The tragedy of Fukushima continues to reveal more illness. Navy first responders have come forward with radiation related sickness.
Nuclear energy will never, ever be safe. This accident proves that beyond a doubt. Holy crap, I don’t think we’ve even begun to see all of the devastation.
This is a disturbing report on our stupidity and carelessness and its impacting ecology, and specifically the orcas.
Here’s a Puget Sound indigenous group trying to help the orcas.
Of course, thinking of the west coast, my mind wandered towards the impact of Fukushima. A member of the mercury support group has stated that she felt much worse after moving to the west coast. She left after a year.
From the article:
Barrett-Lennard says the southern resident orca pod, which is found in the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland, has lost seven matriarchs over the past two years, and he’s noticed a lack of vocalizations from the normally chatty mammals.
~~~~~~~~~~
More here. This is even more sobering in detail. There is an animated video of the radiation trail towards the United States and Canada. Be sure to click on the Laura James video –a picture says a thousand words. It made me nauseous looking at all the dead and dying sea stars.
They also make note that it is happening in Maine and New Jersey, so they question the Fukushima connection…but perhaps the radiation didn’t stop at the West Coast, but has traveled inland, as they say?
They also make note that the moose population is dying off–so much so that Wisconsin called off its moose hunt this past year. The deer population, as I’ve blogged about, is suffering and dying, too. And nobody questions GMO’s and their possible impact on these animals.
Making the bucks off of orcas that should be swimming freely in the ocean. Sociopaths.
Advocates for releasing Tilikum, and the other orcas in captivity have spoken out against Sea World. The owners of Sea World just don’t get it–no matter how well you say you treat the orcas, you are still holding them captive against their will.
A prison cell with a luxury bed and carpeted floor is still a prison cell…
Free Tilikum and all the orcas back to their native waters where they belong.
Idle No More has a post up on the far-reaching effects of NAFTA. This is especially important because now we have NAFTA on steroids with TPP being fast-tracked through Congress.
Here’s an update on Blackfire.
More here.
From the article:
Though officials did meet with NGOs opposed to the mine, they accepted Blackfire’s take that protestors were out to squeeze money from the firm, says MiningWatch’s analysis of the emails.
~~~~~~
Of course….because the mining company execs see everything in $$, they think everyone *else* thinks as they do. It is inconceivable to them that there are people who value the environment, their health, their children’s health, the Earth, etc.
Note how the company was unable to substantiate claims against Abarca. It appears he was thrown in jail under false claims.
NAFTA, and I fear TPP, are all about taking power and control away from the local people. It means losing their autonomy to decide what happens in their communities, as the mega million dollar lawsuit illustrates.
These trade agreements are not supportive of the democratic process, rather a dictatorial process. How is this representation of taxpayers?
In what could be called the Billionaires’ News Service, Ariana Huffington and Bill Gates, amongst other billionaires, want to control even more of the media message….er, I mean, news…
…and this, my friends, is why we need the Fairness Doctrine. This is why we need a break up of the monopoly of the press and media by the 1%–they already have their voices heard, over and over. They were able to sell the Iraq War through their monopoly of the news outlets–radio, paper, TV–as we saw in the previous blog on Iraq Veterans against the War. It was scripted without so much as one critical media reporter…oh, wait, Phil Donahue was critical…and he was fired. The more that media is concentrated, the less independent voices are heard. If we had the media we had in the 60s and 70s, there would have been more investigating of WMD’s, and less cheerleading by the talking heads.
The Guardian link, has a little more detail. Keep in mind that the Guardian has also joined forces with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation… further concentrating Gates’ media messaging…
A side note~~A commenter on the commondreams site has this link up**. Wow. If this is true, it opens up yet another can of worms of falsifying evidence to get us into yet another war….
And the questions begin: Why did Scahill and Jones refuse to share a stage with Mother Marian? If Scahill is as good as investigative reporter that he is reported to be, then why would he not investigate the accusations against Mother Marian? Why did he not seek her out to get her side of the story? This is all just mindboggling.
**also note that the author writes articles published in Huffington Post.
Get us out. Now.
…in the form of a tax break…by eliminating property taxes for businesses.
From the article:
An analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency determined that if the tax were eliminated, schools and cities in Lake County would lose $74.2 million, Porter County $14 million and LaPorte County $7.2 million. That’s about the same annual impact as property tax caps, which have decimated government services in all three counties.
~~~~~~~~
I can smell ALEC all over this push to eliminate taxes for the wealthiest while putting more of the burden on the middle class and poor, if they try to make it up through sales tax.
And then there’s the continued assault on Glenda Ritz’ authority as a duly elected official who got more votes than Pence. (Indeed, they were practically begging people to attend his inauguration. A website reported that 1500 people attended his inauguration….I’m betting that 1,000 were homeless people given $20 to be there. Or perhaps state workers threatened with their jobs if they didn’t attend. /snark) I also tried to access the site that lists Pence’s contributors for his inauguration day–the website was listed as suspicious! Nope, not going to risk that.
Anyway, here we are still under the death grip of the Koch brothers and neocon toadies….
Dow and Monsanto seem to be in a race to see who can be the most sociopathic. Because only a sociopath can bioengineer corn so that they can poison the earth more, no matter at the cost to the ecology, humans, and animals.
The Center for Food Safety has a petition up to somehow get the spineless FDA to stop this depraved idea. Please sign it–you never know, they just might feel the pressure for once.
So now the prison system is using prisoners to fight wildfires…for $1 an hour, and that’s if they’re lucky. Others have received only 50 cents an hour. This is just wrong on so many levels.
And, as someone noted in the comments, it fits right in with for-profit schools, for-profit security state, for-profit healthcare, etc., with forcing people to work for slave wages, so the 1% can make even more profits. Disgusting.
This is what was happening with the mental health system before reform–they were forcing folks to work without pay. While I do think that having something to do and learning a trade is valuable, it must be fair and paid with decent wages.
Eagle 
You must be logged in to post a comment.