Is Global Warming Part of Earth's Natural Cycle: MIT Team Says "Yes"
06-26-2009 • Daily Galaxy
A team of MIT scientists recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels -the first increase in ten years. What baffles the team is that this data contradicts theories stating humans are the primary source of increase in greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere.
Read Full Story
Saturday, June 27, 2009
House Passes the 1,200-page Climate Bill that Congress was Not Allowed to Read
House Passes the 1,200-page Climate Bill that Congress was Not Allowed to Read
Text size
Aaron Dykes
Infowars
June 26, 2009
Despite heated objections by some Republicans, the unread 1,200-page Waxman-Markey climate bill was passed 219-212 in the House on Friday.
Final roll call votes are listed here.
During Boehner’s brief attempt at filibuster, he reads passages related to the usage of "qualified youth corps" to regulate energy efficiency in regards to "the sustainability of low-end income communities." "I wonder if ACORN qualifies for these grants," Boehner quipped.
Objecting to the fact that 300 pages were added to the bill at 3 a.m., Minority leader John Boehner attempted a brief filibuster, giving time for colleagues and aides to scan the unread extra passages and present certain excerpts on the floor. Politico blasts his effort, reporting:
That wasn’t good enough for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who delayed the roll call vote by reading page-by-page through a 300-page managers’ amendment Democrats added at around 3 a.m. Friday. Boehner seemed to relish the hour-long stunt, picking out the bill’s most obscure language and then pontificating about what it might – or might not – mean.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Shockingly, co-sponsor Henry Waxman objected to Boehner’s reading the bill on the House floor, and tried to prevent it on procedural grounds so that is contents would remain unknown and no one would shift support or delay the bill’s passage. Passing “laws” in secret is not law at all– it is tyranny, and it is shameful:
Waxman also wondered if any “historical records would be broken” by Boehner reading part of the bill and queried whether the tactic was “an attempt to try to get some people to leave on a close vote?”
Politico reports that Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) raised questions about whether "there was even a copy of the current version of the bill anywhere in the House chamber."
Rep. Michele Bachmann stated plainly that the bill was "a choice between liberty and tyranny," claiming that the bill institute "control over nearly every aspect in the lives of the American people" and advocating the Forbes amendment.
Remarkably, Ed Markey, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, rose to report that a copy was only available at the speaker’s desk or online, which Politico reports, would require members "to leave the floor to access."
Rep. Michele Bachmann stated plainly that the bill was "a choice between liberty and tyranny," claiming that the bill institute "control over nearly every aspect in the lives of the American people" and advocating the Forbes amendment.
House Passes Landmark Climate Bill
WSJ | June 26, 2009 7:31 PM EST
WASHINGTON — Landmark legislation to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions was approved by the House of Representatives in a close vote late Friday, securing a hard-fought victory for a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s agenda.
The 1,200 page bill—formally known as the "American Clean Energy and Security Act"—will reach into almost every corner of the U.S. economy. By putting a price on emissions of common gases, such as carbon dioxide, the bill would affect the way electricity is generated, how homes and offices are designed, how foreign trade is conducted and how much Americans pay to drive or to heat their homes.
READ MORE
Text size
Aaron Dykes
Infowars
June 26, 2009
Despite heated objections by some Republicans, the unread 1,200-page Waxman-Markey climate bill was passed 219-212 in the House on Friday.
Final roll call votes are listed here.
During Boehner’s brief attempt at filibuster, he reads passages related to the usage of "qualified youth corps" to regulate energy efficiency in regards to "the sustainability of low-end income communities." "I wonder if ACORN qualifies for these grants," Boehner quipped.
Objecting to the fact that 300 pages were added to the bill at 3 a.m., Minority leader John Boehner attempted a brief filibuster, giving time for colleagues and aides to scan the unread extra passages and present certain excerpts on the floor. Politico blasts his effort, reporting:
That wasn’t good enough for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who delayed the roll call vote by reading page-by-page through a 300-page managers’ amendment Democrats added at around 3 a.m. Friday. Boehner seemed to relish the hour-long stunt, picking out the bill’s most obscure language and then pontificating about what it might – or might not – mean.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Shockingly, co-sponsor Henry Waxman objected to Boehner’s reading the bill on the House floor, and tried to prevent it on procedural grounds so that is contents would remain unknown and no one would shift support or delay the bill’s passage. Passing “laws” in secret is not law at all– it is tyranny, and it is shameful:
Waxman also wondered if any “historical records would be broken” by Boehner reading part of the bill and queried whether the tactic was “an attempt to try to get some people to leave on a close vote?”
Politico reports that Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) raised questions about whether "there was even a copy of the current version of the bill anywhere in the House chamber."
Rep. Michele Bachmann stated plainly that the bill was "a choice between liberty and tyranny," claiming that the bill institute "control over nearly every aspect in the lives of the American people" and advocating the Forbes amendment.
Remarkably, Ed Markey, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, rose to report that a copy was only available at the speaker’s desk or online, which Politico reports, would require members "to leave the floor to access."
Rep. Michele Bachmann stated plainly that the bill was "a choice between liberty and tyranny," claiming that the bill institute "control over nearly every aspect in the lives of the American people" and advocating the Forbes amendment.
House Passes Landmark Climate Bill
WSJ | June 26, 2009 7:31 PM EST
WASHINGTON — Landmark legislation to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions was approved by the House of Representatives in a close vote late Friday, securing a hard-fought victory for a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s agenda.
The 1,200 page bill—formally known as the "American Clean Energy and Security Act"—will reach into almost every corner of the U.S. economy. By putting a price on emissions of common gases, such as carbon dioxide, the bill would affect the way electricity is generated, how homes and offices are designed, how foreign trade is conducted and how much Americans pay to drive or to heat their homes.
READ MORE
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Engineering Autism: Mice With Extra Chromosome Region Show Many Autistic Signs
Engineering Autism: Mice With Extra Chromosome Region Show Many Autistic Signs
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2009) — Mice who inherit a particular chromosomal duplication from their fathers show many behaviors associated with human autism, researchers report in the June 26th issue of the journal Cell. The duplicated chromosomal region in mice is the equivalent of human chromosome 15q11-13, the most frequent cytogenetic abnormality observed in autism, accounting for some five percent of all cases.
The engineered mice validate the human chromosome abnormality as one cause of the disease, the researchers said. They will also serve as an invaluable tool for therapeutic development.
"We know several mice as 'putative' models of autism, which show face validity that they are similar to human patients," said Toru Takumi of Hiroshima University in Japan. "In addition to these similar phenotypes, our mice have construct validity," meaning that their symptoms are traced to the same biological cause.
Autism is a common and heterogeneous neuropsychiatric disorder with manifestations of impaired social interaction and communication as well as repetitive behavior or restricted interest, the researchers explained. It is also one of the most heritable of all mental disorders, suggesting that genetic factors play an important role in development of the disease.
Scientists have studied many gene candidates, and mice carrying some of those mutations do show some signs. Still the molecular pathways underlying autism remain largely mysterious.
Chromosomal abnormalities are thought to account for 10 to 20 percent of cases and duplication of chromosome 15q11-13 is the only recurrent aberration so far linked to the disease.
In the new study, Takumi's team generated mice with a duplication of a region on their chromosome 7, mirroring the autism-linked abnormality seen in humans. Mice who inherit that abnormality from their fathers show poor social interaction, behavioral inflexibility, abnormal ultrasonic vocalizations and indications of anxiety, the results of extensive behavioral testing now show.
For instance, when given the option of spending time alone or in the presence of a stranger mouse, normal mice will often choose to hang out with the stranger, Takumi said. Mice with the chromosomal abnormality, on the other hand, more often choose to spend time with inanimate objects over fellow mice.
In tests of spatial memory, in which mice are trained to swim to a hidden platform, animals with the paternally inherited duplication were less able to adapt to changes in the platform's location than normal mice were. Another test, in which mice have to locate the correct hole to exit a box, showed similar results.
"We were honestly surprised to see behavioral inflexibility in two different reversal tests of learning and two different backgrounds," Takumi said. "Higher ultrasonic calls from pups with paternal duplication were unexpected" too. It's also hard to say exactly what those unusual calls mean for the mice, given scientists' limited understanding of mouse communication.
In other tests, the mice showed more signs of fear or anxiety, a feature common in autistic individuals.
The researchers also found molecular-level evidence that the duplication can lead to changes in a receptor for serotonin, a nerve messenger that acts as a growth factor in the immature brain. Those changes stem from different levels of one brain-specific small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA), known as MBII52, a molecule that is known to be involved in physiologically important "edits" to the receptor.
Because the gene that encodes MBII52 is "maternally imprinted," its expression in mice with the inherited duplication from their father was double that of normal mice or those who inherited the same abnormality from their mothers, they report. (Imprinted genes are chemically modified to prevent their expression.) Studies in cultured neurons showed that those changes to MBII52 are associated with an altered neural response, suggesting that changes in serotonin signals might underlie the aberrant behaviors exhibited by the animals.
In addition to those insights, the mice may yet hold many more clues for understanding autism and potential for new treatments.
"The link between social behaviors in rodents and social behavior in humans is difficult to establish," the researchers concluded. "Our model mouse will be valuable not only for therapeutic studies but also provides a starting point for more detailed genetic analysis directed toward understanding the etiology of developmental brain disorders."
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2009) — Mice who inherit a particular chromosomal duplication from their fathers show many behaviors associated with human autism, researchers report in the June 26th issue of the journal Cell. The duplicated chromosomal region in mice is the equivalent of human chromosome 15q11-13, the most frequent cytogenetic abnormality observed in autism, accounting for some five percent of all cases.
The engineered mice validate the human chromosome abnormality as one cause of the disease, the researchers said. They will also serve as an invaluable tool for therapeutic development.
"We know several mice as 'putative' models of autism, which show face validity that they are similar to human patients," said Toru Takumi of Hiroshima University in Japan. "In addition to these similar phenotypes, our mice have construct validity," meaning that their symptoms are traced to the same biological cause.
Autism is a common and heterogeneous neuropsychiatric disorder with manifestations of impaired social interaction and communication as well as repetitive behavior or restricted interest, the researchers explained. It is also one of the most heritable of all mental disorders, suggesting that genetic factors play an important role in development of the disease.
Scientists have studied many gene candidates, and mice carrying some of those mutations do show some signs. Still the molecular pathways underlying autism remain largely mysterious.
Chromosomal abnormalities are thought to account for 10 to 20 percent of cases and duplication of chromosome 15q11-13 is the only recurrent aberration so far linked to the disease.
In the new study, Takumi's team generated mice with a duplication of a region on their chromosome 7, mirroring the autism-linked abnormality seen in humans. Mice who inherit that abnormality from their fathers show poor social interaction, behavioral inflexibility, abnormal ultrasonic vocalizations and indications of anxiety, the results of extensive behavioral testing now show.
For instance, when given the option of spending time alone or in the presence of a stranger mouse, normal mice will often choose to hang out with the stranger, Takumi said. Mice with the chromosomal abnormality, on the other hand, more often choose to spend time with inanimate objects over fellow mice.
In tests of spatial memory, in which mice are trained to swim to a hidden platform, animals with the paternally inherited duplication were less able to adapt to changes in the platform's location than normal mice were. Another test, in which mice have to locate the correct hole to exit a box, showed similar results.
"We were honestly surprised to see behavioral inflexibility in two different reversal tests of learning and two different backgrounds," Takumi said. "Higher ultrasonic calls from pups with paternal duplication were unexpected" too. It's also hard to say exactly what those unusual calls mean for the mice, given scientists' limited understanding of mouse communication.
In other tests, the mice showed more signs of fear or anxiety, a feature common in autistic individuals.
The researchers also found molecular-level evidence that the duplication can lead to changes in a receptor for serotonin, a nerve messenger that acts as a growth factor in the immature brain. Those changes stem from different levels of one brain-specific small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA), known as MBII52, a molecule that is known to be involved in physiologically important "edits" to the receptor.
Because the gene that encodes MBII52 is "maternally imprinted," its expression in mice with the inherited duplication from their father was double that of normal mice or those who inherited the same abnormality from their mothers, they report. (Imprinted genes are chemically modified to prevent their expression.) Studies in cultured neurons showed that those changes to MBII52 are associated with an altered neural response, suggesting that changes in serotonin signals might underlie the aberrant behaviors exhibited by the animals.
In addition to those insights, the mice may yet hold many more clues for understanding autism and potential for new treatments.
"The link between social behaviors in rodents and social behavior in humans is difficult to establish," the researchers concluded. "Our model mouse will be valuable not only for therapeutic studies but also provides a starting point for more detailed genetic analysis directed toward understanding the etiology of developmental brain disorders."
Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder
Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder
http://www.naturalnews.com/026503_pandemic_swine_flu_bioterrorism.html
Natural News.com ^ | June 25, 2009 | Barbara Minton, Natrual Health Editor
Posted on Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:08:37 AM by NorwegianViking
(NaturalNews) As the anticipated July release date for Baxter’s A/H1N1 flu pandemic vaccine approaches, an Austrian investigative journalist is warning the world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism and attempts to commit mass murder. She has also prepared an injunction against forced vaccination which is being filed in America. These actions follow her charges filed in April against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of Austria for producing contaminated bird flu vaccine, alleging this was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic.
Summary of claims and allegations filed with FBI in Austria on June 10, 2009
In her charges, Burgermeister presents evidence of acts of bioterrorism that is in violation of U.S. law by a group operating within the U.S. under the direction of international bankers who control the Federal Reserve, as well as WHO, UN and NATO. This bioterrorism is for the purpose of carrying out a mass genocide against the U.S. population by use of a genetically engineered flu pandemic virus with the intent of causing death. This group has annexed high government offices in the U.S.
Specifically, evidence is presented that the defendants, Barack Obama, President of the U.S, David Nabarro, UN System Coordinator for Influenza, Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, David de Rotschild, banker, David Rockefeller, banker, George Soros, banker, Werner Faymann, Chancellor of Austria, and Alois Stoger, Austrian Health Minister, among others, are part of this international corporate criminal syndicate which has developed, produced, stockpiled and employed biological weapons to eliminate the population of the U.S. and other countries for financial and political gain.
The charges contend that these defendants conspired with each other and others to devise, fund and participate in the final phase of the implementation of a covert international bioweapons program involving the pharmaceutical companies Baxter and Novartis. They did this by bioengineering and then releasing lethal biological agents, specifically the “bird flu” virus and the “swine flu virus” in order to have a pretext to implement a forced mass vaccination program which would be the means of administering a toxic biological agent to cause death and injury to the people of the U.S. This action is in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act.
Burgermeister’s charges include evidence that Baxter AG, Austrian subsidiary of Baxter International, deliberately sent out 72 kilos of live bird flu virus, supplied by the WHO in the winter of 2009 to 16 laboratories in four counties. She claims this evidence offers clear proof that the pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies themselves are actively engaged in producing, developing, manufacturing and distributing biological agents classified as the most deadly bioweapons on earth in order to trigger a pandemic and cause mass death.
In her April charges, she noted that Baxter’s lab in Austria, one of the supposedly most secure biosecurity labs in the world, did not adhere to the most basic and essential steps to keep 72 kilos of a pathogen classified as a bioweapon secure and separate from all other substances under stringent biosecurity level regulations, but it allowed it to be mixed with the ordinary human flu virus and sent from its facilities in Orth in the Donau.
In February, when a staff member at BioTest in the Czech Republic tested the material meant for candidate vaccines on ferrets, the ferrets died. This incident was not followed up by any investigation from the WHO, EU, or Austrian health authorities. There was no investigation of the content of the virus material, and there is no data on the genetic sequence of the virus released.
In answer to parliamentary questions on May 20th, the Austrian Health Minister, Alois Stoger, revealed that the incident had been handled not as a biosecurity lapse, as it should have been, but as an offence against the veterinary code. A veterinary doctor was sent to the lab for a brief inspection.
Burgermeister’s dossier reveals that the release of the virus was to be an essential step for triggering a pandemic that would allow the WHO to declare a Level 6 Pandemic. She lists the laws and decrees that would allow the UN and WHO to take over the United States in the event of pandemic. In addition, legislation requiring compliance with mandatory vaccinations would be put into force in the U.S. under conditions of pandemic declaration.
She charges that the entire “swine flu” pandemic business is premised on a massive lie that there is no natural virus out there that poses a threat to the population. She presents evidence leading to the belief that the bird flu and swine flu viruses have, in fact, been bioengineered in laboratories using funding supplied by the WHO and other government agencies, among others. This “swine flu” is a hybrid of part swine flu, part human flu and part bird flu, something that can only come from laboratories according to many experts.
WHO’s claim that this “swine flu” is spreading and a pandemic must be declared ignores the fundamental causes. The viruses that were released were created and released with the help of WHO, and WHO is overwhelmingly responsible for the pandemic in the first place. In addition, the symptoms of the supposed “swine flu” are indistinguishable from regular flu or from the common cold. The “swine flu” does not cause death anymore often than the regular flu causes death.
Burgermeister notes that the figures for deaths reported for the “swine flu” are inconsistent and there is no clarity as to how the number of “deaths” has been documented.
There is no pandemic potential unless mass vaccinations are carried out to weaponize the flu under the guise of protecting the population. There are reasonable grounds for believing that the mandatory vaccines will be purposely contaminated with diseases that are specifically designed to cause death.
Reference is made to a licensed Novartis bird flu vaccine that killed 21 homeless people in Poland in the summer of 2008 and had as its “primary outcome measure” an “adverse events rate”, thereby meeting the U.S. government’s own definition of a bioweapon (a biological agent designed to cause an adverse events rate, i.e death or injury) with a delivery system (injection).
She alleges that the same complex of international pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies that have developed and released pandemic material have positioned themselves to profit from triggering the pandemic with contracts to supply vaccines. Media controlled by the group that is engineering the “swine flu” agenda is spreading misinformation to lull the people of the U.S. into taking the dangerous vaccine.
The people of the U.S. will suffer substantial and irreparable harm and injury if they are forced to take this unproven vaccine without their consent in accordance with the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, National Emergency Act, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51, Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, and the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza.
In the U.S. since 2008, Burgermeister charges that those named in her allegations have implemented new and/or accelerated the implementation of laws and regulations designed to strip the citizens of the U.S. of their lawful constitutional rights to refuse an injection. These people have created or allowed provisions to remain in place that make it a criminal act to refuse to take an injection against pandemic viruses. They have imposed other excessive and cruel penalties such as imprisonment and/or quarantine in FEMA camps while barring the citizens of the U.S. from claiming compensation from injury or death from the forced injections. This is in violation of the laws governing federal corruption and the abuse of office as well as of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Through these actions, the named defendants have laid the groundwork for mass genocide.
Using the “swine flu” as a pretext, the defendants have preplanned the mass murder of the U.S. population by means of forced vaccination. They have installed an extensive network of FEMA concentration camps and identified mass grave sites, and they have been involved in devising and implementing a scheme to hand power over the U.S. to an international crime syndicate that uses the UN and WHO as a front for illegal racketeering influenced organized crime activities, in violation of the laws that govern treason.
She further charges that the complex of pharmaceutical companies consisting of Baxter, Novartis and Sanofi Aventis are part of a foreign-based dual purpose bioweapons program, financed by this international criminal syndicate and designed to implement mass murder to reduce the world’s population by more than 5 billion people in the next ten years. Their plan is to spread terror to justify forcing people to give up their rights, and to force mass quarantine in FEMA camps. The houses, companies and farms and lands of those who are killed will be up for grabs by this syndicate.
By eliminating the population of North America, the international elite gain access to the region’s natural resources such as water and undeveloped oil lands. And by eliminating the U.S. and its democratic constitution by subsuming it under a North American Union, the international crime group will have total control over North America.
Highlights from the complete dossier
The complete dossier of the June 10th action is a 69 page document presenting evidence to substantiate all charges. This includes:
Factual background that delineates time lines and facts that establish probable cause, UN and WHO definitions and roles, and history and incidents from the April, 2009 “swine flu” outbreak.
Evidence the “swine flu” vaccines are defined as bioweapons as delineates in government agencies and regulations classifying and restricting vaccines, and the fear of foreign countries that “swine flu” vaccines will be used for biological warfare.
Scientific evidence the “swine flu” virus is an artificial (genetic) virus.
Scientific evidence the “swine flu” was bioengineered to resemble the Spanish flu virus of 1918 including quotes from Swine Flu 2009 is Weaponized 1918 Spanish Flu by A. True Ott, Ph.D., N.D., and a Science Magazine report from Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger et.al.
The genome sequence of the “swine flu”
Evidence of the deliberate release of the “swine flu” in Mexico
Evidence as to the involvement of President Obama that delineates his trip to Mexico which coincided with the recent “swine flu” outbreak and the death of several officials involved in his trip. Contention is made that the President was never tested for “swine flu” because he had been previously vaccinated.
Evidence as to the role of Baxter and WHO in producing and releasing pandemic virus material in Austria includes a statement from a Baxter official stating the accidentally distributed H5N1 in the Czech Republic was received from a WHO reference center. This includes delineation of evidence and allegations from Burgermeister’s charges filed in April in Austria that are currently under investigation.
Evidence Baxter is an element in a covert bioweapons network
Evidence Baxter has deliberately contaminated vaccine material.
Evidence Novartis is using vaccines as bioweapons
Evidence as to WHO’s role in the bioweapons program
Evidence as to WHO’s manipulation of disease data in order to justify declaring a Pandemic Level 6 in order to seize control of the USA.
Evidence as to the FDA’s role in covering up the bioweapons program
Evidence as to Canada’s National Microbiology Lab’s role in the bioweapons program.
Evidence of the involvement of scientists working for the UK’s NIBSC, and the CDC in engineering the “swine flu”.
Evidence vaccinations caused the Spanish killer flu of 1918 including belief of Dr. Jerry Tennant that the widespread use of aspirin during the winter that followed the end of World War I could have been a key factor contributing to the earlier pandemic by suppressing the immune system and lowering body temperatures, allowing the flu virus to multiply. Tamiflu and Relenza also lower body temperatures, and therefore can also be expected to contribute to the spread of a pandemic.
Evidence as to manipulation of the legal framework to allow mass murder with impunity.
Constitutional issues: the legality vs. illegality of jeopardizing the life, health and public good by mass vaccinations.
The issue of immunity and compensation as evidence of intent to commit a crime.
Evidence as to the existence of an international corporate crime syndicate.
Evidence of the existence of the “Illuminati”.
Evidence as to the depopulation agenda of the Illuminati/Bilderbergs and their involvement in the engineering and release of the artificial “swine flu” virus.
Evidence that weaponized flu was discussed at the annual Bilderberg meeting in Athens from May 14-17, 2009, as part of their agenda of genocide, including a list of attendees who, according to a statement once made by Pierre Trudeau, view themselves as genetically superior to the rest of humanity.
Media is keeping Americans clueless about the threat they are under
Jane Burgermeister is a dual Irish/Austrian who has written for Nature, the British Medical Journal, and American Prospect. She is the European Correspondent of the Renewable Energy World website. She has written extensively about climate change, biotechnology, and the ecology.
In addition to the charges currently under investigation that she filed against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology in April, she has filed charges against WHO and Baxter among others concerning a case of exploding “swine flu” vials meant for a research lab on a busy IC train in Switzerland.
In her view, control of the media by the ruling elite has allowed the world crime syndicate to further its agenda unabated while the rest of the people remain in the dark about what is really going on. Her charges are an attempt to get around this media control and bring the truth to light.
Her greatest concern is that “in spite of the fact Baxter has been caught red handed nearly triggering pandemic, they are also moving ahead, together with allied pharma companies, with supplying the vaccine for pandemics.” Baxter is hurrying to get this vaccine to market some time in July.
***
For more information: http://www.naturalnews.com/025760.html http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/200… http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/200906… http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…
***
Ref
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2279142/posts
*****
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 9:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026503_pandemic_swine_flu_bioterrorism.html
Natural News.com ^ | June 25, 2009 | Barbara Minton, Natrual Health Editor
Posted on Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:08:37 AM by NorwegianViking
(NaturalNews) As the anticipated July release date for Baxter’s A/H1N1 flu pandemic vaccine approaches, an Austrian investigative journalist is warning the world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism and attempts to commit mass murder. She has also prepared an injunction against forced vaccination which is being filed in America. These actions follow her charges filed in April against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of Austria for producing contaminated bird flu vaccine, alleging this was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic.
Summary of claims and allegations filed with FBI in Austria on June 10, 2009
In her charges, Burgermeister presents evidence of acts of bioterrorism that is in violation of U.S. law by a group operating within the U.S. under the direction of international bankers who control the Federal Reserve, as well as WHO, UN and NATO. This bioterrorism is for the purpose of carrying out a mass genocide against the U.S. population by use of a genetically engineered flu pandemic virus with the intent of causing death. This group has annexed high government offices in the U.S.
Specifically, evidence is presented that the defendants, Barack Obama, President of the U.S, David Nabarro, UN System Coordinator for Influenza, Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, David de Rotschild, banker, David Rockefeller, banker, George Soros, banker, Werner Faymann, Chancellor of Austria, and Alois Stoger, Austrian Health Minister, among others, are part of this international corporate criminal syndicate which has developed, produced, stockpiled and employed biological weapons to eliminate the population of the U.S. and other countries for financial and political gain.
The charges contend that these defendants conspired with each other and others to devise, fund and participate in the final phase of the implementation of a covert international bioweapons program involving the pharmaceutical companies Baxter and Novartis. They did this by bioengineering and then releasing lethal biological agents, specifically the “bird flu” virus and the “swine flu virus” in order to have a pretext to implement a forced mass vaccination program which would be the means of administering a toxic biological agent to cause death and injury to the people of the U.S. This action is in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act.
Burgermeister’s charges include evidence that Baxter AG, Austrian subsidiary of Baxter International, deliberately sent out 72 kilos of live bird flu virus, supplied by the WHO in the winter of 2009 to 16 laboratories in four counties. She claims this evidence offers clear proof that the pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies themselves are actively engaged in producing, developing, manufacturing and distributing biological agents classified as the most deadly bioweapons on earth in order to trigger a pandemic and cause mass death.
In her April charges, she noted that Baxter’s lab in Austria, one of the supposedly most secure biosecurity labs in the world, did not adhere to the most basic and essential steps to keep 72 kilos of a pathogen classified as a bioweapon secure and separate from all other substances under stringent biosecurity level regulations, but it allowed it to be mixed with the ordinary human flu virus and sent from its facilities in Orth in the Donau.
In February, when a staff member at BioTest in the Czech Republic tested the material meant for candidate vaccines on ferrets, the ferrets died. This incident was not followed up by any investigation from the WHO, EU, or Austrian health authorities. There was no investigation of the content of the virus material, and there is no data on the genetic sequence of the virus released.
In answer to parliamentary questions on May 20th, the Austrian Health Minister, Alois Stoger, revealed that the incident had been handled not as a biosecurity lapse, as it should have been, but as an offence against the veterinary code. A veterinary doctor was sent to the lab for a brief inspection.
Burgermeister’s dossier reveals that the release of the virus was to be an essential step for triggering a pandemic that would allow the WHO to declare a Level 6 Pandemic. She lists the laws and decrees that would allow the UN and WHO to take over the United States in the event of pandemic. In addition, legislation requiring compliance with mandatory vaccinations would be put into force in the U.S. under conditions of pandemic declaration.
She charges that the entire “swine flu” pandemic business is premised on a massive lie that there is no natural virus out there that poses a threat to the population. She presents evidence leading to the belief that the bird flu and swine flu viruses have, in fact, been bioengineered in laboratories using funding supplied by the WHO and other government agencies, among others. This “swine flu” is a hybrid of part swine flu, part human flu and part bird flu, something that can only come from laboratories according to many experts.
WHO’s claim that this “swine flu” is spreading and a pandemic must be declared ignores the fundamental causes. The viruses that were released were created and released with the help of WHO, and WHO is overwhelmingly responsible for the pandemic in the first place. In addition, the symptoms of the supposed “swine flu” are indistinguishable from regular flu or from the common cold. The “swine flu” does not cause death anymore often than the regular flu causes death.
Burgermeister notes that the figures for deaths reported for the “swine flu” are inconsistent and there is no clarity as to how the number of “deaths” has been documented.
There is no pandemic potential unless mass vaccinations are carried out to weaponize the flu under the guise of protecting the population. There are reasonable grounds for believing that the mandatory vaccines will be purposely contaminated with diseases that are specifically designed to cause death.
Reference is made to a licensed Novartis bird flu vaccine that killed 21 homeless people in Poland in the summer of 2008 and had as its “primary outcome measure” an “adverse events rate”, thereby meeting the U.S. government’s own definition of a bioweapon (a biological agent designed to cause an adverse events rate, i.e death or injury) with a delivery system (injection).
She alleges that the same complex of international pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies that have developed and released pandemic material have positioned themselves to profit from triggering the pandemic with contracts to supply vaccines. Media controlled by the group that is engineering the “swine flu” agenda is spreading misinformation to lull the people of the U.S. into taking the dangerous vaccine.
The people of the U.S. will suffer substantial and irreparable harm and injury if they are forced to take this unproven vaccine without their consent in accordance with the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, National Emergency Act, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51, Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, and the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza.
In the U.S. since 2008, Burgermeister charges that those named in her allegations have implemented new and/or accelerated the implementation of laws and regulations designed to strip the citizens of the U.S. of their lawful constitutional rights to refuse an injection. These people have created or allowed provisions to remain in place that make it a criminal act to refuse to take an injection against pandemic viruses. They have imposed other excessive and cruel penalties such as imprisonment and/or quarantine in FEMA camps while barring the citizens of the U.S. from claiming compensation from injury or death from the forced injections. This is in violation of the laws governing federal corruption and the abuse of office as well as of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Through these actions, the named defendants have laid the groundwork for mass genocide.
Using the “swine flu” as a pretext, the defendants have preplanned the mass murder of the U.S. population by means of forced vaccination. They have installed an extensive network of FEMA concentration camps and identified mass grave sites, and they have been involved in devising and implementing a scheme to hand power over the U.S. to an international crime syndicate that uses the UN and WHO as a front for illegal racketeering influenced organized crime activities, in violation of the laws that govern treason.
She further charges that the complex of pharmaceutical companies consisting of Baxter, Novartis and Sanofi Aventis are part of a foreign-based dual purpose bioweapons program, financed by this international criminal syndicate and designed to implement mass murder to reduce the world’s population by more than 5 billion people in the next ten years. Their plan is to spread terror to justify forcing people to give up their rights, and to force mass quarantine in FEMA camps. The houses, companies and farms and lands of those who are killed will be up for grabs by this syndicate.
By eliminating the population of North America, the international elite gain access to the region’s natural resources such as water and undeveloped oil lands. And by eliminating the U.S. and its democratic constitution by subsuming it under a North American Union, the international crime group will have total control over North America.
Highlights from the complete dossier
The complete dossier of the June 10th action is a 69 page document presenting evidence to substantiate all charges. This includes:
Factual background that delineates time lines and facts that establish probable cause, UN and WHO definitions and roles, and history and incidents from the April, 2009 “swine flu” outbreak.
Evidence the “swine flu” vaccines are defined as bioweapons as delineates in government agencies and regulations classifying and restricting vaccines, and the fear of foreign countries that “swine flu” vaccines will be used for biological warfare.
Scientific evidence the “swine flu” virus is an artificial (genetic) virus.
Scientific evidence the “swine flu” was bioengineered to resemble the Spanish flu virus of 1918 including quotes from Swine Flu 2009 is Weaponized 1918 Spanish Flu by A. True Ott, Ph.D., N.D., and a Science Magazine report from Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger et.al.
The genome sequence of the “swine flu”
Evidence of the deliberate release of the “swine flu” in Mexico
Evidence as to the involvement of President Obama that delineates his trip to Mexico which coincided with the recent “swine flu” outbreak and the death of several officials involved in his trip. Contention is made that the President was never tested for “swine flu” because he had been previously vaccinated.
Evidence as to the role of Baxter and WHO in producing and releasing pandemic virus material in Austria includes a statement from a Baxter official stating the accidentally distributed H5N1 in the Czech Republic was received from a WHO reference center. This includes delineation of evidence and allegations from Burgermeister’s charges filed in April in Austria that are currently under investigation.
Evidence Baxter is an element in a covert bioweapons network
Evidence Baxter has deliberately contaminated vaccine material.
Evidence Novartis is using vaccines as bioweapons
Evidence as to WHO’s role in the bioweapons program
Evidence as to WHO’s manipulation of disease data in order to justify declaring a Pandemic Level 6 in order to seize control of the USA.
Evidence as to the FDA’s role in covering up the bioweapons program
Evidence as to Canada’s National Microbiology Lab’s role in the bioweapons program.
Evidence of the involvement of scientists working for the UK’s NIBSC, and the CDC in engineering the “swine flu”.
Evidence vaccinations caused the Spanish killer flu of 1918 including belief of Dr. Jerry Tennant that the widespread use of aspirin during the winter that followed the end of World War I could have been a key factor contributing to the earlier pandemic by suppressing the immune system and lowering body temperatures, allowing the flu virus to multiply. Tamiflu and Relenza also lower body temperatures, and therefore can also be expected to contribute to the spread of a pandemic.
Evidence as to manipulation of the legal framework to allow mass murder with impunity.
Constitutional issues: the legality vs. illegality of jeopardizing the life, health and public good by mass vaccinations.
The issue of immunity and compensation as evidence of intent to commit a crime.
Evidence as to the existence of an international corporate crime syndicate.
Evidence of the existence of the “Illuminati”.
Evidence as to the depopulation agenda of the Illuminati/Bilderbergs and their involvement in the engineering and release of the artificial “swine flu” virus.
Evidence that weaponized flu was discussed at the annual Bilderberg meeting in Athens from May 14-17, 2009, as part of their agenda of genocide, including a list of attendees who, according to a statement once made by Pierre Trudeau, view themselves as genetically superior to the rest of humanity.
Media is keeping Americans clueless about the threat they are under
Jane Burgermeister is a dual Irish/Austrian who has written for Nature, the British Medical Journal, and American Prospect. She is the European Correspondent of the Renewable Energy World website. She has written extensively about climate change, biotechnology, and the ecology.
In addition to the charges currently under investigation that she filed against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology in April, she has filed charges against WHO and Baxter among others concerning a case of exploding “swine flu” vials meant for a research lab on a busy IC train in Switzerland.
In her view, control of the media by the ruling elite has allowed the world crime syndicate to further its agenda unabated while the rest of the people remain in the dark about what is really going on. Her charges are an attempt to get around this media control and bring the truth to light.
Her greatest concern is that “in spite of the fact Baxter has been caught red handed nearly triggering pandemic, they are also moving ahead, together with allied pharma companies, with supplying the vaccine for pandemics.” Baxter is hurrying to get this vaccine to market some time in July.
***
For more information: http://www.naturalnews.com/025760.html http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/200… http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/200906… http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…
***
Ref
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2279142/posts
*****
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 9:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Greatest hoax of the modern era, 'global warming', Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill H.R. 2454
Greatest hoax of the modern era, 'global warming', Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill H.R. 2454
Cap-and-Trade Bill: Villainy on a Grand Scale
By Alan Caruba Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Supported by outright lies by the President about “clean” or “renewable energy”, and based on the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, on Friday Congress is reportedly going to vote on the 1,200-page Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill (H.R. 2454).
It would impose a huge tax on the provision and use of electricity in the nation.
Energy is the most vital resource America has and we have enjoyed abundant and affordable energy for our long history. That will all change if the Waxman-Markey bill becomes law.
It is based on the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming.” The Earth is presently ten years into a cooling cycle and it is estimated to last a very long time.
Calling carbon dioxide “a pollutant” is a lie. All vegetation on Earth is dependent on carbon dioxide. Putting Limits on carbon dioxide emissions is idiocy and lunacy.
For the nearly six months since President Obama assumed office and in league with the majority Democrat Party in Congress, the actions taken to date appear to have a single purpose, the destruction of the nation’s economy.
The Waxman-Markey bill is villainy on a grand scale
The Waxman-Markey bill is villainy on a grand scale.
It is no accident that President Obama and his acolytes keep calling for “clean energy”, “energy independence”, and babbling endlessly about “green jobs” as the real jobs of Americans are systematically destroyed. Upon taking office, Obama rescinded the executive order to permit exploration of the nation’s offshore continental shelf for the wealth of oil and natural gas it possesses.
It is no accident that his Secretary of the Interior unilaterally cancelled 77 oil and gas leases or that, on March 25, the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 that adds two million more acres of wilderness to the 107 million acres already “protected” by the federal government.
It is estimated that 300 million barrels of oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath these “protected” acres. The government owns 607 million acres of land in a nation founded on the belief in the sanctity and power of private property, the keystone of capitalism.
Even if the bill were to become law, it totally ignores the fact that all the other nations of the Earth will continue to generate “greenhouse gases.” The United Nations Kyoto Protocol, intended to reduce these gases, purposefully exempted China, India, and all undeveloped nations. Its limits are, by definition, meaningless.
The Waxman-Markey bill will, by 2035, reduce the aggregate domestic product (GDP) by an estimated $7.4 trillion. Our present annual GDP is about $14 trillion. It is estimated to destroy 844,000 jobs on average with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 1,900,000 jobs. It will raise electricity rates 90% after adjusting for inflation. Prices for gasoline and natural gas will rise by 74% and 55% respectively.
This bill will impoverish Americans and destroy the nation
This bill will impoverish Americans and destroy the nation.
Out of 307 million Americans, I seriously doubt that more than a relative handful know what Cap-and-Trade means or that it is even being debated, but they, their children, and their grandchildren will, by the actions of this Congress, live in a very different, very costly America.
The Democrats in Congress and the present occupant of the White House, by their actions, must hate America. They pose the greatest threat to its future that has ever existed in our history.
Call, write, fax, and email your representatives in Congress. Let them know you will not stand by idly as they destroy America.
Cap-and-Trade Bill: Villainy on a Grand Scale
By Alan Caruba Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Supported by outright lies by the President about “clean” or “renewable energy”, and based on the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, on Friday Congress is reportedly going to vote on the 1,200-page Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill (H.R. 2454).
It would impose a huge tax on the provision and use of electricity in the nation.
Energy is the most vital resource America has and we have enjoyed abundant and affordable energy for our long history. That will all change if the Waxman-Markey bill becomes law.
It is based on the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming.” The Earth is presently ten years into a cooling cycle and it is estimated to last a very long time.
Calling carbon dioxide “a pollutant” is a lie. All vegetation on Earth is dependent on carbon dioxide. Putting Limits on carbon dioxide emissions is idiocy and lunacy.
For the nearly six months since President Obama assumed office and in league with the majority Democrat Party in Congress, the actions taken to date appear to have a single purpose, the destruction of the nation’s economy.
The Waxman-Markey bill is villainy on a grand scale
The Waxman-Markey bill is villainy on a grand scale.
It is no accident that President Obama and his acolytes keep calling for “clean energy”, “energy independence”, and babbling endlessly about “green jobs” as the real jobs of Americans are systematically destroyed. Upon taking office, Obama rescinded the executive order to permit exploration of the nation’s offshore continental shelf for the wealth of oil and natural gas it possesses.
It is no accident that his Secretary of the Interior unilaterally cancelled 77 oil and gas leases or that, on March 25, the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 that adds two million more acres of wilderness to the 107 million acres already “protected” by the federal government.
It is estimated that 300 million barrels of oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath these “protected” acres. The government owns 607 million acres of land in a nation founded on the belief in the sanctity and power of private property, the keystone of capitalism.
Even if the bill were to become law, it totally ignores the fact that all the other nations of the Earth will continue to generate “greenhouse gases.” The United Nations Kyoto Protocol, intended to reduce these gases, purposefully exempted China, India, and all undeveloped nations. Its limits are, by definition, meaningless.
The Waxman-Markey bill will, by 2035, reduce the aggregate domestic product (GDP) by an estimated $7.4 trillion. Our present annual GDP is about $14 trillion. It is estimated to destroy 844,000 jobs on average with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 1,900,000 jobs. It will raise electricity rates 90% after adjusting for inflation. Prices for gasoline and natural gas will rise by 74% and 55% respectively.
This bill will impoverish Americans and destroy the nation
This bill will impoverish Americans and destroy the nation.
Out of 307 million Americans, I seriously doubt that more than a relative handful know what Cap-and-Trade means or that it is even being debated, but they, their children, and their grandchildren will, by the actions of this Congress, live in a very different, very costly America.
The Democrats in Congress and the present occupant of the White House, by their actions, must hate America. They pose the greatest threat to its future that has ever existed in our history.
Call, write, fax, and email your representatives in Congress. Let them know you will not stand by idly as they destroy America.
U.N. to Emerge as Global IRS
U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, $845 billion from U.S. taxpayers, Global Poverty Act
U.N. to Emerge as Global IRS
Cliff Kincaid Bio
Email Article
By Cliff Kincaid Wednesday, June 24, 2009
While our media sleep, the United Nations is proceeding, with President Obama’s acquiescence, to implement a global plan to create a new international socialist order financed by global taxes on the American people.
The Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development that begins on Wednesday will consider adoption of a document calling for “new voluntary and innovative sources of financing initiatives to provide additional stable sources of development finance...” This is U.N.-speak for global taxes. They are anything but “voluntary” for the people forced to pay them.
The most “popular” proposals, which could generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for global purposes, involve taxes on greenhouse gas emissions and financial transactions such as stock trades.
The document was agreed to at an informal meeting of expert “facilitators” and was made available on Monday afternoon at 3 p.m. It is doubtful that any changes will be made to it.
The conference was postponed from June 1-3 and will now take place June 24-26 at the U.N. in New York. While the “outcome document” has been watered down somewhat from the previous version, it still reaffirms attainment of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, which would require the payment of $845 billion from U.S. taxpayers. A commitment to the MDGs was a stated objective of the Global Poverty Act, which Barack Obama had introduced as a U.S. senator. It requires the U.S. to devote 0.7 percent of Gross National Income to foreign aid.
Now, as President, Obama can bypass the Congress and simply direct his Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to approve the U.N. conference document. Then the pressure will be increased on Congress to come up with the money and satisfy our “international commitments."
This is the pattern that he followed in regard to more money for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). After agreeing at the G-20 summit to provide more money for the IMF, the Obama White House slipped the cash and credit into the recently passed emergency war funding bill. The Obama White House had added billions in cash, as well as a $100 billion line of credit, for the IMF.
Rep. Mike Pence commented, “This legislation, which includes $108 billion in loan authorizations for a global bailout, for the International Monetary Fund-at a time when this government has run up a $2 trillion annual deficit-I believe does a disservice to taxpayers and to those that defend us. Passing a $108 billion global bailout on the backs of our soldiers is just not right.”
The U.N. conference document explains where all of this is leading-the destruction of the American dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the build-up of global institutions such as the IMF and the U.N.
It declares that “We acknowledge the calls by many states for further study of the feasibility and advisability of a more efficient reserve system, including the possible function of SDRs in any such system and the complementary roles that could be played by various regional arrangements.” SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a form of international currency that enables global institutions like the International Monetary Fund to provide more foreign aid to the rest of the world. The U.S. pays for SDRs through its financial contributions to the IMF.
If implemented, the document would officially mark the end of the United States as the world’s leading economic power.
Urging socialism as the solution to the crisis, the document states that “Insufficient emphasis on equitable human development has contributed to significant inequalities among countries and peoples. Other weaknesses of a systemic nature also contributed to the unfolding crisis, which has demonstrated the need for more effective government involvement to ensure an appropriate balance between the market and public interest.”
The nerve center of this emerging new international socialist system will be the United Nations, a body that has developed a reputation for corruption and incompetence and whose “peacekeepers” have been implicated in sexual abuse and other human rights violations.
“The United Nations, on the basis of its universal membership and legitimacy, is well positioned to participate in various reform processes aimed at improving and strengthening the effective functioning of the international financial system and architecture,” the document says.
“This United Nations Conference is part of our collective effort towards recovery,” it adds.
The Obama Administration’s unofficial point man in U.N. deliberations has been economist Joseph Stiglitz, who has been coordinating a “Commission of Experts” that has reported to U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto, the notorious Communist Catholic Priest who received the Lenin Peace Prize from the old Soviet Union.
Stiglitz produced his own document which called for “the issuance of additional SDRs,” “additional sources of funding” for global institutions, a new global reserve currency, and a new global credit facility. Key recommendations have been incorporated into the official U.N. conference document but Stiglitz and his “experts” provide far more details about them.
In terms of new funding sources, the document calls for “innovative sources of financing such as emission rights trading and financial transactions taxes...” The concept of “emissions trading” enables corporations to avoid limits on greenhouse gas emissions if they pay taxes to government. It is part of the “cap and trade” legislation that the liberals are now pushing on Capitol Hill.
Chapter Five of this document, “International Financial Innovations,” goes into detail, declaring that “For some time, the difficulty in meeting the UN official assistance target of 0.7 percent of Gross National Income of developed industrial countries as official development assistance, as well as the need for adequate funding for the provision of global and regional public goods (peace building, fighting global health pandemics, combating climate change and sustaining the global environment more generally) has generated proposals on how to guarantee a more reliable and stable source of financing for these objectives.”
The document notes that an international airline ticket tax is now in effect, as a result of the actions of the “Leading Group on Solidarity Levies” that now involves close to 60 countries and major international organizations. This money is going to fight global diseases.
The term “Solidarity Levies” is U.N.-speak for global taxes
The Stiglitz document explains, “Some of the initiatives that have been proposed encompass ‘solidarity levies’ or, more generally, taxation for global objectives. Some countries have already decreed solidarity levies on airline tickets but there is a larger set of proposals. There have also been suggestions to auction global natural resources-such as ocean fishing rights and pollution emission permits-for global environmental programs.”
It goes on to say, “The suggestion of taxes that could be earmarked for global objectives has a long history. To avert their being perceived as encroachments on participating countries’ fiscal sovereignty, it has been agreed that these taxes should be nationally imposed, but internationally coordinated.”
So the nations of the world, including the U.S., will collect the taxes but then turn them over to institutions such as the U.N. The world body will function, in effect, like a global IRS.
Is it too much to ask that our media take some time off from talking about the girl with star tattoos on her face, “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” and Perez Hilton, to examine what is going on at the United Nations?
U.N. to Emerge as Global IRS
Cliff Kincaid Bio
Email Article
By Cliff Kincaid Wednesday, June 24, 2009
While our media sleep, the United Nations is proceeding, with President Obama’s acquiescence, to implement a global plan to create a new international socialist order financed by global taxes on the American people.
The Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development that begins on Wednesday will consider adoption of a document calling for “new voluntary and innovative sources of financing initiatives to provide additional stable sources of development finance...” This is U.N.-speak for global taxes. They are anything but “voluntary” for the people forced to pay them.
The most “popular” proposals, which could generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for global purposes, involve taxes on greenhouse gas emissions and financial transactions such as stock trades.
The document was agreed to at an informal meeting of expert “facilitators” and was made available on Monday afternoon at 3 p.m. It is doubtful that any changes will be made to it.
The conference was postponed from June 1-3 and will now take place June 24-26 at the U.N. in New York. While the “outcome document” has been watered down somewhat from the previous version, it still reaffirms attainment of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, which would require the payment of $845 billion from U.S. taxpayers. A commitment to the MDGs was a stated objective of the Global Poverty Act, which Barack Obama had introduced as a U.S. senator. It requires the U.S. to devote 0.7 percent of Gross National Income to foreign aid.
Now, as President, Obama can bypass the Congress and simply direct his Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to approve the U.N. conference document. Then the pressure will be increased on Congress to come up with the money and satisfy our “international commitments."
This is the pattern that he followed in regard to more money for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). After agreeing at the G-20 summit to provide more money for the IMF, the Obama White House slipped the cash and credit into the recently passed emergency war funding bill. The Obama White House had added billions in cash, as well as a $100 billion line of credit, for the IMF.
Rep. Mike Pence commented, “This legislation, which includes $108 billion in loan authorizations for a global bailout, for the International Monetary Fund-at a time when this government has run up a $2 trillion annual deficit-I believe does a disservice to taxpayers and to those that defend us. Passing a $108 billion global bailout on the backs of our soldiers is just not right.”
The U.N. conference document explains where all of this is leading-the destruction of the American dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the build-up of global institutions such as the IMF and the U.N.
It declares that “We acknowledge the calls by many states for further study of the feasibility and advisability of a more efficient reserve system, including the possible function of SDRs in any such system and the complementary roles that could be played by various regional arrangements.” SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a form of international currency that enables global institutions like the International Monetary Fund to provide more foreign aid to the rest of the world. The U.S. pays for SDRs through its financial contributions to the IMF.
If implemented, the document would officially mark the end of the United States as the world’s leading economic power.
Urging socialism as the solution to the crisis, the document states that “Insufficient emphasis on equitable human development has contributed to significant inequalities among countries and peoples. Other weaknesses of a systemic nature also contributed to the unfolding crisis, which has demonstrated the need for more effective government involvement to ensure an appropriate balance between the market and public interest.”
The nerve center of this emerging new international socialist system will be the United Nations, a body that has developed a reputation for corruption and incompetence and whose “peacekeepers” have been implicated in sexual abuse and other human rights violations.
“The United Nations, on the basis of its universal membership and legitimacy, is well positioned to participate in various reform processes aimed at improving and strengthening the effective functioning of the international financial system and architecture,” the document says.
“This United Nations Conference is part of our collective effort towards recovery,” it adds.
The Obama Administration’s unofficial point man in U.N. deliberations has been economist Joseph Stiglitz, who has been coordinating a “Commission of Experts” that has reported to U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto, the notorious Communist Catholic Priest who received the Lenin Peace Prize from the old Soviet Union.
Stiglitz produced his own document which called for “the issuance of additional SDRs,” “additional sources of funding” for global institutions, a new global reserve currency, and a new global credit facility. Key recommendations have been incorporated into the official U.N. conference document but Stiglitz and his “experts” provide far more details about them.
In terms of new funding sources, the document calls for “innovative sources of financing such as emission rights trading and financial transactions taxes...” The concept of “emissions trading” enables corporations to avoid limits on greenhouse gas emissions if they pay taxes to government. It is part of the “cap and trade” legislation that the liberals are now pushing on Capitol Hill.
Chapter Five of this document, “International Financial Innovations,” goes into detail, declaring that “For some time, the difficulty in meeting the UN official assistance target of 0.7 percent of Gross National Income of developed industrial countries as official development assistance, as well as the need for adequate funding for the provision of global and regional public goods (peace building, fighting global health pandemics, combating climate change and sustaining the global environment more generally) has generated proposals on how to guarantee a more reliable and stable source of financing for these objectives.”
The document notes that an international airline ticket tax is now in effect, as a result of the actions of the “Leading Group on Solidarity Levies” that now involves close to 60 countries and major international organizations. This money is going to fight global diseases.
The term “Solidarity Levies” is U.N.-speak for global taxes
The Stiglitz document explains, “Some of the initiatives that have been proposed encompass ‘solidarity levies’ or, more generally, taxation for global objectives. Some countries have already decreed solidarity levies on airline tickets but there is a larger set of proposals. There have also been suggestions to auction global natural resources-such as ocean fishing rights and pollution emission permits-for global environmental programs.”
It goes on to say, “The suggestion of taxes that could be earmarked for global objectives has a long history. To avert their being perceived as encroachments on participating countries’ fiscal sovereignty, it has been agreed that these taxes should be nationally imposed, but internationally coordinated.”
So the nations of the world, including the U.S., will collect the taxes but then turn them over to institutions such as the U.N. The world body will function, in effect, like a global IRS.
Is it too much to ask that our media take some time off from talking about the girl with star tattoos on her face, “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” and Perez Hilton, to examine what is going on at the United Nations?
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Swine Flu Pandemic, 2009:
Swine Flu Pandemic, 2009: Anglo-American Genocide Part I and Part II
Posted on June 23, 2009 by zandocomm
Posted on June 23, 2009 by zandocomm
Friday, June 19, 2009
Local Money Strengthens Communities
Groups stem the flight of capital from their towns
and help small businesses through local currencies.
by Dave Block
Groups stem the flight of capital from their towns
and help small businesses through local currencies.
by Dave Block
IRS Moves to Ban Tax Returns Filed By All But ‘Experts’
By James P. Tucker, Jr.
In an astonishing power grab, the Internal Revenue Service wants to license all who prepare returns for taxpayers. This means that Uncle Oscar couldn’t help his nephew prepare his income tax return unless a Washington bureaucrat grants a license.
H&R Block and the National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP) are supporting the effort by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman for selfish reasons: If Uncle Oscar can’t help, his nephew must pay a “licensed” preparer.
Shulman said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee that he expects to make his recommendations to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and President Obama by the end of the year.
Shulman argued that licensing is needed because of bad guy tax preparers. Of the millions of tax returns filed over the last three years, only about 350 preparers were convicted of fraud, according to the IRS’s own records.
Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, challenged IRS claims that licensing would generate significant funds from “tax cheats.” He told the Washington Times, “If the IRS thinks that licensing tax preparers will raise a lot of money, it won’t.”
Shulman’s recommendations “could focus on a new model for the regulation of tax return preparers; education and training of return preparers; and enforcement related to return preparer misconduct,” the IRS said.
“Education” and “training”? Many times over the years, newspapers have sent male and female reporters, posing as married couples, to IRS offices for “help” with their returns. They would offer simple situations: two kids and a mortgage. In an overwhelming majority of cases, four different IRS “professionals” would prepare their returns in four different ways.
Shulman said 87 percent of taxpayers now use computer software or paid preparers. “Tax preparers and the associated industry can help us increase compliance and strengthen the integrity of the tax system,” Shulman said. On the subject of “integrity,” he failed to mention David Rockefeller and other billionaires who pay no income tax at all by ducking their obligations with the help of high-priced “preparers.”
The first step in the licensing process, the IRS said, will involve fact-finding
and receiving input from unlicensed tax preparers and software vendors, as well as those who are licensed by state and federal authorities, including enrolled agents, lawyers and accountants.
“H&R Block strongly supports the IRS initiative announced by Commissioner Doug Shulman to review comprehensively alternatives for improving the accuracy of tax filings and the ethics and integrity of all who hold themselves out directly or indirectly in providing tax preparation services,” said Chairman Richard Breeden.
“We are all in favor of raising the bar,” said NATP’s Paul Cinquemani. “If people are operating out there without continuing education, they are on dangerous ground.”
Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003
By James P. Tucker, Jr.
In an astonishing power grab, the Internal Revenue Service wants to license all who prepare returns for taxpayers. This means that Uncle Oscar couldn’t help his nephew prepare his income tax return unless a Washington bureaucrat grants a license.
H&R Block and the National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP) are supporting the effort by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman for selfish reasons: If Uncle Oscar can’t help, his nephew must pay a “licensed” preparer.
Shulman said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee that he expects to make his recommendations to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and President Obama by the end of the year.
Shulman argued that licensing is needed because of bad guy tax preparers. Of the millions of tax returns filed over the last three years, only about 350 preparers were convicted of fraud, according to the IRS’s own records.
Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, challenged IRS claims that licensing would generate significant funds from “tax cheats.” He told the Washington Times, “If the IRS thinks that licensing tax preparers will raise a lot of money, it won’t.”
Shulman’s recommendations “could focus on a new model for the regulation of tax return preparers; education and training of return preparers; and enforcement related to return preparer misconduct,” the IRS said.
“Education” and “training”? Many times over the years, newspapers have sent male and female reporters, posing as married couples, to IRS offices for “help” with their returns. They would offer simple situations: two kids and a mortgage. In an overwhelming majority of cases, four different IRS “professionals” would prepare their returns in four different ways.
Shulman said 87 percent of taxpayers now use computer software or paid preparers. “Tax preparers and the associated industry can help us increase compliance and strengthen the integrity of the tax system,” Shulman said. On the subject of “integrity,” he failed to mention David Rockefeller and other billionaires who pay no income tax at all by ducking their obligations with the help of high-priced “preparers.”
The first step in the licensing process, the IRS said, will involve fact-finding
and receiving input from unlicensed tax preparers and software vendors, as well as those who are licensed by state and federal authorities, including enrolled agents, lawyers and accountants.
“H&R Block strongly supports the IRS initiative announced by Commissioner Doug Shulman to review comprehensively alternatives for improving the accuracy of tax filings and the ethics and integrity of all who hold themselves out directly or indirectly in providing tax preparation services,” said Chairman Richard Breeden.
“We are all in favor of raising the bar,” said NATP’s Paul Cinquemani. “If people are operating out there without continuing education, they are on dangerous ground.”
Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Move to hand privately-owned Federal Reserve complete regulatory power over entire U.S. economy heralds new form of government
Move to hand privately-owned Federal Reserve complete regulatory power over entire U.S. economy heralds new form of government
Paul Joseph Watson & Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, June 18, 2009
President Obama’s plan to give the privately-owned and unaccountable Federal Reserve complete regulatory oversight across the entire U.S. economy, which is likely to be enacted before the end of the year, will officially herald the beginning of a new form of government in the United States - an ultra-powerful banking dictatorship controlled by a small gaggle of shadowy and corrupt elitists.
The new rules would see the Fed given the authority to “regulate” any company whose activity it believes could threaten the economy and the markets.
This goes a step further than the centrally planned economies of the Soviet Union or Communist China, in that the Federal Reserve is not even accountable to the U.S. government, it is a private entity that according to former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, is accountable to nobody but the banking families that own it.
Obama’s regulatory “reform” plan is nothing less than a green light for the complete and total takeover of the United States by a private banking cartel that will usurp the power of existing regulatory bodies, who are now being blamed for the financial crisis in order that their status can be abolished and their roles handed over to the all-powerful Fed.
According to an Associated Press report today, Democratic leaders have committed to enacting the plan before the end of the year and Republicans in both the House and Senate have indicated that they won’t stand in the way of the overhaul.
“The final plan….is expected to sidestep most jurisdictional disputes and simply impose across the board standards to be applied by all financial regulators, according to administration and industry sources, ” reports the Washington Times.
In other words, the Fed, which is already totally unaccountable to Congress, is to be placed in complete control of the entirety of the U.S. financial system, to do as it wishes without repercussion.
As the LA Times reports, the government, in conjunction with the private Federal Reserve, would effectively have the clout to simply seize and take over any company it desires.
In order to appease those opposed to the plan, such as Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, the Obama administration has agreed to create a “watchdog” council of regulators to “advise the Fed”.
However, as former chairman Alan Greenspan has most recently pointed out, given that the Fed is an independent entity, and therefore accountable to no one, it will have the power to simply reject and overrule any advice it is offered.
Pointing out the flagrant conflict of interest in empowering the Federal Reserve to essentially regulate itself, Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin Robert Auerbach writes, “The Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill suited for its present regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach. The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they regulate. Bank regulation begins at its 12 district Federal Reserve Banks, each governed by a nine-member board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district.”
As economic author Nomi Prins highlights, Obama’s plan does nothing whatsoever to fix the excesses of financial institutions blamed for the financial collapse, it only ensures their continued operation and an expansion of the practices that contributed to the economic crisis in the first place.
“The ’sweeping overhaul’ of the financial system detailed by Geithner on behalf of the Obama administration does not overhaul the system at all,” writes Prins, “giving the Fed a bigger role, creating a ‘council of regulators’ to oversee the existing oversight bodies and allowing the biggest Wall Street players to maintain their status, leaves the system intact.”
“The Federal Reserve is not a fully public entity. It has amassed a set of $7.87 trillion worth of facilities and other entities through which it has lavished cheap loans in return for questionable collateral from the banking system. It has kept the true nature of these transactions a secret despite numerous FOIA requests. And, it has actively promoted the creation of bigger institutions in a chaotic environment, rather than putting the brakes on the creation of these giants,” concludes Prins.
Proof that the agenda of implementing overt financial dictatorship is being carefully coordinated can be seen in the fact that an almost identical scheme is also being set up in the United Kingdom, where “The governor of the Bank of England has called for greater powers to allow it to fulfil its new role of promoting financial stability,” according to a BBC report.
Just as in the U.S., King is calling for traditional independent regulatory bodies to be all but abolished and replaced by the Bank of England itself, which just like the Federal Reserve is a private outfit with no accountability to the government whatsoever.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
The mainstream media, for the most part, has reported the oversight plan as a much needed regulatory crackdown on those responsible for the financial crisis. However, the details of the plan constitute almost exactly what lobbyists for leading bankers have been pushing for over the past few weeks.
“All derivatives contracts will be subject to regulation and all derivatives dealers subject to supervision,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said at a Time Warner Economic Summit in New York on Monday, also noting “When you have too many people involved, there’s an accountability problem.”
As we reported earlier this month, heads of nine of the biggest banks in the derivatives market, including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America, secretly lobbied to keep derivatives under Federal Reserve “oversight” and away from real scrutiny.
As reported by The New York Times, they all met secretly to discuss how to use the lax regulation and institutional secrecy of the NY Fed to shield their credit-default swaps business from prying eyes and attempts at regulation.
The banks formed a lobby– the CDS Dealers Consortium– only weeks after accepting TARP funds in October 2008 to protect its interests. Heading this effort was Edward Rosen, who previously helped fend off derivatives regulation. Rosen wrote and circulated a “confidential memo” to the Treasury Department and leaders on Capital Hill, making their agenda clear, the Times reported.
Rosen and his backers propose that derivatives be “traded in privately managed clearinghouses, with less disclosure,” according to the Times. The clearinghouse of choice for the big banks in Rosen’s CDS Consortium is ICE U.S. Trust, which is in turned regulated only by the Federal Reserve system.
So the upshot of all this is that the bankers get what they want, are allowed to carry on as they were, while at the same time the fractional reserve banking system and the federal government are both greatly expanded and empowered, and the compliant corporate media ludicrously tells us that a strict crackdown is underway.
This kind of activity is exactly what some leading representatives have warned of in recent weeks.
A fortnight ago, the Democratic Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Collin Peterson, announced to the press that “The banks run the place,” in reference to the US Congress.
While Peterson is also pushing for legislation to regulate derivatives trading, his proposed bill would limit derivatives trading to public exchanges, rather than private clearinghouses, which are managed by banks.
Peterson’s warning mirrors that of Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who just a few weeks before uttered the same rarely acknowledged truth.
“And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,” Durbin said.
How simultaneously dangerous and ridiculous it is that the Federal Reserve is given more authority to oversee the economy. This is the same privately run entity that refused to comply with congressional demands for transparency and disclose the destination of trillions dollars in bailout funds. It is the same privately owned entity that has withheld internal memos, in spite of freedom of information act requests. It is the same private entity, run for the most part by European banking elites, that has arrogantly refused to tell Senators and Congressmen which banks were in receipt of government loans.
The government is ready to hand over everything to a monolithic private corporation and a gaggle of bastard banker offspring, that have gobbled up an amount close to the entire GDP of the country in taxpayers’ money and figuratively stuck the middle finger up regarding questions over where that money has gone.
It can be no more apparent than at this time that legislation to audit, repeal and eventually end the Federal Reserve, must be supported by Americans if they want to see their children and their grandchildren grow up without indentured debt and entrenched servitude to a fascistic marriage of private banks and hugely inflated government.
Paul Joseph Watson & Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, June 18, 2009
President Obama’s plan to give the privately-owned and unaccountable Federal Reserve complete regulatory oversight across the entire U.S. economy, which is likely to be enacted before the end of the year, will officially herald the beginning of a new form of government in the United States - an ultra-powerful banking dictatorship controlled by a small gaggle of shadowy and corrupt elitists.
The new rules would see the Fed given the authority to “regulate” any company whose activity it believes could threaten the economy and the markets.
This goes a step further than the centrally planned economies of the Soviet Union or Communist China, in that the Federal Reserve is not even accountable to the U.S. government, it is a private entity that according to former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, is accountable to nobody but the banking families that own it.
Obama’s regulatory “reform” plan is nothing less than a green light for the complete and total takeover of the United States by a private banking cartel that will usurp the power of existing regulatory bodies, who are now being blamed for the financial crisis in order that their status can be abolished and their roles handed over to the all-powerful Fed.
According to an Associated Press report today, Democratic leaders have committed to enacting the plan before the end of the year and Republicans in both the House and Senate have indicated that they won’t stand in the way of the overhaul.
“The final plan….is expected to sidestep most jurisdictional disputes and simply impose across the board standards to be applied by all financial regulators, according to administration and industry sources, ” reports the Washington Times.
In other words, the Fed, which is already totally unaccountable to Congress, is to be placed in complete control of the entirety of the U.S. financial system, to do as it wishes without repercussion.
As the LA Times reports, the government, in conjunction with the private Federal Reserve, would effectively have the clout to simply seize and take over any company it desires.
In order to appease those opposed to the plan, such as Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, the Obama administration has agreed to create a “watchdog” council of regulators to “advise the Fed”.
However, as former chairman Alan Greenspan has most recently pointed out, given that the Fed is an independent entity, and therefore accountable to no one, it will have the power to simply reject and overrule any advice it is offered.
Pointing out the flagrant conflict of interest in empowering the Federal Reserve to essentially regulate itself, Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin Robert Auerbach writes, “The Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill suited for its present regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach. The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they regulate. Bank regulation begins at its 12 district Federal Reserve Banks, each governed by a nine-member board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district.”
As economic author Nomi Prins highlights, Obama’s plan does nothing whatsoever to fix the excesses of financial institutions blamed for the financial collapse, it only ensures their continued operation and an expansion of the practices that contributed to the economic crisis in the first place.
“The ’sweeping overhaul’ of the financial system detailed by Geithner on behalf of the Obama administration does not overhaul the system at all,” writes Prins, “giving the Fed a bigger role, creating a ‘council of regulators’ to oversee the existing oversight bodies and allowing the biggest Wall Street players to maintain their status, leaves the system intact.”
“The Federal Reserve is not a fully public entity. It has amassed a set of $7.87 trillion worth of facilities and other entities through which it has lavished cheap loans in return for questionable collateral from the banking system. It has kept the true nature of these transactions a secret despite numerous FOIA requests. And, it has actively promoted the creation of bigger institutions in a chaotic environment, rather than putting the brakes on the creation of these giants,” concludes Prins.
Proof that the agenda of implementing overt financial dictatorship is being carefully coordinated can be seen in the fact that an almost identical scheme is also being set up in the United Kingdom, where “The governor of the Bank of England has called for greater powers to allow it to fulfil its new role of promoting financial stability,” according to a BBC report.
Just as in the U.S., King is calling for traditional independent regulatory bodies to be all but abolished and replaced by the Bank of England itself, which just like the Federal Reserve is a private outfit with no accountability to the government whatsoever.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
The mainstream media, for the most part, has reported the oversight plan as a much needed regulatory crackdown on those responsible for the financial crisis. However, the details of the plan constitute almost exactly what lobbyists for leading bankers have been pushing for over the past few weeks.
“All derivatives contracts will be subject to regulation and all derivatives dealers subject to supervision,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said at a Time Warner Economic Summit in New York on Monday, also noting “When you have too many people involved, there’s an accountability problem.”
As we reported earlier this month, heads of nine of the biggest banks in the derivatives market, including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America, secretly lobbied to keep derivatives under Federal Reserve “oversight” and away from real scrutiny.
As reported by The New York Times, they all met secretly to discuss how to use the lax regulation and institutional secrecy of the NY Fed to shield their credit-default swaps business from prying eyes and attempts at regulation.
The banks formed a lobby– the CDS Dealers Consortium– only weeks after accepting TARP funds in October 2008 to protect its interests. Heading this effort was Edward Rosen, who previously helped fend off derivatives regulation. Rosen wrote and circulated a “confidential memo” to the Treasury Department and leaders on Capital Hill, making their agenda clear, the Times reported.
Rosen and his backers propose that derivatives be “traded in privately managed clearinghouses, with less disclosure,” according to the Times. The clearinghouse of choice for the big banks in Rosen’s CDS Consortium is ICE U.S. Trust, which is in turned regulated only by the Federal Reserve system.
So the upshot of all this is that the bankers get what they want, are allowed to carry on as they were, while at the same time the fractional reserve banking system and the federal government are both greatly expanded and empowered, and the compliant corporate media ludicrously tells us that a strict crackdown is underway.
This kind of activity is exactly what some leading representatives have warned of in recent weeks.
A fortnight ago, the Democratic Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Collin Peterson, announced to the press that “The banks run the place,” in reference to the US Congress.
While Peterson is also pushing for legislation to regulate derivatives trading, his proposed bill would limit derivatives trading to public exchanges, rather than private clearinghouses, which are managed by banks.
Peterson’s warning mirrors that of Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who just a few weeks before uttered the same rarely acknowledged truth.
“And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,” Durbin said.
How simultaneously dangerous and ridiculous it is that the Federal Reserve is given more authority to oversee the economy. This is the same privately run entity that refused to comply with congressional demands for transparency and disclose the destination of trillions dollars in bailout funds. It is the same privately owned entity that has withheld internal memos, in spite of freedom of information act requests. It is the same private entity, run for the most part by European banking elites, that has arrogantly refused to tell Senators and Congressmen which banks were in receipt of government loans.
The government is ready to hand over everything to a monolithic private corporation and a gaggle of bastard banker offspring, that have gobbled up an amount close to the entire GDP of the country in taxpayers’ money and figuratively stuck the middle finger up regarding questions over where that money has gone.
It can be no more apparent than at this time that legislation to audit, repeal and eventually end the Federal Reserve, must be supported by Americans if they want to see their children and their grandchildren grow up without indentured debt and entrenched servitude to a fascistic marriage of private banks and hugely inflated government.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Brazil finds new strain of H1N1 virus
Brazil finds new strain of H1N1 virus
Jun 16 01:11 PM US/Eastern
Brazilian scientists have identified a new strain of the H1N1 virus after examining samples from a patient in Sao Paulo, their institute said Tuesday.
The variant has been called A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 by the Adolfo Lutz Bacteriological Institute, which compared it with samples of the A(H1N1) swine flu from California.
The genetic sequence of the new sub-type of the H1N1 virus was isolated by a virology team lead by one of its researchers, Terezinha Maria de Paiva, the institute said in a statement.
The mutation comprised of alterations in the Hemagglutinin protein which allows the virus to infect new hosts, it said.
It was not yet known whether the new strain was more aggressive than the current A(H1N1) virus which has been declared pandemic by the World Health Organization.
The genetic make-up of the H1N1 virus and its subvariants are important for scientists.
Pharmaceutical companies are working to mass produce a vaccine against the current A(H1N1) flu.
There are fears though that it could mutate into a deadly strain, much in the same way as the 1918 Spanish flu -- also an A(H1N1) virus type -- did when it killed tens of millions around the planet.
According to the WHO, 36,000 people in 76 countries have been infected with the H1N1 virus, causing 163 deaths.
Jun 16 01:11 PM US/Eastern
Brazilian scientists have identified a new strain of the H1N1 virus after examining samples from a patient in Sao Paulo, their institute said Tuesday.
The variant has been called A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 by the Adolfo Lutz Bacteriological Institute, which compared it with samples of the A(H1N1) swine flu from California.
The genetic sequence of the new sub-type of the H1N1 virus was isolated by a virology team lead by one of its researchers, Terezinha Maria de Paiva, the institute said in a statement.
The mutation comprised of alterations in the Hemagglutinin protein which allows the virus to infect new hosts, it said.
It was not yet known whether the new strain was more aggressive than the current A(H1N1) virus which has been declared pandemic by the World Health Organization.
The genetic make-up of the H1N1 virus and its subvariants are important for scientists.
Pharmaceutical companies are working to mass produce a vaccine against the current A(H1N1) flu.
There are fears though that it could mutate into a deadly strain, much in the same way as the 1918 Spanish flu -- also an A(H1N1) virus type -- did when it killed tens of millions around the planet.
According to the WHO, 36,000 people in 76 countries have been infected with the H1N1 virus, causing 163 deaths.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
'Definitely' is most commonly misspelt word
'Definitely' is most commonly misspelt word
'Definitely' is the most commonly misspelt word in the English language, a study has found.
Published: 8:32AM BST 15 Jun 2009
The 10-letter word came top in a study of everyday words Britons struggle to spell correctly, with most of us regularly mixing up the second 'I' with an 'A' on a regular basis.
Second place was 'sacrilegious', which leaves people confused over whether it has an 'E' or 'I' in the middle.
Related Articles
Losing weight 'can be an early warning sign of Alzheimer's'
Gordon Brown's handwriting reveals a common condition
Barclays cuts cash Isa rates
Berlin: Events marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall
Fitness shoes: do they work?'Indict', which is often misspelt as 'indite', was third.
The fourth most difficult word was 'manoeuvre' which causes problems due to the proximity of the 'O' and 'E' to each other.
'Bureaucracy', which is awkward because the inclusion of so many vowels, was fifth.
A spokesperson for market research company www.OnePoll.com, which carried out the study of 5,000 people, said: "So many of us can't seem to spell.
"Whether it is down to the structure of the word, or the frequency of use, there is no excuse not to learn how they are formed.
"And considering people judge others, yet don't like their intelligence to be judged by how well they spell, they should up their game and pick up a dictionary."
The vegetable 'broccoli' – came sixth, followed by 'phlegm' at seven and 'prejudice' at eight.
'Consensus' and 'unnecessary' completed the top ten.
Other difficult words to feature in the poll include 'supersede' at 11, 'connoisseur' at 15 and 'particularly' at 17.
Confusion over the number of Ns in 'questionnaire' meant it came twelfth, with 'entrepreneur' fourteenth and 'parallel' at 19.
The survey revealed some very odd ways the nation spells words which just failed to make the top 20.
Nearly one in 10 (nine per cent) thought 'mortgage' was spelt 'morgauge' and seven per cent often spell 'speech' as 'speach'.
Ninety per cent admit to giving up trying to spell 'diarrhoea' and a third get it so wrong their PC spellchecker can't even recognise the word they're attempting to conquer.
The research also found 57 per cent judge other people on their spelling, with 42 per cent admitting they believe people who can't spell are 'thick'.
Oddly enough, most Brits rate their spelling as 'good'.
Half of Brits admit the spell-check and auto-correcting on computers is to blame for their laziness in not checking spelling.
One in three reckon predictive text messaging and 'text speak' are to blame for terrible spelling in the real world.
Over three-quarters of the adults polled (78 per cent) said women are generally better at spelling than men.
Six out of ten said they were embarrassed by their poor spelling skills and one in ten corrected others when they spell something incorrectly and yet a third are irritated by being correct themselves.
Worryingly, a third believe the art of spelling is something 'you just learn in school'.
A spokesperson for www.OnePoll.com added: "It's clear the role technology is having on our lives is contributing to the downfall of our ability to spell.
"It often comes down to picking up bad habits earlier on in life which are difficult to shrug off.
"Computers and mobile phones which spell words for us has left us with a lazy attitude towards spelling."
TOP 20 MISSPELT WORDS
1. Definitely
2. Sacrilegious
3. Indict
4. Manoeuvre
5. Bureaucracy
6. Broccoli
7. Phlegm
8. Prejudice
9. Consensus
10. Unnecessary
11. Supersede
12. Questionnaire
13. Lieutenant
14. Entrepreneur
15. Connoisseur
16. Inoculate
17. Particularly
18. Liquify
19. Parallel
20. Conscience
'Definitely' is the most commonly misspelt word in the English language, a study has found.
Published: 8:32AM BST 15 Jun 2009
The 10-letter word came top in a study of everyday words Britons struggle to spell correctly, with most of us regularly mixing up the second 'I' with an 'A' on a regular basis.
Second place was 'sacrilegious', which leaves people confused over whether it has an 'E' or 'I' in the middle.
Related Articles
Losing weight 'can be an early warning sign of Alzheimer's'
Gordon Brown's handwriting reveals a common condition
Barclays cuts cash Isa rates
Berlin: Events marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall
Fitness shoes: do they work?'Indict', which is often misspelt as 'indite', was third.
The fourth most difficult word was 'manoeuvre' which causes problems due to the proximity of the 'O' and 'E' to each other.
'Bureaucracy', which is awkward because the inclusion of so many vowels, was fifth.
A spokesperson for market research company www.OnePoll.com, which carried out the study of 5,000 people, said: "So many of us can't seem to spell.
"Whether it is down to the structure of the word, or the frequency of use, there is no excuse not to learn how they are formed.
"And considering people judge others, yet don't like their intelligence to be judged by how well they spell, they should up their game and pick up a dictionary."
The vegetable 'broccoli' – came sixth, followed by 'phlegm' at seven and 'prejudice' at eight.
'Consensus' and 'unnecessary' completed the top ten.
Other difficult words to feature in the poll include 'supersede' at 11, 'connoisseur' at 15 and 'particularly' at 17.
Confusion over the number of Ns in 'questionnaire' meant it came twelfth, with 'entrepreneur' fourteenth and 'parallel' at 19.
The survey revealed some very odd ways the nation spells words which just failed to make the top 20.
Nearly one in 10 (nine per cent) thought 'mortgage' was spelt 'morgauge' and seven per cent often spell 'speech' as 'speach'.
Ninety per cent admit to giving up trying to spell 'diarrhoea' and a third get it so wrong their PC spellchecker can't even recognise the word they're attempting to conquer.
The research also found 57 per cent judge other people on their spelling, with 42 per cent admitting they believe people who can't spell are 'thick'.
Oddly enough, most Brits rate their spelling as 'good'.
Half of Brits admit the spell-check and auto-correcting on computers is to blame for their laziness in not checking spelling.
One in three reckon predictive text messaging and 'text speak' are to blame for terrible spelling in the real world.
Over three-quarters of the adults polled (78 per cent) said women are generally better at spelling than men.
Six out of ten said they were embarrassed by their poor spelling skills and one in ten corrected others when they spell something incorrectly and yet a third are irritated by being correct themselves.
Worryingly, a third believe the art of spelling is something 'you just learn in school'.
A spokesperson for www.OnePoll.com added: "It's clear the role technology is having on our lives is contributing to the downfall of our ability to spell.
"It often comes down to picking up bad habits earlier on in life which are difficult to shrug off.
"Computers and mobile phones which spell words for us has left us with a lazy attitude towards spelling."
TOP 20 MISSPELT WORDS
1. Definitely
2. Sacrilegious
3. Indict
4. Manoeuvre
5. Bureaucracy
6. Broccoli
7. Phlegm
8. Prejudice
9. Consensus
10. Unnecessary
11. Supersede
12. Questionnaire
13. Lieutenant
14. Entrepreneur
15. Connoisseur
16. Inoculate
17. Particularly
18. Liquify
19. Parallel
20. Conscience
Father's Sperm Delivers Much More Complex Material Than Previously Thought
Father's Sperm Delivers Much More Complex Material Than Previously Thought
ScienceDaily (June 15, 2009) — It was long believed that conception does not involve a meeting of equals. The egg is a relatively large, impressive biological factory compared with the tiny sperm, which delivers to the egg one copy of the father's genes. However, a new study from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah reveals that the father's sperm delivers much more complex genetic material than previously thought. The findings could lead to a diagnostic test to help couples deal with infertility.
Researchers discovered particular genes packaged in a special way within the sperm, and that may promote the development of the fetus.
"Our findings show that the father plays an active role in packaging his genome to help ensure a healthy baby," says study co-leader Brad Cairns, Ph.D., investigator with HCI and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and professor of oncological sciences at the University of Utah. "However, they also raise the possibility that a man's aging, health and lifestyle may alter this packaging and negatively affect fertility and embryo development."
During fetal development, certain genes make decisions about organ and tissue development. The new research shows that in sperm, these genes are wrapped in special packaging materials called 'modified histones.' These modified histones appear to be key factors in ensuring genes are activated or repressed at the right level, place and time, which helps the fertilized egg develop properly.
Chromosomes are long strands of DNA containing thousands of genes, and their packaging helps determine which genes turn on and off. Understanding how these genes are activated or repressed leads to a better understanding of how disorders like birth defects and cancer develop.
"Genes have on-and-off switches, and understanding them allows us to target them, leading to possible treatments, cures or prevention strategies," says Cairns. "That's the good news."
The study is set for publication June 14 – a week before Father's Day – in the online edition of the journal Nature. The research involved collaboration between Cairns' lab at HCI and the University of Utah's in vitro fertilization (IVF) and andrology lab led by Doug Carrell – along with their joint graduate student, Sue Hammoud.
An implication of this study is that factors such as genetic mutations, age or lifestyle may affect sperm chromosome packaging, leading to infertility. "We are hopeful that this work will soon lead to a clinical diagnostic test that will help couples with infertility problems make better informed decisions regarding their prospects for a healthy child. We will also be testing if aspects of a man's lifestyle – such as age, diet or health – affect proper packaging and fertility," says Cairns. Other future work includes how decision-making genes are packaged in eggs, which remains a major mystery.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adapted from materials provided by University of Utah Health Sciences.
Email or share this story:| More Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA
MLA University of Utah Health Sciences (2009, June 15). Father's Sperm Delivers Much More Complex Material Than Previously Thought. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 15, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/06/090614153253.htmAds by
ScienceDaily (June 15, 2009) — It was long believed that conception does not involve a meeting of equals. The egg is a relatively large, impressive biological factory compared with the tiny sperm, which delivers to the egg one copy of the father's genes. However, a new study from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah reveals that the father's sperm delivers much more complex genetic material than previously thought. The findings could lead to a diagnostic test to help couples deal with infertility.
Researchers discovered particular genes packaged in a special way within the sperm, and that may promote the development of the fetus.
"Our findings show that the father plays an active role in packaging his genome to help ensure a healthy baby," says study co-leader Brad Cairns, Ph.D., investigator with HCI and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and professor of oncological sciences at the University of Utah. "However, they also raise the possibility that a man's aging, health and lifestyle may alter this packaging and negatively affect fertility and embryo development."
During fetal development, certain genes make decisions about organ and tissue development. The new research shows that in sperm, these genes are wrapped in special packaging materials called 'modified histones.' These modified histones appear to be key factors in ensuring genes are activated or repressed at the right level, place and time, which helps the fertilized egg develop properly.
Chromosomes are long strands of DNA containing thousands of genes, and their packaging helps determine which genes turn on and off. Understanding how these genes are activated or repressed leads to a better understanding of how disorders like birth defects and cancer develop.
"Genes have on-and-off switches, and understanding them allows us to target them, leading to possible treatments, cures or prevention strategies," says Cairns. "That's the good news."
The study is set for publication June 14 – a week before Father's Day – in the online edition of the journal Nature. The research involved collaboration between Cairns' lab at HCI and the University of Utah's in vitro fertilization (IVF) and andrology lab led by Doug Carrell – along with their joint graduate student, Sue Hammoud.
An implication of this study is that factors such as genetic mutations, age or lifestyle may affect sperm chromosome packaging, leading to infertility. "We are hopeful that this work will soon lead to a clinical diagnostic test that will help couples with infertility problems make better informed decisions regarding their prospects for a healthy child. We will also be testing if aspects of a man's lifestyle – such as age, diet or health – affect proper packaging and fertility," says Cairns. Other future work includes how decision-making genes are packaged in eggs, which remains a major mystery.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adapted from materials provided by University of Utah Health Sciences.
Email or share this story:| More Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA
MLA University of Utah Health Sciences (2009, June 15). Father's Sperm Delivers Much More Complex Material Than Previously Thought. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 15, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/06/090614153253.htmAds by
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Crops under stress as temperatures fall
Crops under stress as temperatures fall
Our politicians haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, observes Christopher Booker.
By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:04PM BST 13 Jun 2009
For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.
There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.
Related Articles
David Cameron's cowardly caveat on a Euro referendum
Iranian elections a 'loathsome charade'
North Dakota: Thousands of people to be evacuated amid Red River flooding fears
Postcards from the Edge: the economic crisis that stretches from Wall Street to all streets
Birds 'are better at singing in the rain ? and the cold'
African tribe populated rest of the worldNone of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.
In China, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest. (In one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain.) In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: "In 43 years I've never seen anything like the decline we're looking at in South America."
In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year's food shortage, which provoked riots from west Africa to Egypt and Yemen, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.
There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since 2007 than we have known for decades.
Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall.
It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.
It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn't vote for last week.
Our politicians haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, observes Christopher Booker.
By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:04PM BST 13 Jun 2009
For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.
There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.
Related Articles
David Cameron's cowardly caveat on a Euro referendum
Iranian elections a 'loathsome charade'
North Dakota: Thousands of people to be evacuated amid Red River flooding fears
Postcards from the Edge: the economic crisis that stretches from Wall Street to all streets
Birds 'are better at singing in the rain ? and the cold'
African tribe populated rest of the worldNone of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.
In China, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest. (In one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain.) In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: "In 43 years I've never seen anything like the decline we're looking at in South America."
In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year's food shortage, which provoked riots from west Africa to Egypt and Yemen, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.
There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since 2007 than we have known for decades.
Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall.
It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.
It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn't vote for last week.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Home
Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 13:38. By ISAAC WOLF, Scripps Howard News Service national
Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world.
Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction.
A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found that -- because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination -- no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States.
But thousands of consumer goods and millions of pounds of unfinished metal and its byproducts have been found to contain low levels of radiation, and experts think the true amount could be much higher, perhaps by a factor of 10.
Government records of cases of contamination, obtained through state and federal Freedom of Information Act requests, illustrate the problem.
In 2006 in Texas, for example, a recycling facility inadvertently created 500,000 pounds of radioactive steel byproducts after melting metal contaminated with Cesium-137, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records. In Florida in 2001, another recycler unintentionally did the same, and wound up with 1.4 million pounds of radioactive material. And in 1998, 430,000 pounds of steel laced with Cobalt-60 made it to the U.S. heartland from Brazil.
But an accounting of the magnitude of the problem is unknown because U.S. and state governments do not require scrap yards, recyclers and other businesses -- a primary line of defense against rogue radiation -- to screen metal goods and materials for radiation or report it when found. And no federal agency is responsible for oversight.
"Nobody's going to know -- nobody -- how much has been melted into consumer goods," said Ray Turner, an international expert on radiation with Fort Mitchell, Ky.-based River Metals Recycling. He has helped decontaminate seven metal-recycling facilities that unwittingly melted scrap containing radioactive isotopes.
"It's your worst nightmare," Turner said.
It is also one that has only barely begun to register as a potential threat to health and safety.
What is known now is that -- despite the shared belief of officials in six state and federal agencies that tainted metal is potentially dangerous, should be prevented from coming in unnecessary contact with people and the environment, and should be barred from entering the United States -- there is no one in charge of making sure that happens.
In fact, the Scripps investigation found:
-- Reports are mounting that manufacturers and dealers from China, India, former Soviet bloc nations and some African countries are exporting contaminated material and goods, taking advantage of the fact that the United States has no regulations specifying what level of radioactive contamination is too much in raw materials and finished goods.Compounding the problem is the inability of U.S. agents to fully screen every one of the 24 million cargo containers arriving in the United States each year.
-- U.S. metal recyclers and scrap yards are not required by any state or federal law to check for radiation in the castoff material they collect or report it when they find some.
-- No federal agency is responsible for determining how much tainted material exists in how many consumer and other goods. No one is in charge of reporting, tracking or analyzing cases once they occur. In fact, the recent discovery of a radioactive cheese grater triggered a bureaucratic game of hot potato, with no agency taking responsibility.
-- It can be far cheaper and easier for a facility stuck with "hot" items to sell them to an unwitting manufacturer or dump them surreptitiously than to pay for proper disposal and cleaning, which can cost a plant as much as $50 million.
-- For facilities in 36 states that want to do the right thing, there is nowhere they can legally dump the contaminated stuff since the shutdown last year of a site in South Carolina, the only U.S. facility available to them for the disposal.
-- A U.S. government program to collect the worst of the castoff radioactive items has a two-year waiting list and a 9,000-item backlog -- and is fielding requests to collect an additional 2,000 newly detected items a year.
Experts say you needn't empty your home of metal implements for fear of radiation. The peril from most individual items is generally not considered great, although some could be hazardous on their own.
In fact, everyone is exposed every day to the "background" radiation found in nature. For instance, some ceramic pots emanate low levels of radiation that occurs in clay. Granite countertops often contain measurable, but individually insignificant, amounts of naturally occurring uranium.
Other exposures come from small and contained amounts of radiation used in smoke detectors and medical devices.
The potential danger comes, however, from the cumulative effect of proximity to radiation, particularly over time and in relation to other contaminants. The precise degree of that danger has not yet been definitively determined for low-level radiation, such as that contained in commonplace goods and materials.
One scientific school of thought, which has been losing favor in recent years, holds that low levels of radiation mean low-level threats. An opposite camp contends that exposure to any level of radiation -- especially if it is chronic -- carries health risks. The U.S. government has so far sidestepped the issue of how little radiation is too much.
According to a 2006 report by a National Academy of Sciences panel, there is a direct relationship between radiation and an increased risk of cancer. Prolonged exposure can also lead to birth defects and cataracts, studies have shown.
Because the amount of tainted metals in circulation is unknown, the cumulative overall health effect -- now and over time -- is impossible to calculate. Whatever it is, there is little debate that unnecessary exposure to radiation is best avoided.
"There is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial," said Richard Monson, chairman of the Committee to Assess Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation, at the release of the National Academy report.
There are no reports of anyone dying or being hurt in the United States after contact with the contaminated metal goods and materials. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency leaves no doubt that tainted metal poses a particular threat.
"Radioactively contaminated scrap threatens both human health and the environment," reads a cautionary statement on the EPA's Web site.
The Scripps investigation used the federal Freedom of Information Act to gain access to a previously un-mined NRC database, the only official assemblage of reports of radiologically contaminated items that have turned up in scrap yards, trash dumps and manufactured goods since 1990.
But because such reporting is neither required nor consistent, neither state nor federal environmental officials -- nor many in the scrap-metal industry -- consider the NRC accounts an accurate reflection of the problem's true dimensions. (The only mandatory rule is that anyone knowingly transporting radioactive material must notify the U.S. Department of Transportation.)
"Typically, these go unreported," said Carolyn Mac Kenzie (cq), a U.S. Department of Energy physicist who is a world expert in radioactive metals. "Whatever number you come up with would not reflect reality."
One of the most conservative estimates comes from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which put the number of radioactively contaminated metal objects unaccounted for in the United States in 2005 at 500,000. Others suggest the amount is far higher. The most recent NRC estimate -- made a decade ago -- is 20 million pounds of contaminated waste.
What is known is that the NRC's national Nuclear Material Events Database has documented 18,740 cases involving radioactive material in consumer products, metal intended for their manufacture and other inadvertent exposures to the public, the vast majority since 1990. State environmental reports -- obtained under state freedom of information requests -- also reveal dozens of others.
A recent example emerged last summer, when a Flint, Mich., scrap plant discovered a beat-up kitchen cheese grater that was radioactive. The China-made grater bearing the well-known EKCO brand name was laced with the isotope Cobalt-60. Tests showed the gadget to be giving off the equivalent of a chest X-ray over 36 hours of use, according to NRC documents.
Estimated to have been in circulation for as long as a decade, the grater likely was four to five times more radioactive when it was new. EKCO's parent company, World Kitchen, of Rosemont, Ill., described the incident as isolated and found no need to issue a recall, spokesman Bryan Glancy said.
It was not the only cheese grater found. NRC documents show that another Cobalt-60-tainted grater had turned up in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2006. The reports do not indicate what brand of grater it was or if it was related to the one that surfaced in Michigan.
Cobalt-60 also tainted a 430,000-pound shipment of metal from Brazil in 1998. Part of that load found its way to Michigan and then Indiana, where it was used to make brackets for 1,000 La-Z-Boy recliners.
The contamination was detected by a radiation monitor when scrap leftover from the brackets job was shipped to the Butler, Ind., steel recycler Steel Dynamics, according to NRC documents.
The Cobalt-60 tainted Reclina-Rocker chairs, which would have given off a chest X-ray's worth of radiation every 1,000 hours, were still in warehouses when the contamination was discovered, and never made it to stores or living rooms, according to Rex Bowser, director of the Indoor Air and Radiological Health Emergency Response Program of the Indiana State Department of Health.
The recliners' radiation levels were "enough above background to be a concern for people sitting in La-Z-Boy chairs," Bowser said.
In many instances where contamination is identified -- generally by companies that have invested in costly detection equipment -- the contamination comes from the inadvertent blending of radioactive sources with piles of other scrap that metal recyclers reprocess and later sell.
Often, when a factory shuts down or a plant relocates, industrial smoke detectors, measuring gauges and other machines and parts that contain small amounts of radioactive material are left behind. Because they commonly are encased in a protective shell, the devices pose little risk when the plant is operating.
But when a facility closes, the devices frequently are trashed as scrap. If those radioactive parts are later heated during reprocessing, the radiation can escape and blend with the finished recycled product.
Many large scrap outfits invest in radiation detectors -- which can cost $50,000 each -- that provide a measure of protection. Steel company Gerdau Ameristeel, based in Toronto and Tampa, Fla., installs as many as six levels of detection at its scrap mills, at a cost of as much as $1 million for each facility, said Jim Turner, corporate environmental director.
But even scrap and recycling operations that are diligent in scanning incoming and outgoing loads can unknowingly wind up with tainted material.
One reason is that monitoring devices are not all strong enough to penetrate a full truckload of scrap and may miss the radioactive sources. And even the weather can foul things up, as Gerdau Ameristeel learned when a 2001 thunderstorm disturbed detectors at its Jacksonville, Fla., recycling operation, permitting radioactive Cesium-137 to slip through. The plant's cleanup cost was $10 million, according to an NRC report.
Sometimes the devices containing radiation simply disappear. In January, for instance, Wal-Mart admitted that it could not account for about 15,000 illuminated exit signs, which each contain tritium, a radioactive isotope, according to the NRC.
And other times, they are purposely masked in an attempt to dump the hot items on someone else, often to avoid the cost of proper disposal. Those fees have mushroomed in the past three decades from $1 per cubic foot to more than $400, with forecasts for them to more than double in coming years, according to a 2004 estimate by Robin Nazzaro, the audit agency GAO's natural-resources and environment director.
Recycler Doug Kramer, owner of Los Angeles-based Kramer Metals, recounted how workers once found a radioactive object wrapped in lead and hidden in a beer keg -- presumably to keep the radiation from being detected.
The global dimension of the recycling of radiation problem is large, and growing, experts say.
Between 2006 and 2007, for instance, authorities in the Netherlands found about 900 women's handbags that had originated in India and were decorated with metal rings laced with Cobalt-60 on each bag's shoulder strap. Once discovered, they were sent to a radioactive waste site in the Netherlands.
Last fall, radioactive metal also from India was used by a Connecticut company to make 500 sets of buttons for Otis elevators in France and Sweden. No one realized the elevator buttons -- which had been installed -- were radioactive until a similar shipment tripped radiation alarms at the U.S. border with Mexico, according to Otis Elevator spokesman Dilip Rangnekar.
Otis scrambled to remove the tainted buttons from the elevator cabs, Rangnekar said. But an international authority on rogue radiation said it is likely even more of the buttons remain in circulation.
"Thousands and thousands were produced," said Abel Gonzalez, a former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency's division of radiation and waste safety. "I doubt they have found all of them."
U.S. officials and metal experts say evidence is mounting that radioactive metal from abroad is increasingly --- and intentionally -- being sent to the United States, sometimes decades after the contaminated material was first detected and returned to its source.
In 1991, an Indian supplier sent to the United States more than 50 shipments of chain-link fencing, some of which was tainted. Investigators found the fencing scattered around the country, including in Florida, Tennessee, New York and Washington state.
"The NRC told them not to ship more material to the U.S., but it allowed them to keep what was here, here," said Paul Frame, a radiation expert at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
But a decade later, another shipment of tainted Indian fencing reached the United States, Frame said.
"My guess was that it was the same stuff," he said. "You suspect that in some cases they know the material is radioactive but they're going to ship it out anyway because it's money."
John Williamson, administrator of Florida's radiation control bureau, agrees and predicts that tainted steel from China and products from India will continue to surface, at the borders and on the plant floors.
One reason is that, after U.S. customs rejects a load of contaminated material, no one knows what happens once it is sent back to its overseas producer because no tracking system exists, he and other front-line experts said.
"In China and India, who knows what happens?" Williamson said. "My belief is it goes back into the hopper."
NRC reports give weight to his belief. Construction reinforcement materials from Mexico laced with Cobalt-60 that were detected at the border in 2006 were traced back to metal from a contaminated batch produced and exported more than 20 years before by two Juarez, Mexico, foundries.
Some experts say the United States bears some blame for the infiltration of tainted metal and products. Even though there is little debate that radiation-laced material is unwelcome, neither Congress nor federal agencies have established a "safe" level of contamination, despite two decades of wrestling with the issue.
That has created a loophole that overseas metal dealers and product manufacturers can exploit, critics say. But forbidding all radioactive material in metal would throw a damaging and costly wrench into the recycling industry, according to John Gilstrap, safety director for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries trade group.
"If we set the thresholds unrealistically low, we're inflicting pain on businesses for no necessary reason," Gilstrap said.
But Gerdau Ameristeel's Turner disagrees. Asked what the allowable level of radiation in metal should be, Turner replied via e-mail: "ZERO."
To officials in several states, it is the absence of federal oversight and indistinct rules about materials and goods tainted with low-level radiation that is causing undue pain. After the South Carolina waste site closed last summer, six states called on Congress to act. So far, it has not.
"There is no one federal agency responsible for regulating all ionizing radiation, and therefore regulations are fragmented or non-existent in some areas," said Michael Mobley, head of a commission formed last summer by officials from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia.
"If we address all radioactive materials across the board and the waste that is generated from them, we will protect public health and the environment to a greater extent than we do now," he said.
E-mail Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Recycled Radiation
Comment viewing options
Flat list - collapsedFlat list - expandedThreaded list - collapsedThreaded list - expanded Date - newest firstDate - oldest first 10 comments per page30 comments per page50 comments per page70 comments per page90 comments per page150 comments per page200 comments per page250 comments per page300 comments per page
Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
throwing out my recliner
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 15:44.
This is a very intriguing and thought provoking article. I appreciate how in depth the article is, and how this writer obviously spent a long time trying to find good sources. News articles are usually very vague, so I apprecite the amount of detail in this article. I look forward to learning more and I hope that the US government steps it up. In the meantime though, I think I'm going to get rid of my recliner and maybe my cheese grater too...
»
reply
Equivalent of an x-ray every 36hrs?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 16:56.
The general lack of awareness about radiation could easily be attributed to the fact that this seems to impact the population either over an extended period (as you noted) or minimally- and because nobody really cares either way. Indeed, travelers who fly more than 75k miles on commercial airlines per year (450,000 in the US do so) are exposed to more than the maximum legal annual radiation dose for people working in industrial or medical facilities. Though your insightful article is a start, there is still little here that would shock the conscience of the average consumer enough to motivate the political action needed to end this latent threat.
»
reply
Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by Robert Cherry (not verified) on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 20:04.
My employer was the prime contractor for the Texas emergency response in 2006 mentioned in your article. I was the radiation safety officer for the response.
The weight of the Cs-137 contaminated steel was not quite 500,000 pounds as you wrote. Actually, it was very close zero pound (or 0 kilogram, if you prefer). Cesium-137 does not bond very well in steel. Instead, it is volatilized and goes into the emission control dust (ECD) that is virtually 100%-captured in the baghouse. Indeed, the contamination was discovered first at a site that recycles ECD for zinc, cadmium and other useful and valuable metals when the ECD shipment from the steel mill triggered portal alarms. The recycling site then notified the steel mill.
Nevertheless, outgoing steel was monitored for radioactivity after the ECD contamination was discovered. No radioactivity was detected above normal background concentrations in this steel. The entire event is described public records, which you may obtain (and should have obtained before you published your article) from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Or did you mistake the contaminated ECD for steel? The contaminated ECD was properly disposed at a licensed disposal site and never entered commerce for recycling or for anything else.
Interestingly, the chemistry tests of the steel that are normally performed detected a noticeable increase of lead (Pb) in the steel shortly before the Cs-137 contamination in the ECD was discovered. This may have been due to lead from the shielded container that contained the cesium-137.
Since we studied the Florida incident and coordinated with Florida regulators as we worked through our own incident in Texas, we learned that the Florida company also had no problem with cesium-137 contaminated steel.
It is the steel mill that becomes contaminated by cesium-137, not the steel product. And more than 99% of the contamination remains in the ECD. The ECD is already an EPA-controlled hazardous waste and none escapes from well-designed plants, such as the Texas and Florida steel mills
Cobalt-60, as you should know and as the rest of your article shows, presents a quite different problem because cobalt is chemically similar to iron. It thoroughly contaminates steel products if it is introduced into the steel-making process. It is cobalt-60 that produces contaminated steel, not cesium-137.
It is irresponsible of you to publish the information about the Texas incident without properly determining facts that are readily available. Such wrong information can have strong adverse economic impacts on the steelmaker and its employees. The steelmaker was victimized once by whoever improperly disposed of the cesium-137 source in scrap metal scheduled for recycling. Your articles victimized them a second time.
Robert Cherry, PhD, CHP
»
reply
Michigan source info published 11/2008
Submitted by Michelle K. Gross (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 05:49.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2126970/posts
This is a link to a transcript of a local Michigan news station reporting on the cheese grater in Nov 2008. Note that the hosting site declares itself to be a conservative web=site
»
reply
Not a bad article in
Submitted by Charles Grant (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 14:02.
Not a bad article in comparision with some of the other reporting on the subject I have seen. You are correct that the U.S. has failed time and again to promulgate a regulation that declares what level is the regulatory threshold. Each time, the effort was beaten back by "public interest groups" that erroneously state that "no level is safe." If that is the case, then don't fly anywhere, don't have a dental x-ray, don't have a smoke detector in your house, etc. etc. In fact, Am-241 is licensed by the USNRC for use in these devices and it is allowable to place them in the municipal trash when they are spent. The answer is for the USNRC to specify a regulatory limit for radioactivity, such as in their Regulatory Guide 1.86. Radioactive materials play a vital and productive role in our daily lives. Its time the USNRC stepped up and either adopted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards or promulgated their own. It's time we "moved on" with it and ignore reactionist agendas of special interests.
»
reply
Bad Author, No Cookie
Submitted by RandomTroll (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 14:47.
It doesn't take much googling to figure out your facts are skewed and there are already complaints about how this is being reported. There is another article on this site that contradicts some portions of this story. I can't possibly attest to the validity of the statements by Dr. Cherry, but thanks for providing more insight into the issue Sir.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/06/05/06052009_letourneau_nuke.html
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Jm0ZW0-dNmMJ:www.scrippsnews.com/node/43586+recycling+facility+texas+radioactive+cesium&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
»
reply
Radioactive returns:
Submitted by Aldred (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 16:10.
Hmmmmmm remember the World Trade steel that they shipped to China as fast as they could hack it up and shove it on a ship?
»
reply
Geiger counters
Submitted by odyssey (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 20:13.
Should the average homeowner at least buy a cheap geiger counter to test their household?
»
reply
Radioactive goods
Submitted by Craig (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 20:43.
The best solution is simply to manufacture and recycle all consumer goods and raw materials including scrap right here within our own economy. Goods manufactured in this country could be more easily monitored through all stages of procurement and every stage of the productive cycle and all manufacturers and suppliers would be subject to uniform domestic legal sanctions, which is a lot less expensive than litigating these matters through international trade or legal agencies.
»
reply
From China
Submitted by Fed Up (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 21:26.
I am always very suspicious of anything made in China, most importantly food or personal cosmetics, inclusive of soaps, shampoos, deodorants, toothpaste, mouthwash and body wash. I read every ingredient and where the product on food boxes was made and don't eat Chinese food anymore. I just do NOT trust them with anything that goes in my body or on it. They have a new game. Instead of Made in China labels we now see Made in PRC, which is the People's Republic of China. Now I'm on the lookout for appliance and am eyeballing a few things that will be trashed tonight. I don't mind paying more for products, especially if they're made in the good ol' USA!
»
reply
Radioactive materials & detection
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 23:00.
I'm surprised there was no mention of DU (Depleted Uranium)in this article, potentially much more dangerous to populations around the world. It comes from spent fuel rods used in nuclear reactors, but still retains 40% of it's radioactive content, so the term 'depleted' is very deceptive. It is then given, or sold very cheaply, to the military who convert it into shells used in tanks, artillary shells, bunker buster bombs, and smaller ordinance.
It is still so 'hot' that when the shell flies through the air it burns, and upon hitting something solid emits a vaporized aerosol of fine particles throughout the area. If even one small particle is inhaled the liklihood of lung cancer, and other internal cancers, is a very high probability. The jagged edges of these ceramic like particles assure they are difficult for the body to eliminate. Although low level radioactivity the particle contaminates cells surrounding it...and can also pass through semen to the unwitting wives & girlfriends of returning GI's, causing birth defects in embryos & fetuses.
Of course the military denies it is harmful, but the hundreds of thousands returning from the Gulf Wars, afflicted with the multi-symptom ailment known as Gulf War Syndrome, by their sheer numbers tell a different tale. Oddly, DU & Agent Orange sprang from the same weapons program. It must also be noted with a 4.5 billion year lifetime it never goes away, and the Navy stopped allowing DU weaponry on their ships 2 or three years ago...why?
Google DU, or depleted uranium for thousands of articles about this deadly substance.
»
reply
Scrap metal covered with DU
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 23:36.
I forgot to mention the most important question relating to metal contaminated with radioactive material...Where do the thousands (or millions) of tons of scrap metal we have created by shooting DU all over the middle east go...China, India, elsewhere?
»
reply
The Navy stopped using DU 2
Submitted by bilderberger (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 00:05.
The Navy stopped using DU 2 years ago because they ran out after dropping it in Iraq & Afghanistan!
»
reply
RE: the post about DU &
Submitted by LC in West Texas (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 00:20.
RE: the post about DU & Agent Orange. In the late 60's & early 70's I worked for an aerial spraying service in West Texas, the target of which was mesquite tree / bush eradication on ranch properties. I would hold the flag high, get sprayed by the plane, then scoot over 15 feet and get drenched again. I was either a freshmen or sophomore in high school at the time. Our foreman would brag at the time "this is the same sh*t they use in Vietnam". The owner/pilot died very young, in his early 40's, of lung cancer. I spent one long summer at that job and when asked to come back the next few years I politely declined. 40 years later I have growths in my lungs that have my doctors baffled. Without oxygen 24/7 my saturation level will stay in the mid to upper 80's. I submit to a PET/CT scan every 90 days to mark any growth if any. When I mentioned Agent Orange the oncologist just said "..hmmmm".
»
reply
You're absolutely incorrect, my friend
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 02:59.
There's plenty of nuclear waste material that could be converted to DU. After a couple decades & tens of billions of dollars spent Yucca Mountain has yet to open, and if it does it will already be at full capacity.
A couple things I didn't mention before are:
1) Incidents of cancer among the mid-east population have risen dramatically, as well as serious birth defects,
2) DU can be picked up in the frequent huge dust storms in the middle east, and distributed as far away as the east coast of the US,
3) And worst of all, it has the potential to kill EVERY living thing on earth down to the microbial level.
Yet our military is still in complete denial about the danger it poses, and has roadblocked testing of our returning soldiers...WTF!
»
reply
RECYCLED RADIOACTIVE METAL
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 03:54.
Don't you just love globalisation? Oh, how our neighbors just love us to death.
»
reply
radiation is the least of your problems
Submitted by jenchen (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 11:21.
Get used to it-the human race is not evolving-it is regressing backwards-not protecting and supporting life-humans want only to control-destroy and degrade all life. They do not want love truth and to develop souls-they want lies and fear and to have giant egos. You will never trust, you need to control out of fear-because you project your own sadism onto nature. You will never stop being violent and you will never respect that "everyone" has the right to free will (no one's free will ever denies another their free will. You will never love each other as equals-you crave inequity and a class system-You will never stop being hypocrites who punish ("inferiors" you proudly do not love as you should-as equals) and you will never comprehend the law-the only law of reality-you get back what you give. You are destroyers of life-you are not creative lovers and supporters of life. You want the ignorance-poverty and prisons and torture of lessors to make your egos feel superior-if you were allowed in Heaven-heaven would become a Hell by your presence. You would never make as your number one priority-the abolition of all suffering on Earth-you would rather make life Hell for others-because your jealousy and greed for power would never include creating a heaven on earth for all equally. The crop circles-are the mark of the beast-where what I have said is true they have marked you and various UFO's who have marked you (and have been watching and judging you) will each arrive at these marks and you will be turned into robots or worse because what I have said about you is true: you refuse to evolve-and yes after 2012 your alloted time to do so "out of your own free will" is up-then they will begin collecting you who have not evolved and so have no souls.
»
reply
Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by Dr Alok K Bhattacharyya (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 13:41.
This is a very interesting article. The author tried to establish that often imported articles from places like China and India contain radioactive elements like CO60. Though I think the Chinese and Indians may have inadvertently shipped items laced with radioactive materials, but they did not intentionally did so in order to cause cancer in the USA or other places.
On the other hand in their quest to export democracy worldwide, USA and its allies have used bunker buster bombs laced with depleted Uranium in ex-Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. USA has used at least 1000 tons of depleted Uranium in those wars. USA Senate actually increased the quota for use of depleted Uranium. I do not think USA authorities can claim ignorance about the risk of DU. They knowlingly used DU to contamintate Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been significant rise of cancer and birth defects in both countries. Some reports suggest that DU was used for genocide over generations.
Now DU does not just stay in one place. A portion of that after the bomb blasts of shock and awe becomes airborne. If the particles get to the Jet Stream they can be carried any where as the Jet Stream circles the Globe. India and China are downwind from both Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence at least a portion of DU might have reached those places. So next time if consumers in USA or other places find imported goods radioactive, please check if the radiation is beta type (comes from cobalt 60) or alpha type (comes from DU). If it's alpha, please understand that that the chicken has come home to roost.
Also there were various reports that after 9-11 the ground below where the Twin Towers stood showed molten steel. There were some suggestions that nuclear bombs were used to bring the Towers down. At least the mushroom clouds emanating from the top of the Towers as they collapsed bore a striking resemblance to nuclear bomb blast pictures. The USA authorities quickly shipped all those enormous amount of steel and other junk to reportedly China and South Korea. Nobody knows for sure their final destinations. There is no report of that those were tested for safety before shipment. What has happened or will happen with all that steel nobody knows. May be they have been melted to make pots and pans and came back to the USA.
I hope the ScrippsNews will do an investigation on DU from bunker buster bombs and 9-11 steel, all made in the good ol US of A.
»
reply
RECYCLED RADIOACTIVE METAL
Submitted by Dr Alok K Bhattacharyya (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 13:56.
Anonymous, your neighbours do not love you to death. They just want you to have long and healthy life so that you can carry on buying real stuff from them at cheap prices and be able to pay for those the sooner the better.
On the contrary USA in her quest to export democracy worldwide used bunker buster mombs with depleted Uranium, about 1000 tons of that in Iraq, Afghanistan and ex-Yugoslavia. By the way, the people in those countries never wanted your DU-laced democracy.
Get real. Pot calling kettle black!
»
reply
Need to list all brands, dates
Submitted by George LoBuono (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 14:11.
For now, we need a list of all brands and dates of manufacture so that the public can dump such products quickly. Toss those EKCO graters and have an agency test other cheap import products to identify which are suspect.
»
reply
Genocide
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 16:40.
With the possible exception of radioactive steel parts on furniture or bed springs, the far greater threat is indeed the gradual contamination of the global environment by "hot particles". These can be injested as dust or in foodstuffs and once in the body act as cancer seeds by irradiating nearby healthy cells. A group called the Low Level Radiation Campaign (website at llrc.org) has shown that radioactive waste from nuclear plants dumping into the Irish Sea is then thrown back onto the coastline by surf where it dries and becomes airborne in the wind. Coastal counties now have elevated cancer rates. This illustrates the basic flaw of nuclear technology - it is incompatible with biology and cannot be 100% contained. We are creating a cancer lottery in which the chances of random death by invisible forces are rising year by year. To purposely release huge amounts of these particles by shooting off DU laced weapons is suicidal - its nuclear waste in the most damaging form just sprayed into the air. It is most certainly a war crime called genocide.
»
reply
DU don't mix radioactivity issues with Uranium toxicity
Submitted by GregR (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 17:41.
To Paul Magill Smith, you seem to be confusing the chemical toxicity of Uranium and the (insignificant) dangers of it's radioactivity. They are not the same.
What your posting here is the typical "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" tripe we see on many sites. I don't mean to minimize the toxicity of uranium. It is as most other heavy metals - toxic/poisonous. But this has NOTHING to do with radioactivity that is a separate issue.
Speaking of separate issues, DU's ability to burn under certain conditions is not associated with it's radioactivity it's a function of the element itself.
Finally thank you Mr. Cherry for your informed input.
»
reply
Depleted Uranium - the real story
Submitted by Mark H (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 17:43.
The radioactivity of uranium has nothing to do with how it explodes - uranium is pyrophoric, which means that a fine enough dust of the metal will spontaneously oxidize at ambient temperatures. Totally depleted uranium does the same thing, as does titanium. Furthermore DU isn't used in penetrator shells because it's radioactive - it's used because it's dense and also very malleable. It tranfers all its kinetic energy to the target very effeciently when it splats.
Where are all these journals from established medical journals that show that cancer is a "high probability" from breathing in one little particle? Oh right. There aren't any. Lord knows nobody misses a chance to demonize the US Armed Forces these days, so if data existed, it would be front page news.
»
reply
crimes against humanity
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 20:36.
Using any radio active materials as a weapon is a crime against humanity.think American citizens have any control over the political,military,industrial complex?I once commented that DU is like a gun that shoots from both ends of the barrel .It kills the so called enemy immediately,then eventually kills the shooter, slowly infects his wife and unborn children etc.Then keeps on killing those who remain in its presents for hundreds of years .Only an enemy of both sides of a war would create such a weapon.one has to wonder how who ever did create a weapon like this can live with themselves.
»
reply
WTF? GregR
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:26.
I've been researching, writing, & posting on this subject for several years now so your, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" doesn't qualify. How much research have YOU done on this issue? Come back to me with proof everything I stated about DU is fallacious, but you'd better have better references than government sources, or those biased by the money they stand to make from disseminating this WMD...and even the UN agrees it IS a WMD.
By the way, my brothers invented a device called the Nukalert. Google it. I've helped assemble 20,000 of them, and carry one on my keychain. How will you know which way to go when the same people in OUR government, who did 911, set off a nuke in a US city?
Here's a big unanswered question for you. Since 15 of the 19 (supposed) terrorists on the planes on 911 were Saudis, why didn't we invade them instead of Iraq?
»
reply
And you don't believe
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:34.
a complicit MSM would do anything to suppress information that they were complicit in leading us into an unnecessary war of 'choice'? La La land must be a nice place to live, but there isn't room enough for sane rational informed logical people, I guess.
»
reply
How many people in this country realize
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:44.
Henry Kissenger, in the early 1970's, stated to the NSC the #1 priority for US national security would be to depopulate the world by 2 BILLION people, beginning in the middle east because of vital resources (meaning oil of course) there to the US. What better way to do this than 'salt the earth' there with DU? And they gave this psycho a Nobel Peace Prize? WTF?
»
reply
nuked
Submitted by Pirate News (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 04:27.
These are the same mafia scrapyards, chop chops, garbage collectors and towtruckers who stole my 2 cars, and who run cartheft rackets worldwide. Kosher Nostra at the top, Italian mob in the middle, rednecks at the bottom.
This mafia cartel run all "cleanup" at nuke plants in USA, such as BURNING millions of tons of radiactive waste in my town. BTW burning can't change a radiactive halflife of 3-billion years.
geocities.com/knoxville_tn_epa
archive.org/details/IndependentInvestigationOfTheEastTennesseeTechnologyPark
piratenews.org/newslinks.html
»
reply
uranium nano particles
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 06:25.
when the uranium is converted to nano particles it can pass through to any part of the body! once there it can sit right next to your dna. it can then emmit 'low level radiation' but because it is so close to the dna and other cellular mechanisms it can cause damage even with beta radiation...former student of radiation biology
»
reply
You don't want live on top of a potential Uranium mine, it's bad
Submitted by Al (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 20:59.
Please note that radioactivity is a natural process, below is a reference to a report that has been sitting on the shelf, since 1988, The Commonwealth of Virginia, the DEPARTMENT OF MINES, MINERALS AND ENERGY. VIRGINIA DIVISION OF MINERAL RESOURCES. You will will Not, be happy to find out that, shopping malls, high schools, residential areas are built on very radioactive ground, now this ground in some cases has an excess of 15,000 counts per second (cps), while the background at sea level is about 30 cps. This area has potential for a Uranium mines, and Not for home building. It is the job, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Mineral Resources Division to protect the public from the geological hazards that exist, including the analysis and the identification of potential development areas for human habitation. It has not done it's job, the people who live and the children that go to these schools that where built on these areas, need to be informed of the potential hazards, it's just criminal. This is an open file report No.78 , that has 9 maps and a description of the potential Thorium and Uranium in the area, allot of money was spent to write this report, private exploration companies were looking for Uranium in the mid 1980's, but the could not secure a land position because the ownership of the land was so fragmented so nothing was done, except to develop the land for suburbia, and so Uranium went to the West, like Utah. The point of this story, is that what you don't know can hurt you both financially and ruin your health. If you have a house on one of these areas around the USA, don't tell anybody, because you will be liable that you did not inform a potential buyer about the hazard. This is just a small part of the bigger problem, like very radioactive granite from New Jersey, that is put on the out side of a multistory bank in Dallas, radioactive granite sold in home improvement stores for counter tops, building stones in the West that are made of pitchblende (mineral), radioactive well water, it's not checked for Thorium usually and so on and on.. etc..
It's, You the public that has to make the demands of the Government, after all they work for us ?
VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF MINES, MINERALS AND ENERGY VIRGINIA DIVISION OF MINERAL RESOURCES CATALOG OF PUBLICATIONS AND MAPS.
"Geochemistry and radioactivity in the Powhatan area, Virginia, by Jan Krason, S.S. Johnson, P.D. Finley, and J.D. Marr, Jr., 60 p., 9 plates, 29 figs., 16 tables, 1988" Publication 78.
»
Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 13:38. By ISAAC WOLF, Scripps Howard News Service national
Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world.
Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction.
A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found that -- because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination -- no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States.
But thousands of consumer goods and millions of pounds of unfinished metal and its byproducts have been found to contain low levels of radiation, and experts think the true amount could be much higher, perhaps by a factor of 10.
Government records of cases of contamination, obtained through state and federal Freedom of Information Act requests, illustrate the problem.
In 2006 in Texas, for example, a recycling facility inadvertently created 500,000 pounds of radioactive steel byproducts after melting metal contaminated with Cesium-137, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records. In Florida in 2001, another recycler unintentionally did the same, and wound up with 1.4 million pounds of radioactive material. And in 1998, 430,000 pounds of steel laced with Cobalt-60 made it to the U.S. heartland from Brazil.
But an accounting of the magnitude of the problem is unknown because U.S. and state governments do not require scrap yards, recyclers and other businesses -- a primary line of defense against rogue radiation -- to screen metal goods and materials for radiation or report it when found. And no federal agency is responsible for oversight.
"Nobody's going to know -- nobody -- how much has been melted into consumer goods," said Ray Turner, an international expert on radiation with Fort Mitchell, Ky.-based River Metals Recycling. He has helped decontaminate seven metal-recycling facilities that unwittingly melted scrap containing radioactive isotopes.
"It's your worst nightmare," Turner said.
It is also one that has only barely begun to register as a potential threat to health and safety.
What is known now is that -- despite the shared belief of officials in six state and federal agencies that tainted metal is potentially dangerous, should be prevented from coming in unnecessary contact with people and the environment, and should be barred from entering the United States -- there is no one in charge of making sure that happens.
In fact, the Scripps investigation found:
-- Reports are mounting that manufacturers and dealers from China, India, former Soviet bloc nations and some African countries are exporting contaminated material and goods, taking advantage of the fact that the United States has no regulations specifying what level of radioactive contamination is too much in raw materials and finished goods.Compounding the problem is the inability of U.S. agents to fully screen every one of the 24 million cargo containers arriving in the United States each year.
-- U.S. metal recyclers and scrap yards are not required by any state or federal law to check for radiation in the castoff material they collect or report it when they find some.
-- No federal agency is responsible for determining how much tainted material exists in how many consumer and other goods. No one is in charge of reporting, tracking or analyzing cases once they occur. In fact, the recent discovery of a radioactive cheese grater triggered a bureaucratic game of hot potato, with no agency taking responsibility.
-- It can be far cheaper and easier for a facility stuck with "hot" items to sell them to an unwitting manufacturer or dump them surreptitiously than to pay for proper disposal and cleaning, which can cost a plant as much as $50 million.
-- For facilities in 36 states that want to do the right thing, there is nowhere they can legally dump the contaminated stuff since the shutdown last year of a site in South Carolina, the only U.S. facility available to them for the disposal.
-- A U.S. government program to collect the worst of the castoff radioactive items has a two-year waiting list and a 9,000-item backlog -- and is fielding requests to collect an additional 2,000 newly detected items a year.
Experts say you needn't empty your home of metal implements for fear of radiation. The peril from most individual items is generally not considered great, although some could be hazardous on their own.
In fact, everyone is exposed every day to the "background" radiation found in nature. For instance, some ceramic pots emanate low levels of radiation that occurs in clay. Granite countertops often contain measurable, but individually insignificant, amounts of naturally occurring uranium.
Other exposures come from small and contained amounts of radiation used in smoke detectors and medical devices.
The potential danger comes, however, from the cumulative effect of proximity to radiation, particularly over time and in relation to other contaminants. The precise degree of that danger has not yet been definitively determined for low-level radiation, such as that contained in commonplace goods and materials.
One scientific school of thought, which has been losing favor in recent years, holds that low levels of radiation mean low-level threats. An opposite camp contends that exposure to any level of radiation -- especially if it is chronic -- carries health risks. The U.S. government has so far sidestepped the issue of how little radiation is too much.
According to a 2006 report by a National Academy of Sciences panel, there is a direct relationship between radiation and an increased risk of cancer. Prolonged exposure can also lead to birth defects and cataracts, studies have shown.
Because the amount of tainted metals in circulation is unknown, the cumulative overall health effect -- now and over time -- is impossible to calculate. Whatever it is, there is little debate that unnecessary exposure to radiation is best avoided.
"There is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial," said Richard Monson, chairman of the Committee to Assess Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation, at the release of the National Academy report.
There are no reports of anyone dying or being hurt in the United States after contact with the contaminated metal goods and materials. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency leaves no doubt that tainted metal poses a particular threat.
"Radioactively contaminated scrap threatens both human health and the environment," reads a cautionary statement on the EPA's Web site.
The Scripps investigation used the federal Freedom of Information Act to gain access to a previously un-mined NRC database, the only official assemblage of reports of radiologically contaminated items that have turned up in scrap yards, trash dumps and manufactured goods since 1990.
But because such reporting is neither required nor consistent, neither state nor federal environmental officials -- nor many in the scrap-metal industry -- consider the NRC accounts an accurate reflection of the problem's true dimensions. (The only mandatory rule is that anyone knowingly transporting radioactive material must notify the U.S. Department of Transportation.)
"Typically, these go unreported," said Carolyn Mac Kenzie (cq), a U.S. Department of Energy physicist who is a world expert in radioactive metals. "Whatever number you come up with would not reflect reality."
One of the most conservative estimates comes from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which put the number of radioactively contaminated metal objects unaccounted for in the United States in 2005 at 500,000. Others suggest the amount is far higher. The most recent NRC estimate -- made a decade ago -- is 20 million pounds of contaminated waste.
What is known is that the NRC's national Nuclear Material Events Database has documented 18,740 cases involving radioactive material in consumer products, metal intended for their manufacture and other inadvertent exposures to the public, the vast majority since 1990. State environmental reports -- obtained under state freedom of information requests -- also reveal dozens of others.
A recent example emerged last summer, when a Flint, Mich., scrap plant discovered a beat-up kitchen cheese grater that was radioactive. The China-made grater bearing the well-known EKCO brand name was laced with the isotope Cobalt-60. Tests showed the gadget to be giving off the equivalent of a chest X-ray over 36 hours of use, according to NRC documents.
Estimated to have been in circulation for as long as a decade, the grater likely was four to five times more radioactive when it was new. EKCO's parent company, World Kitchen, of Rosemont, Ill., described the incident as isolated and found no need to issue a recall, spokesman Bryan Glancy said.
It was not the only cheese grater found. NRC documents show that another Cobalt-60-tainted grater had turned up in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2006. The reports do not indicate what brand of grater it was or if it was related to the one that surfaced in Michigan.
Cobalt-60 also tainted a 430,000-pound shipment of metal from Brazil in 1998. Part of that load found its way to Michigan and then Indiana, where it was used to make brackets for 1,000 La-Z-Boy recliners.
The contamination was detected by a radiation monitor when scrap leftover from the brackets job was shipped to the Butler, Ind., steel recycler Steel Dynamics, according to NRC documents.
The Cobalt-60 tainted Reclina-Rocker chairs, which would have given off a chest X-ray's worth of radiation every 1,000 hours, were still in warehouses when the contamination was discovered, and never made it to stores or living rooms, according to Rex Bowser, director of the Indoor Air and Radiological Health Emergency Response Program of the Indiana State Department of Health.
The recliners' radiation levels were "enough above background to be a concern for people sitting in La-Z-Boy chairs," Bowser said.
In many instances where contamination is identified -- generally by companies that have invested in costly detection equipment -- the contamination comes from the inadvertent blending of radioactive sources with piles of other scrap that metal recyclers reprocess and later sell.
Often, when a factory shuts down or a plant relocates, industrial smoke detectors, measuring gauges and other machines and parts that contain small amounts of radioactive material are left behind. Because they commonly are encased in a protective shell, the devices pose little risk when the plant is operating.
But when a facility closes, the devices frequently are trashed as scrap. If those radioactive parts are later heated during reprocessing, the radiation can escape and blend with the finished recycled product.
Many large scrap outfits invest in radiation detectors -- which can cost $50,000 each -- that provide a measure of protection. Steel company Gerdau Ameristeel, based in Toronto and Tampa, Fla., installs as many as six levels of detection at its scrap mills, at a cost of as much as $1 million for each facility, said Jim Turner, corporate environmental director.
But even scrap and recycling operations that are diligent in scanning incoming and outgoing loads can unknowingly wind up with tainted material.
One reason is that monitoring devices are not all strong enough to penetrate a full truckload of scrap and may miss the radioactive sources. And even the weather can foul things up, as Gerdau Ameristeel learned when a 2001 thunderstorm disturbed detectors at its Jacksonville, Fla., recycling operation, permitting radioactive Cesium-137 to slip through. The plant's cleanup cost was $10 million, according to an NRC report.
Sometimes the devices containing radiation simply disappear. In January, for instance, Wal-Mart admitted that it could not account for about 15,000 illuminated exit signs, which each contain tritium, a radioactive isotope, according to the NRC.
And other times, they are purposely masked in an attempt to dump the hot items on someone else, often to avoid the cost of proper disposal. Those fees have mushroomed in the past three decades from $1 per cubic foot to more than $400, with forecasts for them to more than double in coming years, according to a 2004 estimate by Robin Nazzaro, the audit agency GAO's natural-resources and environment director.
Recycler Doug Kramer, owner of Los Angeles-based Kramer Metals, recounted how workers once found a radioactive object wrapped in lead and hidden in a beer keg -- presumably to keep the radiation from being detected.
The global dimension of the recycling of radiation problem is large, and growing, experts say.
Between 2006 and 2007, for instance, authorities in the Netherlands found about 900 women's handbags that had originated in India and were decorated with metal rings laced with Cobalt-60 on each bag's shoulder strap. Once discovered, they were sent to a radioactive waste site in the Netherlands.
Last fall, radioactive metal also from India was used by a Connecticut company to make 500 sets of buttons for Otis elevators in France and Sweden. No one realized the elevator buttons -- which had been installed -- were radioactive until a similar shipment tripped radiation alarms at the U.S. border with Mexico, according to Otis Elevator spokesman Dilip Rangnekar.
Otis scrambled to remove the tainted buttons from the elevator cabs, Rangnekar said. But an international authority on rogue radiation said it is likely even more of the buttons remain in circulation.
"Thousands and thousands were produced," said Abel Gonzalez, a former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency's division of radiation and waste safety. "I doubt they have found all of them."
U.S. officials and metal experts say evidence is mounting that radioactive metal from abroad is increasingly --- and intentionally -- being sent to the United States, sometimes decades after the contaminated material was first detected and returned to its source.
In 1991, an Indian supplier sent to the United States more than 50 shipments of chain-link fencing, some of which was tainted. Investigators found the fencing scattered around the country, including in Florida, Tennessee, New York and Washington state.
"The NRC told them not to ship more material to the U.S., but it allowed them to keep what was here, here," said Paul Frame, a radiation expert at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
But a decade later, another shipment of tainted Indian fencing reached the United States, Frame said.
"My guess was that it was the same stuff," he said. "You suspect that in some cases they know the material is radioactive but they're going to ship it out anyway because it's money."
John Williamson, administrator of Florida's radiation control bureau, agrees and predicts that tainted steel from China and products from India will continue to surface, at the borders and on the plant floors.
One reason is that, after U.S. customs rejects a load of contaminated material, no one knows what happens once it is sent back to its overseas producer because no tracking system exists, he and other front-line experts said.
"In China and India, who knows what happens?" Williamson said. "My belief is it goes back into the hopper."
NRC reports give weight to his belief. Construction reinforcement materials from Mexico laced with Cobalt-60 that were detected at the border in 2006 were traced back to metal from a contaminated batch produced and exported more than 20 years before by two Juarez, Mexico, foundries.
Some experts say the United States bears some blame for the infiltration of tainted metal and products. Even though there is little debate that radiation-laced material is unwelcome, neither Congress nor federal agencies have established a "safe" level of contamination, despite two decades of wrestling with the issue.
That has created a loophole that overseas metal dealers and product manufacturers can exploit, critics say. But forbidding all radioactive material in metal would throw a damaging and costly wrench into the recycling industry, according to John Gilstrap, safety director for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries trade group.
"If we set the thresholds unrealistically low, we're inflicting pain on businesses for no necessary reason," Gilstrap said.
But Gerdau Ameristeel's Turner disagrees. Asked what the allowable level of radiation in metal should be, Turner replied via e-mail: "ZERO."
To officials in several states, it is the absence of federal oversight and indistinct rules about materials and goods tainted with low-level radiation that is causing undue pain. After the South Carolina waste site closed last summer, six states called on Congress to act. So far, it has not.
"There is no one federal agency responsible for regulating all ionizing radiation, and therefore regulations are fragmented or non-existent in some areas," said Michael Mobley, head of a commission formed last summer by officials from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia.
"If we address all radioactive materials across the board and the waste that is generated from them, we will protect public health and the environment to a greater extent than we do now," he said.
E-mail Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Recycled Radiation
Comment viewing options
Flat list - collapsedFlat list - expandedThreaded list - collapsedThreaded list - expanded Date - newest firstDate - oldest first 10 comments per page30 comments per page50 comments per page70 comments per page90 comments per page150 comments per page200 comments per page250 comments per page300 comments per page
Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
throwing out my recliner
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 15:44.
This is a very intriguing and thought provoking article. I appreciate how in depth the article is, and how this writer obviously spent a long time trying to find good sources. News articles are usually very vague, so I apprecite the amount of detail in this article. I look forward to learning more and I hope that the US government steps it up. In the meantime though, I think I'm going to get rid of my recliner and maybe my cheese grater too...
»
reply
Equivalent of an x-ray every 36hrs?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 16:56.
The general lack of awareness about radiation could easily be attributed to the fact that this seems to impact the population either over an extended period (as you noted) or minimally- and because nobody really cares either way. Indeed, travelers who fly more than 75k miles on commercial airlines per year (450,000 in the US do so) are exposed to more than the maximum legal annual radiation dose for people working in industrial or medical facilities. Though your insightful article is a start, there is still little here that would shock the conscience of the average consumer enough to motivate the political action needed to end this latent threat.
»
reply
Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by Robert Cherry (not verified) on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 20:04.
My employer was the prime contractor for the Texas emergency response in 2006 mentioned in your article. I was the radiation safety officer for the response.
The weight of the Cs-137 contaminated steel was not quite 500,000 pounds as you wrote. Actually, it was very close zero pound (or 0 kilogram, if you prefer). Cesium-137 does not bond very well in steel. Instead, it is volatilized and goes into the emission control dust (ECD) that is virtually 100%-captured in the baghouse. Indeed, the contamination was discovered first at a site that recycles ECD for zinc, cadmium and other useful and valuable metals when the ECD shipment from the steel mill triggered portal alarms. The recycling site then notified the steel mill.
Nevertheless, outgoing steel was monitored for radioactivity after the ECD contamination was discovered. No radioactivity was detected above normal background concentrations in this steel. The entire event is described public records, which you may obtain (and should have obtained before you published your article) from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Or did you mistake the contaminated ECD for steel? The contaminated ECD was properly disposed at a licensed disposal site and never entered commerce for recycling or for anything else.
Interestingly, the chemistry tests of the steel that are normally performed detected a noticeable increase of lead (Pb) in the steel shortly before the Cs-137 contamination in the ECD was discovered. This may have been due to lead from the shielded container that contained the cesium-137.
Since we studied the Florida incident and coordinated with Florida regulators as we worked through our own incident in Texas, we learned that the Florida company also had no problem with cesium-137 contaminated steel.
It is the steel mill that becomes contaminated by cesium-137, not the steel product. And more than 99% of the contamination remains in the ECD. The ECD is already an EPA-controlled hazardous waste and none escapes from well-designed plants, such as the Texas and Florida steel mills
Cobalt-60, as you should know and as the rest of your article shows, presents a quite different problem because cobalt is chemically similar to iron. It thoroughly contaminates steel products if it is introduced into the steel-making process. It is cobalt-60 that produces contaminated steel, not cesium-137.
It is irresponsible of you to publish the information about the Texas incident without properly determining facts that are readily available. Such wrong information can have strong adverse economic impacts on the steelmaker and its employees. The steelmaker was victimized once by whoever improperly disposed of the cesium-137 source in scrap metal scheduled for recycling. Your articles victimized them a second time.
Robert Cherry, PhD, CHP
»
reply
Michigan source info published 11/2008
Submitted by Michelle K. Gross (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 05:49.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2126970/posts
This is a link to a transcript of a local Michigan news station reporting on the cheese grater in Nov 2008. Note that the hosting site declares itself to be a conservative web=site
»
reply
Not a bad article in
Submitted by Charles Grant (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 14:02.
Not a bad article in comparision with some of the other reporting on the subject I have seen. You are correct that the U.S. has failed time and again to promulgate a regulation that declares what level is the regulatory threshold. Each time, the effort was beaten back by "public interest groups" that erroneously state that "no level is safe." If that is the case, then don't fly anywhere, don't have a dental x-ray, don't have a smoke detector in your house, etc. etc. In fact, Am-241 is licensed by the USNRC for use in these devices and it is allowable to place them in the municipal trash when they are spent. The answer is for the USNRC to specify a regulatory limit for radioactivity, such as in their Regulatory Guide 1.86. Radioactive materials play a vital and productive role in our daily lives. Its time the USNRC stepped up and either adopted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards or promulgated their own. It's time we "moved on" with it and ignore reactionist agendas of special interests.
»
reply
Bad Author, No Cookie
Submitted by RandomTroll (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 14:47.
It doesn't take much googling to figure out your facts are skewed and there are already complaints about how this is being reported. There is another article on this site that contradicts some portions of this story. I can't possibly attest to the validity of the statements by Dr. Cherry, but thanks for providing more insight into the issue Sir.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/06/05/06052009_letourneau_nuke.html
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Jm0ZW0-dNmMJ:www.scrippsnews.com/node/43586+recycling+facility+texas+radioactive+cesium&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
»
reply
Radioactive returns:
Submitted by Aldred (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 16:10.
Hmmmmmm remember the World Trade steel that they shipped to China as fast as they could hack it up and shove it on a ship?
»
reply
Geiger counters
Submitted by odyssey (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 20:13.
Should the average homeowner at least buy a cheap geiger counter to test their household?
»
reply
Radioactive goods
Submitted by Craig (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 20:43.
The best solution is simply to manufacture and recycle all consumer goods and raw materials including scrap right here within our own economy. Goods manufactured in this country could be more easily monitored through all stages of procurement and every stage of the productive cycle and all manufacturers and suppliers would be subject to uniform domestic legal sanctions, which is a lot less expensive than litigating these matters through international trade or legal agencies.
»
reply
From China
Submitted by Fed Up (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 21:26.
I am always very suspicious of anything made in China, most importantly food or personal cosmetics, inclusive of soaps, shampoos, deodorants, toothpaste, mouthwash and body wash. I read every ingredient and where the product on food boxes was made and don't eat Chinese food anymore. I just do NOT trust them with anything that goes in my body or on it. They have a new game. Instead of Made in China labels we now see Made in PRC, which is the People's Republic of China. Now I'm on the lookout for appliance and am eyeballing a few things that will be trashed tonight. I don't mind paying more for products, especially if they're made in the good ol' USA!
»
reply
Radioactive materials & detection
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 23:00.
I'm surprised there was no mention of DU (Depleted Uranium)in this article, potentially much more dangerous to populations around the world. It comes from spent fuel rods used in nuclear reactors, but still retains 40% of it's radioactive content, so the term 'depleted' is very deceptive. It is then given, or sold very cheaply, to the military who convert it into shells used in tanks, artillary shells, bunker buster bombs, and smaller ordinance.
It is still so 'hot' that when the shell flies through the air it burns, and upon hitting something solid emits a vaporized aerosol of fine particles throughout the area. If even one small particle is inhaled the liklihood of lung cancer, and other internal cancers, is a very high probability. The jagged edges of these ceramic like particles assure they are difficult for the body to eliminate. Although low level radioactivity the particle contaminates cells surrounding it...and can also pass through semen to the unwitting wives & girlfriends of returning GI's, causing birth defects in embryos & fetuses.
Of course the military denies it is harmful, but the hundreds of thousands returning from the Gulf Wars, afflicted with the multi-symptom ailment known as Gulf War Syndrome, by their sheer numbers tell a different tale. Oddly, DU & Agent Orange sprang from the same weapons program. It must also be noted with a 4.5 billion year lifetime it never goes away, and the Navy stopped allowing DU weaponry on their ships 2 or three years ago...why?
Google DU, or depleted uranium for thousands of articles about this deadly substance.
»
reply
Scrap metal covered with DU
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 23:36.
I forgot to mention the most important question relating to metal contaminated with radioactive material...Where do the thousands (or millions) of tons of scrap metal we have created by shooting DU all over the middle east go...China, India, elsewhere?
»
reply
The Navy stopped using DU 2
Submitted by bilderberger (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 00:05.
The Navy stopped using DU 2 years ago because they ran out after dropping it in Iraq & Afghanistan!
»
reply
RE: the post about DU &
Submitted by LC in West Texas (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 00:20.
RE: the post about DU & Agent Orange. In the late 60's & early 70's I worked for an aerial spraying service in West Texas, the target of which was mesquite tree / bush eradication on ranch properties. I would hold the flag high, get sprayed by the plane, then scoot over 15 feet and get drenched again. I was either a freshmen or sophomore in high school at the time. Our foreman would brag at the time "this is the same sh*t they use in Vietnam". The owner/pilot died very young, in his early 40's, of lung cancer. I spent one long summer at that job and when asked to come back the next few years I politely declined. 40 years later I have growths in my lungs that have my doctors baffled. Without oxygen 24/7 my saturation level will stay in the mid to upper 80's. I submit to a PET/CT scan every 90 days to mark any growth if any. When I mentioned Agent Orange the oncologist just said "..hmmmm".
»
reply
You're absolutely incorrect, my friend
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 02:59.
There's plenty of nuclear waste material that could be converted to DU. After a couple decades & tens of billions of dollars spent Yucca Mountain has yet to open, and if it does it will already be at full capacity.
A couple things I didn't mention before are:
1) Incidents of cancer among the mid-east population have risen dramatically, as well as serious birth defects,
2) DU can be picked up in the frequent huge dust storms in the middle east, and distributed as far away as the east coast of the US,
3) And worst of all, it has the potential to kill EVERY living thing on earth down to the microbial level.
Yet our military is still in complete denial about the danger it poses, and has roadblocked testing of our returning soldiers...WTF!
»
reply
RECYCLED RADIOACTIVE METAL
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 03:54.
Don't you just love globalisation? Oh, how our neighbors just love us to death.
»
reply
radiation is the least of your problems
Submitted by jenchen (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 11:21.
Get used to it-the human race is not evolving-it is regressing backwards-not protecting and supporting life-humans want only to control-destroy and degrade all life. They do not want love truth and to develop souls-they want lies and fear and to have giant egos. You will never trust, you need to control out of fear-because you project your own sadism onto nature. You will never stop being violent and you will never respect that "everyone" has the right to free will (no one's free will ever denies another their free will. You will never love each other as equals-you crave inequity and a class system-You will never stop being hypocrites who punish ("inferiors" you proudly do not love as you should-as equals) and you will never comprehend the law-the only law of reality-you get back what you give. You are destroyers of life-you are not creative lovers and supporters of life. You want the ignorance-poverty and prisons and torture of lessors to make your egos feel superior-if you were allowed in Heaven-heaven would become a Hell by your presence. You would never make as your number one priority-the abolition of all suffering on Earth-you would rather make life Hell for others-because your jealousy and greed for power would never include creating a heaven on earth for all equally. The crop circles-are the mark of the beast-where what I have said is true they have marked you and various UFO's who have marked you (and have been watching and judging you) will each arrive at these marks and you will be turned into robots or worse because what I have said about you is true: you refuse to evolve-and yes after 2012 your alloted time to do so "out of your own free will" is up-then they will begin collecting you who have not evolved and so have no souls.
»
reply
Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by Dr Alok K Bhattacharyya (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 13:41.
This is a very interesting article. The author tried to establish that often imported articles from places like China and India contain radioactive elements like CO60. Though I think the Chinese and Indians may have inadvertently shipped items laced with radioactive materials, but they did not intentionally did so in order to cause cancer in the USA or other places.
On the other hand in their quest to export democracy worldwide, USA and its allies have used bunker buster bombs laced with depleted Uranium in ex-Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. USA has used at least 1000 tons of depleted Uranium in those wars. USA Senate actually increased the quota for use of depleted Uranium. I do not think USA authorities can claim ignorance about the risk of DU. They knowlingly used DU to contamintate Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been significant rise of cancer and birth defects in both countries. Some reports suggest that DU was used for genocide over generations.
Now DU does not just stay in one place. A portion of that after the bomb blasts of shock and awe becomes airborne. If the particles get to the Jet Stream they can be carried any where as the Jet Stream circles the Globe. India and China are downwind from both Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence at least a portion of DU might have reached those places. So next time if consumers in USA or other places find imported goods radioactive, please check if the radiation is beta type (comes from cobalt 60) or alpha type (comes from DU). If it's alpha, please understand that that the chicken has come home to roost.
Also there were various reports that after 9-11 the ground below where the Twin Towers stood showed molten steel. There were some suggestions that nuclear bombs were used to bring the Towers down. At least the mushroom clouds emanating from the top of the Towers as they collapsed bore a striking resemblance to nuclear bomb blast pictures. The USA authorities quickly shipped all those enormous amount of steel and other junk to reportedly China and South Korea. Nobody knows for sure their final destinations. There is no report of that those were tested for safety before shipment. What has happened or will happen with all that steel nobody knows. May be they have been melted to make pots and pans and came back to the USA.
I hope the ScrippsNews will do an investigation on DU from bunker buster bombs and 9-11 steel, all made in the good ol US of A.
»
reply
RECYCLED RADIOACTIVE METAL
Submitted by Dr Alok K Bhattacharyya (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 13:56.
Anonymous, your neighbours do not love you to death. They just want you to have long and healthy life so that you can carry on buying real stuff from them at cheap prices and be able to pay for those the sooner the better.
On the contrary USA in her quest to export democracy worldwide used bunker buster mombs with depleted Uranium, about 1000 tons of that in Iraq, Afghanistan and ex-Yugoslavia. By the way, the people in those countries never wanted your DU-laced democracy.
Get real. Pot calling kettle black!
»
reply
Need to list all brands, dates
Submitted by George LoBuono (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 14:11.
For now, we need a list of all brands and dates of manufacture so that the public can dump such products quickly. Toss those EKCO graters and have an agency test other cheap import products to identify which are suspect.
»
reply
Genocide
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 16:40.
With the possible exception of radioactive steel parts on furniture or bed springs, the far greater threat is indeed the gradual contamination of the global environment by "hot particles". These can be injested as dust or in foodstuffs and once in the body act as cancer seeds by irradiating nearby healthy cells. A group called the Low Level Radiation Campaign (website at llrc.org) has shown that radioactive waste from nuclear plants dumping into the Irish Sea is then thrown back onto the coastline by surf where it dries and becomes airborne in the wind. Coastal counties now have elevated cancer rates. This illustrates the basic flaw of nuclear technology - it is incompatible with biology and cannot be 100% contained. We are creating a cancer lottery in which the chances of random death by invisible forces are rising year by year. To purposely release huge amounts of these particles by shooting off DU laced weapons is suicidal - its nuclear waste in the most damaging form just sprayed into the air. It is most certainly a war crime called genocide.
»
reply
DU don't mix radioactivity issues with Uranium toxicity
Submitted by GregR (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 17:41.
To Paul Magill Smith, you seem to be confusing the chemical toxicity of Uranium and the (insignificant) dangers of it's radioactivity. They are not the same.
What your posting here is the typical "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" tripe we see on many sites. I don't mean to minimize the toxicity of uranium. It is as most other heavy metals - toxic/poisonous. But this has NOTHING to do with radioactivity that is a separate issue.
Speaking of separate issues, DU's ability to burn under certain conditions is not associated with it's radioactivity it's a function of the element itself.
Finally thank you Mr. Cherry for your informed input.
»
reply
Depleted Uranium - the real story
Submitted by Mark H (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 17:43.
The radioactivity of uranium has nothing to do with how it explodes - uranium is pyrophoric, which means that a fine enough dust of the metal will spontaneously oxidize at ambient temperatures. Totally depleted uranium does the same thing, as does titanium. Furthermore DU isn't used in penetrator shells because it's radioactive - it's used because it's dense and also very malleable. It tranfers all its kinetic energy to the target very effeciently when it splats.
Where are all these journals from established medical journals that show that cancer is a "high probability" from breathing in one little particle? Oh right. There aren't any. Lord knows nobody misses a chance to demonize the US Armed Forces these days, so if data existed, it would be front page news.
»
reply
crimes against humanity
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 20:36.
Using any radio active materials as a weapon is a crime against humanity.think American citizens have any control over the political,military,industrial complex?I once commented that DU is like a gun that shoots from both ends of the barrel .It kills the so called enemy immediately,then eventually kills the shooter, slowly infects his wife and unborn children etc.Then keeps on killing those who remain in its presents for hundreds of years .Only an enemy of both sides of a war would create such a weapon.one has to wonder how who ever did create a weapon like this can live with themselves.
»
reply
WTF? GregR
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:26.
I've been researching, writing, & posting on this subject for several years now so your, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" doesn't qualify. How much research have YOU done on this issue? Come back to me with proof everything I stated about DU is fallacious, but you'd better have better references than government sources, or those biased by the money they stand to make from disseminating this WMD...and even the UN agrees it IS a WMD.
By the way, my brothers invented a device called the Nukalert. Google it. I've helped assemble 20,000 of them, and carry one on my keychain. How will you know which way to go when the same people in OUR government, who did 911, set off a nuke in a US city?
Here's a big unanswered question for you. Since 15 of the 19 (supposed) terrorists on the planes on 911 were Saudis, why didn't we invade them instead of Iraq?
»
reply
And you don't believe
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:34.
a complicit MSM would do anything to suppress information that they were complicit in leading us into an unnecessary war of 'choice'? La La land must be a nice place to live, but there isn't room enough for sane rational informed logical people, I guess.
»
reply
How many people in this country realize
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:44.
Henry Kissenger, in the early 1970's, stated to the NSC the #1 priority for US national security would be to depopulate the world by 2 BILLION people, beginning in the middle east because of vital resources (meaning oil of course) there to the US. What better way to do this than 'salt the earth' there with DU? And they gave this psycho a Nobel Peace Prize? WTF?
»
reply
nuked
Submitted by Pirate News (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 04:27.
These are the same mafia scrapyards, chop chops, garbage collectors and towtruckers who stole my 2 cars, and who run cartheft rackets worldwide. Kosher Nostra at the top, Italian mob in the middle, rednecks at the bottom.
This mafia cartel run all "cleanup" at nuke plants in USA, such as BURNING millions of tons of radiactive waste in my town. BTW burning can't change a radiactive halflife of 3-billion years.
geocities.com/knoxville_tn_epa
archive.org/details/IndependentInvestigationOfTheEastTennesseeTechnologyPark
piratenews.org/newslinks.html
»
reply
uranium nano particles
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 06:25.
when the uranium is converted to nano particles it can pass through to any part of the body! once there it can sit right next to your dna. it can then emmit 'low level radiation' but because it is so close to the dna and other cellular mechanisms it can cause damage even with beta radiation...former student of radiation biology
»
reply
You don't want live on top of a potential Uranium mine, it's bad
Submitted by Al (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 20:59.
Please note that radioactivity is a natural process, below is a reference to a report that has been sitting on the shelf, since 1988, The Commonwealth of Virginia, the DEPARTMENT OF MINES, MINERALS AND ENERGY. VIRGINIA DIVISION OF MINERAL RESOURCES. You will will Not, be happy to find out that, shopping malls, high schools, residential areas are built on very radioactive ground, now this ground in some cases has an excess of 15,000 counts per second (cps), while the background at sea level is about 30 cps. This area has potential for a Uranium mines, and Not for home building. It is the job, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Mineral Resources Division to protect the public from the geological hazards that exist, including the analysis and the identification of potential development areas for human habitation. It has not done it's job, the people who live and the children that go to these schools that where built on these areas, need to be informed of the potential hazards, it's just criminal. This is an open file report No.78 , that has 9 maps and a description of the potential Thorium and Uranium in the area, allot of money was spent to write this report, private exploration companies were looking for Uranium in the mid 1980's, but the could not secure a land position because the ownership of the land was so fragmented so nothing was done, except to develop the land for suburbia, and so Uranium went to the West, like Utah. The point of this story, is that what you don't know can hurt you both financially and ruin your health. If you have a house on one of these areas around the USA, don't tell anybody, because you will be liable that you did not inform a potential buyer about the hazard. This is just a small part of the bigger problem, like very radioactive granite from New Jersey, that is put on the out side of a multistory bank in Dallas, radioactive granite sold in home improvement stores for counter tops, building stones in the West that are made of pitchblende (mineral), radioactive well water, it's not checked for Thorium usually and so on and on.. etc..
It's, You the public that has to make the demands of the Government, after all they work for us ?
VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF MINES, MINERALS AND ENERGY VIRGINIA DIVISION OF MINERAL RESOURCES CATALOG OF PUBLICATIONS AND MAPS.
"Geochemistry and radioactivity in the Powhatan area, Virginia, by Jan Krason, S.S. Johnson, P.D. Finley, and J.D. Marr, Jr., 60 p., 9 plates, 29 figs., 16 tables, 1988" Publication 78.
»