Category Archives: nuclear

JFK

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This post may be too graphic for some–fair warning:

DN featured Oliver Stone speaking on John F. Kennedy’s murder. (Stone is also doing a piece on Martin Luther King, Jr.)

In addition. REELZ is running a documentary on it, too.  They put forth the theory that it was actually an FBI agent George Hickey that fatally shot Kennedy.  He supposedly stood up in the car with the safety off and the car lurched, causing him to lose his balance.  I believe they said 12-15 witnesses had seen an agent with a rifle in a car behind the president.  Stone, however, places the fatal shot coming from the front of President Kennedy’s car.  Stone served in Vietnam and bases that on what he witnessed in the war–a shot came from the front, which is why Kennedy’s head bounces back from the force of it.  Stone brings up the inability of the FBI and others to replicate the bullets.  CBS also did a piece on it and also could not replicate three rapid fire shots from that type of weapon.

Stone also brings up another important point:  Kennedy had fired Allen Dulles.  I was unaware of that–and then he was the head of the Warren Commission??  Good Grief no wonder the investigation was so warped.  Hmmm…

The REELZ documentary makes the point that the WWII rifle used by Oswald was a full metal jacket– a bullet that would make a clean pass through a person’s body.  However, the bullet that killed the president was a different bullet that exploded upon impact–it is designed to cause as much damage as possible.  They noted several fragments in Kennedy’s brain.

The interference by the Secret Service, CIA, as well as other agencies is a red flag.  The physician who was to perform the autopsy in Dallas insisted that the body stay there until it was performed, but the Secret Service would not allow it.  The physician protested that this was state law– in order to protect the chain of control (I think that’s the right term).  They basically told him they were in charge and he best get out of the way.   So they took the body and when the autopsy was performed in D.C., they were contaminating the area with wall-to-wall agents and interfering with the physical evidence and the autopsy itself.  Red flags all over the place.

Stone brought up some great points when asked if Kennedy was a warmonger–he was instead an advocate of Peace.   He didn’t feel the need to bomb the hell out of another country to prove himself being “tough on war” or that the U.S. was superior in weaponry.   He makes the case that Kennedy, had he lived, would have stopped the Cold War.  While Stone is speaking about that, I think of the much ballyhooed Reagan by the conservatives and how Reagan stopped the Cold war.  Pfft.  The Soviet Union was impoverished and could not continue the arms race.    Reagan was a war hawk.  He wasn’t into Peace.  He thought of anyone seeking peace as a Commie Hippie.  I can only wonder at the number of people whom have been turned away from seeking peace just so they wouldn’t be called a Commie.  I know that I wouldn’t want to be labeled a Communist (or terrorist).  (Same with environmentalists –those that would support it but don’t publicly because of fear of being labeled troublemakers?)  People don’t realize that those names are thrown out to do exactly that–make something out to be the opposite of what it is so that people will find it distasteful.   When Martin Luther King, Jr. started speaking out against the Vietnam War, and advocating for the poor, he, too, was labeled a Communist.

(Side note–It’s tough to see the footage of Walter Cronkite announces President Kennedy’s death.  Still brings tears.)

The question that needs to be asked is:  who stood to gain from it??  Follow the money…and those deadset against Kennedy’s seeking peace instead of war…

Here is an account by Carl Oglesby in the book “From Camelot to Kent State” — a good book on the personal history accounts of the 60s:

I was ten years older than the SDS kids.  I was running the technical publications dept. at Bendix Aerospace Systems Division of the Bendix Corporation in Ann Arbor:  per defense work, rockets and missiles and electronic subsystems, some moon stuff, some supersecret Vietnam stuff.

[…]

The reaction to the Kennedy assassination really blasted me loose.  I was at work, of  course, like most everybody else.  It was Friday, a half hour or forty-five minutes or so after the guy was announced dead, I wondered down to the personnel office to talk to my pal, the personnel manager, Tony, and I said, “Tony, we should take the flag down.”

He didn’t want to do it.  He said, “Well, when we get word.  When we’re told by corporate headquarters to put the flag at half-staff.”    And we got into a big argument in the hallway about that, about whether or not we needed to hear from corporate headquarters about putting the flag down.  Did the flag belong to corporate headquarters?  Was that what that was about?  That Bendix owned the flag?  Did it own the country?  Big fight.

Then I went up to Mahogany row, a couple of floors up, to check out with some guys I knew up there, who I thought would be more reasonable, and in this one office they had the Scotch out.  The ripple of excitement, the thrill that ran through the Bendix Systems Division when the word came of Kennedy’s death, and with it the implicit word that now we got Johnson.  It was like—I don’t know how to describe it.  It was almost a physical tremor.

Before, there was gloom, because for one thing Kennedy had canceled out a big contract we had.  We were building something called the Eagle missile that was supposed to go on a certain airplane.  Well, the airplane didn’t exist, and it wasn’t going to exist, either.    So Kennedy logically figured out why build the missile?  But this didn’t seem reasonable to “corporate headquarters.”  which was real pissed at having lost the Eagle missile system.  Well, that was the mood people were in.

The next minute Kennedy gets popped.  A minute after that, the Scotch is out, because the contracts are coming back.  And they did!  By God, they did.  I couldn’t shrug that off.

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Solar in Canada

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Global News features a homeowner who installed solar panels and is now seeing the benefits.    He requested a meter that would feed the excess energy he doesn’t need back into the utility grid, but didn’t see it for months.  The power company exec offers no explanation, only to say that the problem has been fixed.  And the reporter stated that someone refused to be interviewed…I’m assuming it’s the power company’s representative? 

Anyway, I thought about all the excuses used for not pushing solar energy for the northern states–that there’s just not enough sunlight to make it economically feasible—and here we have someone in Canada, which has even less sunlight and because of the shape of Earth, is less intense energy from the sun, and yet they are still able to absorb enough energy to power their homes and have more to send back to the utility company.  Kind of blows that excuse, doesn’t it?

There are others here in the U.S. who go completely off-grid, where they’re not attached to the public utility, and they use batteries to store the excess energy for days that the sun doesn’t shine. 

The time has come for solar.  Cheap–when you factor in environmental damage by all other means of producing energy:  coal (mercury, lead, arsenic), oil (cancer), nuclear (cancer), gas (fracking–mercury, cancer, and God only knows what else).—plus their detrimental effects on climate change.

Clean.  Unlimited power source.

I did a web search and found a national geographic video on a solar farm–but the narrator states that unlike solar panels, they use mirrors that reflect light upward, and then a tube with synthetic oil captures the heat, to transport it.  With that information, I clicked off the video.  Why on Earth would they use synthetic oil??  It just seems that we are so creatively challenged that we can’t think outside the oil box. 

It’s just so harrrrd to think sustainably!!     /said with dripping sarcasm

One Bad Day…

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I was reading the comments on the previous survival site and someone put up a link to this.  Really sobering talk by a nuclear scientist who tells it like it is.

He mentions the hubris of “it can’t happen here”…..which we all know is bullsh*t.   A reminder of how hubris in government has led to disaster—-  the “O” rings in the space shuttle Challenger.    Engineers warned that there were issues, but because of the arrogance of those in charge, they were ignored….and we all know how that turned out.

Arnie Gunderson is saying the same hubris is present in the nuclear industry and disaster is just waiting to happen.  He touches on Indian Point and Vermont Yankee.   I wish he had gone into more depth on Yankee, but alas…

He makes very good points that the people running these plants are not stupid and they care about these plants because they live with their families in the surrounding area….but all it takes is one bad day.

 

Warm and fuzzy thoughts for the weekend…

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….well, not exactly.  Here’s a map of nuclear power plants in the U.S. and the areas that would be affected if the worst happened:

modernsurvivalblog.com/nuclear/u-s-nuclear-power-plants-safe-distance/

Indiana is so screwed.  So is the Midwest, with the exception of Kentucky and lower parts of West Virginia.

*yawn*

How ’bout those Dodgers…?

(trying to emphasize the lack of concern)

 

 

Stealing from the poor

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This mother in Saskatoon had apples stolen from her trees.  She said in the story that her son cannot digest food easily, so she was planning on making applesauce with them, when someone came and cleaned her out.  Luckily, there were some good hearted people who gave her not only apples, but other food, as well. …one could say that she was made whole.

That’s what Law was originally about–someone does something wrong to another and is made to do something for that person to make up for it–that’s what they called “making one whole” .

Now it seems the Law—looking at the person stealing as a corporation– is saying that the corporation had a right to take everything. 

Or –she was at fault for not having a guard dog protect her assets.

Or –she should have had a hot fence up. 

I’m thinking of corporate anti-union sentiment; of bankers/finance; of insurance (both health and home); of pretty much anything in this country where the less well-connected or less wealthy are not being treated in a just manner.

Our apples have been stolen and we haven’t enough folks with good hearts and enough resources themselves to come and make us whole again.

The Yes Men

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It is a continual source of amusement and awe at the stuff I come across looking up other stuff.

For instance, the Yes Men — an activist group against the Bhopal disaster,

We never hear that part of the information Wikileaks leaked is about the stuff done by corporations.

Note at the bottom where Dr. Ingrid Eckerman, a member of the International Medical Commission on Bhopal, has been denied a visa to India since 2008. Incredible that someone trying to help the people damaged by this disaster is denied access.

This may be why (from the link to the IMC wiki page):

The IMCB publicly condemned Union Carbide and reiterated the company’s full liability not only for responsibility in causing the deadly gas leak, but also for the confounding role of its behaviour with respect to pre-accident preventive and exposure mitigating efforts, and the timely and effective application of the appropriate medical measures at the time of the accident. This included the lack of transparency about the composition of the gases released, resulting in the absence of rational methods of care and planning resulting in loss of sight and in some cases life, and creation of suspicion and conflict among professionals and the population. There was also a lack of emergency preparation which would have made the public and professionals aware of the potential toxins inside the plant and how to respond to an accident.

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Fracking came to mind with the mention of lack of transparency about the composition of the toxins released.  Remember the nurse who was sickened because they refused to tell her what chemicals she was dealing with? This from American Nurses association for information on toxins and their effects.   Take note of the UNIONS strength in numbers at calling attention to this and demanding transparency.

More reasons why they don’t want people to know what’s in it—

It is now well known that persistent and chronic gas-related health effects are present in the Bhopal population.[3][4][5] However, the full spectrum of effects is yet to be defined, especially in those exposed as children or in utero, and as manifested in survivor reproductive health.[6][7] There has been a lack of systematic collection of relevant information in these reproductive effects, and also with respect to cancer development or other chronic illnesses as sequelae of the gas exposure.

Recent investigations have shown that local well water has become contaminated by the improper storage of a large amount of hazardous waste in the facility, or on its grounds.[8] This toxic waste is especially hazardous to those still suffering the effects of direct exposure to the gas.

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See, if you don’t know what’s in it, you can’t connect the symptoms to the chemical that caused it.  Kind of like genetically modified organisms, eh?  If people don’t know what’s in their food, they can’t connect ill health to it.

Syria update

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Global News has this up on Al Qaida’s overtaking a village in Syria.  So the question begging to be asked is–why are we supporting the rebels, if the rebels are linked to Al Qaida?

Rallies here protesting Syria strike.

Rehab Saad, who came to Canada from Syria 17 years ago, said the Obama administration should back off its calls for military intervention.

“Barack Obama: You got the Nobel Peace Prize not to start war… Don’t start a war that nobody will know when and where it’s going to end,” she said.

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The President had this message.  I don’t think anyone is against helping people but going to war over it is not the answer.  Diplomacy is the answer…or don’t we know how to do that anymore?

 

How can you tell… **edited

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…when John Kerry is lying?  His lips are moving.   (Old joke, but unfortunately still works.)

From Global news in Canada.

Anytime anyone involves ego in a decision, you can bet it is a bad decision.  Going to war over a warped perception of credibility is wrong.  And America’s credibility was seriously damaged with going to war in Iraq.  We were perceived as bullies and liars.   The whole world rejoiced when Barack Obama was elected because the whole world disagreed with our invasion.

But the world’s perception of us didn’t seem to bother Congress before now, eh?

And what exactly does “protect our values” mean??  Because I don’t value war.

Kerry tries to shut up opposing voices by throwing out ” this is not the time for  armchair isolationists”….that’s you and me, folks, the American public that speaks out against war.  We’re sick of war and we’re sick of millionaire politicians telling us that our opinions don’t matter.

He asks if one would be comfortable if we don’t act and Assad gasses his people.  Hello? Are we alone in the world?  Israel and Saudi Arabia have a stake in this  and they should be expected to bear the brunt of it–skin in the game, as they say…they are both wealthy nations, and we are fast losing our wealth.  Well, it’s still there, technically, but in the hands of a few who don’t want to pay taxes….that… fund… wars.  So Saudi Arabia and Israel need to ante up.

Note how Kerry asserts that there will be no boots on the ground, but from what I was watching yesterday, he once again flip-flopped and stated that he did not want that put in writing because it may become necessary if things escalate.   Mighty suspicious….

Tell me again why Kerry was trying to interfere with U.N. gathering evidence on chemical weapons?  And why aren’t we waiting for the U.N. to get the results bacK?  The Syria situation is not new–this has been happening for over a year now….so why the rush, rush, rush to bomb?

And tell me why those pictures of the dead keep nagging at me–like I have seen them before…?  That they were from a chemical weapons attack, but not the current event with Syria?? I just can’t shake that feeling.

Here’s the view from emptywheel.  During the hearing, Kerry was drumming his fingers on the table with impatience that they were questioning him.   John McCain was caught playing computer games….on taxpayer’s dime.  If those same taxpayers were caught playing computer games during company time, they would be fired.

Another take here on it from the Israelis:

Note the sentiment if the U.S. doesn’t strike, Israel will.   Is that supposed to be a threat of some sort?

Lastly, John Kerry’s testimony as a Vietnam veteran before Congress, below.  He stated yesterday that no chemicals had been used since WWI…I was stunned that he chose to ignore Agent Orange used in Vietnam.  In this video, he acknowledges the horror of them and how we “destroyed villages in order to save them…”  Note also the reference to Nixon, who stated he “did not want to be the first president to lose a war…”  Doesn’t that sound eerily similar to “we have to go in to Syria to save our credibility…”??  The Communism threat was a lie, btw, as only 25% of the people in Vietnam were Communists.  The rest were peaceful Buddhists.  Pretty sad, eh?

**Edited to fix stupid link to Kerry’s Vietnam Testimony:

Kerry pushing for war

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The more John Kerry talks….the more I’m getting the “weapons of mass destruction lie” feeling….the urgency to push us into war is unsettling…and undiplomatic.  I suspect Israel is the real reason we’re being told we have no choice but to fire upon them….

This from Jim White at emptywheel.  Let’s just say he’s not to happy with President Obama for once again getting us into war.  I do like his take on “Blurred Lines” however.  Nice to see a guy stand up and be counted.