Notes from a Facebook buddy:
This young woman, Jennifer Rexford, BP-hired oil cleanup worker, is documenting her illness from the toxins in the gulf with her video camera. If you think it's just headaches or something like that, watch this. Severe neurological damage. Doctors and hospitals refuse to acknowledge this with anyone there who's sick. And there are apparently tens of thousands now.
Paul Doomm is mentioned twice in this video. He is a 22 year old who swam in and ate from the Gulf all summer, against his grandmother's advice. He has been hospitalized after seeing 94 doctors who don't know what to do for him. His blood had the highest amount of PAH's ever documented.
Society's Child
Tokyo,-- Plutonium has been detected in soil at five locations at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said in a statement on Monday.
According to Kyodo News Agency, the plutonium detection suggests "certain damage to fuel rods".
Plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, is present in the fuel at the complex, which has been leaking radiation for over two weeks.
According to Kyodo News Agency, the plutonium detection suggests "certain damage to fuel rods".
Plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, is present in the fuel at the complex, which has been leaking radiation for over two weeks.
© n/a
Damaged reactor building at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Damaged reactor building at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant.
If spent fuel rods catch fire from lack of coolant, the intense heat will lift radiation plumes high into the atmosphere that will drift around the world. That's the nightmare scenario, clouds of radioactive material showering the planet with lethal toxins for months on end. And, according to the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna, that deadly process has already begun. The group told New Scientist that:
"Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors - designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests - to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl. (New Scientist, March 24 ---thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")
Raleigh, North Carolilna-- Utilities in Florida as well as North and South Carolina are adding to the list of states in the U.S. reporting trace amounts of radiation from a nuclear reactor in Japan that was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami.
Progress Energy says it picked up low levels of iodine-131, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear fission, at its nuclear plant in South Carolina and a Florida plant.
Progress Energy owns the single-unit Crystal River Nuclear Plant near Crystal River, Fla.
Progress Energy says it picked up low levels of iodine-131, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear fission, at its nuclear plant in South Carolina and a Florida plant.
Progress Energy owns the single-unit Crystal River Nuclear Plant near Crystal River, Fla.
A unit of Germany's Bayer AG has been ordered by a court in Arkansas to pay $136.8 million to Riceland Foods over the contamination of U.S. long grain rice stocks with a genetically modified strain from Bayer that decimated exports more than four years ago.
The judgment, handed down by a jury in Stuttgart, Arkansas, includes $125 million in punitive damages to Riceland, a farmers cooperative.
Bayer said it is "disappointed" with the verdict and is considering its legal options. It said the punitive damages exceed what is permitted by Arkansas law and will therefore be limited to the statutory cap of $1 million.
Tokyo -- Water found in a tunnel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has alarmingly high radiation readings, officials said Monday, adding that it is unclear how or why the tainted water got out of the building.
The water at the plant is emitting more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour of radioactivity -- a level the plant's owner had said is at least 100,000 times normal levels for coolants inside a nuclear reactor.
It was in a tunnel that contains electrical cables and is connected to the No. 2 reactor's turbine building, an official with the Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. The measurements were taken Monday afternoon.
The water at the plant is emitting more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour of radioactivity -- a level the plant's owner had said is at least 100,000 times normal levels for coolants inside a nuclear reactor.
It was in a tunnel that contains electrical cables and is connected to the No. 2 reactor's turbine building, an official with the Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. The measurements were taken Monday afternoon.
© Getty
The first pitch of Japan's baseball season has been pushed back so people don't waste gasoline driving to games. When the season does start, most night games will be switched to daytime so as not to squander electricity. There will be no extra innings.
Tokyo's iconic electronic billboards have been switched off. Trash is piling up in many northern cities because garbage trucks don't have gasoline. Public buildings go unheated. Factories are closed, in large part because of rolling blackouts and because employees can't drive to work with empty tanks.
This is what happens when a 21st-century, technologically sophisticated country runs critically low on energy. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami have thrust much of Japan into an unaccustomed dark age that could drag on for up to a year.
Comment: Joe Bageant died March 26th 2011 after a relatively brief struggle with cancer. Joe was a prolific social commentator and author who used his keen insight and raw sense of humor to dissect and expose the ugly truth about the failed experiment that is human 'civilization'. Hailing from the backwoods of Virginia, Joe saved his most incisive commentary for life in the USA and his last article, written in December 2010, shows why his voice of sanity will be sorely missed.
© Joe Bageant
One explanation might be the effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp, and 44 ounce Big Gulp soft drinks. Another might be pop culture, which is not culture at all of course, but marketing. Or we could blame it on digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? Those wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?
But a more reasonable explanation is that, (A) we don't even know we are doing it, and (B) we cling to institutions dedicated to making sure we never find out.
- Extremists hijack anti-government cuts demonstration
- 84 people injured - and at least 31 police officers hurt on day of violence
- Ritz hotel attacked with paint and smokebombs and 1,000 occupy Fortnum & Mason
- Protesters surge along Piccadilly, Regent Street and Oxford Street forcing shops to close
- Lightbulbs filled with ammonia hurled at police officers
- Labour leader Ed Miliband defends speech to marchers
A massive clear-up operation was underway today after trouble continued to flare late into the night as hundreds of people clashed with officers in Trafalgar Square.
Police confirmed 201 people were in custody and there had been 84 reported injuries during the protests. At least 31 police were hurt with 11 of them requiring hospital treatment.
© Reuters
Riot: Police officers stand in front of a fire lit be demonstrators in central London last night
Riot: Police officers stand in front of a fire lit be demonstrators in central London last night
No stranger to controversy, U.S. retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has come under fire for offering a push-up bikini top to young girls.
Its "Ashley" bikini -- described as "padded" and a "push-up" -- was posted on the Abercrombie Kids website earlier this week.
The company declined to comment Saturday but noted it has since updated the description of its bikini online.
The product is now being offered as a padded, "striped triangle." Bottoms are sold separately.
"How is this okay for a second-grader?" asked Rebecca Odes in a recent post on the Babble parenting blog.
"Playing at sexy is an inevitable and important part of growing up. But there's a difference between exploring these ideas on your own and having them sold to you in a children's catalog," she wrote.
Gail Dines, a sociology professor at Wheelock College in Boston, similarly slammed the top, saying it would encourage girls to think about themselves in a sexual way before they are ready.
