Dead dolphins and shrimp with no eyes found after BP clean-up

 

Emily Dugan
The Independent UK
Sun, 14 Apr 2013

 

Chemicals used to disperse Gulf of Mexico spill blamed for marine deaths and human illness

Hundreds of beached dolphin carcasses, shrimp with no eyes, contaminated fish, ancient corals caked in oil and some seriously unwell people are among the legacies that scientists are still uncovering in the wake of BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill.

This week it will be three years since the first of 4.9 billion barrels of crude oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, in what is now considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. As the scale of the ecological disaster unfolds, BP is appearing daily in a New Orleans federal court to battle over the extent of compensation it owes to the region.

Infant dolphins were found dead at six times average rates in January and February of 2013. More than 650 dolphins have been found beached in the oil spill area since the disaster began, which is more than four times the historical average. Sea turtles were also affected, with more than 1,700 found stranded between May 2010 and November 2012 – the last date for which information is available. On average, the number stranded annually in the region is 240.

Contact with oil may also have reduced the number of juvenile bluefin tuna produced in 2010 by 20 per cent, with a potential reduction in future populations of about 4 per cent. Contamination of smaller fish also means that toxic chemicals could make their way up the food chain after scientists found the spill had affected the cellular function of killifish, a common bait fish at the base of the food chain.

Deep sea coral, some of which is thousands of years old, has been found coated in oil after the dispersed droplets settled on the sea’s bottom. A recent laboratory study found that the mixture of oil and dispersant affected the ability of some coral species to build new parts of a reef.

Doug Inkley, a senior scientist for the US National Wildlife Federation and author of a report published this week on wildlife affected by the spill, said: “These ongoing deaths – particularly in an apex predator such as the dolphin – are a strong indication that there is something amiss with the Gulf ecosystem.”

Scientists believe that the 1.8 million gallons of dispersant, sprayed as part of the clean-up, have cemented the disaster’s toxic effect on ocean life and human health. The dispersant, called Corexit, caused what some scientists have described as “a giant black snowstorm” of tiny oil globules, which has been carried around the ocean in plumes and has now settled on the sea floor. A study last November found the dispersant to be 52 times more toxic than the oil itself.

Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, said: “Before we depend on dispersants to get rid of oil and get it out of sight, we need to understand what it can do in the open ocean. We’re told to keep oil off the shore and away from estuaries, but we’ve not dealt with something like this before, that’s in the open ocean and gone from top to bottom, affecting the whole water column.”

Scientists believe the addition of dispersants to the oil made it more easily absorbed through the gills of fish and into the bloodstream. Dr William Sawyer, a toxicologist, has studied concentrations of petroleum hydrocarbon (PHC) in edible fish and shellfish in the region. Samples before the spill had no measurable PHC in the tissue, whereas fish tested in recent months show tissue concentrations as high as 10,000 parts per million, or 1 per cent of all tissue. He said: “The study shows that the absorption [of the oil] was enhanced by the Corexit.”

BP says the dispersants it used are “government approved and safe when used appropriately”, and that extensive testing has shown seafood in the Gulf states is safe to eat.

Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences has found sea life in the Gulf with lesions and deformities that it believes may be linked to the use of dispersants. These include shrimp with no eyes and crabs with no eyes or without claws. BP claims these abnormalities are “common in marine life”, had been seen in the region before, and are caused by bacterial infections or parasites.

In a blow to the region’s tourism, tar balls continue to wash up along the affected coastline, which now stretches from the beaches of Louisiana to Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Marco Kaltofen, a chemical engineer at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said: “We have a reservoir of petroleum and petroleum-contaminated sediment that lies just offshore of several Gulf beaches. Every time we have a storm, all of a sudden you’re getting these tar balls washing up.”

It is not just wildlife that scientists believe has been affected. Michael Robichaux, a Louisiana doctor, has documented 113 patients who he thinks were made ill by exposure to chemicals associated with the spill. Their most common symptoms include headaches, memory loss, fatigue, irritability, vertigo, nausea, blurred vision and insomnia.

One of Dr Robichaux’s patients, Jorey Danos, 32, is a formerly healthy father of three. Since working for BP on the clean-up, he says he has experienced serious ill health, including severe abdominal and joint pain that has left him walking with a cane. Several doctors, including a neurologist, have put his condition down to the neurological impact of exposure to the chemicals related to the spill.

Mr Danos said: “I worked 21 days in one of the boats skimming the oil and we were sprayed directly with Corexit from above on three occasions. My skin came out with bumps and burning and I started having breathing problems. When a speedboat with BP representatives came by I asked for a respirator but they said no, because it would lead to bad media attention. Now I’m still dealing with it three years later.” BP said all workers were provided with safety training and protective equipment and would have had the opportunity to join a class action settlement.

Geoff Morrell, BP’s head of US communications, said: “No company has done more to respond to an industrial accident than BP has in the US Gulf of Mexico.”

http://www.sott.net/article/260843-Dead-dolphins-and-shrimp-with-no-eyes-found-after-BP-clean-up

 

Three years after BP oil spill, USF research finds massive die-off

Note: This photo is a man with a goggles over his eyes, absolutely sickening…

 

Craig Pittman
Tampa Bay Times
Thu, 04 Apr 2013

 

© Tampa Bay Times

The oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon disaster three years ago killed off millions of amoeba-like creatures that form the basis of the gulf’s aquatic food chain, according to scientists at the University of South Florida.

The die-off of tiny foraminifera stretched through the mile-deep DeSoto Canyon and beyond, following the path of an underwater plume of oil that snaked out from the wellhead, said David Hollander, a chemical oceanographer with USF.

“Everywhere the plume went, the die-off went,” Hollander said.

The discovery by USF scientists marks yet another sign that damage from the disaster is still being revealed as its third anniversary looms. Although initially some pundits said the spill wasn’t as bad as everyone feared, further scientific research has found that corals in the gulf died. Anglers hauled in fish with tattered fins and strange lesions. And dolphins continue dying.

The full implications of the die-off are yet to be seen. The foraminifera are consumed by clams and other creatures, who then provide food for the next step in the food chain, including the types of fish found with lesions. Because of the size of the spill, the way it was handled and the lack of baseline science in the gulf, there’s little previous research to predict long-term effects.

The disaster began with a fiery explosion aboard an offshore drilling rig on April 20, 2010. It held the nation spellbound for months as BP struggled to stop the oil, but the spill has largely faded from national headlines. The oil is still there, though.

Weathered particles of oil from Deepwater Horizon are buried in the sediment in the gulf bottom and could be there for as much as a century.

“These are not going away any time soon,” Hollander said.

USF researchers dug up core samples from the gulf bottom in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and they plan to return this year and next to compare what they found. Their examination uncovered the massive die-off, according to researcher Patrick Schwing. They also noted an absence of microscopic worms that are normally seen in those areas. The researchers could not estimate how many square miles the die-off covered.

In the core samples, they could see that most of the grayish sediment on the bottom built up gradually over centuries, said Isabel Romero, a researcher working with Hollander. But on top they found a large, dark clump of sediment from the time of the 2010 disaster. The amount registered as 300 times the normal amount of oil-based particles found on the bottom.

The oil in the sediment samples definitely came from the 2010 disaster, Hollander said. The substance bears the same chemical signature as Deepwater Horizon oil.

Effects on fish

That’s also the chemical signature of the substance that has clogged the livers of red snapper and other fish found with lesions. The fish livers were trying to screen out the impurities but could not cope with the quantities, he said.

“We’re seeing lots of connections with fish diseases,” Hollander said. “We’re seeing compromised immune systems.”

The diseased fish began turning up a few months after BP was able to shut off the flow of oil in July 2010. The discovery of fish with lesions faded out the following year, said Steve Murawski, a USF fisheries biologist who has overseen a project that examined 7,000 fish caught in the gulf.

Scientists are now looking for more subtle effects in red snapper, such as reductions in the number of large fish and a decline in the total population, Murawski said. They are looking for any genetic mutations, too, he said.

“If they get sick, that’s one thing,” Murawski said. “But if it changed their genes so that they’re less resistant to disease or have lower weights, that’s a big deal. That would be a real game-changer if true.”

BP spokesman Craig Savage said, “No company has done more, faster to respond to an industrial accident than BP did in response to the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010. As a result of our $14 billion cleanup effort, BP-funded early restoration projects as well as natural recovery processes, the gulf is returning to its baseline condition – the condition it would be in if the accident had not occurred.”

But USF oceanographers and biologists are finding lingering effects of Deepwater Horizon. That’s no surprise to the biologists, who recall that eight years passed after the Exxon Valdez oil spill before the herring population crashed from immune system problems.

“I spent a lot of time in the marshes in Louisiana,” Murawski said. “You can still find a lot of oil in there.”

Why soiled sediment?

One intriguing question is why some oil settled into the sediment on the bottom of the gulf a mile deep and stayed there. Hollander says that may be the work of two factors. One is the dispersant called Corexit that BP used to try to spread the oil out so it wouldn’t wash ashore. The other is the Mississippi River.

BP sprayed Corexit directly at the wellhead spewing oil from the bottom of the gulf, even though no one had ever tried spraying it below the water’s surface before. BP also used more of the dispersant than had been used in any previous oil spill, 1.8 million gallons, to try to break up the oil.

Meanwhile, the spill coincided with the typical spring flood of the mighty Mississippi, which sent millions of gallons of freshwater cascading in to push the oil away from the coast.

The Corexit broke the oil droplets down into smaller drops, creating the plume, Hollander said. Then the smaller oil droplets bonded with clay and other materials carried into the gulf by the Mississippi, sinking into the sediment where they killed the foraminifera.

In some areas where the die-off occurred, he said, the tiny creatures came back, but in others the bottom remains bare. Meanwhile, some of the burrowing kind are digging down into the contaminated sediment – and stirring it up all over again.

http://www.sott.net/article/260526-Three-years-after-BP-oil-spill-USF-research-finds-massive-die-off

 

Tens of Thousands Rally to Stop Keystone XL Pipeline & Urge Obama to Move “Forward on Climate”

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Democracy Now

By Amy Goodman

February 18, 2013  |  

The following is a transcript of a Democracy Now! segment on the massive protests against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Tens of thousands of people gathered on Washington’s National Mall, Sunday, to urge President Obama to reject the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Organizers of the Forward on Climate event described it as the largest climate rally in history. Protesters displayed a mock pipeline with the motto “Separate oil and separate oil and state.” The proposed 1700 mile pipeline would deliver tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas. The Reverend Lennox Yearwood compared the rally to Martin Luther King’s 1963 march on Washington for civil-rights. The protest was organized by 350.org, the Sierra Club and the hip hop caucus among others. Speakers included President Obama’s former green jobs adviser Van Jones.

VAN JONES: Well, this is it. This is the last minute in the last quarter of the biggest most important game humanity has ever played. This is it. One thing I know having worked in this town, the simple maxim, if you don’t fight for what you want, you deserve what you get. If you don’t fight for what you want, you deserve what you get. I had the honor of working for this president, and I want to direct my message to him. President Obama, all the good that you have done, all the good you can imagine doing will be wiped out, wiped out by floods, by fires, by superstorms if you fail to act now to deal with this crisis that is a gun pointed at the head of the future. Everything you have done. History will judge you 20 years from now based on one decision alone. That decision is not in the hands of the congress. That decision is not in the hands of any governors. That decision is not in the hands of any mayors or any dogcatchers. The decision is in your hands, Mr. President, your hands. Your hands. The decision to let this pipeline come through America is a most fateful decision you’ll ever make, Mr. President. It would be like jabbing a dirty needle into this country from Canada. It would be like lighting a fuse on a carbon bomb. That is what it would be like doing, Mr. President. And you cannot allow that to happen. If the pipeline goes through, Mr. President, the first thing it runs over will not be farmland. The first thing it runs over will not be small towns. If you let this pipeline go through, Mr. President, the first thing it runs over is the credibility of the President of the United States of America. That is the first thing it runs over.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama’s former green jobs czar Van Jones. Canadian indigenous leader Chief Jacqueline Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation traveled from British Columbia to attend Sunday’s rally.

CHEIF JACQUELINE THOMAS: I am a mother of four and a grandmother of one, and I was raised by my own grandmother. She was a traditional medicine woman of my people. I learned early on the value of our environment. She was known as Dr. Sophie Thomas and her words are still with me today. And what she told us was when we take care of the land, the land would take care of us. [Cheers] if we destroy this land, we will destroy ourselves. I am speaking on behalf of the Yinka Dene Alliance from northern British Columbia. And Yinka Dene translates to ‘people of the earth’. I am part of the Dene people from the northern reaches of the Northwest Territories, down to my cousins, the Navajo of Arizona. We formed an alliance to stop the Enbridge Northern Gateway project which plans to bring tar sands oil to the coast of British Columbia, which will then be put on tankers to go to the Asian markets.

The Yinka Dene Alliance is opposed to irresponsible, environmental damaging projects that puts our communities, our water, our culture, our land, our fish, our animals, and most importantly, our plants, at risk. It puts at risk my neighbors to the east of me that live at the tar sands. The government doesn’t recognize these people, and these people have been dying of mysterious cancers. Their water is polluted. Their animals are sick. Mother Earth is sick. Enbridge really has brought our communities together in Canada because we have had oil spills, and you also have had a oil spills in this country, because oil will spell. It is just a matter of when. They’ve spilled in the Kalamazoo, which I hear cannot be cleaned up. They’ve broken their promises and I understand it’s even Enbridge that it did that. They’ve spelled oil in Red Deer Alberta. They’ve spilled oil in my sister, the territories of the Lubicon Cree. They’ve spilled oil in the Northwest Territories, the Dene brothers and sisters that I know from the Northwest Territories. And, of course, who can forget Exxon Valdez? Of course, also, in most recent memory we’ve had the BP spill, which was on the news day after day, month after month. They have hurt the brothers and sisters of the Houma Nation that my sister has visited. Never in my life have I ever seen white and native work together until now [Cheers]. Thank you, Enbridge, for doing this work for me.

AMY GOODMAN: Canadian indigenous leader Chief Jacqueline Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation, one of the main organizers of Sunday’s Forward on Climate rally was environmentalist and writer, Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.

BILL MCKIBBEN: All that I ever wanted to see, all that I ever wanted to see was a movement of people to stop climate change, and now I have seen it! [Cheers] You guys, you guys look so beautiful. I have been meeting people all day. It’s hometown heroes like our friends atSEAC and it’s heroes like those people who have been blocking Keystone with their bodies down in Texas. It’s people who understand that the fight against fracking and against coal ports and against taking the tops of mountains is ultimately the fight for a living plant. [Cheers] It is people who lived through Sandy and people who survived the drought, some of whom I got to go to jail with last week. [Cheers] It is the students at 256 colleges who are now fighting the fossil fuel industry head on to force divestment, the biggest student movement in decades. [Cheers] It is all of you. Your the antibodies kicking in as the plant tries to fight its fever. [Cheers] We have waited a long time to get started. We’ve already seen the Arctic melt. Our colleagues in 191 countries at 350.org tell us every day about some new drought, some new flood. Because we’ve waited this long, the easiest answers are no longer enough. We’re going have to start making tough decisions.

Our theme has to be when you are in a hole, stop digging. [Cheers] Above all, above all stop the Keystone pipeline. [Cheers] the president can do that with a single stroke of his pen. And if he does, he will become the first world leader to veto a big project because it is bad for the climate. [Cheers] That would be a legacy and a signal to the rest of the world. And so we will keep making our case. We’ll follow him and the secretary of the state around the country. And as this spring goes on we will unite that fight with a focus on all the other holes we’re still digging too. And as summer comes on, this movement will just pick up. I want everybody to circle those days toward the end of July that are on average are the hottest each year. We’re going to try and make them hot politically, too, this year.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill McKibben of 350.org. The Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly who starred as the character Kate Austin in the show Lost also spoke at Sunday’s climate rally.

EVANGELINE LILLY: I an shamed of what my country is doing. I am ashamed that we’re knocking on your door with dirty oil. I want to stand up here a Canadian and say, I want to say I’m sorry to the workers in Canada and the workers in America who have to go home and look at their kids in the eye and know their damaging their future. I want to say, yes to jobs that allow Americans and Canadians to go home and let their kids in the the eye and say, I am fighting for you. I’m working for you.

AMY GOODMAN: Casey Camp, a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, also attended Sunday’s Forward on Climate rally. She said oil development is the latest challenge facing her native American nation.

CASEY CAMP: Now we’re suffering environmental genocide as a result of ConocoPhillips refinery being on our land, as well as many pipelines underneath us. And now Keystone and Keystone XL are disrupting our lives as well as the lives of our relatives up in the northern country. And we’re here to make a difference. We’re here to be in solidarity with all of us who understand that we have a very slim opportunity to make human life continue to exist. That’s our choice.

AMY GOODMAN: Casey Camp, a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma. And if you want to go to our website, we have an in-depth page on the Keystone XL pipeline at democracynow.org. When we come back, Harry Belafonte wins the highest honor of the NAACP and gives a major address in Los Angeles and New York. He is introduced by a man who could be the next senator of New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker.

See more stories tagged with:

keystone pipeline [2],

obama [3]

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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/tens-thousands-rally-stop-keystone-xl-pipeline-urge-obama-move-forward-climate

 

(02 October 2012) Japan: Radiation Survey

Published on Oct 2, 2012 by NibiruMagick2012

Originally published on Oct 2, 2012 by rumorecurioso

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/

Climate Change Update (20 July 2012) Removed fuel assemblies 100 times more radioactive than normal

Published on Jul 20, 2012 by NibiruMagick2012

Removed fuel assemblies 100 times more radioactive than normal — Tepco worker thinks it’s from
http://enenews.com/

Drought widens, unlikely to yield through October
http://www.sott.net/signs/list_by_category/4-The-Living-Planet?page=1

Volcano alert level raised for Mt. Tongariro volcano, New Zealand
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/

[Ajisai Revolution] Protest is ongoing all around in Japan
http://fukushima-diary.com/category/dnews/

It’s Friday, and Protest Is On, Rain or Shine, at PM Official Residence in Tokyo (7/20/2012)
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/

Nuked Radio #50 Details: 8 Current Nuke Events
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwRIsE9Dj0k

Not a du Rag not a shemag, but a raGraG.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd7G0xt4hB8&feature=channel&list=UL

*2 Years Later* Professor: Microbes in Gulf attacking things other than oil? Very large increase in crab and lobster with appendages falling off — High incidence of eyeless shrimp… More (VIDEO)

Published: April 23rd, 2012 By ENENews

Crustacean biologist Darryl Felder, Department of Biology with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette: “My fear is that these prior incidents of lesions might be traceable to microbes, and my questions are, did we alter microbial populations in the vicinity of the well by introducing this massive amount of petroleum and in so doing cause microbes to attack things other than oil?” -April 19, 2012

Title: Gulf Oil Spill: BP Execs Escape Punishment as Fallout from Disaster Continues to Impact Sea Life
Source: Democracy Now
Date: Apr. 23, 2012
Emphasis Added

AMY GOODMAN: [...] The impact of the disaster continues to unfold for the area’s residents and wildlife. Scientists say shrimp, fish and crabs in the Gulf of Mexico have been deformed by chemicals released during the spill. One commercial fisherperson told Al Jazeera that half of shrimp caught during the last white shrimp season were eyeless.

SCOTT EUSTIS: We have some evidence of deformed shrimp, which is another developmental impact, so that shrimp’s grandmother was exposed to oil while the mother was developing, but it’s the grandchild of the shrimp that was exposed grows up with no eyes.

[...]

DAHR JAMAIL: We have recently come across very, very disturbing information from Gulf region scientists. You know, the first person I came across was Dr. Jim Cowan with Louisiana State University, and he’s been working on a project, getting his funding from the state of Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. And he’s been, actually, for many decades, sampling red snapper, which is a very popular fish in the industry. And he’s been finding that before the BP disaster in April 2010, that of all the red snapper he was sampling, he was finding point-one-tenth [0.1] of 1 percent snapper coming up with lesions and other types of problems. Post-spill, that has gone to between 2 and 5 percent of all samples. That means an increase of between 2,000 and 5,000 percent, and in some areas as much as 20 percent [a 20,000% increase], he said, in other areas who have extreme impact, where the oil and dispersants came in nearby the shore, of as many as 50 percent [a 50,000% increase] of fish sampled. Very, very disturbing information there.

And then, another doctor that I spoke with, Dr. Darryl Felder with University of Louisiana-Lafayette, he also has before-and-after samples. He was working out around the Macondo wellhead area on the sea floor with a grant from the National Science Foundation, that they wanted him to investigate just overall drilling impact on species in the area. And so, he had deep sea crab, deep sea lobster, deep sea shrimp, from before the spill, and then many, many sampling trips after the spill. And what he found was obviously a very, very large increase of finding crab and lobster, etc., that had black gills, that had appendages falling off, again similar stains on their shells, and again similar to findings not too different from Dr. Jim Cowan’s, in that when the oil, that much unnatural oil introduced into the environment, coupled with the dispersants, that it’s causing these lesions that are burrowing into the carapace and the shells and eating into the wax of the shells, causing an increase in the microbes that do eat oil. Not only are they not eating just oil, but eating into the shells, and then parasites and diseases and other illnesses are being formed.

And then, lastly and I think most disturbingly, as you already touched upon, the eyeless shrimp. We’re seeing very, very large incidence of eyeless shrimp now popping up not just in Louisiana, but in Alabama and Mississippi, not just inshore, but further far ashore—offshore. And some of the shrimp that we’re seeing, they came from a shrimper in Louisiana that was caught—caught 400 pounds of white shrimp in one catch in last September, just off the outskirts of Barataria Bay. And that was—of the 400 pounds of shrimp, the shrimpers told us that all of them were eyeless. So, very, very disturbing findings. And unfortunately, we’re expecting more to continue.

[...]

[BP claims administrator Ken] Feinberg is on his way out, because so many people across the region are incensed at the way he’s handled most of the claims. [...]

I talked to Ryan Lambert, who heads one of the largest charter fishing businesses in the entire Southeast, and he said, “Hey, we’re going to court. They have destroyed my business. It’s not coming back. I haven’t seen one single speckled trout in three months. It’s the first time I’ve ever experienced that in my life. That’s 90 percent of the fish that we catch. So of course I’m going to go to court, because what they offered me, frankly, was insulting.”

http://enenews.com/2-years-later-concern-in-gulf-that-microbes-are-attacking-things-other-than-oil-very-large-increase-in-crab-and-lobster-with-appendages-falling-off-high-incidence-of-eyeless-shrimp-more

NibiruMagick 2012′s Climate Change Update: Gulf Dead Zone Much Larger Than thought, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station CA. (2 February 2012)

Uploaded by NibiruMagick2012 on Feb 1, 2012

The leak occurred in equipment that was installed in the plant in the fall of 2010. The leak occurred in one of thousands of tubes that carry radioactive water from the Unit 3 reactor.
However, the company has found damage to other tubes, Dricks said.
“The damage that they have found to many other tubes is unusual, and they are attempting to identify the reason,”
http://enenews.com/ap-radiation-could-have-escaped-nuke-plant-on-san-diego-co…

US: Researchers Discover Gulf Dead Zone Much Larger Than Previously Thought
http://www.sott.net/signs/list_by_category/4-The-Living-Planet?page=1

Powerful energy release emanating from the Earth’s core recorded?
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/

Tropical Cyclone Iggy weakens before making landfall
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php

Report: ‘Empty’ Reactor No. 4 was actually filled with nuclear fuel — Only a matter of time before melt-out
http://enenews.com/

DON”T forget Zippcast (Uploaded fast tonight)
http://www.zippcast.com/user/NibiruMagick2012

China Syndrome “INEVITABLE” Fukushima Japan

Editors Note: As a former anti-nuclear activist that trained over 75 people in non-violent direct action to occupy the construction site of  a proposed power plant outside of Tulsa, Ok, I learned how nuclear energy works and what the dangers are – China Syndrome is as bad as it gets.  At this point humanity needs a miracle to solve this crisis and the only REAL answer would appear to come from ET sources – if they have the power to shut down nuclear missiles and to terraform planets, certainly they have the technology or capability to save the Japanese people from a horrible fate. Not to mention the global reverberations from such a catastrophic event.

Unfortunately that’s a pipe dream.

Everyone should know by now I’m not a fear mongerer, but in this case: May God help us all!  To say the situation is grave would be an understatement and the fact that the media has covered this up, leads me to believe that a China Syndrome nuclear event may very well be humanity”s wake up call.  Whatever that end up being,  it will have to be a mind blowing event that shatters all existing paradigms so that it unites the world in solidarity against the power structure.

Our extraterrestrial friends aren’t going to get us out of this mess, this is a job we have to do for ourselves on our own because we let this happen and have had the power to stop it all along. Over the years my disappointment in humanity for dropping the ball on the nuclear threat has been enormous, because as a teenager I gave my life over as a full time volunteer to the anti-nuclear cause two summers in a row. We won against the nuclear power structure in Oklahoma and we promoted alternative energy sources as if there were no tomorrow, but in the end over 30 yrs later the situation has gotten so much worse that it’s absolutely heartbreaking.

We needed everyone to stand up and keep fighting against this evil because that’s exactly what nuclear power represents: pure unadulterated evil. Look at how radiation malforms a fetus or turns to a blood cell into cancer or lays to waste an area of land rendering it uninhabitable for up to 2 million years; radiation is one of the most destructive forces in nature and one helluva wasteful way to simply boil water.

Now, it’s time for humanity to unite as one against the power companies that have a stranglehold on life. They do nothing but promote war, poverty, disease and every where we turn energy companies are behind the worst environmental and societal crimes.

Geo-engineering and weather modification of the air is collapsing the web of life on land. Radiation, oil, mercury, Corexit and many other toxins  from oil platforms and industry waste are creating massive dead zones in the oceans. On the land fracking is destroying the aquifirs and causing earthquakes everywhere it goes.  Now we have China Syndrome in Japan, which is quite alarming since the Hawaiian islands are one big tsunami away from a massive wall of radioactive water. Great…

They’ve taken over the media so that now the energy companies are the messenger and the completely control the message, owning the power to create false reality’s and belief systems. These evil men and women who control the energy industry have virtually put themselves in the position of gods, or least they almost wield that kind of power. Haven’t we had enough?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=FL4-X1slyvs

From: NibiruMagick2012  | Nov 19, 2011  | 1,354 views

Architect of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3, Uehara Haruo, the former president of Saga University had an interview on 11/17/2011.
In this interview, he admitted Tepco’s explanation does not make sense, and that the China syndrome is inevitable.
He stated that considering 8 months have passed since 311 without any improvement, it is inevitable that melted fuel went out of the container vessel and sank underground, which is called China syndrome.
He added, if fuel has reaches a underground water vein, it will cause contamination of underground water, soil contamination and sea contamination. Moreover, if the underground water vein keeps being heated for long time, a massive hydrovolcanic explosion will be caused.
He also warned radioactive debris is spreading in Pacific Ocean. Tons of the debris has reached the Marshall Islands as of 11/15/2011.

http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/11/architect-of-reactor-3…

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“Crime Scene”: Oil Industry Vultures Pick Over Alaska by Greg Palast, Part 2

By Greg Palast, Penguin Books
Posted on November 18, 2011, Printed on November 20, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/153133/%22crime_scene%22%3A_oil_industry_vultures_pick_over_alaska

The following is Part II of an excerpt from Greg Palast’s “Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores.” In Part 1, published here,  journalist Greg Palast meets Etok, “the unofficial and at times the official sovereign of this polar territory,” of Northern Alaska, who’s waging battle against brutal multinational corporate forces. Part II starts off with Palast flying off to “Dead Horse” — land taken over by the oil industry. (for a copy of Vulture’s Picnic, click here.)

DEAD HORSE

From Kaktovik, I flew with Etok into Dead Horse, whose prettified name, Prudhoe Bay, graces the BP/Exxon/Shell field, including the drilling rigs balanced on fake islands and the giant machinery that stuffs the crude into the pipeline for its ride to Valdez.

Etok looked down, his jaw clenched, and I could see history taking another bite of his heart. “A crime scene,” he said.

In 1969, a New Mexico oilman and rancher, R. O. Anderson, discovered oil here and staked his claim. His “discovery” was quite some news to the North Slope Eskimos, who had been burning crude oil for centuries while the United States was still burning whales. Anderson’s claim stake, in the name of his company, ARCO, also came as a surprise to the Natives, who already owned the land.

Now if it had been the other way around, if an Eskimo had “discovered” R.O.’s cows on R.O.’s ranch and decided to ship the meat to the Arctic, we’d call it cattle rustling, thievery. And we’d call his property a crime scene.

Etok’s “Pleistocene”  people had been digging oil for millennia, and since 1873, drilling for it. Etok’s dad, from whom he inherited the Arctic’s most experienced harpoon, was an engineer in the oil field during World War II, helping to pull up the Natives’ crude for the U.S. Navy to fuel the defense against the expected invasion from Japan. The Navy never paid the $84 million it owes for this oil. (Etok, not surprisingly, vows to collect it.)

In 1970, not long after R.O.’s ARCO grabbed the North Slope drilling rights, the Arab oil embargo shot oil prices through the ceiling and made R. O. Anderson, “owner” of Prudhoe Bay, richer, by my estimate, than God. That wasn’t enough. Anderson’s “discovery” at Dead Horse would be worth even more if only he could get it to Japan.

Japan? A geography lesson is required here. In Mrs. Gordon’s sixth-grade class, Alaska was that big-ass square in the upper left corner of the pull-down map of the United States hanging above the blackboard. Alaska had a strip of dots to the left of the square, the Aleutian Islands, the Ice Age stepping stones the Pleistocene hunters walked across from Russia. And there was a long thing hanging from it, a peninsula that looks like a hose dripping down to the Lower 48 states. You could almost see Alaska’s succulent resources draining into our puny little states below Canada.

That’s the deal, isn’t it? We bought Alaska from the Russians and now we can suck on that fat straw, chug down the crude like a frat boy on his back getting wasted on a hose from a keg of beer.

Continued here:

http://www.alternet.org/books/153133/%22crime_scene%22%3A_oil_industry_vultures_pick_over_alaska

Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores

By Greg Palast, Penguin Books
Posted on November 18, 2011, Printed on November 19, 2011

The following is an excerpt from Greg Palast’s “Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores.” Click here to buy your copy.  AlterNet will publish part II of this excerpt tomorrow. 

There is a legend told among the Inupiat Alaskans who live above the Arctic Circle, “Etok Tames the Green People.” It goes like this:

In the Old Days, as today, the peoples on the edge of the Arctic Sea killed whales. It’s just what they do. It’s what they eat. But the Green People didn’t like that, and so the Green People set out one day in their fancy-ass black powerboat to stop the people of the Arctic Sea from doing their whale killing thing.

It was a long, long time ago in 1979. The elders tell us how the Green People showed up outside the Inupiat Native village of Kaktovik in their black powerboat and set out their stores of vegetables on the beach. The Green People only ate green food. The Green People then set off in their black powerboat on their blubber-saving mission, with a plan to block the Eskimo’s bidarka whaling ship. Quick as a Raven’s wink, they got lost in a fog bank and stuck in the ice sheet. Prepared, committed, and resourceful, the Green People set out their pup tents on the ice floe and slept, hoping for the fog to lift in the morning.

But they were not lost. The Inupiat of the Arctic Sea knew exactly where the Green People were. Etok, the great whale hunter, told his villagers to accept the gift of the Green People and take all their vegetables. Etok then told his people to be patient, and, elders say, they lit up some excellent weed, put on Bob Dylan tapes, and waited.

During the summer the sun never sets in the Inupiat land. It just rolls around the sky in a Circle. And under the gyrating sun, the Greens’ expensive boat, being black, absorbed the radiant heat, melted the ice holding it and drifted out into the endless Sea.

By three a.m., the wait was over, and the patient Eskimo leader told his people to go and retrieve the lost black boat, call the Coast Guard, and claim it as abandoned property.

In the morning, the Green People awoke, still in fog, and did not see their boat, their boat with their emergency radio and food. The Green People drifted on their block of ice, lost and doomed. Etok told his people not to move, that the Green People must “cry themselves out” and obtain the wisdom that comes with accepting your certain death by starvation, hypothermia, or polar bear.

The Inupiat of the Arctic Sea waited an entire day. Then another day and another day.

On the fourth day, Etok figured the Green People were now wise enough, hungry enough, and thirsty enough. He ordered his people to rescue them. “They are vegetarians,” the wise Etok explained to his people and ordered them to bring many buckets of mikiaq, fermented whale meat in congealed blood. The hungry Green People ate the whale, no longer giving a shit that it was some goddamned endangered species. The Inupiat told them it was not wise to enter the Native boats. The rescue party had brought along a filthy crude-oil barge for the frozen Green People to ride.

The Natives dumped the Green People at Dead Horse, where White People take petroleum from Prudhoe Bay. The Green People, whose lesson had been taught to them without their knowing, thanked the Inupiat for saving their lives. And from that day forward, Greenpeace protected the Natives’ right to kill whales as in the Old Days, and joined the Inupiat people in fighting their competitors, the commercial whalers or, as the Natives call them, “the fucking Japanese.”

Etok is one bad-ass Eskimo.

THE SHOW GIRLS CLUB, FAIRBANKS, ALASKA, 2010

I didn’t have any trouble picking him out, even in the pumping lights of the Fairbanks strip club where we were supposed to meet: the leather-dark face, a wolverine pelt sewn into his parka collar with its vicious fangs still attached, and, around his neck, five huge claws of the last polar bear killed by his father. Eskimo bling.

While I’d heard that Eskimos kiss by rubbing noses, the look in Etok’s eyes suggested I wasn’t going to get the nose rub.

“Mr. Palast, we are the last of the Pleistocene people,” he told me. “It would be an honor to help you fuck up British Petroleum and fuck up your Queen, too.”

It was entirely appropriate for Etok, as a head of state, to address his concerns through me, a reporter for British government television, to his diplomatic equal, the Monarch of Windsor; though, as Etok would point out, his realm was larger than Britain, with more resources. And unlike England, Etok’s kingdom had never lost a war. I promised to carry his message back to Her Majesty.

In the fall of 2010, BP’s oil was still sloshing around the Gulf of Mexico. Where would BP strike next?

I was tired of reporting on disasters after the body count, after the oil hits the beach, after pipes explode, and after kids get cancer. I wanted to film a disaster before it happened.

So I took Ricardo, his cameras, and my dear Director James to the North. Just above the Arctic Circle, where British Petroleum and Shell Oil are sharpening their drill bits, ready to bite into the receding ice of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. For Big Oil, global warming is a profit center. The hole their hydrocarbons has punched in the ozone has opened up once ice-locked oil fields and tanker routes.

It’s a global warming bonanza for BP if they can just skooch a few sea mammals out of the way. The Beaufort Sea is the part of the Arctic Ocean that meets Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The “Wildlife” of the Refuge includes the Inupiat-speaking Eskimos, the whale hunters. BP would have to move the polar bears, the whales, and the whale hunters. But that means the landlord has to approve. That’s Etok. At least according to Etok.

Etok is at times the unofficial and at times the official sovereign of this polar territory, which is officially sovereign—except when it isn’t. The confusion results from the historical oddity that the Eskimo never surrendered to “America” but America pretended they did. There was never a war, so there was never peace nor a peace treaty. For Etok, the Inupiat’s Arctic remains a free republic under occupation—by the British. For the Eskimos of the oil-lush North Slope of Alaska, the BP and Shell logos are far more powerful than the American flag.

The first Eskimo movie star, Nanook of the North, died of starvation after he sold fur pelts for knives and candy to John Jacob Astor. Astor would resell them at Saks Fifth Avenue for thousands of dollars even in the 1920s. Etok has no sympathy for Nanook. Etok thinks Nanook used his knife on the wrong animals.

The Chief of Intelligence, Harry Lord, the one who sent me the invite to the Arctic, had given Etok my last book. The Leader, for whom preparation means survival, had highlights and notes on virtually every page.

Whether Etok trusted me or not, I don’t know. He certainly decided he could make use of me to issue his ultimatum to BP and the Queen’s ignorant subjects. Our television program, Dispatches, is carefully scanned by the UK’s ruling elite. If he could get me into these closed-off zones, and in return, I could get his story out, well, we had a deal.

The Inupiat leader ordered nonalcoholic brews for us and took us to a corner of the empty barroom turned away from the stage. While a drugged blond giantess shook her stuff, Etok explained his purpose and his rules for our next day’s travel to a Native-only town within his nation above the Arctic Circle. The big girl, feeling ignored, put on a long winter coat and sat down with us, nodding, as perplexed as we were.
ON THE LANDING STRIP AT KAKTOVIK

There was whale blubber everywhere, and whale bones big as taxicabs along the inexplicably long air strip, and huge blocks of whale fat in driveways and in backyards among busted ATVs and diesel-powered dogsleds. Giant hunks of whale meat were strewn in front of the stilt houses, with a dog tied up next to each pile. The dogs are tethered, kept out all day, in case a polar bear wanders in for a whale-meat snack. The dogs will bark long enough, before being eaten, to warn the families inside.

While bouncing in the back of the four-wheeler taking us from the “airport,” James spotted a whale carcass. It was on a sand spit about a mile offshore. James was hot to film it. That sure would wow the network even if our London studios ended up getting picketed by untamed greenies. Etok dropped us at the bunkhouse built for visiting white people. He took in James’s request to visit the carcass and said we would be escorted there in Akootchook’s boat. Akootchook is the local Deputy Chief. Akootchook, word came back, agreed to take us, but for now, the Chief was on a conference call with lawyers.

We had arrived right on the autumnal equinox, when endless day tips into endless night, and James fretted about losing the sunlight needed for filming. I knew enough to nap until further notice, and Rick quietly filmed lots of the icy emptiness.

James, seeing the precious daylight dying, asked Etok if he could tell the Chief to hurry up a bit.

Oh shit oh God no, James.

“LISTEN, YOU RUDE LITTLE IMPATIENT BRITISH PRICK. YOU WILL FOLLOW PROTOCOL, COCKSUCKER. THIS IS NOT YOUR FUCKING IMPE- RIAL COLONY.”

Well, I figured James had to get a taming sometime, so at least that was now out of the way. James sat quietly, head down . . . while I listened with great care to Intelligence Chief Harry Lord and the tale of “How Kaktovik Lost the Cold War.”

In 1947, the U.S. Air Force told the Inupiat of Kaktovik to get the fuck out.

The U.S. military needed a big runway in case the Russians attacked America over the polar ice cap.

Kaktovik’s island was an interesting choice. You can fly a hundred miles in any direction from Kaktovik and you’ll find absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, the Air Force had to have that one single spot, the lone Eskimo village, within this vast emptiness. The Natives, by proving the location both geologically stable and weather-worthy, had placed a “steal me” sign on their homes.

Chief Akootchook, father of the current Chief Akootchook, sued to block the Natives’ expulsion.

The military responded with a beach landing, a kind of mini D-Day on ice. The United States Marines came ashore on the skinny peninsula at the island’s end. The invaders brought a bulldozer. Then, one by one, the GI’s earthmover pushed each and every Inupiat house into the Arctic Sea. It must have taken quite some time. There were more than a hundred homes on that land spit.

Kaktovik was more than a village to the Inupiat. It was their metropolis, the closest thing Eskimos had to a shopping mall, where Inuit from Can- ada traded with Alaskan Natives. They called it Barter Island. The Air Force nodded its head to history by giving the military’s new airport the identify- ing initials, BTI.

Akootchook still demanded a ruling from the courts. He got it. Unfortunately. The judge said the Natives of Kaktovik had to cease squatting on U.S. government property. It didn’t matter that the Inupiat had lived there for a few thousand years before the United States or its government existed. Well, that’s the fine print.

Some Natives remained, rebuilding, though on more treacherous shoreline. Then in 1954, the Air Force told the Natives to get off that land, too. America was building the world’s most powerful radar network, the DEW Line, to watch for the Soviet surprise missile attack.

The bulldozer went to work again and the Eskimos moved up the shore until 1961, when the Air Force told the Natives they had to move yet again. The Natives, the Air Force determined, were a “security risk.” The straggling crew of “security risks” picked up their whale guns and whalebone toys and moved again, for the last time, to the diminished little village I came to visit.
TO ALCATRAZ AND BACK

“The Americans,” as Etok calls us, did not realize that the Battle of Kaktovik was far from over.

In 1969, four thousand miles to the south, in San Francisco Bay, the federal government owned another island, also beautiful and extraordinarily valuable.

Etok, with a group of a hundred Indians from the Lower 48, landed, heavily armed, on this bay isle, once the home of Alcatraz Penitentiary, and told the U.S. government to get off their property, Indian property. The Natives were prepared to die for it, but not alone. They made it clear that any American invaders would go with them.

How did the Eskimo Etok end up as a proud, if temporary, owner of Alcatraz Island?

Continued here:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153130/vultures%27_picnic%3A_in_pursuit_of_petroleum_pigs%2C_power_pirates%2C_and_high-finance_carnivores