TransCanada has applied for new permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and state agencies to build its proposed Keystone XL pipeline across over 1,000 U.S. waterways, including the Missouri, Niobrara, and Keya Paha rivers in Nebraska. [1]
The pipeline would imperil the drinking water of Tribal, rural, and urban communities — including the city of Omaha — that rely on the Missouri River, as well as the precious Ogallala aquifer, which provides water that irrigates one-third of our nation’s crops.
This move by TransCanada to apply for new permits comes after indigenous, landowner, and environmental groups including Bold successfully sued to stop the company’s illegal use of a blanket “Nationwide Permit 12” to fast-track authorization of Keystone XL construction through all 1,000+ water crossings. [2]
The Army Corps and state agencies are now accepting public comments on TransCanada’s new water permit application until Sept. 13, 2020. (Public hearings are also expected to be scheduled in late September or October, details to come). [3]
A full length documentary by Sacha Stone exposing the 5G existential threat to humanity in a way we never imagined possible! Please SHARE this as widely as you feel drawn…use it to target your local bureaucrats, technocrats, health practitioners, local and federal government agencies and more than anything else…your family and friends. Featuring in this film: weapons development experts, biologists, molecular & cellular biologists, blood microscopists, activists, as well as good leaders out there on the frontline. We know what this technology is – we know how it was conceived and we know where it is intended to take people and planet. We are drawing the line here….and we are doing so with the full fire of consciousness. Arise Homo sapiens!
Like every “next generation” wireless network technology, 5G will give your phone a speedier connection — about 10 times faster than 4G, industry experts expect.
What most people are unaware of is that frequency signatures and electromagnetic radiation can drastically alter human physiology. This would include smartphones, Wi-Fi networks and smart meters that are being used more frequently than ever before by utility and communications companies.
These technologies are undoubtedly causing cancers, diabetes, neurological disorders and a plethora of other health disorders in people all over the world.
Even in the rare scenario where a person doesn’t own a smartphone, they’re still regularly bombarded by electromagnetic radiation coming from Wi-Fi networks and other forms of frequencies that are found in most neighborhoods and public locations.
Society receives profound benefits from electronics. Unfortunately, many technologies (i.e. cell phones, cell towers, Wi-Fi and smart meters) emit electromagnetic radiation (EMR) that can harm human health and wildlife. Katie Singer’s An Electronic Silent Spring encourages recognition that EMR can harm. This site offers protective solutions for public health and our ecosystem.
About An Electronic Silent Spring by Katie Singer
An Electronic Silent Spring explores What is EMR? (Electromagnetic radiation emitted by wireless technologies like cell phones, cell towers, cordless DECT phones, Wi-Fi, smart meters.)
It answers What is EMF? (EMF stands for electromagnetic fields. All living creatures need the Earth’s EMFs in order to navigate, digest food, reproduce and more. Man-made EMFs emitted by electronic technologies can interfere with and harm living creatures’ basic functioning.
An Electronic Silent Spring focuses on how mobile phones and Wi-Fi affect children and how wireless technologies can interfere with medical implants like insulin pumps, cardiac pacemakers and deep brain stimulators. More
Environmental Protection Agency data show that in some Corn Belt communities, atrazine levels can spike three to seven times above the legal limit in late spring and early summer. But by avoiding water testing during peak periods, some water utilities stay in compliance with drinking water regulations – and don’t have to tell customers they were exposed to a hazardous chemical in their tap water.
“Our investigation found that nearly 30 million Americans have atrazine in their tap water,” said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG senior science advisor for children’s environmental health. “But many may never know, because outdated federal policies allow utilities to test for atrazine before or after the spike.” READ MORE HERE
A Los Angeles journalist’s photographs are providing evidence of how the destructive Woosley wildfire could be spreading toxic and deadly contamination.
KCAL9’s Stu Mundel’s photos show the fire beginning in the proximity of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, or SSFL. The consequences attached to such a realization are disastrous for the surrounding communities which have long fought the laboratory’s alleged contamination issue.
Here’s the breakdown. It all makes sense if you follow along.
Southern California Edison reported a disturbance the Chatsworth substation, which is located on SSFL property, a mere two minutes prior to a fire erupting. In 1959, a Sodium Reactor Experiment reactor partially melted down in the same location. KCAL9’s Stu Mundel posted pictures of the incident here: READ MORE HERE
California officials have now confirmed that 59 people have died as a result of the devastating Southern California Woosley fire. Officials say the Northern California Camp Fire has now destroyed at least 9,000 homes and forced 52,000 residents to evacuate.
As bad as this is, for Californians, things are going to get worse following a deceptive move by its governor, Jerry Brown.
Camp Fire Potentially Started By Pacific Gas and Electric Company
California’s resources are not only battling several major destructive fires, but they are also intensely investigating potential causes.
Yesterday, I wrote up an article on potential cause of the Woosely fire, which California denies. Wildfire blame in California can mean billions in litigation. The state doesn’t want to get it wrong, or misplace blame, or even, honestly apply blame. It’s a mess.
“Working mostly with data from Facebook and other social media sites, they are able to determine what people want to hear and how they want to hear it. Cambridge Analytica based much of its model on research done by Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre which earlier published an online personality quiz that went viral. In the UK there are ethical guidelines about how such data can be used and according to Professor Johathan Rush, the Centre’s director, as quoted in the Guardian article:
“The danger of not having regulation around the sort of data you can get from Facebook and elsewhere is clear. With this, a computer can actually do psychology, it can predict and potentially control human behaviour. It’s what the scientologists try to do but much more powerful. It’s how you brainwash someone. It’s incredibly dangerous.”
The Precautionary Principle: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage to environmental or human health, exploitation by any corporate or personal entity that could damage the environment or the health of humans must be delayed until there is absolute scientific certainty that damage can be totally averted.”
“The point, ladies and gentleman, is that greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.” – Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) from the movie Wall Street
“The economic system in the USA is not capitalism. Rather, it is corporate fascism, individualism and money worship, not capitalism.” – Anonymous
”Environment Canada reported that the metallic contaminants that had been dumped in the tailings pond included these hazardous metals:Lead, Arsenic, Nickel, Zinc, Cadmium, Vanadium, Antimony, Manganese and Mercury.” (Note that Mount Polley was a copper mine whose massive tailings lagoon earthen dam [130 feet tall] dissolved in 2014, suddenly releasing 24,000,000 million cubic meters of toxic sludge into the tiny Hazeltine Creek, the nearby Lake Polley and then into the pristine Quesnel Lake, which flowed into the 600 mile long Fraser River, a migratory Sockeye salmon-bearing river that empties into the Georgia Strait and the Pacific Ocean at the city of Vancouver, B.C. The dam wall breech resulted in the worst environmental disaster in the history of British Colombia)
Last night in Duluth, Minnesota (10-22-2018) a small, Minnesota-based, right-wing, Libertarian think tank, the Center of the American Experiment (CAE), came to town to do a one-sided, propagandistic, fact-free promotion supporting the foreign penny stock mining company, PolyMet and its plans to dig an experimental, inherently dangerous, highly toxic, open pit copper/nickel sulfide mine in water-rich northern Minnesota near the headwaters of the St Louis River.
What was likely not discussed at the pro-corporate presentation (to which nobody opposing copper-nickel mining was invited) was the fact that PolyMet’s massive open pit mine has to have an even more massive, highly toxic waste/tailings lagoon nearby that would eventually store, behind 250 foot high (!) earthen dam (!) walls, billions of gallons (!) of eternally-poisonous, highly acidic (sulfuric acid with a pH of stomach acid) mine sludge for generations or centuries (absent, of course a locally heavy rain deluge that could easily cause a sudden, unexpected breech in the earthen dam walls, resulting in what could potentially be the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of Minnesota).
Microwave Sickness is the most widespread manifestation of wireless radiation health effects and exposing its extent is a key to our success in creating change.
US Scientist Criticizes ICNIRP’s Refusal to Reassess Cell Phone Radiation Exposure Guidelines after US National Toxicology Program Studies Show Clear Evidence of Cancer in Experimental Animals
Call the Leaders of the Joint Conference Committee Today to Stop Wireless Broadband Deployment in Rural America
H.R.2 is a Farm Bill that has passed both the Senate and the House. Next Wednesday, September 5th it will be reviewed by a Joint Conference Committee of both the House and the Senate to work out differences before forwarding it to the President.
We want to ask for wired DSL and fiber optics connection to the home, not undependable and unhealthy wireless in rural communities. WE WANT THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS TAKEN OUT OF THE FARM BILL:
As listed on the agenda: Meeting of conferees on H.R.2, to provide for the reform and continuation of agricultural and other programs of the Department of Agriculture through fiscal year 2023.
Most Importantly, Please Call and/or
Email the Following Chairmen and
Ranking Members.
Ask that internet connections remain wired through fiber optics, landlines or ethernet to the home which is a much safer, faster and more cybersecure than wireless communication.
“Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations.” — George Eliot, from the author’s last novel, Daniel Deronda
The Big Oil cartels have, for decades, been poisoning the air, the aquifers, the rivers, the lakes the air, the soil and the Gulf of Mexico, the Persian Gulf and every ocean and ocean floor on the planet with uncounted millions of gallons of toxic crude oil via their risky – and very leaky – deep water oil wells. It wasn’t just the crime against the planet that British Petroleum and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton perpetrated in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. There are many other entities that have contributed to the mortal wounding of the Gulf, and one of the big ones is the US military.
A prime example of the damage done to the Gulf by corporate entities includes the Mississippi River delta’s massive dead zone that has been enlarging rapidly for decades, thanks to the many corporate polluters that have been dumping industrial waste, herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers, prescription drugs and other toxins into surface water streams and rivers (and aquifers also) to flow downstream from such professedly “environmentally friendly” states like Minnesota and its multitude of Big Oil, Big Chemical and Big Agribusiness-co-opted (or duped) farmers. Big Businesses like those meet the definition of sociopaths and therefore must be recognized as conscienceless.
There are hundreds of enlarging dead zones at the mouths of all of the world’s major rivers, but much of the pollution that caused the huge dead zone at the Mississippi River’s mouth started in the Upper Midwest’s farmlands. Especially guilty were the corporate-controlled mega-farms that routinely over-used synthetic herbicides, fertilizers and pesticides on the crops and soil. (See www.geoengineeringwatch.org for more details.)
As I was growing up, I often fished in the upper Minnesota River. Just during my adolescent years, I witnessed the beginnings of the pollution of that river because of farm chemical runoff. I saw the river go from swimmable and fishable to muddy, smelly, toxic and relatively fishless. More
While we are continuing to challenge the Trump administration’s rubber-stamp approval of the federal permit for Keystone XL in the courts, Trump’s State Department recently opened a public comments docket for an “Environmental Assessment” of the new Mainline Alternative route for KXL in Nebraska.
This new route includes land in Nebraska counties that has never before undergone environmental review, and where landowners never knew until now — after all the years of public hearings and submitting comments — that KXL might be plowing through their farms, and had no due process and chance to make their voices heard.
Basically, there’s a huge list of problems with this illegal review. It’s an attempt to shoe-horn a review of private property in Nebraska by a federal agency with no authority over that land, into an illegally outdated environmental review of KXL from 2014, in clear violation of the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
But we still need to make our voices heard. Despite this illegal sham review process that’s been set in motion — which we will continue to fight in the courts — it’s critical that Nebraskans especially, but all Pipeline Fighters sign on and tell the Trump administration they are opposed to Keystone XL.
We’ve composed a sample comment you can sign-on to, that covers all the bases on protesting this illegal process with the same arguments our attorneys are using in court, and includes key issues of concern for Nebraska’s land, water and property rights, and sovereign rights of Indigenous nations. You may also edit the language, or add your own personal statement to the comment.
*Important: If you are a landowner on the new “Mainline Alternative” route, please contact mark@boldnebraska.org for assistance with submitting your comment. For instance, if you have water crossings, or known endangered species or wildlife habitat on your land, be sure to include exact locations and detailed information about them in your comments.
The deadline to submit a public comment is June 25th.
Speaking at an event Wednesday, David Dodge said, “We’re going to have some very unpleasant circumstances,” the Edmonton Journalreported. “There are some people that are going to die in protesting construction of this pipeline. We have to understand that.”
“Nevertheless, we have to be willing to enforce the law once it’s there,” Dodge said. “It’s going to take some fortitude to stand up.”
In an interview with the Journal, he elaborated by saying, “We have seen it other places, that equivalent of religious zeal leading to flouting of the law in a way that could lead to death.”
Dodge’s comments prompted outrage from climate activists.
Author and 350-org co-founder Bill McKibben warned, “North American governments have shown the ‘fortitude’ necessary to kill indigenous people often enough that this is no idle threat,” while Canandian author Naomi Klein called the threat a “disgrace.” She added, “If the worst happens, we now know they went into this with their eyes wide open.”
North American governments have shown the “fortitude” necessary to kill indigenous people often enough that this is no idle threat. https://t.co/PhtB24Bu55
In 2010 the pro-corporate 5/4 United States Supreme Court decided, in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling that favored multi-billionaire corporate elites and their trans-national corporations by making it easier for them to steal US elections by allowing unlimited, anonymous monetary “contributions”/bribes to both major US political parties, political action groups and the many politicians who were then beholden to their newest corporate paymasters.
The Citizen’s United ruling, which should go down in the history books as the “worst Supreme Court decision of the past century”, has emboldened the already powerful, corruptible and endlessly greedy corporations – that already own or somehow have dominion over the economy, the government and the media – to now also be able to have intimate access to any number of campaign fund-needy politicians to do their will whenever their desired legislation comes up for a vote.
Money Doesn’t Just Talk, It Screams
It is impossible for progressive voters to match the influence that comes from the huge amounts of anonymous campaign money from corporations such as is coming from foreign mining companies. And the monetary influence is aimed at politicians from all the political parties who take corporate money namely Democrats and Republicans.
This reality explains why progressive northeast Minnesota voters are always having to swallow hard when going to the polls to vote for the latest DFL candidate who is in the process of betraying voters on environmental issues such as the most recent copper mining issue that will eventually spell environmental disaster for everybody, including pro-business, climate change denying conservatives who live downstream from the proposed mines and their massive polluted tailings lagoons.. More
An Open Letter to the Affected Mayors, City Councilors and Assorted Thought Leaders who Inhabit the Areas Downstream and Downwind
The first (of many) junior mining companies that want to mine copper in northeast Minnesota’s water-rich, relatively unspoiled forest and lakes region is the PolyMet Mining Corporation that is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
PolyMet is a Canadian Penny Stock mining company that you can buy on the NYSE for 81 cents a share. It’s peak share price over the past 12 months was $1.36 a share, but it isn’t on anybody “buy” list at the moment.
PolyMet has never mined anything in its life and has never earned a single penny producing anything of value. It is a front group for Glencore, a multinational mining, commodities and oil and gas trading company that is based in Switzerland. Both corporations prefer doing business hidden behind boardroom walls. PolyMet’s daily operations are mostly funded by greedy institutional investors and loans from the deep-pocketed Glencore. Neither corporation should have any credibility in the minds of right-thinking individuals. I will explain that statement later in the column.
In January 2011, Glencore and PolyMet, signed a secret agreement that guaranteed that Glencore could buy controlling interest in PolyMet with the right to convert it’s debt into equity. It is public knowledge that Glencore also has the rights to sell all the metal that is mined in the first 5 years of production in the world’s markets.
Contrary to PolyMet’s talking points about being good citizens by producing copper for all of our needs, none of the copper that is mined by PolyMet might ever be utilized here at home.More
This is not a new finding, but no global action has yet taken place. The 2010 Report on Possible Impacts of Communication Towers on Wildlife Including Birds and Bees, commissioned by India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests, reviewed the literature on health and environmental impacts of wireless radiation. As shown in their Figure 2 (below), the vast majority of over 900 peer-reviewed studies show wireless radiation causes negative biological effects on humans, other animals, plants, wildlife, bees, and birds
Wireless technologies are promoted as green and harmless but are neither. In addition to detrimental biological effects, they contribute substantially to global carbon dioxide emissions and accelerated climate change.
here is still no federal mandate for Smart meters….it is NOT an opt out program….it is an OPT IN….you must be offered and accept the offer of the meter or request one. Not one politician nor city or county official that I know of has ever read the PERPA regulations on Smart Meters. OR maybe they did read them and decided the $$ was just too good and ignored them.
Technology’s purpose is to increase our standard of living. Yet sometimes we’re so enamoured by the convenience or pleasure a new product offers that we overlook its risks. Or perhaps the risk may not be immediately apparent, or worse yet – authorities tell us there’s no danger until it’s too late: think tanning beds, asbestos, tobacco, thalidomide. Everything was great with those products…until it wasn’t. Which brings us to wireless smart meters (for simplicity’s sake, let’s just call them smart meters).
Essentially, these gadgets have replaced the meter-reader who used to come to our houses and read the utility meter. Smart meters provide technology that measures a house’s exact consumption of gas, electricity, even water, and sends that information back to the supplier by communicating with a central control system. It does this wirelessly, via radiofrequency (RF)…
“Industry-controlled ‘science’ is not really science but a smokescreen to pave the way for products that may be harmful – but what do they care as long as they profit? There are many great scientists but there are also some who are willing to be hired to ‘prove’ that something doesn’t cause cancer, or that something is ‘safe’. You cannot trust the EPA, the FDA, or industry ‘science’.”
Here is an incomplete list of some of the culprits:
A) Foreign Mining Corporations (PolyMet, Glencore, Twin Metals, Antofagasta, etc);
Minnesota’s Elected Politicians/Accomplices (both Corporate-influenced “Liberal” Democrats, and “Conservative” Republicans);
Minnesota’s “Regulatory” Agencies that are Supposed to be “Natural Resource Protectors” (Including the DNR, the PCA, and the US Forest Service); and
Most Area Newspapers; Most Area Television Stations; All the Area’s Chambers of Commerce; Minnesota Power (Electric Utility); the Trump Administration; Regional Labor Unions: and Dozens of Suppliers/Businesses that will Temporarily Profit from Supplying the Mining Industry While Simultaneously Risking the Permanent Poisoning of the St Louis River Watershed, Including Lake Superior
This column will point out and try to de-mystify some of the often-perplexing developments in the decades-long debate concerning allowing foreign mining corporations (which could justifiably be considered “Undocumented Aliens”) to invade water-rich northern Minnesota in order to extract our state’s non-ferrous metal deposits- for the selfish enrichment of its foreign shareholders and management, none of whom really care about the long-term consequences to the state’s precious water resources.
Everywhere in the world where copper mines have been dug and the poisonous tailing’s ponds have been installed, there has not been a single one that has not permanently polluted the ground water and the downstream watersheds, often catastrophically, see the list of 100 of them at . State of the art copper sulfide mines inevitably produce as an inevitable by-product sulfuric acid and many other toxic substances that poison the soil, air, ground water, nearby aquifers, lakes and downstream rivers, especially in water-rich environments like northern Minnesota. More
The U.S. Army has requested a federal court to dismiss a class-action lawsuit filed last August by residents of Frederick, Md., seeking $750 million in compensation for the deaths and illnesses caused by contaminated soil and groundwater at Fort Detrick.
Decades ago, the Army dumped sludge from its former decontamination plants, ashes from its incinerators, and potentially radioactive sludge from a sewage disposal plant, drums of the industrial solvent trichloroethylene and other hazardous substances into unlined pits at the post’s Area B, reported by the Frederick News-Post. About 200 people are involved in the suit, which claims the contaminants are responsible for cancer and other terminal illnesses they or their relatives experienced.
Two views of what a typical oil pipeline “spill” on dry land looks like after crews begin digging up part of the most superficial layer of the oil-saturated, totally irremediable, contaminated wheat field soil that was in the vicinity of the pipeline rupture.
The photos above were taken soon after the 2013 underground rupture of a Tesoro pipeline near Tioga, North Dakota. Farmer Steve Jensen, who had been paid by the pipeline company in exchange for permission to bury the pipe across his farmland, discovered the massive oil contamination of his wheat field while harvesting his crops on Sept 29, 2013. Jensen had to notify the company of its pipeline failure, because Tesoro’s state-of-the-art monitoring technology failed to detect the spill.
Tesoro initially grossly underestimated the significance of the spill (as is typical of all oil companies), claiming the volume of the spill, was 750 barrels. It was soon forced to publish a new figure of 20,600 barrels (which was likely also an under-estimate).
20,600 barrels is equivalent to 865,200 gallons, making the Tesoro pipeline oil spill the largest of the many spills that have plagued North Dakota since the Bakken Formation’s massive oil reserves were opened up to oil exploitation over the last two decades. The Bakken Formation, incidentally, was named after Henry Bakken a Tioga, North Dakota-area farmer where the massive oil deposit was originally discovered in 1951.
Tesoro re-named itself Andeavor a few months ago after it completed the acquisition of an oil refinery company. (Andeavor is currently valued at $105 per share on the New York Stock Exchange). The company is based in San Antonio, Texas,
The Political Economy Research Institute identified Tesoro as the 24th-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the US, releasing roughly 3,740,000 lbs of toxic chemicals annually. Major pollutants emitted annually by the corporation include more than 400,000 lbs of sulfuric acid. The EPA also named Tesoro a responsible party for four Superfund toxic waste sites.
Here are my reasons that the DNR should reject PolyMet’s permit applications for their earthen tailings dam, their liquid slurry pipeline pumping operation and their open pit sulfide mine near the headwaters of the St Louis River:
For starters, it is critically important to understand that the foreign Penny Stock company called PolyMet has a current share price of $0.63 per share, down from $1.50 per share in 2014. PolyMet, a total amateur in the business, has never operated a single mine in its short corporate life nor has it earned a single penny from mining. Their only income comes from selling shares to speculators and borrowing money from investors to pay their executives and employees. In addition, PolyMet, being an inanimate money-making corporation (that by definition has no conscience), cannot be trusted to tell the public about all the risks to the environment (including wildlife, fish, water, soil and air) that their exploitation of the earth could generate.
Therefore PolyMet can be expected to hide the fact that their operations could easily cause a massive environmental catastrophe similar to what happened at Mount Polley, British Columbia in 2014 (carefully study the article further below for the frightening details). Mount Polley was a state of the art copper mining operation.
Every citizen stakeholder that is potentially adversely affected by PolyMet’s operatioin deserves to be fully informed by (theoretically) unbiased regulators such as the MN DNR about the potentially catastrophic risk to the water users who happen to live downstream from the massive tailings lagoon, whose (eventual) 250 foot high earthen dam is at a high risk of failing in some way or other sometime in the future, especially in the event of a large deluge of rain, an earthquake or a design flaw that could cause the earthen dam to dissolve, leak, over-top or structurally fail in some other way, including being damaged by sabotage. The risks will exist for eternity, since the toxic metals (see list below) in the lagoon will never degrade into non-toxic forms.
In addition, the vulnerable pipeline that will carry the toxic sludge from the processing plant to the slurry pond is at high risk of sabotage, with serious environmental contamination that could possibly be even worse than the bursting of a dirty frack oil pipeline such as could happen from the foreign pipeline company Enbridge as it transports dirty oil from the tar sands in Canada or from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. I don’t believe that PolyMet has dealt with the possibility of sabotage.
Up to this point, both PolyMet and Twin Metals (and all of the governmental agencies that have been involved in the approval process) have been seriously neglectful in educating the public about all the potential lethal dangers of either the pipeline or the massive amount of toxic liquids that will forever cause the deaths of any water bird that lands on the lake-like lagoon (a la Butte, Montana’s ever-lastingly poisonous mining tailings “pond” and the nearby defunct Berkeley open pit mine [now a toxic “lake”] that has had its water pumps shut down and is now nearly filled to the brim with poisonous water that has high levels of dissolved toxic metals and a pH approximating that of stomach acid!). More
“The Pentagon and its military-industrial complex of weapons suppliers are acknowledged to be the worst and most plentiful polluters on the face of the earth, with hundreds of military bases and weapons production sites that qualify for the designation of SuperFund sites. Those sites contain the most toxic by-products of war-making and the environmental pollution is so bad that the government and the taxpayers are on the hook for doing the impossible clean-up!”
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Definition of Anthropogenic: “an adjective used to describe the environmental pollution and pollutants that originate from human or corporate activity.”
Conscientious whistleblowers in the honor-the-earth, protect-the-water and assorted other environmental movements regularly point out the glaring reality that it is actually the amoral, conscienceless multinational corporations that are the main cause of local, regional and planetary environmental pollution.
But if an investigative journalist accidentally allows those assertions to be published or voiced, the media’s propaganda machine predictably goes into defensive mode or attack mode, first casting doubt on the whistle-blower’s assertions or else it issues an ad hominem attack upon the whistle-blower.
The corporation’s stable of lawyers and public relations department – with the assistance of assorted media mouthpieces – start mis-directing the public’s perceptions by repeatedly using the “time-honored” phrase of “human activity” or “man-made activity” for causing the problem (even though all the credible truly scientific evidence implicates “corporate activity” for the damage). More
Standing Rock, North Dakota(TFC)— The Fifth Column News contacted Michael Wood Jr. regarding his organization Veterans Stand and it’s Standing Rock operations. Wood responded shortly before the government issued eviction orders, then raided the remaining camps. He relayed Veterans Stand’s goals and its volunteer’s experiences at Standing Rock.
Veterans Stand unites US veterans wanting to “defend America from enemies, foreign and domestic”, its website reads. Former Baltimore PD Sergeant of 10 years and US Marine Michael Wood Jr. currently serves as the organization’s executive director. According to Wood, VS has “ a continually growing volunteer staff of 16”. It’s staff largely consists of military veterans wishing to continue fulfilling their oaths to protect.
Time-sensitive: contact senators about 5G (nationwide campaign)
* * * * *
Dear Everyone,
US FCC wants to “streamline” the approval process for DAS (Distributed Antenna System) 4G/5G ubiquitous cell towers by exempting them from the 1996 Telecommunications Act!
And the US Senate will imminently be voting on S.19 and S.88, to expand DAS 4G/5G deployment!
If such efforts succeed, millions of small cell towers (on existing light poles/utility poles, or new ones) will be deployed everywhere, throughout residential neighborhoods. The millimeter microwave radiation deployed will produce horrific health effects, worsening EVERYONE’s health, and will remove the remaining pollinators. It’s THAT serious. The bees in particular will die off rapidly, per studies of bees and microwave radiation.
See link below for list of Senators and their info, by State, for ease in writing and phoning.
“Northern Minnesotans, Native American Water Protectors ( like the heroes at Standing Rock), sportsmen, environmentalists, downstream businesses, wild rice harvesters, fish, game, birds and just plain working folks whose babies and other vulnerable beings with developing brains need non-toxic water to thrive or simply survive must understand that such relatively common catastrophes could destroy the aquifers in the BWCAW, Birch Lake, the Partridge River, the Embarrass River, the St. Louis River, the city of Duluth and ultimately, Lake Superior.”
Last year, Duluth News-Tribune published a Local News article with the title “EPA signals its support for final PolyMet review”.
The article ended with what I regard as an intentionally deceptive and woefully insufficient sentence: “Critics say the project is likely to taint downstream waters with acidic runoff”. More
Now biotech companies want local residents to pay the costs of clean-up! Action Alert!
Over a decade ago, Scotts partnered with Monsanto to market a GM bentgrass resistant to glyphosate (Roundup). It was planted next to the Malheur National Forest in test plots ostensibly controlled by Oregon State University. Unbeknownst to most people, it was also planted all over the US—in California, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and seventeen other states.
It was supposed to be confined and controlled, but it very quickly escaped and spread out of the test plots in Oregon into Idaho, and crossbred with natural grasses to create new breeds that were also resistant to glyphosate. It clogged up irrigation ditches, threatening food crops and contaminating pasture-raised cattle with GMOs. In addition to the immediate threats to farmers and ranchers, grass seed—which is among Oregon’s top five commodities—is now under threat.
Initially, Scotts-Monsanto tried to stop the spread and clean up the contamination. But it was unable to do so because the original bentgrass (and now the other grasses it cross-pollinated with) are glyphosate-resistant. More toxic herbicides have been brought in to try to keep irrigation ditches clear, and to stop the grasses from clogging and eventually killing waterways important to wildlife and humans.
Now, according to The Oregonian, Scotts-Monsanto is walking away from the monster it created, leaving farmers, ranchers, wildlife, and eventually the fishing industry (if it spreads to the Columbia River) to deal with it. The current conundrum is that herbicides necessary to kill the invasive GM grasses are toxic to aquatic life, including fish. Soon the grasses will become resistant to even the most toxic chemicals, and nothing will eradicate the invasive grasses but heavy equipment.
Worst of all, the effects of GM products replacing natural grasses and plants on wildlife were completely predictable.
Scotts-Monsanto was fined $500,000, the maximum penalty under the Plant Protection Act, and agreed never to sell GM bentgrass. In addition, the companies were ordered to eradicate the GM nuisance in irrigation districts so farmers could continue farming.
But the federal government is apparently stepping in to help Scotts-Monsanto avoid liability. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently deregulated the GM grass, a move that shifts the burden of controlling GM bentgrass from Scotts-Monsanto to local landowners and American taxpayers.
The law is clear: if a plant poses a risk, the USDA is not to deregulate it. Scotts-Monsanto has already signed an agreement not to sell the product. So why is the USDA violating the law and deregulating GM bentgrass? Why would Scotts-Monsanto ask that it be deregulated when it has agreed not to sell it? It may be because GM bentgrass has been planted all over the United States, and when it’s discovered that the Oregon scenario is happening in every state, Scotts-Monsanto can pin it on the government and the taxpayers avoiding responsibility for costly clean-ups.
There are precedents for farmers and consumers holding biotech companies legally accountable in these scenarios. Midwestern corn growers filed a class-action lawsuit against Syngenta last year, claiming the company’s GM corn contaminated their crops and cost them billions in international sales. In 2011, Bayer paid $750 million to Southern rice growers in a similar scenario.
We hope justice is done in Oregon, and the parties responsible for this mess are forced to clean it up.
Action Alert! Tell the USDA to stop offering legal liability protection to biotech companies. Please send your message immediately.
“Everybody agrees that the Bakken oil discovery has cursed North Dakota in a multitude of ways. It has disrupted local communities with sex trafficking, drug trafficking, de-stabilizing inflationary pressures on everything, over-building of ramshackle lodging and the permanent poisoning of the land and underground water supplies because of the use of highly toxic fracking chemicals.”
Energy Transfer Partner’s “Black Snake” (the Dakota Access Pipeline) is at Risk of Being Beheaded
This Monday, October 17, I watched some dramatic live coverage from Mandan, North Dakota on Democracy Now’s website. It is now available for viewing by anybody with online access.
The coverage showed the celebration of the official dismissal of the trumped up legal charges against Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman for 1) criminal trespassing and 2) incitement to riot that followed her investigative journalistic efforts earlier this fall as she and the Democracy Now crew were reporting on the efforts of nonviolent indigenous “water protectors” who are trying to protect their sacred water from corporate usurpers. North Dakota’s response to the nonviolent action of unarmed people was embarrassingly uber-militaristic. The state mounted a Gestapo-like defense in support of a giant multinational corporation that thinks it has a right to do whatever it wants to do with the planet’s dwindling and increasingly polluted natural resources.
The corporation involved this time is called Energy Transfer Partners, and it is threatening the drinkable Missouri River water with its multi-billion dollar Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL, aka, the “Black Snake” that is mentioned further below).
Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and their wealthy/greedy investors are in cahoots with equally greedy, gigantic, amoral mining corporations, oil corporations and investment banks, all of which are quite willing to exploit and even permanently poison public land, public water, public air and, by extension, the people who depend on the purity of those resources – all for the love of the almighty dollar.
Such sociopathic behaviors by corrupt crony capitalist entities are occurring all over the planet, including here in northern Minnesota (Enbridge, and the penny stock companies PolyMet and NorthMet are just three examples of extractive industries that are threatening the purity of just the St Louis River estuary that supplies sustenance to points south, including Duluth, Minnesota and the Great Lakes.) More
“This investigation identified a complete breakdown of safety at Enbridge. Their employees performed like Keystone Kops and failed to recognize that their pipeline had ruptured and continued to pump crude into the environment. Despite multiple alarms and a loss of pressure in the pipeline, for more than 17 hours and through three shifts, they failed to follow their own shutdown procedures. Enbridge restarted the pipeline twice in that 17-hour period, pumping oil that would account for 81 percent of the total spill.” — National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-07-24/-keystone-kops-bungling-led-to-costliest-u-s-pipeline-spill)
On July 25, 2010 Enbridge Energy’s Alberta tar sands pipeline burst near Marshall, Michigan, spilling an estimated 1.1 million gallons of toxic heavy crude oil (including various petroleum-based diluents) into the Kalamazoo River. (Note that, in order to easily flow through an oil pipeline, the extra-heavy sludgy oil peculiar to the Canadian tar sands needs to be diluted with a 25% – 50% mixture of dangerous petroleum solvents, including the known carcinogen, benzene).
As soon as Enbridge workers in Hazmat suits arrived on the scene the first day of the catastrophe, they tested for benzene fumes and other toxic volatile organic substances and ordered nearby residents to evacuate immediately. Some of the affected residents never came back to their homes for 60 days.
Enbridge’s Kalamazoo disaster was North America’s worst and most expensive inland oil spill disaster. To my knowledge, it was never reported in the Duluth News-Tribune or on the local nightly news. Nobody that I know ever saw or heard a single report about it on local or regional television or radio news. Sadly, the same could be said about most of the other environmental disasters mentioned below that involved corporations that have a presence in the upper Midwest.
The Enbridge pipeline that ruptured in Michigan delivered dirty tar sands oil from Ontario. That pipeline crossed northern Minnesota, (and both the Mississippi and St Louis Rivers); crossed the entire state of Wisconsin; and ended up at a terminal in Indiana.
Tragically for the Kalamazoo River and every fish and minnow and crawfish in it, a six-foot break in the pipeline sent hours of high pressure toxic petroleum products into the Tallmadge Creek, a tributary of the Lake Michigan-bound Kalamazoo River. The broken pipe polluted a 35 mile segment of the river, and the damage will likely be permanent.
The Enbridge pipeline rupture that contaminated the Kalamazoo River on July 25, 2010
Oil and Heavy Metal Pollution of Water and Soil is Forever
It is important to emphasize that the pollution of any water or soil resource from significant amounts of chemicals, especially oil and toxic metals, whether the resource is an aquifer, a river, a bog, a wild rice bed or a lake, CAN NEVER BE FULLY REMEDIATED, despite what is said in the propaganda campaigns that are cunningly generated from the guilty mining, energy or petroleum companies whose flawed technology is responsible.
Petroleum products and heavy metals are both capable of floating on, mixing with or sinking beneath the water (thus flowing far beyond the mouth of the stream, attaching to the shoreline and/or sinking into the sludge at the bottom.
“Clean-up” of an oil spill is thus a myth. “Clean-ups” can never completely suck out or dredge up or de-contaminate all the pollutants no matter what method is tried.
To make things worse, the co-opted mainstream media can be counted on to simply (and very lazily) repeat the propaganda that comes from Big Oil, Big Mining, Big Coal or Big Energy when their spokespersons hold the reassuring press conferences that follow every “accidental” spill. Corporations have their duty to their advertisers, investors and stock market analysts to not unduly stir up a lack of confidence in the stock price.
Mining “Accidents” are Inevitable and They Could Happen Here
The inevitable “accidents-just-waiting-to-happen” scenario applies to some well-known examples like the Exxon Valdez disaster, the British Petroleum/Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Enbridge’s Kalamazoo River disaster, and some of the mining industry tailings ponds “breaches” that occur so frequently or just slowly leak toxins forever. More
Here is a Last Days prophecy which declares what happened when one of three Trumpets sounded! “…and a third of of the living creatures in the sea died;” Revelation 8:9 NKJ
The Bible scripture noted, was recorded roughly 2000 years ago by the apostle John who was given a vision and told to write down future major events which would transpire worldwide. For now, some of which he had written as last days prophecies are currently and dramatically being fulfilled. But to cloud present day events, there is a first class coverup by elite’s and also the Associated Press which feeds major news stories to mainstream newspapers and television outlets, but then avoids major studies that point to the truth of the Fukushima meltdown while a major prophecy is also being fulfilled.
Scientists confirm that the seas are being contaminated with endless amounts of radiation while oceans around the world are still experiencing an unprecedented fish die off of numerous species, but also seabirds are all part of the newly threatened food chain. Five years ago the Japanese nuclear reactors that resulted in a meltdown in 2011 are still spewing out radioactive material into the ocean. And it’s reaching the West Coast.
Consequently, billions of fish are being affected and/or dying in the Pacific Ocean and either washing up on countless beaches or sinking down to the ocean floors from Alaska and further to South America. We are talking about an epidemic of monumental proportions never seen before in the history of the world. This event is far from being a product of natural causes, though there may be a few minor
exceptions.
Although the ocean’s capacity to dilute radiation is huge, signs show that nuclear isotopes are already moving up the local food chain wrote Yale professor Elizabeth Grossman in a 2011 report entitled, Radioactivity in the Ocean: Diluted, But Far from Harmless.
On March 12, 2015, Grossman compared the current epidemic with a previous uptick in mortality among starfish in the White Sea during the 1990s that was linked to nuclear pollution. On another note, mass die-offs of various species, not just seal pups, are being recorded on both sides of that ocean which includes the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. And on 16 January 2012 the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CIFA), which monitors food safety, says: “Approximately 60% of fish have shown to have detectable levels of radionuclides.” Almost every species of fish has shown similar effects, but some studies have had a lid put on them.
Why would a poisonous, birth-defect-causing chemical cause birth defects? I mean, that’s absurd, right? Ridiculous. Let’s blame the whole thing on a virus that causes nothing.
A poison intentionally added to the water supply in 2014? Who cares? Means nothing.
The manufacturer of the poison is a strategic partner of Monsanto? That couldn’t be a clue. Of course not.
By Jon Rappoport
Microcephaly: babies born with smaller heads and brain damage.
As I’ve been telling you all along—look to the pesticides. The fake Zika story is a cover, to protect the pesticide companies, among others.
What do we know so far in this trumped up Zika crisis?
“Immediately below are links to dramatic photos and videos that have been readily available to the US government and American news agencies, but which were not reported, published or shown, to my knowledge, on the evening news of either local or regional corporate media outlets.”
“ALL tailings “ponds” are a problem. If they don’t breach and spill massive amounts of toxic sludge into the environment like at Mount Polley, they leach that contamination slowly, poisoning the waters and lands around them.”
In the December 23rd edition of the Duluth (Minnesota, USA) News-Tribune, a staff writer, using the byline of “News Tribune”, wrote a Local News article with the title “EPA signals its support for final PolyMet review”
The article ended with this (intentionally?) deceptive and woefully insufficient sentence: “Critics say the project is likely to taint downstream waters with acidic runoff”.
In this commentary article I will attempt to correct the notion that “acidic runoff” is the major reason for the widespread opposition to PolyMet’s proposed copper/nickel mining project (which is adjacent to the pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness). PolyMet, it should be mentioned, is a total novice when it comes to operating copper/nickel mines. More
On Monday morning, the brave collective of Nebraska farmers and ranchers who refuse to sign over their land for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline will be in court to face down the foreign corporation’s threats of eminent domain — and we will be there to stand with them.
If you can’t make it to stand with us at the hearing, please consider a donation to help cover legal expenses for the farmers and ranchers who are fighting TransCanada and eminent domain to protect our land and water.
This is the lawsuit that stopped Keystone XL in its tracks in Nebraska, and also has the potential to stop the status quo of eminent domain for private gain in our state for the future.
Can’t be with us in court on Monday? Stand with us in solidarity.
Please submit a comment to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in your own words, asking that the minimum rate per acre for oil and gas leasing be MUCH higher than $2 an acre, and ask the BLM to remove caps established by current regulations on civil penalties that may be assessed under the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Management Act.
Most importantly, be sure to demand that the BLM NOT approve any more land for oil & gas development/leasing on Wild Horse & Burro Herd Management Areas (HMAs) (since there supposedly isn’t enough water and forage for wild horses and burros on their federally protected HMAs).
(photo: BLM) BLM Extends Public Comment Period to June 19, 2015 on Oil and Gas Royalty Rulemaking
SOURCE: goldrushcam.com
May 29, 2015- WASHINGTON – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced today that it is extending the public comment period on its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) to seek public comment on potential updates to BLM rules governing oil and gas royalty rates, rental payments, lease sale minimum bids, civil penalty caps and financial assurances.
Notice of the two-week extension, which extends the comment period deadline to June 19, 2015, will be published in the Federal Register on June 3, 2015.
Modernizing the BLM’s royalty rate structures can provide greater flexibility, especially given the dramatic growth of oil development on public and tribal lands, where production has increased in each of the past six years, and combined production was up 81 percent in 2014 versus 2008. Potential changes to BLM’s regulations would also respond to concerns expressed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Interior’s Office of Inspector General, and others that the BLM’s existing rules lack flexibility and could be causing the United States to forgo significant revenue to the detriment of taxpayers.
The GAO has repeatedly concluded that the BLM’s regulations do not provide a reasonable assurance that the public is getting appropriate fair share of the revenue from these resources. The BLM’s current rules lack the flexibility to offer new competitive leases at higher royalty rates.
The ANPR also addresses the value of these resources by inviting comment on how the BLM might update its rules regarding the minimum acceptable bid that must be paid by parties seeking a lease at auction, and the annual rental payments that are due after a lease is obtained. The current minimum acceptable auction bid is $2 per acre, which is well below the rate at which most parcels sell, suggesting that the rate could be higher. After obtaining a lease, a lessee is currently required to make annual rental payments until the lease starts producing oil or gas. These rental rates currently are $1.50 per acre for the first five years and $2 for years five through 10. The ANPR invites comment on how rental payments might be better structured to incentivize diligent development of leased areas.
The BLM encourages the public to be actively engaged in this process by submitting comments on the revised proposed rule before June 19 in one of the following ways:
Mail: U.S. Department of the Interior, Director (630), Bureau of Land Management, Mail Stop 2134 LM, 1849 C St. NW, Washington, DC, 20240, Attention: 1004-AE41.
Personal or messenger delivery: Bureau of Land Management, 20 M. St. SE, Room 2134 LM, Attention: Regulatory Affairs, Washington, DC 20003.
Online at the Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments at this Website.
