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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Beware the Ill Winds - Something Very Wicked This Way Comes

Shades of William Shakespeare, channeled right down through the centuries. For dramatic counterpoint nothing beats the dark imprecation cast by the three evil witches in Macbeth, as they boil up a foul decoction of eye of newt, forked snake's tongue and wool of bat, ensconced in the shadowy recesses of an unnamed cavern.

Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
…..........
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
(Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I)

Doesn't that succinctly describe what is happening at Fukushima, Japan where the hellish troika of General Electric (GE), the Tokyo Electric and Power Company (TEPCO), and the Japanese government have whipped up a radioactive, boiling hot nuclear cauldron of Whup Ass Hell-Broth Trouble for the whole of humanity?

And now they have commenced pouring their vile, radioactive brew into the ocean by unknown millions of gallons, flushing into the Pacific the radioactive run-off from the tens of thousands of tons of water that have been dumped on the melted-down reactors to cool them, there to be carried to the soon-to-be-radioactively-poisoned-waters of the Seven Seas by the incessantly circulating currents of the open ocean. (1) The government in Japan has said that the radioactive water would not be a threat to humans (1), but what gullible fool believes that lie? I certainly don't. Do you?

And then there is the matter of all of that radioactive steam and smoke that has been issuing on and off for weeks now, in varying amounts, from the melted-down reactors and the ruined hulks of the containment structures and demolished spent-fuel-rod-cooling-pools. As the weeks go by and more and more radioactive steam and smoke has escaped, the mainstream news media have said less and less about the ongoing crisis at Fukushima.

I guess that's because the West Coast of North America is directly downwind from Japan. Prevailing winds are right now carrying radioactive contamination from Japan across the Pacific to British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California and Mexico. Here you can see a very good model of the prevailing winds and how they disperse the radioactive plume across the Pacific Ocean to North America, before going on to the rest of the northern hemisphere.

University of Maryland Plume Trajectory Modeling

http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~tcanty/hysplit

But not to worry, says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the USA. Even though radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear reactors has been found at a growing number of locations across the USA, "These detections in air, precipitation, and milk were expected, and the levels detected have been far below levels of public-health concern." (2)

Others have been doing their own analyses, however, and based on a century of scientific research have drawn the rather different conclusion that even low levels of ionizing radiation are carcinogenic, and there is likely not a threshold level below which this is not true. (3) In other words, the EPA is simply lying about the menace to public well-being. The radiation from Fuskushima, like all other ionizing radiation, is absolutely hazardous to human health.

An additional problem is that in recent weeks there have been numerous reports that many EPA radiation monitoring devices across the country do not even work, are in need of repair, or yield results that need "review." (4)(5)(6) This obviously further compromises the EPA's blandishments to the public to not be concerned about radiation levels.

And make no mistake about it: Something very wicked this way comes.

Here's how wicked it is. This is what the radioactivity released from the destroyed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl has done to the children in Belarus and the Ukraine.

Chernobyl Legacy
(on the right sidebar click on "Intro" and "Chernobyl Legacy" for the slideshow)
http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl


I am reminded of the words of Gopi krishna, the cosmically-realized, Indian kundalini yogi, who foresaw the horrific effects of nuclear radiation on humanity in the future, and prophetically warned of what has already begun to happen in our time, courtesy of Chernobyl, U.S. Military depleted uranium munitions use in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans, and now undoubtedly with more horrors to issue from the ongoing nuclear crisis at Fukushima. In his poetic book, The Shape of Events To Come, Gopi Krishna speaks of the monstrous impact of radioactive contamination on human DNA:

"A genetic poison for a grisly crop
Of grinning monsters and grimacing freaks,
Whose language is a blend of horrid shrieks,
Fouling the outraged earth for many a year
With such abortions none their sight can bear.
And who can say with what revolting shape
It will the future stock of mankind drape?”

( source: http://www.gopikrishna.net )

And you had better know that this "genetic poison for a grisly crop of grinning monsters and grimacing freaks" is definitely on the way. Here is the latest EPA radionuclide monitoring release.

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/rert/radnet-cart-filter-final.pdf

According to this EPA report, in the last month the dangerous radionuclides, cesium-137 and iodine-131, have been detected at low levels on the Pacific islands of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Hawaii, and on the North American mainland in Alaska, California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Washington State, Alabama and Florida. Where uranium isotopes are concerned, uranium-234 is reported as being detected at low levels in the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Hawaii, California and Washington State, while uranium-238 was reportedly detected in the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Hawaii and California.

Sadly, this recent EPA report understates the scope of the problem. The EPA certainly knows that traces of radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear reactors also have turned up in rainwater in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and North and South Carolina. These facts have been widely reported in the news media in recent weeks, but those data do not appear in the EPA report linked above. In fact, it is hard to know how accurate the EPA reports are, because as mentioned above, there are many "gaps"in the coverage of the EPA's radiation monitoring system. (7) And the reports will keep coming, as thirteen American cities report traces of iodine-131 in the drinking water, Montpelier, Vermont reports cesium-137 in milk samples., and iodine-131 turns up in milk in Phoenix and Los Angeles. (8)

Courtesy of the good work of my helpful Brazilian connection, here are some websites in Europe and Japan with data on radiation levels.

European Radiological Data Exchange Platform
http://eurdep.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Basic/Pages/Public/Home/Default.aspx

Spain
http://www.csn.es/index.php?option=com_maps&view=mappoints&Itemid=32

The Netherlands
http://www.rivm.nl/milieuportaal/dossier/meetnetten/radioactiviteit/resultaten

Switzerland
https://www.naz.ch/en/aktuell/zeitverlaeufe.html

France
http://sws.irsn.fr/sws/mesure/index

IRSN --French website with information in English and French on Fukushima radiation problems
http://www.irsn.fr/EN/Pages/home.aspx

MEXT-- Japanese radiation reports in English (with Chinese and Korean links)
http://www.mext.go.jp/english/radioactivity_level/index.htm

With rising mistrust generally of governments worldwide, and especially in the wake of the sporadic and weak flow of information from the Japanese government about the crisis at Fukushima, there is growing concern that everyday people must monitor ambient radiation levels themselves.

One such effort just getting off the ground is the Radiation Network, centered on the USA, but with limited coverage of Japan and Europe, as well.

http://www.radiationnetwork.com/index.htm


So far, the levels of radiation that have been reported by the Radiation Network are low, but no doubt as time goes on, and as the Fukushima crisis festers, we will see more monitoring of radiation by private individuals. Given the lies and misinformation coming from official agencies in Japan and the USA how could it be otherwise?

The more so, as the EPA's response to the Fukushima crisis has been to seek to greatly increase the permissible levels of radiation in food, water, and soil, (9) the better to transform radioactively ill winds into radioactively nil winds.

Clearly, we are dealing with vicious psychopathology hard at work in high places. The people (if that is what they are) running the current corporate-government system want to hurt us and the whole planet. They are oblivious to humanity's well being. They lie with impunity. They distort reality and the truth without regard for anyone's health, or future life prospects. That is the sober truth of the situation in which we find ourselves.

The Fukushima crisis is not over. Far from it. No, the Fukushima crisis is just beginning, and the radioactive, ill winds have but begun to blow.

Notes

1) http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-japan-nuclear-20110405,0,5272584.story?track=rss
2) http://epa.gov/japan2011/
3) http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/dont-be-fooled-by-the-spin-radiation-is-bad-20110407-1d63z.html
4) http://www.wtvm.com/Global/story.asp?S=14343830
5) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/some-radiation-tracking-air-monitors-may-not-be-working-properly-epa-says.html
6) http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/health/20-epa-radiation-detectors-don%E2%80%99t-work-mar-29-2011
7) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42284594/ns/world_news-asia-pacific
8) http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/09/radiation-detected-in-drinking-water-in-13-more-us-cities-cesium-137-in-vermont-milk/
9) http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/305386