Dr. Mark Sircus: Fukushima: Hanging by a Thread!

After writing my essay"Radioactive Hell on Earth", actually I wanted to change that title to Fukushima on Steroids" or Fukushima is falling apart". Are you ready? It is becoming clear that we, our children and our entire civilization is hanging by a thread. It is a very sorry thing to report that we have literally shot ourselves in the foot with a big nuclear shotgun full of radioactive particles of the worst conceivable kind. It has taken a year, but finally "a US Senator finally got off his ass and went to Japan to see what is going on over there. What he saw was horrific. Reactor No. 4 building is on the verge of collapsing. Seismicity standards rate the building at a zero, meaning even a small earthquake could send it into a heap of rubble. And sitting at the top of the building, in a pool that is cracked, leaking, and precarious even without an earthquake, are "1,565 fuel rods." If an earthquake, or other event, were to cause this pool to drain, this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire that could wipe out most of the northern hemisphere. Certainly it would be a massive civilization-breaking event. After an onsite tour of what remains of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear facilities, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a senior member of the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, sent a letter to Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki saying. "The scope of damage to the plants and to the surrounding area was far beyond what I expected. The precarious status of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear units and the risk presented by enormous inventory of radioactive materials and spent fuel in the event of further earthquake threats should be of concern to all, and a focus of greater international support and assistance." 1,565 fuel rods translates into 460 tons of nuclear fuel stored in pool in a barely intact building on its third and fourth floors. If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will overheat and explode!

Eyre International: Is the New World Order dismantling British Industry?

Remember the days when one used to be proud of simply being British and equally as proud of those very famous, word-renowned British companies that earned this country so much respect overseas? Neo Liberalism has infected almost every walk of life in this country and gained tremendous strength since the "Iron Lady" - Maggie Thatcher took over the reins of Britain back in 1979. We have, since those early days, seen this country and its once proud industries become fragmented and sold off to the European Union or some other overseas entity which is clearly a "New World Order" brain child. We all watched Zionist backed organizations descend over this country, like a huge grey cloud and watched them rain down, flood and destroy the pride of British industry! Who are they, where did they come from and how did it happen? I guess World War Two has to be the turning point when these Zionists regrouped to form their own elite group that would become the foundation of the term "Neo Liberalism" and the birth of the New World Order. It became evident to them that someone could make big money by the privatisation of national industries, especially in areas such as water, gas and electricity etc. One can clearly see that they have come a long way since those early days, resulting in extremely high cost that has now caused so much suffering to the aged and poor of this world. I guess it's only a matter of time before they tax you for breathing oxygen!! I believe that the birth of the "New World Order" started around 1947 when a Friedrich Hayek formed an elite group called The Mont Pelerin Society that consisted of widely scattered neo-liberal thinkers and political figures. The Society sees the danger in the expansion of government, not least in state welfare and in the power of trade unions.  

Cora Currier: Fracking Chemical Disclosure and Trade Secretsu

One of the key controversies about "fracking"is the chemical makeup of the fluid that is pumped deep into the ground to break apart rock and release natural gas. Some companies have been reluctant to disclose what's in their fracking fluid. Scientists and environmental advocates argue that, without knowing its precise composition, they can't thoroughly investigate complaints of contamination. Disclosure requirements vary considerably from state to state, as ProPublica recently charted. In many cases, the rules have been limited by a "trade secrets" provision under which companies can claim that a proprietary chemical doesn't have to be disclosed to regulators or the public. One apparent proponent of the trade secrets caveat? The American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, a nonprofit group that brings together politicians and corporations to draft and promote conservative, business-friendly legislation. ALEC has been in the spotlight recently because of its support of controversial laws like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" provision. This weekend, as part of a story on ALEC's political activity, The New York Times noted that the group recently adopted "model legislation" on fracking chemical disclosure, based on a bill passed in Texas last year. According to the Times, the model bill was "sponsored within ALEC" by ExxonMobil, which runs a major oil and gas operation through its subsidiary, XTO Energy. The advocacy group Common Cause, which provided the documents on ALEC's lobbying efforts to The Times, describes model legislation, in many cases identifying by name the company that proposed it to ALEC's task forces.

Carlos Miller: Homeland Security's Top Terrorist?

Freelance journalist Carlos Miller was documenting a law enforcement raid on the southern Florida's Occupy Wall Street offshoot, Occupy Miami, when he was arrested earlier in 2012 while filming police, for the third time in just a few years. After investigating why authorities in Miami may have singled him out during the ordeal, in which he claims, he was only filming the event, Miller stumbled upon some evidence that exposes just why he was targeted by the local branch of the Department of Homeland Security. Miller was able to obtain through a public records request communication logs from the Miami DHS that reveal what he believes is proof that the authorities had been prepared to issue an arrest against him earlier in the year without him even committing a crime. To the DHS, believes Miller, using a camera seems comparable with carrying out an act of terrorism. Through the public records request, Miller was able to to obtain a treasure trove of correspondence that in many instances included his name. One such account was an email communique that was issued by the Miami-Dade Police Homeland Security Bureau this past January only eleven hours before law enforcement raided the city's Occupy encampment and arrested Mr Miller yet again. In that email sent with the subject line "Multimedia information/Situational Awareness", authorities describe Carlos Miller as a freelance journalist and, ergo, a terrorist in the making. Over the weekend, the reporter recounted in a blog post published to Pixiq.com the events that landed him behind bars during the most recent instance. Also included in the post were the contents of the email that he suggests pegged him as a criminal with a camera. He is a Miami multimedia journalist who has been arrested twice for taking pictures of law enforcement.  

Rick Rozoff: NATO Rehearses For War In The Arctic

To the world's military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open a treasure trove of resources and long-dreamed-of sea-lanes. Rick Rozoff scrutinizes the feverish military activity taking place in the High North, under the official label of a joint Norwegian-NATO-Partnership for Peace endeavor, including preparedness drills against terrorist threats, mass demonstrations, and spies coming in from the cold! The largest military exercise in the High North, inside and immediately outside the Arctic Circle, since the end of the Cold War, and perhaps even before, was completed in northern Norway. Except for the crash of a Norwegian military transport plane in Sweden, during its course, the world would have been unaware of it. Cold Response 2012 was conducted from March 12-21 primarily in Norway but also in Sweden, with the participation of 16,300 troops from fifteen nations as part of full spectrum "air, sea, infantry and special forces" maneuvers against the backdrop of the past three years' new scramble for the Arctic. The term High North is a translation of the Norwegian designation "nordomradene", which was adopted by NATO in January of 2009 for its two-day Seminar on Security Prospects in the High North in Reykjavik, Iceland attended by the bloc's secretary general, chairman of its Military Committee and two top military commanders, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. Four of the five Arctic claimants "the United States, Canada, Norway and Denmark" are members of NATO. The other, Russia, is not.

Bill Van Auken: Obama et al Determined for More War!

President Barack Obama used a visit to Washington's Holocaust Museum to unveil a set of new sanctions against Iran and Syria and to promote the administration's use of "human rights" as a pretext for aggressive war and regime change. The new sanctions target Syrian and Iranian intelligence agencies as well as telecommunications and Internet providers for use of information technology to monitor and repress political opposition. They have been rolled out under conditions in which the United Nations is deploying its monitors in Syria to oversee a ceasefire and as Iran prepares for a second round of negotiations in Baghdad with the PS+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) over its nuclear program. The timing of this latest round of sanctions, coming on top of a whole series of unilateral US and European Union measures aimed at crippling the Syrian and Iranian economies, strongly indicates that Washington is merely using negotiations with both countries as a cover for preparing war and regime change. Obama's executive order calls for Washington to impose sanctions on Syrian and Iranian officials for using information technology, including software to track cellphones and monitor Internet use, and to spy upon and repress dissidents. It would also punish what the US president refers to as the "digital guns for hire," ie, information technology companies that sell software and equipment to targeted regimes. "These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them," Obama declared! 

Sherwood Ross: Attacking Iran with Nuclear Weapons

US plans to attack Iran with a mix of nuclear and conventional weapons have been in readiness since June, 2005, according to Michel Chossudovsky, a distinguished authority on international affairs. "Confirmed by military documents as well as official statements, both the US and Israel contemplate the use of nuclear weapons directed against Iran," writes professor Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Center for Research on Globalization in Montreal. The plans were formulated in 2004. The previous year, Congress gave the Pentagon the green light to use thermo-nuclear weapons in conventional war theaters in the Middle East and Central Asia, allocating $6 billion in 2004 alone to create the new generation of "defensive" tactical nuclear weapons or "mini-nukes". "In 2005, Vice President Dick Chaney ordered USSTRATCOM (Strategic Command) to draft a 'contingency plan' that included "a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons," Chossudovsky writes. The plan went beyond the terms of reference outlined in the Pentagon's 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which called for a "preemptive" "first strike use" of nuclear weapons against Russia and China as well as Iran and North Korea. The 2005 plan identified more than 450 strategic targets in Iran, including numerous alleged nuclear-weapons-program development sites. The plan, incredibly, was rationalized on a second 9/11 type attack on the US that Cheney believed Iran would allegedly support! "President Obama has largely endorsed the doctrine of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons formulated by the previous administration," Chossudovsky writes in his new book, "Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War". His Administration"has also intimated it will use nukes in the event of an Iran response to an Iran response to an Israeli attack on Iran."