Sometimes You Can't Go Home Again

Trey Smith

When Mount St. Helens blew her top in 1980, the nearby landscape looked like it had been leveled by an atomic bomb. Some people thought that any form of life would not return before several generations had passed. And yet, within 5 years or so, life did return. It seems that nature has a way of repairing herself.

Climactic events can be fierce and lead to overwhelming destruction. Most communities that find themselves in the path of a major hurricane, tornado or flood take years to rebuild, but they DO rebuild. There is one event -- a human-caused one -- in which this is not always the case: a nuclear accident. When a nuclear plant melts down, it can render the surrounding area uninhabitable for, maybe, forever.

This is what the citizens of the towns surrounding Fukushima have just learned. Up until now, the government has issued assurances that people would be allowed to return home at some point. But in the last few days government officials have admitted the obvious: the communities near the Fukushima plant have been rendered uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Residents who had pinned their hopes on going home are now coming to the realization that "home" will have to be somewhere else!

You see, this is THE issue with nuclear energy. As long as things are humming along, nuclear energy seems like a good thing. But when a problem arises and things aren't humming along, it's not a good thing at all. This so-called wonderful energy source has the capacity to end human civilization all by itself. So, while many will argue that it has many upsides, this one downside cancels out all the supposed benefits.

It is bad enough that residents near Chernobyl or Fukushima have been permanently displaced, but what happens when a nuclear catastrophe renders the planet unlivable? If the entire population of earth is displaced, we have nowhere else to go!

BP - Humankind's Most Dangerous Moment?

BP - Fukushima Is Collapsing - The Worst Is Coming...

Counting on You, Not Me

Trey Smith

Dressed in a hazardous materials suit, full-face mask and hard hat, Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, left his audience in no doubt: "The future of Japan," he said, "rests on your shoulders. I am counting on you."

Abe's exhortation, delivered during a recent visit to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, was only heard by a small group of men inside the plant's emergency control room. But it was directed at almost 6,000 more: the technicians and engineers, truck drivers and builders who, almost three years after the plant suffered a triple meltdown, remain on the frontline of the world's most dangerous industrial cleanup.

Yet as the scale of the challenge has become clearer with every new accident and radiation leak, the men working inside the plant are suffering from plummeting morale, health problems and anxiety about the future, according to insiders interviewed by the Guardian.
~ from Plummeting Morale at Fukushima Daiichi as Nuclear Cleanup Takes Its Toll by Justin McCurry ~

What Abe said to the men risking life and limb to cleanup this horrific nuclear disaster is not that alike what many leaders say to their brave men and women sent off to war. Just like in a war, many of the circumstances at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were set in motion by politicians and corporate bigwigs. In other words, the calamity was intensified by those driven by greed and power, but the work required to clean up the mess is borne by the powerless.

It has been this way all throughout human history. Even back in the days of Laozi and Zhuangzi, the rulers drew up the plans for conquest, but it was mainly poor conscripts who did the fighting...and dying.

It has often been noted that if the rich and powerful had to fight their own battles, they would be few and far between. If George W. Bush and Dick Cheney personally had led the troops into Iraq or Afghanistan, do you think these "wars" would have lasted so long or even taken place at all? If Barack Obama had to put his boot on the ground, do you think we would have bombed Libya?

~

If truth be known, Shinzo Abe is incorrect. The future of Japan (or the world) does NOT rest on the shoulders of the workers cleaning up Fukushima. No, it rests on the shoulders of leaders like Shinzo Abe. If they continue to put their lust for ever more power and profit before anything else, it merely sets the stage for future disasters. It is leaders like Abe and corporate CEOs who hold the cards!

What Were They Thinking?

Trey Smith

On September 7, 2013 Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said to the 125th session of the International Olympic Committee, the following:

Some may have concerns about Fukushima. Let me assure you, the situation is under control. It has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.

This will surely be remembered as one of the great lies of modern times. In Japan some people call it the “Abesolute Lie”. Believing it, the IOC decided to bring the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo.

Japanese government spokespersons defend Abe’s statement by saying that radiation levels in the Pacific Ocean have not yet exceeded safety standards.

This recalls the old story of the man who jumped off a ten-story building and, as he passed each story, could be heard saying, “So far, so good”.

We are talking, remember, about the Pacific Ocean – the greatest body of water on earth, and for all we know, in the universe. Tokyo Electric Power Company – TEPCO – has been pouring water through its melted-down reactor at Fukushima and into the ocean for two and a half years, and so far the Pacific Ocean has been able to dilute that down to below the safety standard. So far so good. But there is no prospect in sight of turning off the water.
~ from Some Facts You Should Know About Fukushima by Takashi Hirose ~

When I heard that the IOC awarded the 2020 Olympics to Japan, my first thought was: What were they thinking? Japan is home to the worst nuclear accident in history and the IOC wants to invite the world to go there? That seems to me like a recipe for disaster.

Imagine the IOC voting to hold the summer Olympics in New Orleans just after the Hurricane Katrina or the Gulf oil debacle. That would have been a crazy decision too.

Hey, as long as the IOC is making irrational choices, why not pick Damascus or Baghdad for the 2024 Olympics. I'm sure people would be safe there!

A Major Case of Oops!

Trey Smith

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".
~ from US Nearly Detonated Atomic Bomb Over North Carolina -- Secret Document by Ed Pilkington ~

Setting aside the issue of so-called nuclear safety for a moment, if this bomb had indeed detonated, what do you think the American public -- those who were still alive -- would have been told at the time? Remember that this would have occurred at the height of the Cold War, only 1.5 years ahead of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

While no one can know for sure what would have been declared, my guess is that President Kennedy would have gone on TV to announce that we had been attacked by Russia and that American nuclear warheads were on the way to Russia as he spoke. Because of an inopportune accident of mammoth proportions, the world as we know it today would not exist. No, it would be a giant nuclear wasteland!

This is why nuclear weapons -- just like chemical and biological ones -- should be outlawed and ANY nation that processes them should destroy them safely at breakneck speed. While conventional weaponry is bad enough, one inadvertent oops involving a nuclear warhead could alter life on this planet for everyone, not just the hapless victims of where the munition exploded. Since most governments are reluctant to admit their own mistakes, the enemy -- whoever that happens to be at the time -- would get blamed and this one accident most likely would set off a chain reaction that humanity would never recover from.

MR - Fukushima: Biggest Emergency Since Meltdown

Do Not Ask Questions

Trey Smith

Anytime there is a human-caused event that terrorizes or scandalizes a significant portion of a region or the entire country, the government investigates the situation and then releases its findings. As we have been taught to do since we were very young, most people accept the various government pronouncements without giving them a second thought. The few who do question the findings are labeled "kooky conspiracy theorists." Everybody "knows" the identities of the culprit[s] and the majority of the causes, so why do some nerdy individuals continue to ask questions?

When these "conspiracy nuts" continue to question the official explanation -- like say, for 9/11 -- I continually hear average people say, "Look, if there was any substance to their suppositions, don't you think the truth would have leaked out by now?" Of course, the fact that these suppositions remain suppositions proves to the average person that they are the worked of an unhinged mind. They hold to their position in the belief that the truth cannot be suppressed for long.

It sounds like a reasonable argument. We know in our everyday lives how difficult it is to keep a secret. One person tells a family member, colleague or friend something they don't want broadcast to the public at large. Though sworn to absolute secrecy, the person provided with the secret tells one of their close confidants. That person tells someone else and, before you know, the secret is out of the bag!

So, if the government or some company was involved in highly illegal and nefarious activities, the general thought is that the secret couldn't be kept a secret for very long. Someone would spill the beans and, in time, the truth would be made known to the public.

I used to accept this kind of thinking like most everyone else...until I moved to Pendleton, Oregon. Pendleton is downwind from the Hanford Nuclear Site and, through two regional environmental groups, I began to learn that this typical belief doesn't necessarily match up with the facts.

In 1949, the US government intentionally released radiated gases into the surrounding atmosphere as part of an experiment called The Green Run. Scientists wanted to study the effects of radiation on an unknowing public. They already knew how dangerous and toxic nuclear materials are, but they wanted to study the long-terms impacts.

Though hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of people were in on this secret, the world didn't learn of it for 37 years! In fact, as it turns out, The Green Run was just one of thousands of such experiments that had taken place over the course of 30 years. By 1993, it was discovered that our government had run various experiments on an unknowing public which included:

• Exposing more than 100 Alaskan villagers to radioactive iodine during the 1960s.
• Feeding 49 retarded and institutionalised teenagers radioactive iron and calcium in their cereal during the years 1946-1954.
• Exposing about 800 pregnant women in the late 1940s to radioactive iron to determine the effect on the fetus.
• Injecting 7 newborns (six were Black) with radioactive iodine.
• Exposing the testicles of more than 100 prisoners to cancer-causing doses of radiation. This experimentation continued into the early 1970s.
• Exposing almost 200 cancer patients to high levels of radiation from cesium and cobalt. The AEC finally stopped this experiment in 1974.
• Administering radioactive material to psychiatric patients in San Francisco and to prisoners in San Quentin.
• Administering massive doses of full body radiation to cancer patients hospitalised at the General Hospital in Cincinnati, Baylor College in Houston, Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, and the US Naval Hospital in Bethesda, during the 1950s and 1960s. The experiment provided data to the military concerning how a nuclear attack might affect its troops.
• Exposing 29 patients, some with rheumatoid arthritis, to total body irradiation (100-300 rad dose) to obtain data for the military. This was conducted at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco.

Think about this for a moment or two. All of these various experiments were run over the course of several decades and the ONLY reason the public became aware of the truth is when two groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request and 19,000 pages of previously classified documents were released. Had these two organizations not filed the request, who knows if we would know about much of this information at all!

The upshot here is that thousands or tens of thousands of individuals were privy to this secret information and yet the truth did not come to light for decades. Consequently, it is not unreasonable at all to think that in the coming years we may find out that the "official" version of what transpired on 9/11 or concerning the Boston Marathon Bombings is far different than what we currently are being told. Some of those kooky conspiracy theorists may be a lot closer to the truth than we think!

If you are interested in reading some of the questions that are being asked in regard to the Boston Marathon Bombings, you should check out the website, WhoWhatWhy. They are asking the sorts of questions you won't find in the mainstream media.

With Hands Tied

Trey Smith

“The Defendants may not present a defense of necessity or justification … evidence that the operations at Y-12 violated international or domestic law, evidence that their actions were compelled by the Nuremberg Principles or evidence of their motives”.

This April 30 ruling by US District Judge Amul Thapar makes a sham of the upcoming Knoxville, Tenn. trial of three pacifists who snipped through four wire fences to string “Crime Scene” tape around paint slogans on the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility at the Y-12 complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Y-12 houses 400 tons of HEU. (That’s 800,000 pounds of material that the US has threatened to bomb Iran over, if a single ounce of it is ever found there.)
~ from Protecting the Fiction of Legal H-bombs by John LaForge ~

Is this even legal? How can a judge preempt a defense argument before it is even made? What is the point of having a jury if they are blocked from hearing a substantial part of the evidence?

It is as if Judge Thapar has declared that individuals who commit civil disobedience have no other motivation than simply to break the law! In most situations, this is not the case. People commit civil disobedience because they often believe that the moral imperative to protest is more important than the law[s] they have chosen to violate. Their entire defense centers on what they believe these moral imperatives are. The jury then decides which they believe is more important: the moral imperatives or the law.

I wholeheartedly agree with LaForge's characterization of the judge's ruling. His ruling has taken away the only defense the defendants have. It makes the verdict a foregone conclusion before the trial actually gets underway.

If I was one of these three defendants, I would ignore the judge's ruling. I would tell the jury WHY I had committed this act of civil disobedience. I'm confident this would cause this judge to find me in contempt of court, but so what? I am going to jail anyway, so why not go down fighting!

Answering My Own Question

Trey Smith

In my previous post today on the dangers of nuclear waste, I wrote,

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of utter insanity. We are voluntarily creating substances that could end life as we know it and we KNOW this, but we keep doing it anyway. What could be more insane than that?

Actually, I do know of something that IS more insane than that.

There are certain elements in our present society -- fundamentalist Christians come to mind -- who poo poo almost anything scientific. When scientists develop a theory, these are the people who immediately scoff and laugh at it. If one person doesn't agree with any aspect of the theory -- even if that one person is NOT a scientist -- these folks run around saying, "This theory is very controversial and there are lots of scientists who disagree."

And yet, many of these same individuals support the use of nuclear energy because...wait for it...they figure that later human generations will figure out how to store and/or clean it safely. And how will these later generations do that? By utilizing much the same scientific method these people lampoon today!

In other words, those folks who do not accept the almost universal consensus of modern-day scientists that global warming is both real and human-caused are looking to science to solve a problem that we are creating for future generations (as well as ourselves) right now. Not only is that thoroughly disingenuous, but it is completely irrational (insane)!

The Ever Present Dilemma of Nuclear Waste

Trey Smith

There is an eye-opening article posted at Scientific American, Hanford Nuclear Waste Cleanup Plant May Be Too Dangerous, that underscores the elephant in the room when speaking of nuclear power. To generate this form of energy, waste is created too and this waste is about as toxic as toxic can get. And here's the thing: We still haven't figured out how to store it safely!

The problem they are encountering at Hanford -- a superfund site located in central Washington state -- is that the waste itself may prove to be too dangerous to clean up. If that isn't bad enough, it also is proving too dangerous to store. This vile substance currently is stored in so-called containment tanks and, because of its corrosive nature, many of these tanks are leaking. And so, it must somehow be moved to, at the very least, new containment tanks, but the process of moving it may prove to be too dangerous as well.

So, it would seem that we have created a problem that is tantamount to being between a rock and a hard place. Almost every strategy tried or conceived of is fraught with danger -- the sort of danger that could kill millions and leave the western United States and parts of Canada (at the very least) uninhabitable for hundreds of years.

One would think that rational actors would understand that this is an intractable problem and this understanding would lead these rational actors to shut down nuclear plants all over the world because these operations are creating ever more amounts of dangerous toxic waste. Of course, this is not happening. In fact, many folks are pushing for a greater reliance on nuclear energy and more nuclear energy means more nuclear waste -- life-threatening waste that we don't know what to do with!

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of utter insanity. We are voluntarily creating substances that could end life as we know it and we KNOW this, but we keep doing it anyway. What could be more insane than that?

More on the DPRK "Situation"

Trey Smith

The corporate media reduces the DPRK (North Korea) to the Kim family and prefaces their names with the terms “madman”, “evil” and “brutal”. Such vilifications of foreign leaders are used here not only to signify they are target for US overthrow. They are meant to intimidate and isolate anti-war activists as being out in left field for ever wanting to oppose a war against countries ruled by “madmen” – be they Saddam, Fidel, Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Qaddaffi.

Yet to a sensible person, it is crazy that the US, with nuclear weapons thousands of miles from home, in South Korea, denies North Korea a right to have its own nuclear weapons on its own land – particularly when the North says it is developing nuclear weapons only as a deterrent because the US won’t take its own weapons out of the Korean peninsula.

Missing in what passes for discourse on the DPRK in the corporate media is that the US was conducting month-long war maneuvers last March in Korea, now extended into April, using stealth bombers, undetectable by radar, capable of carrying nuclear weapons. And this year these are not “deterrent” war maneuvers, but “pre-emptive war” maneuvers.

Would the US government and people get a little “irrational” if a foreign country that previously had killed millions of our people, sent nuclear capable stealth bombers off the coasts of New York City, Washington DC, Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, there to fly around for a month in preparation for a possible nuclear attack on us? For what is called, in warped US language, war “games”?
~ from North Korea's Justifiable Anger by Stansfield Smith ~

This whole "situation" smacks of the American Exceptionalism I often write about. The ONLY nation to utilize nuclear bombs in war against a civilian population (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) has spent a good deal of the past few decades scolding particular nations for even attempting to develop nuclear weapons. At the same time, we have encouraged those nations that advance the interests of our elite to maintain nuclear stockpiles.

As Smith mentions, almost no one in the mainstream media has mentioned the "war games" angle. Knowing this kind of important information, it begs the question: Is the US purposely goading the DPRK to do and say what they are doing and saying? Are we setting them up for our own political ends?

Smith makes another key point for your consideration.

Since World War II there have been 9000 missile launches. 4 were by the DPRK. There have been 2000 atomic bomb tests. 3 were by DPRK. No country was sanctioned by the UN Security Council for this. No country except the DPRK. Why wouldn’t the North Koreans be incensed by this double standard, especially when the US has nuclear weapons in South Korea?

Look, I am against the whole idea of nuclear weapons. I think the world would be a far safer place if we got rid of every damn one of them. My point here is not that I favor a nuclear weapon free-for-all. It's more that, if we continue to maintain the capability to destroy the world at the push of a button, who are we to deny any other nation the same right? If we argue that our nuclear arsenal exists to serve as a deterrent to other nations, then how can we deny other nations who wish to have their own nuclear arsenal to deter us?

Don't Worry, My Little Chickadees

Trey Smith

Don't you just love it when some government agency or official releases a statement that warns about a danger and then, after a few folks become alarmed, declares that there is nothing to worry about? If so and you happen to live in the Pacific Northwest, you will be tickled pink over this glorious news item.

Six underground storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation along the Columbia River in Washington state were recently found to be leaking radioactive waste, but there is no immediate risk to human health, state and federal officials said on Friday.

The seeping waste adds to decades of soil contamination caused by leaking storage tanks at Hanford in the past and threatens to further taint groundwater below the site but poses no near-term danger of polluting the Columbia River, officials said.

Interestingly enough, area residents have been receiving reports of leakage for...decades! Every time, however, we're told that there is nothing to worry about. Yes, it is true that some of the most poisonous and lethal chemical compounds known to humankind are leaking into the soil and groundwater, but don't worry your pretty little heads about it. Keep shopping in area stores and PLEASE do not move away.

What I find interesting is that this gambit works time and again. A good majority of the people who live downstream from Hanford don't seem all that concerned. Oh sure, there are a few of those "wild-eyed environmental hippie types" who go bouncing off the walls each time they announce new leaks, but the majority who live in this most conservative area of the state simply yawn and continue reading their bibles.

Hmm. Maybe they are on to something. If the leaks make their way into the Columbia River and a giant plume of radioactive muck surges downstream towards the Tr-Cities area, they can throw their bibles in the water to make a holy dam to save everybody.

Oh yeah, I'm sure THAT will work!

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