MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

“In one case, the rice hay that the cows ate had 500,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium.

Professor Kosako’s ‘chaotic harvest season’ must be now.

84 more meat cows from Fukushima that ate highly radioactive hay were discovered by Fukushima Prefecture, as the prefectural government started to test rice hay fed to the cows.

From Mainichi Shinbun Japanese (2:41PM JST 7/16/2011):

Fukushima Prefecture announced on July 16 that 84 additional meat cows that had been fed the potentially radioactive rice hay were shipped inside Fukushima, and to Tokyo, Saitama, Yamagata, and Miyagi Prefectures.” Read more.

High Level of Plutonium Rumored to Have Been Detected in Rice Paddies 50 Kilomters from Fukushima I Nuke Plant – “An old ‘baseless rumor’ (back in May) that no MSM mentioned (not even to refute it), although bloggers cited the passage. But as the rice grows in the rice paddies in Kanto and Tohoku and more and more cows are found radioactive because what they ate was highly radioactive (rice hay), it may be worth keeping it in mind, just in case.” Read more.

“Revelations that radiation-contaminated rice straw used as feed for beef cattle was produced far away from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant have sent shockwaves through the livestock farming community in Fukushima Prefecture.

Consumers have also been filled with a sense of growing distrust in the government over delays in responding to the problem of radiation-tainted beef.

Forty-two beef cows that ate rice straw contaminated with radioactive cesium were found to have been shipped from a livestock farm in the Fukushima Prefecture town of Asakawa from April 8. The rice straw had been supplied by a farmer in Shirakawa, about 75 kilometers away from the tsunami-hit nuclear power station.

‘It’s unbelievable that this (contamination) occurred in an area so far away from the nuclear plant,’ said a 34-year-old man who has run a livestock farm in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, for nearly 10 years.

On July 8 the government asked livestock farmers in the city to refrain from shipping beef.

‘Fukushima-produced beef cows will no longer sell unless we switch to feed produced outside the prefecture and suspend shipments of beef cows until the safety of all feed produced in the prefecture is confirmed,’ the Minamisoma farmer said.

Officials with the local governments of areas to which the cows had been shipped were busy confirming meat distribution routes until late on July 14.” Read more.

“Budget and debt problems are once again racking America. Barack Obama has failed to persuade the Republican majority in Congress to raise the national debt ceiling. That much is nothing new, and similar attempts will be unlikely to succeed in the future. Since July 10, the White House has been holding daily consultations on raising the ceiling. The current ceiling of $14.3 trillion must be raised by several hundred billion, or the Department of the Treasury will run out of money by August 2.

Looming crisis

The Americans raise their debt ceiling on a regular basis. Since 1993, they have come close to defaulting 16 times. In 1995, the government even shut down for a week. In the past, the world perceived these exercises as a matter of course, whereas now the unwritten rule of the U.S. budget is increasingly becoming a sore subject.

The times have changed, and the national debt and deficit have become too astronomical to be treated as an American eccentricity, especially considering the U.S.-bred financial crisis of 2008 and the backdrop of failing finances in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal (likely to be followed by Spain and Italy) and the patently pre-crisis condition of the Euro.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has not yet announced who will be the hardest hit if worst comes to worst – the secretaries of departments, other officials, congressmen, senators, the Pentagon, intelligence, teachers, transportation workers, the IRS, NASA, museums, or janitors. That much, at least, is of little concern to Europe.

The problem is not salary cuts for specific agencies but U.S. solvency. Nobody is saying that the United States will immediately default on its entire sovereign debt – it remains the most reliable debtor in the world.

The trouble lies elsewhere:” Read more.

Bernanke: Debt ceiling breach ‘calamitous’ – “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was back on Capitol Hill Thursday, warning that failure by Congress to raise the debt ceiling would be ‘a calamitous outcome.’… And he said while the Fed would do what it could to respond to such a default, that the central bank would not be able offset the impact of the damage. His remarks echoed recent warnings from credit rating agencies that there could be a downgrade in the nation’s credit rating if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.” Read more.

Moody’s put U.S. credit rating under review for potential downgrade – “Moody’s Investors Service raised the pressure on U.S. lawmakers to increase the government’s $14.3 trillion debt limit by placing the nation’s credit rating under review for a downgrade… The rating may be reduced to the Aa range, and there is no assurance Moody’s would restore its top rating, even if a default is quickly ‘cured.'” Read more.