1.48 million becquerels a square meter, the standard used for evacuating residents after the Chernobyl accident, Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan, said in a research report published May 24 and given to the government.

Radiation from the plant has spread over 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), according to the report. The extent of contamination shows the government must move fast to avoid the same future for the area around Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant as Chernobyl, scientists said. Technology has improved since the 1980s, meaning soil can be decontaminated with chemicals or by planting crops to absorb radioactive materials, allowing residents to return.

“We need to finish this treatment as quickly as possible, within three years at most,” Tetsuo Iguchi, a specialist in isotope analysis and radiation detection at Nagoya University in central Japan, said in a telephone interview. “If we take longer, people will give up on returning to their homes.”

Soil Samples

Soil samples showed one site with radiation from Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter about 25 kilometers to the northwest of the Fukushima plant, according to Kawata’s study. Five more sites about 30 kilometers from Dai- Ichi showed radiation exceeding 1.48 million becquerels per square meter.

When asked to comment on the report today, Tokyo Electric spokesman Tetsuya Terasawa said the radiation levels are in line with those found after a nuclear bomb test, which disperses plutonium. He declined to comment further.

Japan’s government introduced a mandatory exclusion zone 20 kilometers around the plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that knocked out power leading to three reactor meltdowns. Kawata’s study didn’t include samples from inside the exclusion zone, where only government and Tokyo Electric staff may enter.

The government in April ordered the evacuation of towns including Iitate, Katsurao and Namie that are outside the 20- kilometer zone after finding high levels of radiation.

‘As Soon As Possible’

“Basically, the way in which the current zones have been drawn up aren’t a concern in terms of the impact on health,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. “Using Mr. Kawata’s report as a guide, we want to do what we can to improve the soil, so people can return as soon as possible.”

While the area containing soil pockets over 1.48 million becquerels a square meter is smaller than around Chernobyl –600 square kilometers compared with 3,100 square kilometers — the level of contamination means soil needs to be cleaned or removed before residents can return, Kawata said in his report.

“It might take about one or two years for people to return to land outside the 20-kilometer zone,” the University of Nagoya’s Iguchi said. “If we replace the soil, it is possible for people to return even inside the zone.”

The “dead zone” around Chernobyl remains at 30 kilometers, Mykola Kulinich, Ukraine’s ambassador to Japan, said in Tokyo on April 26, the 25th anniversary of the disaster.

Chernobyl Fallout

Belarus, which absorbed 80 percent of the fallout from the Chernobyl explosion, estimates that 2 million, or 20 percent of the population, was affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe, while about 23 percent of the country’s land was contaminated, according to a Belarus embassy website. About a fifth of the country’s agricultural land has been rendered unusable, which means some $700 million in losses each year, according to the website.

Using crops was one solution being considered by Belarus with the idea that grains harvested from contaminated areas could then be processed to make ethanol. A study funded by a philanthropy arm of Heineken NV (HEIA) found that radioactive elements do not transfer into ethanol and this would allow Belarus to become a major supplier of the liquid used to dilute gasoline to the European Union.

Crop planting was planned in areas of “low-level” radiation, Michael Rietveld, chief executive officer of Ireland’s Greenfield Partners, which agreed with the Belarus government in 2007 to develop an ethanol business project to decontaminate the soil, said in an interview October 2009.

Crop Planting

“There are cows walking over this land now,” Rietveld said in reference to Belarus. “People are living over there. It’s not a dangerous venture to use crops in low-contaminated areas. Most of the contamination is in the soil not the air.”

The global financial crisis hampered Greenfield’s fund raising and the project closed last year after the Belarus government expressed concerns about the Irish company’s ability to attract financing.

Another solution for Fukushima may be chemical treatment of the soil to allow cesium to be absorbed into porous crystals, such as zeolite, which are more visible and simpler to remove, the University of Nagoya’s Iguchi said.

Restoring the land may be more critical in Japan than Belarus, where the population density is about 46 people per square kilometer, according to United Nations data. That’s more than seven times less than the metric for Japan, where 127.6 million people live on about 378,000 square kilometers.

Road Map

Restoring land use in Fukushima hinges on Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, ending the crisis at the nuclear station, where three reactors went into meltdown following the earthquake and tsunami that also left more than 23,000 people dead or missing.

The utility on April 17 set out a so-called road map to end the crisis in six to nine months. Tepco said it expects to achieve a sustained drop in radiation levels at the plant within three months, followed by a cold shutdown, where core reactor temperatures fall below 100 degrees Celsius.

The chance of Tepco achieving that goal is six or seven out of 10, William Ostendorff, a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee earlier this week.

Tepco has yet to decide how to deal with the plant site, Megumi Iwashita, a spokeswoman for the company said on May 26.

The most cost-effective solution may be to allow the cesium to move down into the soil to decay, Kathryn Higley, a radiation health physicist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, said in a telephone interview. Cesium has a half-life of about 30 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“They’re going to make decisions on an acre-by-acre basis as to what’s going to happen to these facilities,” she said. “The area around Chernobyl is now a nature park. When you move 100,000 people out of an area, nature does pretty well.”

Source: Bloomberg

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Who’s in Charge of Who’s in Charge?

By Steve Bhaerman (aka Swami Beyondananda)

“It’s time to face the elephant – and the donkey – in the living room. Both political parties are ultimately controlled by the out-of-control power of money.” – Swami Beyondananda

No matter which issue is closest to your heart (or, if it is particularly infuriating, your liver or spleen), EVERY political issue boils down to just one…

Who’s in charge of who’s in charge?

The founders of the United States of America addressed this issue directly in the Declaration of Independence, putting forth the profoundly radical notion that the legitimacy of government rests on the consent of the governed. Furthermore, they declared that every free individual is sovereign (i.e., has the same rights as a king) with the same natural right to thrive as the grass has to grow.

In creating the Bill of Rights and the Constitution a dozen years later, our country’s founders designed a republic (from the Latin res publica meaning “thing of the people”) as the structure that would serve as an alternative to rule by monarchy and oligarchy. However, the forces the American patriots fought in the Revolutionary War have retrenched and re-grouped. Instead of one multinational corporation (The British East India Company) backed by the power of the military, there are now many. And because these entities have access to so much wealth and resource, they have been able to overrule the rule of law. In some cases, they simply factor in any financial penalty as “the cost of doing business,” and go on perpetrating their socio-pathic behavior. More often, they do the easier thing. They “invest” in government, and by paying legislators directly (why pay taxes when you can avoid the middle man and go direct?) they can simply buy new laws, or negate old ones. Oh, and when they need to, they can – thanks to the military industrial complex that really rules America — employ the U.S. military as well.

Now while some might see this as a cynical assessment, I see it as just the opposite. Cynicism is a rationalization of powerlessness, an excuse for apathy, a reason to go back to sleep. I view the stark assessment above as the first truth-telling step on the road to recovery. Despite our nation’s unique legacy, we the people have become addicted to powerlessness and dependence on a ruling elite whom we hope will trickle some wealth down onto us “pee-ons.” But, as the Swami says, “the ruling class has flunked ruling class. They get an F.”

Whether that “F” stands for freedom or fascism is up to us and no one else.

We Have A Deeply-United Body Politic

No, that’s not a misprint. While the mainstream media would have us focus on our differences, here is a very important point. Ready? Awakening individuals on all sides of the political divide – from Coffee Party progressives to Tea Party conservatives – overwhelmingly agree that our country is being turned into a third world nation by the unchecked power of money. I am not just speculating here. The work that my friend and associate Joseph McCormick has been doing in large cities and small towns has proved this again and again.

The dysfunctional function of the media has been to prevent civil discourse between the red and blue tribes. Think about it. Where, on mainstream radio or TV, can we find a real forum? All we have are “against-ums.” Those who are turned off by “mass-debating” and “de-testimonials,” turn off their TV, and then what? They fall back into cynicism and apathy, which further entrenches the powers in power. Or, they redouble their activist efforts on behalf of the thousands of worthy issues related to peace, personal freedom, economic justice, ecological sanity, etc., etc., etc. Each of these worthy organizations and causes are like single cell organisms competing with one another for a dwindling “food” (i.e., cash) supply.

Because this well-intentioned activism is going off in all directions at once, it is actually dissipating our energy. Go ahead. Pick the concern that is most important to you:

  • Uncontrolled power of the military industrial complex, and the mind-boggling (and secret) budget for war and weaponry
  • Loss of civil liberties
  • Power of lobbyists to buy and own legislators
  • Choices limited to two pre-selected candidates, and very limited parameters of debate and discussion
  • Growing gap between rich and poor, with the middle class becoming a vanishing species
  • “Health care” where individuals are forced to purchase insurance from a “company store” monopoly
  • Mind-boggling regulations that can be defied by huge corporations but are costly to smaller entrepreneurs
  • Clean water, clean air, clean food compromised by those who benefit from not having to clean up after themselves
  • GMO foods and the monopolies like Monsanto (who want to control the world’s food supply)
  • Big Pharma making selling herbs illegal in the European Union in preparation for doing the same in the USA
  • Chemtrails, HAARP and other dark conspiracies that one finds going deeper down the rabbit hole

Every one of these issues – every one – boils down to just one issue: Who’s in charge of who’s in charge? Is it we, the people? Or they, the very, very few people? It’s as simple as the old maxim, “When few rule, few benefit.”

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Top US Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001, 9/11 A False Flag | Prison Planet

By Paul Joseph Watson

Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.

Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.

Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.

Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.

The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik.

Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80′s.

Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.

Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.

“He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.

“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.

“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.

“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.

“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary. Read more…

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TSA lies about the Constitution | Tenth Amendment Center

By Michael Boldin

Round two of the battle for travel freedom is well underway.

The first round, which garnered national attention in the fall of 2010, focused primarily on the TSA implementing new procedures…pat downs, body scanners….and the public outcry against it….boycotts, protests, calling congress to demand change.

But, as the public response failed to stop the scanners and searches, round two has moved to state legislatures around the country. Most prominently, Texas, where the state house just passed a bill banning TSA searches without probable cause. Click here to read the Tenth Amendment Center’s report on the bill.

This time, the TSA is on the defensive, and published an official statement about the Texas bill on their blog:

What’s our take on the Texas House of Representatives voting to ban the current TSA pat-down? Well, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article. VI. Clause 2) prevents states from regulating the federal government.

The problem here? The statement is false. Ignorance from the TSA is unlikely, so I’ll call a spade a spade. They’re lying.

The supremacy clause says nothing of the sort. Here’s the full text:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

So, in simple terms, what does the supremacy clause mean? Just what it says. The constitution is supreme. And any federal laws made in line with the constitution is supreme. Nothing more, nothing less.

Notice there’s not one single word in the actual text that says anything about states regulating the federal government as the TSA claims. They’re just making things up as they go. Read more…

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Sherry Jackson To Be Released from Prison

Dear Friends and Supporters,

First and foremost, I would like to thank you for all your prayers, love, and support. Your prayers kept me strong in the midst of the storm. Your financial support helped restore my health and keep our house from foreclosure. Thank you!

It’s almost over. I was released from Coleman Prison Camp on February 15, 2011. I was released to a transitional facility (halfway house) up until April 1st and then allowed to go home on “home confinement”. Officially, I will be in the Bureau of Prisons custody until August 8, 2011. At that time, I will begin a one-year probation period, answering to a probation officer once a week. Then I will be able to travel and have more freedom of speech. The time between now and August 8th will be spent restoring relationships and re-familiarizing myself with the world around me (especially technology).

I wrote 5 books in prison, one of which I would like to become a movie. (No, I didn’t waste my time playing cards and watching television.) I will have to do a little more research on two of the books, type all of the books into Microsoft Word and get them copyrighted and published. I plan to continue public speaking. I also plan to attend Bible College this fall and start a women’s ministry. (Any tuition or publication gifts will be greatly appreciated. In addition, I will be speaking out on social issues, like PRISONS.

I solicit your prayers in these areas.

I plan to produce a monthly e-mail to anyone who is interested in hearing what is going on, where I will be speaking, if I will be on radio, when a book is released…. I will not bombard you with e-mails. Any additional e-mails will be sent only if I will be in your area. I will not sell or otherwise give out your information to anyone else. I invite you to let me know if you want to be on my list and I will only be contacting those who request it. If you don’t have an e-mail address, I will snail-mail you the same information that is sent out by e-mail. I don’t plan on doing the Facebook or Twitter thing at this point, so this e-mail newsletter will be my main method of contact. If you want to be in contact with me, please let me know by mailing your name, e-mail, home phone, cell phone, and mailing address to me at 1560 Fieldgreen Overlook, Stone Mountain, GA 30088. Otherwise, I will not bother you. I know how overwhelming electronic media can be.

I plan to release the first newsletter in August, so please respond as soon as possible so I can get your information keyed into the database before then. If you know of others who would like the newsletter and didn’t receive this letter, please feel free to invite them on my behalf to respond also. Again, thank you so much for your support and prayers. I never felt unloved.

– Sherry Jackson