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.

“I have a distinct feeling that Japan is getting totally unhinged.

Consider these news summaries. Consider them together. Do they make sense to you? Yes they do, don’t they? The combined message is this: Let’s all rejoice in the radiation, it’s good for you and your children. If we all have it everywhere, millions of becquerels of it, that’s only fair and equitable.

* 4,320 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium found from the beef from Minami Soma City, Fukushima: the cattle farm that shipped cows found with radioactive cesium far exceeding the already loose provisional safety limit of 500 becquerels/kg is located in the “emergency evacuation-ready zone” – not even “the planned evacuation zone” or plain “evacuation zone”, both of which do exist in Minami Soma City. (Various posts at this blog)

* The PM assistant and the current Minister in charge of the nuclear accident at Fukushima I Nuke Plant Goshi Hosono is going to announce the abolition of the “emergency evacuation-ready zone”, because “the 1st step in TEPCO’s “roadmap” has been mostly successfully implemented”.

* Fukushima Prefecture has announced it will shut down the official shelters within Fukushima, which will force the evacuees to go back to their own homes.

* Minami-Soma City has issued a notice to all 32,000 city residents who have been living in the shelters, temporary housing outside Fukushima Prefecture that they must return to Minami-Soma, high radiation or not. (Mainichi Yamagata version, 7/12/2011)

* The national government will spend 100 billion yen (US$1.26 billion) to observe the health of 2 million Fukushima residents for 30 years, instead of evacuating them ASAP. About 1600 yen (US$20) per year per resident. Life is cheap. Since the national government is utterly broke, it will be ultimately paid for by the taxpayers of Japan.” Read more.

… and if another catastrophic earthquake doesn’t sink Japan into the Pacific first.  So to all the Einsteins and Edisons, put your thinking caps on …

“A roadmap toward decommissioning of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant indicates that the removal of melted nuclear fuel rods at the plant may begin in 10 years.

NHK has obtained the mid- and long-term roadmap which was presented when officials from the operator of the Fukushima plant, government officials in charge of nuclear safety, and manufacturers of nuclear reactors met last week.

The draft roadmap drawn up by the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission and Tokyo Electric Power Company says they tentatively set a target date to begin removing fuel rods that melted and fell to the bottom of the reactor.

The work is considered to be the most important phase in the decommissioning process. The roadmap indicates that removal will start in 2021 if technology essential for the work has been developed before that.”  Read more.

Ten Workers Enter Reactor 3 For 9 Minutes and Get 5.3 Millisieverts of Radiation – “6 TEPCO employees and 4 TEPCO affiliate company employees went to the reactor building of the Reactor 3 on July 8 afternoon. 2 TEPCO employees entered the building, measured the radiation at the location where the nitrogen injection hose would be installed (55 millisieverts/hour), and put a temporary coupler on the metal pipe that would be used for nitrogen injection. For that 9-minute job, they received 5.34 millisieverts radiation.” Read more.

By Nicholas Ito – “Tokyo (CNN) — A Japanese health official downplayed the dangers Tuesday after cesium contaminated meat from six Fukushima cows was delivered to Japanese markets and probably ingested.

Goshi Hosono, state minister in charge of consumer affairs and food-safety, said he hoped to head off any overreactions.

‘If we were to eat the meat everyday, then it would probably be dangerous,’ Hosono said at a news conference Tuesday. ‘But if it is consumed only in small portions, I don’t think it would have any long-lasting effects on the human body.’

The meat, delivered late last month, has made its way to consumers and most likely has been ingested, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Monday evening. This was preceded by another recent discovery of radiation in the meat of 11 cows delivered to Tokyo from the same farm.

The discovery was made when Tokyo’s office of health and welfare investigated six deliveries made at the end of June from a Fukushima farm. So far, radiation has been confirmed from three out of the six cows. In one case, radiation reached 3400 Becquerels, which is about seven times the limit set by the government.

When the Fukushima Prefectural Government, on Monday, investigated the farm from which the meat was delivered, cesium was found in cattle feed such as hay, with radiation levels as much as 57 times higher than the ceiling set by the Japanese government.” Read more.

By Matthew Penney – “Japan’s leading business journal Toyo Keizai has published an article by Hokkaido Cancer Center director Nishio Masamichi, a radiation treatment specialist. The piece, entitled ‘The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation’, was published on June 27 and is consistent with the critical coverage of the Fukushima crisis that has appeared in independent weekly magazines, notably Shukan Kinyobi, which have taken a strong anti-nuclear stance since the March 11 earthquake-tsunami-meltdown, and have repeatedly focused on the dangers of radiation exposure while calling for far-reaching measures to protect those at risk.

Nishio begins by asserting that the Fukushima crisis has caused Japan’s ‘myth of nuclear safety’ to crumble. He has ‘grave concern’ for the public health effects of the ongoing radiation leak.

Nishio originally called for ‘calm’ in the days after the accident. Now, he argues, that as the gravity of the situation at the plant has become more clear, the specter of long-term radiation exposure must be reckoned with.

Lamenting the poor state of public knowledge of radiation, Nishio writes, ‘Japan, with its history of having suffered radiation exposure from the atomic bombs, should have the most [direct] knowledge of radiation, but in fact, in the approach to the nuclear accident, has simply fallen into confusion.’ He places blame on a number of groups:

• TEPCO executives, who he accuses of having hidden the truth and prioritized the survival of the company over public health.
• Bureaucrats who were unable to put together an accurate body of information about radiation effects from which to formulate policy.
• A prime minister and cabinet lacking both leadership and an appropriate sense of urgency.
• Politicians who sought to use the crisis in intra- or inter-party struggles.
• Nuclear industry lobbyists and ‘academic flunkies’ (goyo gakusha) of the government who built up the myth of nuclear safety in the first place.

Looking at these groups, he writes, ‘I just cannot feel any hope for Japan’s future. These circumstances are simply tragic.'” Read more.

Radiation Expert Predicts More Threats from Fukushima – “A former nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan blasted the government’s handling of the crisis, and predicted more revelations of radiation threats to the public in the coming months. In his first media interview since resigning his post in protest in April, Toshiso Kosako, one of the country’s leading experts on radiation safety, said Mr. Kan’s government has been slow to test for dangers in the sea and to fish, and has understated certain radiation threats to minimize clean-up costs.” Read more.

“A video first released by TEPCO in April has been re-analyzed by Ian Goddard and appears to reveal a handle found atop a single nuclear fuel bundle. This raises more questions about the condition of any fuel still remaining in the Unit 3 fuel pool.”

Flashback: Fukushima Nuclear Reactor No. 3 Using Controversial, and Dangerous, MOX Fuel – “… an article by retired physical-chemistry engineer Jean-Pierre Morichaud highlights data provided by Jean-Paul Schapira, a well-known French nuclear physicist, and Monique Sené of the Association of Scientists for Nuclear Energy Information. In his article, Morichaud notes that some of the safety concerns posed by MOX when compared to traditional uranium fuel includes a more delicate fabrication of fuel rods to protect against contamination, greater risk of loss of control during reactor operation despite the presence of extra control rods, release of fission gases, and corrosion of fuel rods during reactor operation.” Read more.

By Deborah Dupre – “Sunday, the prestigious Doctor Mark Sircus released a new report concurring with a host of scientists and other doctors giving evidence that people of Japan and United States have been subjected to dangerous levels of radiation since Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns, and also subjected to a tight cover-up by authorities and media, the result of which will be millions of baby deaths and new cancer victims. Japanese and American children are already suffering with symptoms that appear to be the first signs of Radiation Sickness.

‘Finally, three months later, we are getting some numbers on what the real dangers are. And finally we can begin to understand the enormous cover-up of the nuclear doom that is reaching lungs all over the west coast of America, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii and at least half of Japan!’ stated Dr. Mark Sircus.

Dr. Sircus Ac., OMD, is director of International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA) http://www.imva.info/. He was trained in acupuncture and oriental medicine at Institute of Traditional Medicine in Sante Fe, N.M., and at the School of Traditional Medicine of New England in Boston. He served at the Central Public Hospital of Pochutla in Mexico, and was awarded the title of doctor of oriental medicine for his work including one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the U.S. Dr. Sircus’s IMVA is dedicated to unifying various disciplines in medicine with the goal of creating a new dawn in healthcare.

‘For infants, it’s a terrible valley of death we have created for them.’ says Dr. Sircus. ‘As we shall see for years, all of them have been born with already polluted bloodstreams and now, the very young ones are dying in greater numbers on the west coast of the United States since Fukushima blew up.'” Read more.

US: Doctors Say 35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown May Be the Result of Fukushima Fallout – “… a physician (Janette D. Sherman, M. D.) and epidemiologist (Joseph Mangano) have penned a short but horrifying essay asking whether a spike in infant deaths in the Northwest are due to Fukushima” Read more.

By Alexia KEFALAS – “Reuters – Greek police clashed with groups of hooded youths in central Athens on Tuesday at the start of two days of strikes and protests against cuts demanded by international lenders as the price for more financial aid.

As Greece teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, parliament is due to vote this week on a package of spending cuts, tax increases and privatisations agreed as part of a massive bailout aimed at averting the euro zone’s first default.

Labour unions have called a 48-hour strike to protest against the measures and more than 5,000 police were deployed to the centre of the capital to deal with expected trouble as a crowd officials estimated at some 20,000 rallied in Syntagma Square, in front of the parliament building.” Read more.

Why France’s Rescue Plan for Greece Won’t Work Either – “France’s new plan to rescue Greece and forestall the looming global financial crisis has one important thing in common with all the previous efforts: It won’t work. Hearing the clamor for a 21st century version of the “Brady Bonds,” which helped save Latin America in the late 1980s, France has proposed allowing Greece to stretch out the maturity of its debt to 30 years, presumably with a more manageable payment schedule. The idea is that it would give Greece time to work out its problems while assuring that the foreign banks holding the 340 billion euros of outstanding debt would still get paid. A few problems:” Read more.

If Greece defaults, many will get hurt – “Many people think this is just a problem for Greece or the Eurozone and really doesn’t matter to the rest of us. But is that really the case? If so, savers all over the world, including U.S. retirees, would likely be impacted… Any way you look at it, this is not just a little problem in Greece. It affects all of us and you need to understand the implications of it for your investments.” Read more.

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“More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday.

Both are about 30 to 40 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which has been releasing radioactive material into the environment since the week of March 11, when the quake and tsunami caused core meltdowns.

‘This won’t be a problem if they don’t eat vegetables or other products that are contaminated,’ said Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University. ‘But it will be difficult for people to continue living in these areas.’

Kamada teamed up with doctors including Osamu Saito of Watari Hospital in the city of Fukushima to conduct two rounds of tests on each resident in early and late May, taking urine samples from 15 people between 4 and 77.

Radioactive cesium was found both times in each resident.” Read more.

Japan to monitor health of Fukushima residents for 30 years – “The government plans to establish a ¥103 billion fund to track the health of all Fukushima Prefecture residents for 30 years, because of radiation leaking from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, government sources said Thursday.” Read more.

Radioactive Strontium from Ocean Soil Off the Plant – “Strontium-89 and strontium-90 have been detected in soil and ocean water, but for the first time they have been detected in ocean soil 3 kilometers off the coast where Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant is located. The samples from 2 locations were taken on June 2.” Read more.