MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Madison Ruppert – “The crisis at Fukushima was not only a crisis for the people of Japan and the nuclear industry as a whole; it was also a public relations disaster for the Japanese government.

TEPCO, the Japanese utility company that operated Fukushima Daiichi, along with the Japanese government were consistently exposed telling blatant lies or misrepresentations of the truth.

Now, in an attempt to mitigate the public relations fallout that has ensued from their deceit of the Japanese people and those around the globe, the government is devoting roughly 70 million yen or $913,000 to combating what they bill ‘erroneous information’ about the disaster.

The contract was awarded to a Tokyo advertising company who will likely continue their efforts until March.

While the agency will not demand that original postings be taken down or that the poster’s identity be revealed; they will identify the allegedly “erroneous information” in order to carry ‘correct information’ on their website.” Read more.

Government’s move to monitor online sparks public outcry – “While the government defends its new monitoring program of online postings concerning the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to stem the spread of ‘inaccurate’ information, critics say it harkens back to Big Brother… The agency said it is trying to ‘track down inaccurate information and to provide correct ones instead.’ But critics are skeptical about the agency’s motive, especially because the government has been under fire for failing to provide an accurate picture of what has been occurring at the plant and the spread of radioactive contamination.” Read more.

“Japan’s government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs.

Government nuclear experts, however, said the World War II bomb blast and the accidental reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, which has seen ongoing radiation leaks but no deaths so far, were beyond comparison.

The amount of caesium-137 released since the three reactors were crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami has been estimated at 15,000 tera becquerels, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, quoting a government calculation.

That compares with the 89 tera becquerels released by ‘Little Boy’, the uranium bomb the United States dropped on the western Japanese city in the final days of World War II, the report said.

The estimate was submitted by Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s cabinet to a lower house committee on promotion of technology and innovation, the daily said.” Read more.

By Harry Wilson and Philip Aldrick – “Insurance on the debt of several major European banks has now hit historic levels, higher even than those recorded during financial crisis caused by the US financial group’s implosion nearly three years ago.

Credit default swaps on the bonds of Royal Bank of Scotland, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Intesa Sanpaolo, among others, flashed warning signals on Wednesday. Credit default swaps (CDS) on RBS were trading at 343.54 basis points, meaning the annual cost to insure £10m of the state-backed lender’s bonds against default is now £343,540.

The cost of insuring RBS bonds is now higher than before the taxpayer was forced to step in and rescue the bank in October 2008, and shows the recent dramatic downturn in sentiment among credit investors towards banks.

‘The problem is a shortage of liquidity – that is what is causing the problems with the banks. It feels exactly as it felt in 2008,’ said one senior London-based bank executive.

‘I think we are heading for a market shock in September or October that will match anything we have ever seen before,’ said a senior credit banker at a major European bank.” Read more.

By Keith Johnson – “For several months, there has been a news blackout in the United States concerning the devastation and human suffering caused by a 9.0 earthquake that rocked the east coast of Japan on March 11. The resulting tsunami claimed nearly 16,000 lives and made hundreds of thousands homeless.

On the island of Honshu, three reactors at the Daiichi nuclear power facility in Fukushima went into full meltdown. Explosions and fires caused additional damage to other reactors and released vast quantities of poisonous radioactive materials into the environment. Livestock, crops and drinking water within a 75-mile radius of the accident were immediately contaminated. Now, reports of lethal doses of radiation as far as 200 miles away are starting to become more commonplace.

In the United States, a recent report by Janette Sherman, M.D. and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano indicate a 35-percent spike in infant mortality throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Meanwhile, the true extent of the damage and radioactive contamination caused by the Fukushima disaster continues to be downplayed or ignored entirely by the mainstream media. Getting to the truth has been difficult.

‘Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,’ says Arnold Gunderson, a nuclear power expert who served as an expert witness in the investigation of the Three Mile Island accident. In an exclusive interview with AFP, Gunderson gives a timely assessment of the ongoing crisis in Japan and aprises us of what he expects to unfold in the future.” Read more.

Fukushima disaster: residents may never return to radiation-hit homes – “Residents who lived close to the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant are to be told their homes may be uninhabitable for decades, according to Japanese media reports… [Japanese Prime Minister] Kan’s announcement will be the first time officials have publicly recognised that radiation damage to areas near the plant could make them too dangerous to live in for at least a generation, effectively meaning that some residents will never return to them.” Read more.

‘Fukushima’ on the Mississippi?  It could happen – “In May, the federal government simulated an earthquake so massive, it killed 100,000 Midwesterners instantly, and forced more than 7 million people out of their homes. At the time, National Level Exercise 11 went largely unnoticed; the scenario seemed too far-fetched — states like Illinois and Missouri are in the middle of a tectonic plate, not at the edge of one. A major quake happens there once every several generations. But Tuesday’s earthquake along the East Coast is a reminder that disasters can hit where they’re least expected. And if the nightmare scenario comes, government officials worry that state and federal authorities won’t be able to handle the ‘cascading failures’ that follow.” Read more.

By Heidi Stevenson – “At the time BP finally capped the Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico, there were concerns that the process had damaged the seafloor. That fear is now materializing. BP’s Gulf Gusher may be spewing again—and if so, there is no way to stop it. It will continue until seafloor pressure and oil pressure have been equalized, which may take decades.

BP is aware. They’ve hired 40 fishing boats to string boom around the Deepwater Horizon site.

BP, of course, denies it. They claim to have sent several remote-controlled mini submersibles and concluded that the leak could not have come from their well. However, a United State Coast Guard undersea inspection at the site of the Macondo Well found that it was, indeed, leaking. They say that they have video footage of it. BP says it wasn’t oil—it was silt.

Oil is washing ashore in the same areas that were hardest hit last year. It has been tested and is clearly fresh oil from the Macondo well.” Read more.

“This data may be indicative of a RECENT SIGNIFICANT radiological event in Fukushima.

The reading was taken at approximately 10:20am on 8/20/11 in Saint Louis Missouri from a vehicle that had driven approximately 4 miles through the trailing edges of a thunderstorm.

The sample returned a reading of 1.786 mR/hr, which equates to ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT times greater than normal background radiation. This reading is almost 3 times greater than the previous high reading of 62x background radiation.”

“The Japanese government may declare areas near the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant uninhabitable for more than 10 years – perhaps decades – because of radiation levels that are more than 500 times safety limits, according to newspaper reports.

Japanese newspaper The Daily Yomiuri reports government sources have said it could be ‘several decades’ before the area is considered safe to enter, ABC reports…

Radiation readings measuring up to 508.1 millisieverts per year were detected in Okuma town, 1.8 miles from the plant, compared with the internationally recommended limit of 1 millisievert a year, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, said on its website, Bloomberg reports.” Read more.

‘The Whole World Will Be Exposed From The Radiation From Fukushima’ – “Physicist Michio Kaku appeared on 60 Minutes (the Australian edition), and said: ‘The whole world will be exposed from the radiation from Fukushima. [The Japanese people] are guinea pigs, absolute human guinea pigs.’ In fact, radiation experts say that huge quantities of radiation are currently being released by Fukushima. In addition to direct releases, the Japanese are burning radioactive material, putting much more radioactivity into the air. Japanese doctors are warning about the dangers of radiation for the Japanese people … especially kids. Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that radioactive rain-outs were documented recently in British Columbia and Oklahoma with geiger counters. And former Nasa photo analyst Michael Rivero – who has been measuring radiation levels in Oahu, Hawaii, every day since the Japanese earthquake – reports the highest radiation readings yet are occurring right now.” Read more.

“Newly released neutron data from three University of California San Diego scientists confirms Fairewinds’ April analysis that the nuclear core at Fukushima Daiichi turned on and off after TEPCO claimed its reactors had been shutdown. This periodic nuclear chain reaction (inadvertent criticality) continued to contaminate the surrounding environment and upper atmosphere with large doses of radioactivity.

In a second area of concern, Fairewinds disagrees the NRC’s latest report claiming that all Fukushima spent fuel pools had no problems following the earthquake. In a new revelation, the NRC claims that the plutonium found more than 1 mile offsite actually came from inside the nuclear reactors. If such a statement were true, it indicates that the nuclear power plant containments failed and were breached with debris landing far from the power plants themselves. Such a failure of the containment system certainly necessitates a complete review of all US reactor containment design and industry assurances that containments will hold in radioactivity in the event of a nuclear accident. The evidence Fairewinds reviewed to date continues to support its April analysis that the detonation in the Unit 3 Spent Fuel pool was the cause of plutonium found off site.

Third, the burning of radioactive materials (building materials, trees, lawn grass, rice straw) by the Japanese government will cause radioactive Cesium to spread even further into areas within Japan that have been previously clean, and across the Pacific Ocean to North America.

And finally, the Japanese government has yet to grasp the severity of the contamination within Japan, and therefore has not developed a coherent plan mitigate the accident and remediate the environment. Without a cohesive plan to deal with this ongoing problem of large scale radioactive contamination, the radioactivity will continue to spread throughout Japan and around the globe further exacerbating the problem and raising costs astronomically.” Source.

“In a recent speech at the Heritage Foundation, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett told the audience he is not part of some lunatic fringe.

To assure his audience of his lucidity seemed necessary before the Maryland Republican listed dark predictions of what might happen if the nation does not prepare for catastrophic electrical failure from a solar storm or a nuclear bomb.

‘It would end life as you know it,’ Bartlett said at a panel assembled to discuss the effect of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, unleashing irreversible destruction on the nation’s electrical grid.

Bartlett said the threat is real enough that Congress should force utility companies to protect critical transformers in preparation for an EMP event.

So far, the science fiction community has proved more interested than Congress in EMP events, devoting space in novels and movies to a doomsday scenario where electricity is out for years as the United States struggles to recover…

Experts think it actually would take a nuclear bomb detonated miles high in the sky to render electrical grids useless.

EMPs instantly destroy most anything electrical, similar to how a direct lightning strike disables appliances plugged into your home, but EMPS are much more destructive than lightning.

They easily overpower surge protectors, knocking out electrical grids all over the country, potentially even all over the world.” Read more.

CIA expert: North Korea perfecting EMP ‘doomsday’ weapon to use against US – “A former CIA nuclear weapons expert analyst is warning that the nuclear weapons rogue state North Korea is perfecting are designed to cripple the US infrastructure with a devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Why is a North Korean EMP weapon potentially so dangerous? An EMP weapon is similar in many respects to a massive solar flare. Both create titanic upsurges of erratic flux in electrical fields. 21st Century America is especially vulnerable to such an attack. A nuclear burst designed to generate an EMP wave would create instant havoc to the electrical grid of a country, knock out the infrastructure, destroy most computers and servers, and disrupt the entire fragile mosaic of national distribution.” Read more.

By Chisaki Watanabe – “Medical tests on children living in three towns near the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant found 45 percent of those surveyed suffered low-level thyroid radiation exposure, Japan’s government said in a statement.

While the statement didn’t comment on the source of the contamination, the announcement follows reports of radioactive material found in food after radiation leaks from the meltdown of three reactors at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant.

The tests covered 1,080 children aged up to 15 in three towns, Iwaki, Kawamata and Iitate, between 38 to 47 kilometers from the reactors. The tests between March 24 and 30 showed none of the children’s thyroid glands exceeded the safety threshold of 0.2 microsievert per hour set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, according to the Aug. 17 statement.

At least one child had 0.1 microsievert per hour, the highest level observed, while more than half of those exposed absorbed 0.01 microsievert per hour, the statement said. Children are susceptible to poisoning from radioactive iodine, which can accumulate in the thyroid and cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization.” Read more.

“The Japan nuclear disaster is the worst catastrophe in the history of mankind, but little is discussed about documented radioactive impacts to U.S. air, water, and food. A U.S. nuclear engineer calculated that Fukushima meltdowns could release as much as 20 times more radiation than Chernobyl. Still, EPA limited meaningful testing and the media pays little attention. Most states aren’t testing. Others attempt to minimize risk.

Radiation leaked unabated since March 12, 2011. Radiation continues to spew into the air and ocean from Fukushima with no end in sight. A Japanese nuclear engineer admitted meltdown began hours after the disaster started and the situation hasn’t been contained. Three Fukushima nuclear reactors melted down and could emit radiation uncontrolled for another year or longer. A fission event and fire also occurred in fuel pool #4.

Jet stream air currents flowing across the Pacific Ocean from Japan resulted in the U.S. receiving a steady flow of radiation. One week after the disaster, radiation was found in California rainwater. April 6, 2011 rainwater samples showed an 18,100 percent increase above federal standards. Radiation was found in Pennsylvania rainwater 181 times normal limits.

U.S. labs detected radiation from Fukushima in our air, precipitation, milk, drinking water, fruits, and vegetables. Airborne radioactive particles were detected in U.S. soil. Broad-leaf vegetables including spinach and kale are accumulating radiation from rain and dust. In California, spinach, arugula, wild-harvested mushrooms, and strawberries tested positive for cesium 134 and 137. Comprehensive testing of imports is imperative. Even tea and cows in Japan are highly radioactive.

When radiation is in milk, the entire food supply is at risk. One month after Japan’s nuclear disaster started, radiation showed up in California milk. Milk sold in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Arizona, Arkansas, Vermont and Washington also tested positive for radiation. In Hawaii, it was detected 2,033 percent above drinking water safety limits.

Drinking water in some U.S. municipalities shows radioactive contamination from Japan’s fallout. Philadelphia drinking water had the highest radiation levels (reported April 10, 2011). Hardly surprising, since Philadelphia is only about 20 miles downstream from Limerick Nuclear Plant’s continuous radioactive wastewater discharges into the Schuylkill River, 365 days a year.” Read more.