By Idona Graham | Oct 11 2011 | Posted in Entertainment, Music

People from many backgrounds have been inspired to “occupy” cities across the nation since Occupy Wall Street began its protest in New York roughly three weeks ago. It was no surprise to see the people of Ashland join in the movement last Thursday, Oct. 6. Roughly 250 protesters gathered in Ashland Plaza. While speeches were being delivered, many people raised signs proclaiming their dissatisfaction with the current economic situation and corporate corruption. Musicians performed while passing drivers honked in support of the crowd. A free dinner was provided for those who stuck around as the evening got colder, and singer/songwriter Patrick Dodd serenaded the crowd with country-folk labor songs.

If you’re a working man or woman in this day and age, songs from Patrick’s latest album, “Workers of the World Unite,” such as “Workin’ Stiffs Song,” “Don’t Need No Boss,” or “Hard Times (Hangin’ Around),” should capture your emotions and your mind. The seventeen songs on the album all focus on the problems of labor. Dodd is a very talented songwriter, able to marry what seems like a never-ending stream of clever and insightful turns of phrase with catchy, sing-along melodies. Many of his songs’ themes draw from events during the long history of labor struggles. One song in particular, called “Walk on Wobbly Walk On,” tells the story of 100 Wobblies (members of the International Workers of the World), from Portland who decided to join their brothers down in Fresno, Calif. to support a strike there. The men hopped a south-bound freight train but were caught and kicked off in Ashland during the dead of the winter in 1911. The Siskiyou Mountains were covered in snow. However, the men decided to continue the 150-mile trek by foot and eventually made it to Fresno where they were faced with gunfire and assault by strike breakers.

As Patrick begins his set, your body sways to the comfort of his sweet music and as you listen to the words he sings you feel a strong connection of solidarity. One of the first musicians Patrick reminds you of is legendary Texas folksinger Townes Van Zandt. Turns out, that’s no coincidence. Dodd says that Townes was one of his teachers in Austin, along with the sadly underappreciated Blaze Foley, and jokes that, “We used to call Austin grad school for song writers. It was a place that you could hang out with Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley and Guy Clark.”

Despite his father having been a professional musician and discouraging Patrick from becoming one himself, Dodd stayed stubborn and now has 30 years experience in songwriting and activism. He wrote his first song at the age of 6 and was inspired by the folk singers of his grandparent’s generation, such as Woody Guthrie, Odeta and Pete Seeger. One morning, while living in Colorado, he decided he didn’t want to do anything anymore other than write music. So, he headed out and ended up working in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tenn. His activist career began when he began receiving frequent calls from his buddies here in Oregon, where he had spent most of his life, saying that they needed help because there had been a change in timber policy and the woods were being eaten alive. As he attended meetings and rallies he realized that the activists’ songs were not current. He and several others began writing songs that were more relevant for the times. After letting it be known that he would be willing to write songs for various causes he was approached by numerous organizations and began writing songs for causes such as AIDS and the American Indian Movement.

Patrick feels strongly about the role of the musician as an activist and has a wealth of inspiring activist moments he has been a part of. However, he believes that his “success rate isn’t garnered on whether everybody listens at this moment. It’s garnered on whether or not I empower the people that are actually trying to change these laws.” Having been a Wobblie himself for many years, he believes strongly in the power of labor unions and says that he thinks “the biggest lie that was wasted on the working population was that unions were bad.” He adds that, “the potential change is in worker discontent” and that “the younger the worker, the more potential there is for change.” As a previous Marine, he believes that “wars are always a group of working stiffs being told to kill a group of other working stiffs. I think one of the best things we could do is unionize every army in the world. If you want to go to war, have a vote!”

Patrick can be seen hanging out or performing at Occupy Ashland in between a few other performances he has coming up in Eugene and possibly Medford. You can also listen to his music free on Patrick’s website, www.patrickdodd.com. Or tune into the weekly outlaw radio show produced by Patrick and his lovely wife Mary, where they perform as Slim and Betty Jean, playing music, performing comedy and discussing current issues at www.takilmafm.com on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. (many of their past shows are archived on the site, and the two have plans to archive the entire series).

Greetings Fellow Workers - Join us on Wen. Oct 5th behind Mary's Convience Store at 18090 Redwood Hwy. in bueatiful Selma Or. for a party celebrating the release of my new Cd "Workers of the World Unite"  There will be performaces by Silas R. Shand, yours truely, and Patrick Tovall, as well as a guitar pull featuring some of the best talent in and around the valley. We intend this evening to be a celebration of the Workin' Stiffs of the world and it won't be complete without you.  Gather up and find out what all the fuss is about.  Mary's boasts the cheapest coldest beer around, and we intend to produce some of the most kick ass music around so it will be one to remember.  Bring lawn chairs, blankets, warm cloths, musical instruments, and your best party attitude.  Countin' the days fellow workers.  Till then we'll see you in the streets.

Oct 5 behind Mary's Mini Mart in Selma 18090 Redwood Hwy

6pm til???

Oct 5 behind Mary's Mini Mart in Selma 18090 Redwood Hwy

6pm til???

Patients have lost access to hundreds of herbal medicines today, after European regulations came into force.

Sales of all herbal remedies, except for a small number of popular products for 'mild' illness such as echinacea for colds and St John's Wort for depression have been banned.

For the first time traditional products must be lice

Both herbal remedy practitioners and manufacturers fear they could be forced out of business as a result.

Some of the most  commonly used products were saved after the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley approved a plan for the Health Professions Council to establish a register of practitioners supplying unlicensed herbal medicines.

However, many remedies were lost as it was only open to those who could afford the licensing process which costs between £80,000 to £120,000.

At least 50 herbs, including horny goat weed (so-called natural Viagra), hawthorn berry, used for angina pain, and wild yam will no longer be stocked in health food shops, says the British Herbal Medicine Association.

nsed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner.

The House on Thursday afternoon approved two resolutions that would amend the FY 2011 spending bill to block funding for Planned Parenthood, and block all funds to implement last year's healthcare law. But House passage is largely symbolic, as the Senate is not expected to approve either of the bills when it considers them later today.

Votes in both the House and the Senate were a condition that Republicans insisted on as part of last week's agreement on funding for the rest of FY 2011.

The House approved the Planned Parenthood amendment, H.Con.Res. 36, by a 241-185 vote. All but seven Republicans voted voted for it, and they were joined by just 10 Democrats.

The vote followed a brief but tense debate in which one Republican charged that Planned Parenthood covers up criminal behavior in the process of performing abortions.

"This is an organization that has protected those who prey on our children and has protected those who rape our granddaughters," said Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) "Planned Parenthood holds itself out to be above the law by ignoring mandatory reporting requirements, by skirting parental consent, but aiding and abetting child trafficking. They put quick and secret abortions ahead of the welfare of victimized young girls, and it has to stop."

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High radiation levels recorded at a nuclear reactor in northeast Ohio have prompted a special inspection by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Workers at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant immediately evacuated it on April 22 when radiation levels rose while it was shutting down for a refueling outage, the commission said Tuesday. Plant officials don't believe workers were exposed to radiation levels "in excess of NRC limits," the commission said.

"The plant is in a safe condition and there has been no impact to workers at the plant or members of the public from this issue," the commission said in a statement.

Radiation levels rose while workers were removing a monitor that measures nuclear reactions during start-up, low-power operations and shutdown, the commission said.

The highest radiation exposure to any of the workers was 98 millirems, which is equivalent to two or three chest X-rays, a spokesman for the plant's owner said. The NRC's limit for radiation exposure in a year is 5,000 millirems, he said.

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A multitude of respected intelligence officials and heads of state have both publicly and privately asserted that Osama has been dead for years

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 2, 2011

A multitude of different inside sources both publicly and privately, including one individual who personally worked with Bin Laden at one time, told us directly that Osama’s dead corpse has been on ice for nearly a decade and that his “death” would only be announced at the most politically expedient time.

That time has now come with a years-old fake picture being presented as the only evidence of his alleged killing yesterday, while Bin Laden’s body has been hastily dumped into the sea to prevent anyone from finding out when he actually died.

In April 2002, over nine years ago, Council on Foreign Relations member Steve R. Pieczenik, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, and James Baker, told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months”.

Pieczenik would be in a position to know such information, having worked directly with Bin Laden when the US was funding and arming the terror leader in an attempt to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 70′s and early 80′s (a documented historical fact that talking heads in the corporate media are actually denying today in light of developments).

“I worked with Osama bin Laden in ’78, ’81,” Pieczenik told Jones, adding that he later turned terrorist hunter during subsequent administrations.

“I found out through my sources that he had had kidney disease. And as a physician, I knew that he had to have two dialysis machines and he was dying,” Pieczenik told Jones during the April 24, 2002 interview.

“And you could see those in those films, those made-up photos that they were sending us out of nowhere. I mean, suddenly, we would see a video of bin Laden today and then out of nowhere, they said oh it was sent to us anonymously, meaning that someone in the government, our government, was trying to keep up the morale on our side and say oh we still have to chase this guy when, in fact, he’s been dead for months,” added Pieczenik.

Pieczenik then stated that the video tape of a fat Bin Laden look alike “taking responsibility” for 9/11 that was released in December 2001 was “such a hoax” designed to “manipulate” people in the emotional aftermath of 9/11.

The subsequent war in Afghanistan that followed 9/11 was orchestrated “With the agreement of the bin Laden family, knowing fully well that he would die,” said Pieczenik. “And I think that Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, spilled the beans by accident three months ago when he said that bin Laden was dead because his kidney dialysis machines were destroyed in East Afghanistan.”

In addition to Pieczenik, as we reported in August 2002, Alex Jones was separately told by a high level Republican source that Bin Laden was dead and that his body was being kept “on ice” until Osama’s death could be announced at the most “politically expedient” time.

When Jones asked the source if his claim was mere speculation or whether it was actually true, the source re-iterated the fact that he was being deadly serious and that Bin Laden’s corpse was “physically on ice” waiting to be rolled out for public consumption at the most opportune moment.

Many expected that moment to be right before the 2004 election, but after Democrats began speculating about the possibility, Republicans settled instead for a fake Osama video tape that was released on the eve of the election and, according to both George W. Bush and John Kerry, was the deciding factor in a closely-fought contest. Veteran news reader Walter Cronkite labeled the entire farce a Karl Rove-orchestrated “set-up”.

In addition to these sources, a deluge of other heads of state as well as intelligence agency professionals have gone on record over the past nine years to state their belief that Bin Laden was likely dead, after it became clear that the Al-Qaeda leader’s health was in severe decline as a result of kidney disease at the end of 2001. These include;

- Former CIA officer and hugely respected intelligence & foreign policy expert Robert Baer, who in 2008 when asked about Bin Laden by a radio host responded, “Of course he is dead.”

- On December 26, 2001, Fox News, citing a Pakistan Observer story, reported that the Afghan Taliban had pronounced Bin Laden dead and buried him in an unmarked grave.

- On January 18, 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced: “I think now, frankly, he is dead.”

- On July 17, 2002, the then-head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson, told a conference of law enforcement officials that “I personally think he [Bin Laden] is probably not with us anymore.”

- In October 2002, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN that “I would come to believe that [Bin Laden] probably is dead.

- In 2003, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke she suspected Bush knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and was waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.

- In November 2005, Senator Harry Reid revealed that he was told Osama may have died in the Pakistani earthquake of October that year.

- In February 2007, Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies program, stated that the purported video and audio tapes that were being released of Bin Laden were fake and that he was probably dead.

- On November 2, 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told Al-Jazeera’s David Frost that Omar Sheikh had killed Osama Bin Laden.

- In March 2009, former US foreign intelligence officer and professor of international relations at Boston University Angelo Codevilla stated: “All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.”

- In May 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed that his “counterparts in the American intelligence agencies” hadn’t heard anything from Bin Laden in seven years and confirmed “I don’t think he’s alive.”

In a way, the establishment had their hand forced in having to announce the death of someone whose shadowy existence had proven very useful to them in maintaining fear and uncertainty amongst the population of America and the world.

The fact that the myth behind Al-Qaeda has been completely demolished and that the group, through a myriad of revelations, including Anwar Al-Alawki’s post-9/11 visit to the Pentagon, is now widely known to be a US intelligence front, perhaps now means that Al-Qaeda will be swept under the rug and a new enemy will be invented in order to legitimize the continued US military-complex domination of the globe.

H/T: James Corbett – Osama Bin Laden Pronounced Dead… For the Ninth Time

Taking antidepressants may raise the risk of heart disease in men. They can thicken artery walls through an as yet unknown mechanism.

The drugs seem to accelerate atherosclerosis by increasing the thickness of the "intima media", the inner and middle layers of the arteries. They particularly affect the carotid arteries that feed blood to your brain.

Most people have heard the "chemical imbalance" theory and believe it is true. It is important to realize that there is no scientific evidence for this theory. There is no credible scientific lab test showing the presence or absence of mental disease.

There is simply no way you can measure this imbalance.

It sounds scientific, but the drug companies merely use the chemical imbalance theory as a useful metaphor that justifies their aggressive use of antidepressants to correct this alleged "imbalance."

If you carefully study the history of psychiatry you will find that a biological explanation had to be found to justify the failing image of psychiatrists as respected scientific professionals

A multitude of different inside sources both publicly and privately, including one individual who personally worked with Bin Laden at one time, told us directly that Osama’s dead corpse has been on ice for nearly a decade and that his “death” would only be announced at the most politically expedient time.

That time has now come with a years-old fake picture being presented as the only evidence of his alleged killing yesterday, while Bin Laden’s body has been hastily dumped into the sea to prevent anyone from finding out when he actually died.

In April 2002, over nine years ago, Council on Foreign Relations member Steve R. Pieczenik, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, and James Baker, told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months”.

“I found out through my sources that he had had kidney disease. And as a physician, I knew that he had to have two dialysis machines and he was dying,” Pieczenik told Jones during the April 24, 2002 interview.

“And you could see those in those films, those made-up photos that they were sending us out of nowhere. I mean, suddenly, we would see a video of bin Laden today and then out of nowhere, they said oh it was sent to us anonymously, meaning that someone in the government, our government, was trying to keep up the morale on our side and say oh we still have to chase this guy when, in fact, he’s been dead for months,” added Pieczenik.

Pieczenik then stated that the video tape of a fat Bin Laden look alike “taking responsibility” for 9/11 that was released in December 2001 was “such a hoax” designed to “manipulate” people in the emotional aftermath of 9/11.

The subsequent war in Afghanistan that followed 9/11 was orchestrated “With the agreement of the bin Laden family, knowing fully well that he would die,” said Pieczenik. “And I think that Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, spilled the beans by accident three months ago when he said that bin Laden was dead because his kidney dialysis machines were destroyed in East Afghanistan.”

In addition to Pieczenik, as we reported in August 2002, Alex Jones was separately told by a high level Republican source that Bin Laden was dead and that his body was being kept “on ice” until Osama’s death could be announced at the most “politically expedient” time.

When Jones asked the source if his claim was mere speculation or whether it was actually true, the source re-iterated the fact that he was being deadly serious and that Bin Laden’s corpse was “physically on ice” waiting to be rolled out for public consumption at the most opportune moment.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Judy and Jim Embree, an operating room nurse and paramedic and firefighter, were attending a rally at the state Capitol when they discovered that everything they thought to be good and right about their lives was, to an alarming number of people, completely wrong.

This is intentional.  Delay, deny, delay again, hope they die.

A Montgomery County judge zeroed in Friday on the fundamental disconnect driving a legal dispute over collective-bargaining laws and said he plans to issue a ruling Monday morning in the lawsuit filed against the county by a public employees union.

By Agence France-Presse
April 21, 2011 @ 9:15 am

In Breaking Banner,World | No Comments

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US authorities on Wednesday filed charges against two companies on charges they exploited hundreds of Indian and Thai workers who earned a pittance and were forced to stay in decrepit conditions.

In what it called its largest ever human trafficking case in the farm sector, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said that contractor Global Horizons brought in some 200 Thai men on promises of high-paying jobs.

The Thai men were sent between 2003 and 2007 to farms in Hawaii and Washington state where they were crammed into rooms infested with rats and insects and faced verbal and physical assaults, the federal agency said.

The men had paid insurmountable fees to enter the United States but were stripped of their passports and kept separately from non-Thai workers who had more tolerable conditions, the suits alleged. Authorities learned of their plight after a Thai community center in Los Angeles got involved.

"Human trafficking is one of the most insidious forms of discrimination," said Anna Park, a Los Angeles-based attorney for the federal commission.

The commission "is committed to holding employers accountable for benefiting from the modern day enslavement of workers from other countries," she said in a statement.

The federal agency also sued companies running the eight farms where the Thai men worked, saying they "not only ignored abuses but also participated in the obvious mistreatment, intimidation, harassment and unequal pay of the Thai workers," according to a statement.

The companies are Captain Cook Coffee Co., Del Monte Fresh Produce, Kauai Coffee Co., Kelena Farms, MacFarms of Hawaii, Maui Pineapple Farms, Green Acre Farms and Valley Fruit Orchards.

In a separate case, the federal agency filed charges against Signal International, a marine services company based in Alabama, for allegedly demeaning treatment of 500 Indian employees.

The lawsuit said that the men were forced in live in fence-enclosed, segregated housing where they were referred to by number instead of name.

The Indian employees were obliged to spend $30 each day for lodging and food that were "intolerable, demeaning and unsanitary," a statement said.

The Indians were brought to the United States by a separate entity that is not part of the lawsuit.

The federal commission said it would seek back pay and compensation for the Thai and Indian workers, along with measures from the companies to prevent future discrimination.

[Image via Mark Strozier ^[1], Creative Commons licensed]

URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/21/us-farm-companies-charged-with-human-trafficking/

URLs in this post:

[1] Mark Strozier: http://www.flickr.com/photos/r80o/2473887288/

Click here to print.

Copyright © 2011 The Raw Story. All rights reserved.

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to Reuters by a third party, shed light on the way in which U.S. embassies have pulled in the NRC when lobbying for the purchase of equipment made by Westinghouse and other domestic manufacturers.

While the use of diplomats to further American commercial interests is nothing new, it is far less common for regulators to be acting in even the appearance of a commercial capacity, raising concerns about a potential conflict of interest.

The subject is particularly sensitive at a time when there are concerns about whether the operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was designed by U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co., had been properly supervised by the NRC's equivalent in Japan.

The NRC's own chairman has said that in the nuclear business, avoiding conflicts of interest is paramount.

"The important point is that all countries should strive to maintain a strict independence between the regulator and the industries that it oversees," Gregory Jaczko said in an April 2010 speech to an international forum in Seoul.

EMBRACING THE MODEL

But the cables -- from 2006 to early 2010 -- show that the NRC's role in promoting its regulatory model around the world can easily turn it into an advocate for U.S. nuclear technology, whether its officials realize it or not.

For example, an unclassified January 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur noted that the Malaysian government, as it pursued a nuclear policy, preferred to work with contractors the NRC had already approved.

The diplomatic corps there was quick to point out how that might be used to financial advantage.

The stance "places the (U.S. Government) and US companies in a favorable position to build stronger relations with both representatives and (Government of Malaysia) officials," the embassy said.

In other countries the message was even more pointed, as in Italy in late 2009. Former NRC Chairman Dale Klein, then still a commissioner, visited the country to discuss nuclear cooperation as the government looked to restart the country's civilian nuclear program and build as many as 10 new plants.

Klein was there to talk regulation, but he also unwittingly figured in the embassy's efforts to promote American vendors.

"Commissioner Klein's visit gave additional support to U.S. nuclear energy companies. A (embassy) co-sponsored public forum on nuclear energy featuring Commissioner Klein as keynote speaker and U.S. companies as panel members attracted a large audience of senior public and private Italian officials and local press coverage," a cable said.

Klein, now a vice chancellor at the University of Texas System and a board member at two utility companies with nuclear operations, said that while he was a firm believer in the NRC playing a more international role, commercial advocacy was never part of his job.

"As a regulator we would never take a position of recommending one reactor over another. The NRC's position was safety and security, and you can get the safety and security in a variety of ways," Klein said. "I never recall having been asked the question of what reactor should a country use."

ALLERGY TO COMMERCIALISM

The NRC was created in 1975 because its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, had been criticized for conflicts in both policing and promoting an industry. The NRC was tasked with regulation, while a separate agency, later folded into the Energy Department, promoted nuclear power.

It's common for NRC staff and commissioners to be asked to attend international meetings, but they accept only invitations where they can press for strong safety regulations, said Margie Doane, director of the NRC's international programs, who declined to comment directly on the cables.

"You want to talk about safety right at the very inception of someone's thinking about nuclear power," Doane said.

"As long as we make sure our role is only safety and only regulation, it's a very important aspect, and it doesn't have anything to do with whether they buy U.S. technology or not," she said. "If we're invited into something which looks promotional, we make sure that there's a good opportunity for us to get the safety message out, and that it's going to be understood in the right way."

BEAT THE FRENCH

The fear for diplomats is that U.S. equipment companies need government help, lest they be elbowed aside by foreign state-owned competitors such as France's Areva.

The main concern is for the two nuclear reactor builders most closely tied to the United States -- General Electric Co.'s nuclear joint venture with Japan's Hitachi Ltd and Westinghouse Electric Co, the U.S.-based nuclear reactor builder 77 percent owned by Japan's Toshiba Corp. and 20 percent owned by Shaw Group.

That beat-the-French theme comes up over and over again in cables from around the world -- embassies noting with a sense of urgency that foreign competitor X is already on the ground meeting with government officials, and U.S. interests need to act fast at the highest levels to counteract the threat.

"U.S. company representatives and their Italian allies are apprehensive that absent high-level U.S. lobbying, French pressure will push the decision toward a purchase of their technology. We clearly need to engage at the highest level, given the stakes involved ...ens of billions of dollars in contracts and substantial numbers of high-technology jobs could be involved," a cable from the Rome embassy said in February 2009.

In some cases, NRC officials, while not lobbying for American companies, may have smoothed their way. In February 2007, former NRC commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield visited Hanoi to discuss cooperation on nuclear regulation with Vietnam.

According to the embassy, the Vietnamese told Merrifield they had already been approached by French and Japanese companies about a proposed nuclear plant scheduled to start up by 2020. Merrifield, the embassy said, responded in kind that the Vietnamese should expect to hear from American firms like GE and Westinghouse as well.

A spokeswoman for Merrifield's current employer, Shaw Group, was not available for comment.

That push for American counter-action sometimes resulted in overt lobbying, but sometimes the response was more subtle. One striking example came from South Africa in November 2008.

The embassy in Pretoria, so the story goes, helped the American Society of Mechanical Engineers hold a workshop on nuclear codes and standards in Johannesburg. The workshop was sponsored by Westinghouse and Areva, and featured speakers including NRC engineering officials.

While the official purpose of the event was to promote ASME standards to South African suppliers looking to participate in the global nuclear supply chain, the embassy was not shy about explaining its real purpose.

But the embassy indicated there was another purpose: "The unofficial purpose of the workshop was to support Westinghouse's bid as a global supplier committed to localization in South Africa and the ASME standard in its global supply chain, although ASME was technically neutral on the bidding competition," it said.

Their argument was subtle but unmistakable - standards are important, and Westinghouse uses a key international standard, but Areva doesn't, so go Westinghouse instead.

An ASME spokesman declined to comment.

One NRC critic said the very idea of the commission was to divorce the commercial from the professional.

"The whole point in creating the NRC was to get out of the business of looking like they were in the business of promoting anything other than safety," said Henry Sokolski, a conservative nuclear proliferation expert.

"That they should somehow be seen as advantageous to making people comfortable about getting into the business so to speak is itself an abomination. They should be allergic to that," Sokolski said.

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz in New York and Roberta Rampton in Washington, Editing by Martin Howell)

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The skeleton of what will soon be one of the world's biggest nuclear plants is slowly taking shape along China's southeastern coast - right on the doorstep of Hong Kong's bustling metropolis. Three other facilities nearby are up and running or under construction.

PYONGYANG, April 18, Kyodo

North Korea's state television has reported the seriousness of continued radioactive leakages at a Japanese nuclear power plant hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan.

In a Korean Central Television Station program broadcast Sunday night, experts voiced concern about the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

''What is most serious is that even a month after the accident, we see no prospects of getting radioactive leakages under control,'' an expert said.

Another expert warned, ''There is a possibility that unexpected radioactive substances may leak (out of the plant).''

Similarly, the official Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, reported that radioactive contamination has been spreading to not only the air but also soil and the ocean environment.

KCNA and the paper quoted the Japanese nuclear watchdog as saying earlier that Japan had raised the level of severity of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant from 5 to 7, putting it on par with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

The crisis at the Fukushima plant ''is getting more serious,'' KCNA said.

Neither the state TV, KCNA and the Rodong Sinmun referred to a plan unveiled Sunday by the Fukushima plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., to put the troubled reactors at the plant under control in six to nine months.

==Kyodo

ERNON HILLS, Vt., April 19 (UPI) -- Owners of a Vermont nuclear power plant have filed a federal lawsuit to prevent state legislators from closing down the plant when its 40-year license expires.

The outcome of the lawsuit by Entergy Corp., owners of the 39-year-old Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, could set a legal precedent of whether state governments can claim a role in the oversight of nuclear power plants, which are regulated by the federal government, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

In 2006 the Vermont state Senate voted to approve a measure giving state lawmakers the authority to approve or deny a plant's license extension, the newspaper said.

Last year, the Senate voted to close the atomic power station near the Massachusetts border when its license expires next year.

The Entergy lawsuit argues federal, not state, law governs licensing and operation of nuclear power plants.

Legal scholars say the Vermont case could be significant in defining state and federal oversight of nuclear issues.

Boris N. Mamlyuk, who teaches administrative law at Ohio Northern University College of Law, says if federal courts uphold Vermont's right to intercede, then "Nevada, California, and other states will probably renew efforts to curtail the operation of nuclear power plants.''

By Jim Kirwan
4-18-11

 

"The reactors at Fukushima are the largest in the world, and six of them are in total meltdown. They have been melting down since thirty-minutes after the Tsunami' because the cooling systems went off when the earthquake happened and 90 minutes after the cooling stopped-the reactors went into meltdown. This is all a cover-up, this is a false-flag, this is a poisoning of the oceans the atmosphere and the biosphere. No one can escape."   There was an operating nuclear reactor in Sacramento California and 95% of the emissions ended up in the Sierras which supplies all the drinking water for the Bay area and it also goes down to Los Angeles: And it's used for irrigating our food and for dairies and radiation can end up anywhere:" But eventually it ends up in our bodies." (1)   In San Francisco, the drinking water here is now undrinkable unless of course you like drinking Chlorine, straight, no chaser. I use Brita filters to filter drinking-water. But the filters burn out within a week and what comes out of the taps is not drinkable. To take a shower is like a visit to a chemical bath that stinks, profoundly.   I think of this as Reagan's final insult to the dumbest public on the face of the earth because this is Ronnie's famous "Trickle-Down Theory" in-action. And this brings us only death and disease, where there should be life-giving food and water. This is the end result in just one American city, but it is being repeated all across this land as Fukushimacontinues to contaminate the entire planet.   "Depleted Uranium is actually a depopulation agent especially for the unborn and the young and the elderly. With the effect of Depleted Uranium Weapons the effect of global pollution is depopulation of the youngest and the oldest in populations. ~ The 'Decision makers' who decide what weapons we'll use ­ are the politicians. Guess who owns the pharmaceutical companies: It's Cheney, and Bush and Rumsfeld, and people like that. So they're making the decisions to use genocidal weapons and profiting; and then they're making us sick if we live; and then they make more profits on the pharmaceuticals which they're selling to us (To stave off the diseases they gave us in the first place). "Disaster Capitalism."   "Polonium, Uranium, because phosphate fertilizers are loaded with uranium. Phosphate is mined to extract uranium. They only get 15% of the uranium out of the phosphate: 85 percent goes in the fertilizer bag. And we have planes flying all over Europe and all over the United States and Canada, spraying uranium-contaminated phosphate fertilizers all over all our crops, our farmlands, contaminating the runoff, our drinking water, and the animals are all eating it too. So uranium is absolutely everywhere!"   "The HAARP system is a global-weapon of mass-destruction system which was co-developed by the Soviet Union and the Livermore and Los Alamos Labs. That was developed to weaponize nature, and to use the energies released from natural events as weapons-of-war. The Fukushima earthquake was triggered by HAARP, from Alaska by the U. S. Navy. HAARP operates at over a billion mega-watts and it's transmitted through the skies and is bounced of the Chemtrails, which are electro-magnetic mirrors in the sky; so they can transmit it from Alaska all the way around the world by just bouncing it off those mirrors.   Before Chernobyl the US had already been completely nuked and Fukushima just nuked us again-ten times worse than Chernobyl! When you see what we look like twenty years from now it's going to be horrifying. The whole west coast of North America is completely contaminated with radiation now. Both the EPA and the Canadian government said "There's no danger to radiation-no the Fukushima ah-it's just tiny amounts. "Twenty-four of the 124 monitoring stations which the EPA operates were broken" they said.   The question was asked "Why?" Weapons of mass Destruction are created to make PROFITS. "Why is a University creating weapons of Mass-Destruction?" Skull & Bones are Yale men like Kerry, like the Bushes, like many Secretaries of War, almost of the United States were Skull & Bones: It's a secret society of the ruling elite in this country and 85% of the key government positions of the US Government are held by Skull & Bonesmen. That's whose doing it.   "But where's the profit in killing the creativity of our youth?" A lot of it is for land-grabs. 75 or 80% of the energy resources in the United States; that's coal, oil, gas, minerals; are on Native-American Land. So they are using radiation and nuclear technologies to depopulate the Indian Reservations." (1)   "The US has been producing nuclear waste since even before WWII, with nowhere to store it. So all this nuclear waste is sitting at the facilities that generated it, and there's still nowhere to put it. ~ Nuclear weapons and nuclear power are not compatible with life and they're the most expensive weapons that have ever been developed on this planet. What species kills their young for Energy. What species kills their young for Security. What species kills their young for Power. NONE, it's complete insanity.   In the aftermath of Fukushima: An earthquake of magnitude 9.1 occurred at 12:46 on Friday March 11. A magnitude 9 earthquake releases the energy that would be released by one million Hiroshima and Nagasakibombs. What the HAARP System is doing is artificially triggering natural events that released huge amounts of energy that can be used as the destructive force. The earthquake and Tsunami flooded the reactor buildings. There are six reactors at the Fukushima Number one plant and four more at the FukushimaNumber 2 plant. Ninety minutes after the cooling stops, in the cooling ponds which are on top of the reactors.   There are seven cooling ponds at Fukushima, with six on top of the reactors; and there are 600,000 SPENT FUEL RODS, from 40 years of operating those reactors. A (single) spent fuel rod weighs about one-thousand, two hundred pounds. It has over one-thousand three-hundred isotopes in it; and it is exactly what is produced when a nuclear bomb explodes. ~ Four of those reactors blew up from hydrogen explosions and the fuel rods went shooting high into the air and 'that' is what HAS POISONED ALL OF NORTH AMERICA.   (I mean the West coast of Canada, the west Coast of the United States and the West Coast of Mexico). That's the food basket for North America. And this is at levels like bomb testing. This is at levels like Chernobyl released close to the ground and has poisoned the whole world. And now we have something that is at least ten times worse, many times worse than Chernobyl. Because the reactor at Chernobyl, that caught on fire, was half the size of the small reactor in unit one and it was mostly fuel rods that were uranium that burned, instead of the spent fuel rods that represented real nuclear war; that burned at Fukushima! Because of that the whole top third of Honshu, all the way up to the tip of Honshu-that is UNINHABITABLE NOW. It is three-times more radioactive on the ground than after Chernobyl. It's over 3,000 becerels (sp?) per second, of extremely dangerous radionuclides that are decaying across that whole top third of Honshu." (2)   Here's a video of what's left to see of Fukushima-decide for yourself if you think this ruin can ever be operated again. (3)   kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net   1) Leuren Monet Part One of Two www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOYhZlEf5gI   2) Leuren Monet Part Two of Two http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be0ow2Jjs9E&feature=player_embedded   3) Scary Frontier Footage of Fukushima Ruins ­ video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLE2nA-0TBU&feature=player_embedded#at=49

More than 3,200 oil and gas wells classified as active lie abandoned beneath the Gulf of Mexico, with no cement plugging to help prevent leaks that could threaten the same waters fouled by last year's BP spill, The Associated Press has learned.

These wells likely pose an even greater environmental threat than the 27,000 wells in the Gulf that have been plugged and classified officially as "permanently abandoned" or "temporarily abandoned." Those sealed wells were first tallied and reported as a major leaking threat in an investigative report by the AP in July.

The unplugged wells haven't been used for at least five years, and there are no plans to restore production on them, according to the federal government. Operators have not been required to plug the wells because their leases have not expired.

As a result, there is little to prevent powerful leaks from pushing to the surface. Even depleted wells can repressurize from work on nearby wells or shifts in oil or gas layers beneath the surface, petroleum engineers say. But no one is watching to make sure that doesn't happen.

The addition of the unused but officially active wells, as documented in a list provided to the AP by federal officials under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, means at least three-fifths of the 50,000 wells ever drilled in the Gulf have been left behind with no routine monitoring for leaks.

The 27,000 decommissioned wells were drilled mostly on federal leases that have now expired. Government rules for expired leases on the sea floor require operators to plug the wells or make plans to reuse them within a year. In its original report, the AP documented how oil and gas companies regularly flouted the rules regarding temporary abandonment, with some wells "temporarily abandoned" since the 1950s.

Rules for unexpired leases are different, and have allowed operators to simply walk away from idle wells. Some of the roughly 3,200 unsealed wells contained in the latest list were drilled 60 years ago, and most are more than 10 years old.

Federal regulators described idle wells on active leases as a "potential threat" to the environment in a September letter to operators announcing a new program, dubbed "Idle Iron," to plug them within three years. The letter said the program would cover more than 3,000 idle wells but didn't say what kind of wells would be included or whether the wells already contained at least some cement plugging.

The list of specific wells covered by the Idle Iron initiative was provided to the AP by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which regulates oil and gas leases on federal lands on the sea floor.

BOEMRE refused to provide the list when the AP first requested it in September. The agency said at the time that it first wanted to verify with gas and oil companies that the wells were correctly classified. The AP argued that the FOIA provides access to records as they exist at the time of the request, but the agency still refused to release the material.

In finally providing the list last month, BOEMRE said the wells had been "verified." But several weeks later, a representative of the agency, Eileen Angelico, contacted the AP and said it had mistakenly released the original unverified list.

It is that version - a listing of wells as they were classified in September without any challenges from the industry - that the AP has analyzed and used as a basis for this story. Angelico said the verified list wasn't yet ready, despite the earlier assurance that the released list had been checked by operators.

The list cites the American Petroleum Institute number of 3,253 oil or gas wells targeted by the initiative in September. Ninety-nine percent of them, or 3,212, were classified as completed wells. Most were drilled for regular production, but a few were exploratory.

Just 41 of the Idle Iron wells - 1 percent - were already classified in September as "temporarily abandoned."

When wells are drilled, they are lined with metal casing, which is then encased in cement to further shore up the borehole.

Whole segments of wells that are permanently abandoned are plugged with additional lengths of cement - known as plugs - to prevent any oil or gas from pushing its way to the top. Then, the top of the casing is sheared off, and a cap is placed over it.

When wells are temporarily abandoned, fewer cement plugs are placed, so it is easier to drill through the plugs and resume production, if desired.

The typical well in the Iron Idle program is finished only with a wellhead, which is the top of the metal lining, and perhaps a device called a tree, a faucet-like rig equipped with valves to open and shut the flow of hydrocarbons during production.

Federal regulators have acknowledged that even some plugged wells have leaked in the past. And, as the AP disclosed last summer, there is no routine monitoring of abandoned wells - plugged or unplugged.

The oil and gas industry generally views plugging on unexpired leases as an inconvenience and prefers the freedom to resume operations at any time on such wells.

When BP's Deepwater Horizon well blew in the Gulf last April 20, it was being temporarily abandoned to await later production. A poor cement plugging job has been identified as a chief cause of the deadly explosion and spill.

Engineers say the metal and cement lining inside abandoned wells, as well as the plugs, can break down over time and allow leaking. Petroleum or corrosive brine, which is even saltier than sea water, can leak from under the sea floor, harming aquatic life.

The most dramatic threat from the Idle Iron wells is a gusher akin to the BP spill, though probably on a smaller scale, specialists say.

Roger N. Anderson, an energy geophysicist at Columbia University, said he worries about a catastrophic failure of the cement lining in the unplugged wells. "The one thing we don't know very much about is how the cement will age. Highways only last so long, and the cement starts to degrade," he said.

Another danger is that many of the unused Idle Iron wells may be slowly leaking, hurting sea creatures that have adapted to the natural petroleum seepage from the sea floor, but not to higher amounts. "Elevated chronic leaks from thousands of sources spread widely across the Gulf can have much more impact than single spills," said Doug Rader, an ecologist for the Environmental Defense Fund.

A third danger is that hurricanes or other storms will wreck underwater structures and make them leak.

David Pettit, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the lack of oversight of unused wells makes him nervous.

"I have no idea how badly they may be leaking," he said, adding that federal regulators should start with checking some of the oldest wells.

Under the Idle Iron program, operators can choose to seal the wells with a complete series of plugs and sheared-off well lining for permanent abandonment, or with fewer plugs for temporary abandonment.

As a third choice, they may apply limited plugs strategically around the oil or gas zones within the well - but must then seal the well more thoroughly within two more years.

It's not clear if companies would be required to fully seal the Idle Iron wells that are already listed as temporarily abandoned.

Under the new rules, future wells that drop out of production on active leases also must be sealed within three years.

Gene Beck, a petroleum engineer at Texas A&M University who used to work in the petroleum industry, said many companies won't like the Idle Iron program "because it's going to cost a lot of money." It is not clear how much, but companies will have to spend at least $3 billion to permanently plug wells on both active and expired federal leases, according to earlier BOEMRE estimates.

Apache Corp., which operates the most Idle Iron wells with 587 in its portfolio, foresees spending $317 million to plug and decommission its own assets in the Gulf just this year.

Drew Hunger, who manages Gulf decommissioning work for Apache, said he views the timetable of the Idle Iron program as reasonably ambitious, but he added that it also appears to allow for "the limitations on available contractor equipment and manpower."

He said industry complaints about the program revolve around the paperwork and the limited size of BOEMRE's staffing to process it.

Chevron U.S.A., the company with the second-highest number of wells in the program at 528, did not respond to a request for comment. BP has 24 such wells and also did not respond.

Federal officials have said little about how the new program will be enforced. Neither the BOEMRE nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which monitors sea pollution, responded to repeated requests for interviews about the program

By JEFF DONN
AP National Writer

The Michigan State Police have started using handheld machines called "extraction devices" to download personal information from motorists they pull over, even if they're not suspected of any crime. Naturally, the ACLU has a problem with this.

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.

The problem as the ACLU sees it, is that accessing a citizen's private phone information when there's no probable cause creates a violation of the Constitution's 4th Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures.

To that end, it's petitioning the MSP to turn over information about its use of the devices under the Freedom of Information Act. The MSP said it's happy to comply, that is, if the ACLU provides them with a processing fee in excess of $500,000. That's more than $100,000 for each of the five devices the MSP says it has in use.

The ACLU, for its part, says that the fee is odious, and that a public policing agency has a duty to its citizens to be open. "This should be something that they are handing over freely, and that they should be more than happy to share with the public--the routines and the guidelines that they follow," Mark Fancher, an attorney for the ACLU, told Detroit's WDIV.

As of yet there's no suit, but one is likely if the MSP sticks to its proverbial guns and refuses to hand over information about how it's using the cell phone snooping devices, without being first paid off. If litigation does come, the outcome may set a precedent that would have far-reaching effects, and might make a device that most of us carry a pocket battleground in the war of digital privacy.