Friday, January 10, 2014

Kim Dotcom says "Mega Net Encryption Will Change World"


Sunday, December 15, 2013

51 Sailors from USS Ronald Reagan Suffering Thyroid Cancer, Leukemia, Brain Tumors After Participating in Fukushima Nuclear Rescue Efforts



Crew members in their mid-20's from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan are coming down with all sorts of radiation-related illnesses after being deployed less than 3 years ago to assist with earthquake rescue operations off the coast of Japan in 2011.  It looks as though the on-board desalinization systems that take salt out of seawater to make it drinkable, were taking-in radioactive water from the ocean for the crew to drink, cook with and bath-in, before anyone realized there was a massive radiation spill into the ocean.

Charles Bonner, attorney representing sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan said "the crew members were not only going to the rescue by jumping into the water and rescuing people out of the water, but they were drinking desalinated sea water, bathing in it, until finally the captain of the USS Ronald Reagan alarmed people that they were encountering high levels of radiation."

Bonner says that as a result of this exposure, the 51 sailors have come down with a host of medical problems, "They have testicular cancer, they have thyroid cancers, they have leukemia's, they have rectal and gynecological bleeding, a host of problems that they did not have before ... people are going blind, pilots who had perfect eyesight but now have tumors on the brain. And it’s only been 3 years since they went in." Bonner pointed out that these service men and women are young people, ages 21, 22, 23 years old and no one in their family had ever suffered any of these kinds of illnesses before.

At present, 51 sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan are named as Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and Bonner says he anticipates adding twenty additional Sailors soon, bringing the total to 70 to 75 because "The Japanese government is in a major conspiracy with TEPCO to hide and conceal the true facts."
In an utterly shocking admission at a meeting of the Japan Press Club on December 12, 2013, the former Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, who was in-office when the Fukushima disaster took place, told assembled journalists "[People think it was March 12th but] the first meltdown occurred 5 hours after the earthquake." This means that the government of Japan KNEW there was horrific radiation being released, but did not tell the U.S. Navy which had deployed the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan to assist with rescue efforts. 

According to "Stars and Stripes" one Plaintiff in the lawsuit is Petty Officer 3rd Class Daniel Hair. When the earthquake struck, Hair and his Reagan shipmates were en route to Korea. They immediately turned around and steamed to the affected area. “There were people in distress,” he said. “This is what we signed up for.”

The Reagan passed through debris as far as the eye could see: wood, refrigerators, car tires, roofs of houses with people riding on them. Hair was told they were five to 10 miles off the coast from Fukushima, which had been damaged by a massive tsunami spawned by the quake.

Sailors were drinking desalinated seawater and bathing in it until the ship’s leadership came over the public address system and told them to stop because it was contaminated, Hair said. They were told the ventilation system was contaminated, and he claims he was pressured into signing a form that said he had been given an iodine pill even though none had been provided. As a low-ranking sailor, he believed he had no choice.
The Navy has acknowledged that the Reagan passed through a plume of radiation but declined to comment on the details in Hair’s story.

Shortly after the disaster, Senior Chief Mike Sebourn was sent from his home base, Naval Air Facility Atsugi, to Misawa Air Base, 200 miles from the faltering power plant. As a designated radiation decontamination officer, he dealt with aircraft and personnel that had flown into the area.

Sebourn, with only two days of training, was tasked with testing seven points on an aircraft’s skin for radiation. He and others crawled all over the crafts for months, he said, with only gloves for protection. At one point, he said, they took the radiator out of one aircraft and tested it. The radiation was four times greater than what should have required them to wear a suit and respirator, he said.

The level of radiation “was incredibly dangerous,” Sebourn said. “Navy aviation had never dealt with radiation before. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew what was safe. It was a nightmare.”

Sebourn said he suffered nose bleeds, headaches and nausea in the immediate aftermath — symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. Months later, he felt weak in his right arm; excruciating pain followed. He said the command fitness leader in charge of physical training at Atsugi watched as his arm atrophied to about half its size.

“I have issues that can’t be explained,” Sebourn said. “It just seems like I am deteriorating.”

Sebourn said he went to doctors more than a dozen times, but no one knew what had caused the former personal trainer to lose 70 percent of the strength in the right side of his body. He retired after 17 years in Japan.

Sebourn is alarmed that the word “radiation” doesn’t appear anywhere in his service record, even though that was his job and he was exposed to it. He believed troops exposed would be red-flagged in their service records and be tracked for medical problems.

According to "The Huffington Post" another Plaintiff in the lawsuit is former Navy Quartermaster Maurice Enis.

Enis says it was more than a month after arriving off the coast of Japan -- and circling at distances of one to 10 miles from the crippled reactors -- when sailors aboard the carrier got word that a nuclear plant had been affected. "Even then, it was rumors," he said. And it wasn't until the USS Ronald Reagan had left Japan and sailors were scrubbing down the ship that they were offered radiation protection. Enis said the enlisted sailors were never offered any iodine. He said he later learned the "higher ups" -- officers and pilots -- had received the tablets to protect their thyroids from radiation damage.

"They had us sign off that we were medically fine, had no sickness, and that we couldn't sue the U.S. government," Enis told The Huffington Post, recalling widespread anger among the sailors who saw it as "B.S." but who also felt they had little choice.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Stunning Photos Capture Rare Snowfall Blanketing Cairo

Egyptians woke up Friday morning to see snow on the streets of Cairo for the first time in their lifetimes. Update: Egypt’s Meteorological Authority says its the first snowfall in “very many years.”



Friday, December 13, 2013

Million Mask March - Video of hundreds of Anonymous activists marching in US & Brazil



Members and supporters of hacktivist collective Anonymous marked Guy Fawkes Day with a global 'Million Mask March' designed to protest against government corruption, corporate malfeasance and the expanding surveillance state.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Drone strike kills 15 Wedding party-goers in Yemen



Fifteen people who had been heading to a wedding in Yemen have been killed in an air strike. Local media reported that a drone attack had been responsible, and the party-goers had been hit instead of an Al-Qaeda convoy.
“An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital,” a Yemeni security official told Reuters.
Five more people were injured in the attack which took place in Radda, central al-Bayda province on Thursday, the source added.
The group had been en route to the the village of Qaifa, the site of the wedding, when it was hit. The assault left charred bodies strewn in the road and vehicles on fire, officials told AP.
While officials would not identify the source of the air strike, local and tribal media sources attributed the deaths to a drone attack.
No comment followed as to whose drone may have delivered the strike. However, the US is known for its counter-terrorism assistance to the country which at times includes UAV raids.

Washington has recently increased the intensity of its drone strikes in Yemen - despite widespread criticism sparked by the fact that strikes are not always accurate. In October, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism Ben Emmerson said that US drone strikes killed 2,200 in the past decade, 400 of whom were civilians.

Yemen is considered to be the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)’s main foothold of what is deemed the most active wing of the militant network.

Critics maintain that the drone strikes program in the country has done nothing to stem the growth of Al-Qaeda, and has even increased support for the terror network.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

12 Year old girl kills herself to see her father again in heaven


"Girl, 12, hangs herself and leaves a note for her mother saying she wanted to see her dead father again because she 'missed him so much'"* Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks discuss this shocking story. Cenk and Ana also discuss religion and it's effect on people. Tell us what you think of religion in the comment section below.

Monday, December 2, 2013

If The Minimum Wage Rose With The Pay of the Top 1%, It Would Be Nearly $23/hour




A New York Times study has shown that if the minimum wage had risen at the same rate as that of the pay of the top 1% of earners, it would stand at $22.62 per-hour, a staggering 212% higher than it is now.

The federal minimum wage is currently set at $7.25 per-hour. It has remained below a poverty-level wage since 1982. This has contributed to the explosion in income inequality seen in America in the past few decades. Minimum wage jobs tend to be short-term, with few if any benefits, and those who hold those jobs are extremely easy to let go (in what we are enjoined by the ruling classes to embrace as “labor market flexibility”). A 212% increase in the minimum wage may sound exorbitant, but according to the Times’s study:

"Worker productivity has more than doubled since 1968, and if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity gains it would have been $21.72 last year. From 2000 to 2012 alone workers boosted their productivity by 25 percent yet saw their earnings fall rather than rise, leading some economists to label the early 21st century a lost decade for American workers."

The study also revealed the demographic breakdown of those employed in minimum wage jobs. Less than 25% of them are teenagers, and 4 in 10 of them are over the age of 30. Perhaps the most interesting revelation is that since people of color are over-represented in the minimum wage workforce, a modest rise in the minimum wage to just $10.10 per-hour would lift a staggering 3.5 million people of color out of poverty. It just so happens that an increase to $10.10 per-hour received the public backing of President Obama last month.

American workers are working harder and longer but not seeing any reward for their titanic effort. This year has seen a wave of strikes among low-paid workers, particularly in the service and retail sector. Due to the intransigence of the Republican-controlled House over the issue, campaigners have turned their attention to individual states where they have seen some success. States such as Washington and New Jersey have recently approved significant increases in their minimum wage, and activists are lobbying lawmakers in a number of other states.