Fukushima Didn’t Just Suffer Three Meltdowns… The Nuclear Core Has Finally Been Found… Scattered All Over Japan

It Also Suffered “Melt-Throughs” and “Melt-Outs”

Japanese regulations required nuclear waste with 100 or more bq/kg of Cesium to be monitored and disposed of in specialized containers. *** The new government limit for material headed for landfills is 8000 bq/kg, 80 times the pre-Fukushima limit.

So the hottest hot particle found so far is 5 million billion times greater than the current government limits of what can be put in a landfill. In other words, the core of at least one of the Fukushima reactors has finally been found … scattered all over Japan. Nothing like this has ever before happened before.

Marshall Islands, still plagued by U.S. nuclear bomb testing, says 9 nuclear nations must abide by non-proliferation, disarm

This isn’t the first time residents of cities or villages near Monsanto farming territories have stood up with concern after they had noticed increased health issues once Monsanto had moved in. Farmers in Argentina  had also raised their concerns and people in India raised awareness about not only the health effects but the potential damages to the environment. In France farmer Paul Francois won his court case against Monsanto as the courts found Monsanto was guilty of chemical poisoning. A report published by Thanal, an environmental organization based in Kerala, India, stated that Monsanto’s glyphosate causes both health and environmental issues. Something the WHO and other organizations have  denied for years. [1]

As the acute toxicity – reflected in the WHO classification of glyphosate is low, it has long been promoted as safe. However, recent evidence shows substantial adverse health and environmental effects, especially of the formulated products… Recent experiences and studies show a wide range of long-term adverse health effects, again mostly related to formulated products, such as leukemia and other cancers, skin diseases, and birth defects, gastrointestinal problems, and alterations to the central nervous system. Other findings link glyphosate and especially formulations with affecting embryo development, damage cells and DNA, and interrupting the hormone system.

As more independent and integral studies take place, more evidence is piling up to show the dangers associated with GMOs. Even respected names such as David Suzuki has raised his concerns about GMOs claiming that humanity is part of “a massive experiment” when it comes to GMOs. Sayer Ji of Green Med Info also linked evidence between breast cancer and RoundUp, one of Monsanto’s most popular pesticides.[2]

An alarming new study finds that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup weedkiller, is estrogenic and drives breast cancer cell proliferation in the parts-per-trillion range.

What’s happening in Molokai has happened in many other areas of the world and is not something that can continue if we want to have safe food and a healthy environment. GMO crops are being banned in many areas around the world but North America still lacks the political integrity to make the move. The annual March Against Monsanto is set to take place on May 24th, 2014. A tradition that has already done so much for raising awareness about GMOs and the dangers associated with them. Many believe the March Against Monsanto helped to stop the Monsanto Protection Act, a bill passed by Obama that would protect Monsanto from being able to be charged for any health or environmental damages they cause. Let’s raise some awareness and continue to work to stop Monsanto. You can also begin by growing some of your own food! You don’t even need a garden! Sources: [1] http://thanal.co.in/uploads/resource/document/Pesticide-briefing–Glyphosate-14236639.pdf [2] http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/glyphosate-induces-human-breast-cancer-cells-growth-estrogen-receptors

Wall Street Greed and the Corrupt Global Banking Cartel: Too Big to Prosecute? Not for a California Jury

California juries are not bashful – they have been known to render massive punitive damages awards that dwarf the award of compensatory (actual) damages. For example, in one securities fraud case jurors awarded $5.7 million in compensatory damages and $165 million in punitive damages. . . . And in a tobacco case with $5.5 million in compensatory damages, the jury awarded $3 billion in punitive damages . . . .

The question, then, is how to get Wall Street banks before a California jury. How about charging them with common law fraud and breach of contract?  That’s what the FDIC just did in its massive 24-count civil suit for damages for LIBOR manipulation, filed in March 2014 against sixteen of the world’s largest banks, including the three largest US banks – JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. LIBOR (the London Interbank Offering Rate) is the benchmark rate at which banks themselves can borrow. It is a crucial rate involved in over $400 trillion in derivatives called interest-rate swaps, and it is set by the sixteen private megabanks behind closed doors. The biggest victims of interest-rate swaps have been local governments, universities, pension funds, and other public entities. The banks have made renegotiating these deals prohibitively expensive, and renegotiation itself is an inadequate remedy. It is the equivalent of the grocer giving you an extra potato when you catch him cheating on the scales. A legal action for fraud is a more fitting and effective remedy. Fraud is grounds both for rescission (calling off the deal) as well as restitution (damages), and in appropriate cases punitive damages. Trapped in a Fraud Nationally, municipalities and other large non-profits are thought to have as much as $300 billion in outstanding swap contracts based on LIBOR, deals in which they are trapped due to prohibitive termination fees. According to a 2010 report by the SEIU(Service Employees International Union):

The overall effect is staggering. Banks are estimated to have collected as much as $28 billion in termination fees alone from state and local governments over the past two years. This does not even begin to account for the outsized net payments that state and local governments are now making to the banks. . . . While the press have reported numerous stories of cities like Detroit, caught with high termination payments, the reality is there are hundreds (maybe even thousands) more cities, counties, utility districts, school districts and state governments with swap agreements [that] are causing cash strapped local and city governments to pay millions of dollars in unneeded fees directly to Wall Street.

All of these entities could have damage claims for fraud, breach of contract and rescission; and that is true whether or not they negotiated directly with one of the LIBOR-rigging banks. To understand why, it is necessary to understand how swaps work. As explained in my last article here, interest-rate swaps are sold to parties who have taken out loans at variable interest rates, as insurance against rising rates. The most common swap is one where counterparty A (a university, municipal government, etc.) pays a fixed rate to counterparty B (the bank), while receiving from B a floating rate indexed to a reference rate such as LIBOR. If interest rates go up, the municipality gets paid more on the swap contract, offsetting its rising borrowing costs. If interest rates go down, the municipality owes money to the bank on the swap, but that extra charge is offset by the falling interest rate on its variable rate loan. The result is to fix borrowing costs at the lower variable rate. At least, that is how they are supposed to work. The catch is that the swap is a separate financial agreement – essentially an ongoing bet on interest rates. The borrower owes both the interest onits variable rate loan and what it must pay on its separate swap deal. And the benchmarks for the two rates don’t necessarily track each other. The rate owed on the debt is based on something called the SIFMA municipal bond index.  The rate owed by the bank is based on the privately-fixed LIBOR rate. As noted by Stephen Gandel on CNNMoney, when the rate-setting banks started manipulating LIBOR, the two rates decoupled, sometimes radically. Public entities wound up paying substantially more than the fixed rate they had bargained for – a failure of consideration constituting breach of contract. Breach of contract is grounds for rescission and damages. Pain and Suffering in California The SEIU report noted that no one has yet completely categorized all the outstanding swap deals entered into by local and state governments.  But in a sampling of swaps within California, involving ten cities and counties (San Francisco, Corcoran, Los Angeles, Menlo Park, Oakland, Oxnard, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Riverside, and Sacramento), one community college district, one utility district, one transportation authority, and the state itself, the collective tab was $365 million in swap payments annually, with total termination fees exceeding $1 billion. Omitted from the sample was the University of California system, which alone is reported to have lost tens of millions of dollars on interest-rate swaps. According to an article in the Orange County Register on February 24, 2014, the swaps now cost the university system an estimated $6 million a year. University accountants estimate that the 10-campus system will lose as much as $136 million over the next 34 years if it remains locked into the deals, losses that would be reduced only if interest rates started to rise. According to the article:

Already officials have been forced to unwind a contract at UC Davis, requiring the university to pay $9 million in termination fees and other costs to several banks. That sum would have covered the tuition and fees of 682 undergraduates for a year. The university is facing the losses at a time when it is under tremendous financial stress. Administrators have tripled the cost of tuition and fees in the past 10 years, but still can’t cover escalating expenses. Class sizes have increased. Families have been angered by the rising price of attending the university, which has left students in deeper debt.

Peter Taylor, the university’s Chief Financial Officer, defended the swaps, saying he was confident that interest rates would rise in coming years, reversing what the deals have lost. But for that to be true, rates would have to rise by multiples that would drive interest on the soaring federal debt to prohibitive levels, something the Federal Reserve is not likely to allow. The Revolving Door The UC’s dilemma is explored in a report titled “Swapping Our Future: How Students and Taxpayers Are Funding Risky UC Borrowing and Wall Street Profits.” The authors, a group called Public Sociologists of Berkeley, say that two factors were responsible for the precipitous decline in interest rates that drove up UC’s relative borrowing costs. One was the move by the Federal Reserve to push interest rates to record lows in order to stabilize the largest banks. The other was the illegal effort by major banks to manipulate LIBOR, which indexes interest rates on most bonds issued by UC. Why, asked the authors, has UC’s management not tried to renegotiate the deals? They pointed to the revolving door between management and Wall Street. Unlike in earlier years, current and former business and finance executives now play a prominent role on the UC Board of Regents. They include Chief Financial Officer Taylor, who walked through the revolving door from Lehman Brothers, where he was a top banker in Lehman’s municipal finance business in 2007. That was when the bank sold the university a swap related to debt at UCLA that has now become the source of its biggest swap losses. The university hired Taylor for his $400,000-a-year position in 2009, and he has continued to sign contracts for swaps on its behalf since. Investigative reporter Peter Byrne notes that the UC regent’s investment committee controls $53 billion in Wall Street investments, and that historically it has been plagued by self-dealing. Byrne writes:

Several very wealthy, politically powerful men are fixtures on the regent’s investment committee, including Richard C. Blum (Wall Streeter, war contractor, and husband of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein), and Paul Wachter (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s long-time business partner and financial advisor). The probability of conflicts of interest inside this committee—as it moves billions of dollars between public and private companies and investment banks—is enormous.

Blum’s firm Blum Capital is also an adviser to CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which also got caught in the LIBOR-rigging scandal. “Once again,” said CalPERS Chief Investment Officer Joseph Dear of the LIBOR-rigging, “the financial services industry demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to make decisions in the long-term interests of investors.” If the financial services industry cannot be trusted, it needs to be replaced with something that can be. Remedies The Public Sociologists of Berkeley recommend renegotiation of the onerous interest rate swaps, which could save up to $200 million for the UC system; and evaluation of the university’s legal options concerning the manipulation of LIBOR. As demonstrated in the new FDIC suit, those options include not just renegotiating on better terms but rescission and damages for fraud and breach of contract. These are remedies that could be sought by local governments and public entities across the state and the nation. The larger question is why our state and local governments continue to do business with a corrupt global banking cartel. There is an alternative. They could set up their own publicly-owned banks, on the model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota. Fraud could be avoided, profits could be recaptured, and interest could become a much-needed source of public revenue. Credit could become a public utility, dispensed as needed to benefit local residents and local economies.

Unelected Kiev Regime Begins Killing Spree in Eastern Ukraine

Attorney: “I’m really proud of the family that went through what they went through and said, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore.'”

Turkey Cooks the Books in Syria

Seymour Hersh documents Ankara’s efforts to pull the U.S. into the Levant

Dr. Sam Foote just retired after spending 24 years with the VA system in Phoenix. The veteran doctor told CNN in an exclusive interview that the Phoenix VA works off two lists for patient appointments:

There’s an “official” list that’s shared with officials in Washington and shows the VA has been providing timely appointments, which Foote calls a sham list. And then there’s the real list that’s hidden from outsiders, where wait times can last more than a year.

“The scheme was deliberately put in place to avoid the VA’s own internal rules,” said Foote in Phoenix. “They developed the secret waiting list,” said Foote, a respected local physician.

Foote said the VA requires its hospitals to provide timely care to patients, usually within 14 – 30 days. He said evidence was shredded in order to hide the long list of veterans waiting for care. VA officials also told staff not to schedule appointments in the computer system:

“They enter information into the computer and do a screen capture hard copy printout. They then do not save what was put into the computer so there’s no record that you were ever here.”

That hard copy, if you will, that has the patient demographic information is then taken and placed onto a secret electronic waiting list, and then the data that is on that paper is shredded.”

So the only record that you have ever been there requesting care was on that secret list. And they wouldn’t take you off that secret list until you had an appointment time that was less than 14 days so it would give the appearance that they were improving greatly the waiting times, when in fact they were not.”

Foote said the wait times that were reported to authorities in Washington were completely made up:

“So then when they did that, they would report to Washington, ‘Oh yeah. We’re makin’ our appointments within — within 10 days, within the 14-day frame,’ when in reality it had been six, nine, in some cases 21 months.”

CNN also reported that emails they obtained show that Phoenix VA Director Sharon Helman knew about the secret list and the actual wait times, and even defended its use to her staff. Foote has sent letters to officials at the VA Office of the Inspector General to report the secret electronic waiting list and the large number of veterans who died waiting for care. He and other sources told CNN that the IG has interviewed them about the scheme. U.S. House Veterans Affairs Committee in Washington chairman, Rep. Jeff Miller, has been investigating delays in care at veterans hospitals. Congress has now ordered all records in Phoenix be preserved for an upcoming investigation. Here is the CNN report, which includes an interview with family members of Navy veteran Thomas Breen, who died of stage four bladder cancer while waiting on the secret list for an appointment: Will these problems start to be seen outside of the VA system once Obamacare is in full swing? It’s hard to believe things like this are happening in America, and many fear that it is going to get much, much worse since the passing of the Affordable “Care” Act.

Mothers of color and poor women stand to lose the most from a law that would turn pregnant drug users into criminals. But the whole system stands to fail

Natural Resource Extraction vs. Indigenous Rights and the Environment in Latin America

The Myth of American Democracy – Money Talks and Those Without Money Have No Voice

Catherine J. Frompovich Activist Post Before I tell you about the new movie highlighting three famous U.S. whistleblowers that opened in April 2014 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, please know that one of its main characters, CIA-torture-whistleblower John Kiriakou, now in prison, has experienced more harassment at the hands of those in charge at the federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, and a concerted effort is being launched now to spare John Kiriakou any more such treatment. Here’s the deal! Friday, May 9th, 2014, is designated as the day of action for John Kiriakou. Instead of my rewriting the story, I’d like to cut and paste what I received from Brian Sonenstein at FireDogLake.comregarding what happened to prompt an organized grand-scale, citizen action to get John relief from prison officials’ harassment:

John Kiriakou’s wife and 3 youngest children left at 5:00 in the morning to drive 210 miles to see him.

When they arrived, prison officials told them to leave because the visitation room was ‘too crowded.’ John’s family only gets to visit once a month, and he writes that, “My 7- year-old daughter and 2-year-old son cried all the way out the door.”1

Of course, the room wasn’t actually crowded; aside from the fact that his family was among those who had travelled the furthest [sic] to see him, there were plenty of empty seats around the room. But then again, this isn’t about, as John writes, “the petty daily inconveniences that are a normal part of life here.” This is about a conscious effort to punish John Kiriakou for exercising his first amendment rights.

On Friday, May 9th, Firedoglake is organizing a Day of Action for John Kiriakou. We’re asking supporters to take a moment to drop by the local offices of their elected representatives and ask that they contact the Bureau of Prisons on John’s behalf.

I’ve included the link http://www.contactingthecongress.org/ where any member of the U.S. Congress can be contacted. When you click on your Congressperson’s name, his or her webpage opens. As you scroll down it, you can see the Congressperson’s Washington, DC and district office addresses that you can arrange to stop by and visit on May 9th. I’m planning on visiting mine. Will you?

Can you pledge to take a moment on May 9th to stop by your representatives’ local offices?

>>YES, I’ll visit my representatives’ offices in support of John Kiriakou.

>>I can’t make it, but I still want to help.

The Bureau of Prisons’ extralegal campaign to punish John Kiriakou for his free speech has gone on for far too long already. It’s time to get the BOP’s overseers in Congress involved in the fight for John’s fair treatment.

We’ve come up with a list of members of the House and Senate who we think might be willing to speak to the BOP on John’s behalf. They include members of the Judiciary and Appropriations committees that oversee the BOP; members of the influential Intelligence committees who have recently spoken out in support of whistleblowers and against the torture program John helped expose, and others. A few politicians like Ralph Nader, Rep. Jim Moran and Rep. Lloyd Doggett have already spoken out on John’s behalf, but we need many more to do the same.

The Bureau of Prisons could have honored their agreement to move him to a halfway house closer to home for the final 9 months of his sentence. Instead, it has opted to essentially — and repeatedly — spit in his face, offering him a mere 86 days alongside surprise cell searches, threats of ‘diesel therapy’ and fruitless attempts to turn fellow prisoners against him.

When John began speaking out about the Bureau’s shameless dishonesty, prison officials began a campaign of retaliation that has not let up despite direct appeals made by thousands of his supporters. If the Bureau of Prisons won’t listen to us, we’ll work to make sure they hear from their overseers in the federal government.

From the baseless use of the Espionage act to force him to enter a plea agreement, to the systematic destruction of his life to the unjust abuse he now faces regularly in prison, it’s no wonder why whistleblowers like Edward Snowden have opted to flee the country. This is what happens when whistleblowers ‘face the music’ in America.

We only have a few weeks left to convince the Bureau of Prisons to grant John Kiriakou his full 9 months in the halfway house. After that, every day he spends in prison is a day he could have been closer to his family had the BOP kept up their end of the deal.

Can you pledge to take a moment on May 9th to stop by your representatives’ local offices?

>>YES, I’ll visit my representatives’ offices in support of John Kiriakou.

Please read John’s Letter from Loretto, “Bureau of Prisons Throws CIA Torture Whistleblower John Kiriakou’s Children Out of Visitors Room” documenting how his family was treated. The Movie Now to the movie “Silenced” that opened to rave reviews. Coincidentally, the day that I’m writing this blog, I received a letter from John telling me “Tonight [4-20-14] is the premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival of the documentary “Silenced,” which is about Tom Drake, Jesselyn Radack, and me. I can’t wait to read the reviews, and my wife said the early press on the film includes Oscar buzz.” In his letter to me, John mentioned that CodePink also have been working on John’s behalf. I signed the petition CodePink emailed to me. Free Speech Zone with Alyona Mink interviewed the director of “Silenced,” James Spione and two of the main characters: Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack. Of course, John could not be on the interview set although he is spotlighted in “Silenced.” John’s story is the heart of the film, as he’s the one serving time in the federal pen at Loretto, Pennsylvania. The movie tells interesting human stories about the three and what makes them tick. They are intimate stories about what they suffered at the hands of the U.S. government. Whistleblowers must become extinct,  according to the federal government! Accordingly, and to make impressionable examples of how whistleblowers are treated, ‘enemies of the state’ are charged with the Espionage Act that is used as a lever, as in John’s case – and it works! During the interview several things are pointed out:

• Torture is now referred to as “enhanced interrogation.”
• Freedom of the press might be at stake!
• The mainstream press had a very schizophrenic view of whistleblowers. However, the press is starting to wake up.
• The federal government has instituted the “Insider Threat Program” that jeopardizes any government employee who “talks” to anyone without government approval. Employees will lose their jobs and be prevented from working for the government.

What’s happened to the USA? Resources: 2014 Tribeca Film Festival – the movie Silenced http://tribecafilm.com/filmguide/53208997c07f5df7d2000113-silenced Naked Edge Films Movie, Silenced http://nakededgefilms.com/films/silenced/