Syria Conflict Alert: Russia Claims To Have Found Syrian Rebel Chemical Weapons!

When the United States launched a joint attack on Damascus, Syria stating they were targeting chemical weapons facilities, many balked claiming it was too soon. That all appears to be correct, as Russia claims to have found chemical weapons: in the hands of the US and Saudi-backed jihadist rebels.

The Russian military says that it has found rebel chemical weapons stockpiles in the Syrian town hit by a suspected chemical attack, the town of Douma. And the US is now claiming Russia “hacked” the chemical weapons evidence.  And the rhetoric continues. It wasn’t a far enough stretch to accuse Russia of “hacking the election,” so the US is taking it one step further in their quest to advance a war.

While Russia’s foreign ministry warns that Western powers are interfering with OPCW’s work in Syria (noting that the chemical weapons experts’ access to Douma is being hampered by remaining militants, supported by Washington), as Caitlin Johnstone details, we are now being told by US officials (and I assure you I am not making this up) that if the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons doesn’t find evidence that the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapons attack in Douma last week, it’s because Russia hid the evidence. –Zerohedge

Alexander Rodionov of the military’s chemical weapons protection unit said Tuesday its experts found chlorine and components for producing mustard gas at a rebel laboratory in Douma. Rodionov said the canister with chlorine was similar to the one shown in images released by activists, according to The Associated Press.

Given the immense dearth of evidence we’ve been seeing in support of the establishment Douma narrative and the mounting pile of evidence contradicting it, it sure does make the United States government and its mainstream media propaganda arm look like the liars most of us already know they are. The problem is, however, the media and the corrupt government are ramping up for a war and their rhetoric could be paid for with our lives, so this is an incredibly big deal.

More importantly, The Independent‘s famous war journalist Robert Fisk has published a report which affirms the story so many western government lapdogs have been dismissing as Kremlin propaganda for days now. After interviewing a doctor from the hospital of the area where the Douma attack was supposed to have occurred, Fisk was told by Dr. Assim Rahaibani that what was in actuality an outbreak of respiratory distress among occupants of a dusty oxygen-deprived tunnel was made to look like the aftereffects of a chemical weapons attack when a member of the White Helmets started shouting about a gas attack in front of a bunch of video cameras. Everyone panicked and started hosing themselves down, but in the video, according to Rahaibani, “what you see are people suffering from hypoxia — not gas poisoning.”

Fisk’s report was independently backed up by a reporter from One America News Network named Pearson Sharp, who gave a detailed account of his interviews with officials, doctors, as well as many civilians on the street. Sharp says he deliberately selected at random in order to avoid accusations of bias. Many people interviewed hadn’t even heard that a chemical weapons attack had taken place and the ones who had said it was staged by Jaysh al-Islam. The staff at the hospital, including a medic-in-training who was an eyewitness to the incident, gave the same story as the account in Fisk’s report.

The government and the mainstream media seem intent upon selling us a war based on lies and a complete lack of evidence. Of course it’s easy for the elites to demand a war. It isn’t their blood on the lines after all…

Mount Mayon Erupts Beautifully But Violently, Spewing Lava, Smoke, And Ash

Warnings that Mount Mayon would soon erupt have caused over 50,000 Philippines residents living in the area to flee their homes.  Well, the volcano has erupted, complete with lava fountains and ash, and it’s eerily beautiful.

Mount Mayon has spewed lava up to 2,000ft high and its ash plumes stretched up to three miles above the crater.  Cedric Daep, a provincial disaster response official, told a news conference that he has recommended electricity and water supplies be cut in the no-go zones to discourage residents from returning. “If pyroclastic flows hit people, there is no chance for life, Daep said. “Let us not violate the natural law, avoid the prohibited zone, because if you violate, the punishment is the death penalty.”

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the volcano that’s been erupting for almost two weeks, at times very explosively, and still appears to be swelling with magma under the surface.

Mayon’s most destructive eruption, in 1814, killed more than 1,200 people and buried the town of Cagsawa in volcanic mud. The Philippines, which has about 22 active volcanoes, lies in the “Ring of Fire,” a line of seismic faults surrounding the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanic activity are common.

This is the third time since its eruption that Mayon has generated a lava fountain. Pyroclastic flows, superheated gas and volcanic debris that could incinerate anything in their path, reached 3 miles from the crater in one area, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said. “It’s a logistical nightmare,” Office of Civil Defense regional director Claudio Yucot said of the government’s effort to look after the still-swelling number of evacuees in at least 66 emergency shelters in nine cities and towns in northeastern Albay province, where Mayon lies.

Based on its previous eruptions, Mayon’s restiveness could last from two to four months, prompting Albay and national authorities to take steps to ease the impact on schools, public health and safety, livelihood, and law and order, officials said.  Officials have already had problems keeping people from entering the restricted zones to check on livestock or the condition of their homes.

Should any of these trends continue, Mayon could severely impact not only the global climate but become deadly.

 

Fukushima Radiation “Spikes To Unimaginable Levels” As Continued Leak Decimates Food Chain

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at his End of the American Dream blog.

Editor’s Comment: The gift that keeps on giving. An endless ocean of radioactive water, spilling into the Pacific Ocean at an astounding rate, every single day. The effects of this nuclear waste, particularly in the form of cesium 137 and strontium 90, are epidemic – they are being hidden by a refusal to report on the disaster, and by the diffuse global web of biology. 

Though consumers of news, or groceries, don’t see it happening, these radioactive materials are curbing population numbers, and contamination is bio-accumulating up the food chain. A cow in California, for instance, may have only been exposed to a very minute amount of this radiation, but likely ate from an entire field of contaminated grass, and every tiny bit adds up. For humans, eating from many sources at the top of the food chain, this accumulates into greater exposure than direct measurements can account for.

There is no end in sight, and no one who has yet managed to grab back the public’s attention and get across how important this issue continues to be.

Northern Hemisphere Potentially In Great Danger As Fukushima Radiation Spikes To ‘Unimaginable’ Levels

by Michael Snyder

Radiation inside one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power facility has reached an “unimaginable” level according to experts. Because so much nuclear material from Fukushima escaped into the Pacific Ocean, there are many scientists that believe that it was the worst environmental disaster in human history, but most people in the general population seem to think that since the mainstream media really doesn’t talk about it anymore that everything must be under control. Unfortunately, that is not true at all. In fact, PBS reported just last year that “it is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks“. And now we have just learned that the radiation level inside reactor 2 is so high that no human could possibly survive being exposed to it.

According to the Japan Times, the level of radiation inside the containment vessel of reactor 2 is now estimated to be “530 sieverts per hour”…

The radiation level in the containment vessel of reactor 2 at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, the highest since the triple core meltdown in March 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. said.

Tepco said on Thursday that the blazing radiation reading was taken near the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the reactor core.

The high figure indicates that some of the melted fuel that escaped the pressure vessel is nearby.

It is hard to find the words to convey how serious this is.

If you were exposed to a radiation level of just 10 sieverts per hour, that would mean almost certain death. So 530 sieverts per hour is simply off the charts. According to the Guardian, this recent measurement is being described by scientists as “unimaginable”…

The recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour in that part of the reactor.

A single dose of one sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness and nausea; 5 sieverts would kill half those exposed to it within a month, and a single dose of 10 sieverts would prove fatal within weeks.

And the really bad news is that there appears to be a 2 meter hole that was created by melted nuclear fuel “in the metal grating under the pressure vessel in the reactor’s primary containment vessel”. The following comes from Bloomberg…

New photographs show what may be melted nuclear fuel sitting under one of Japan’s wrecked Fukushima reactors, a potential milestone in the search and retrieval of the fuel almost six years after it was lost in one of the worst atomic disasters in history.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc., Japan’s biggest utility, released images on Monday showing a grate under the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 2 reactor covered in black residue. The company, better known as Tepco, may send in a scorpion-like robot as soon as February to determine the temperature and radioactivity of the residue.

If that isn’t frightening enough, one Japanese news source is reporting that this melted nuclear fuel “has since come in contact with underground water flowing from the mountain side”…

The melted fuel has since come in contact with underground water flowing from the mountain side, generating radioactively contaminated water every day. In order to dismantle the reactor, it is necessary to take out the melted fuel, but high radiation levels inside the reactor had hampered work to locate the melted debris.

If this disaster was just limited to Japan, the entire northern hemisphere would not be at risk.

But that is not the case.

Most of the nuclear contamination from Fukushima ended up in the Pacific Ocean, and from there it was literally taken around the rest of the planet. The following was reported by PBS…

More than 80 percent of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific — far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Of this, a small fraction is currently on the seafloor — the rest was swept up by the Kuroshio current, a western Pacific version of the Gulf Stream, and carried out to sea where it mixed with (and was diluted by) the vast volume of the North Pacific.

We don’t know if there is a connection, but it is extremely interesting to note that fisheries up and down the west coast of the United States are failing because of a dramatic decrease in fish populations. Just check out the following excerpt from a story that was posted on January 18th…

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker today determined there are commercial fishery failures for nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska, California and Washington.

In recent years, each of these fisheries experienced sudden and unexpected large decreases in fish stock biomass or loss of access due to unusual ocean and climate conditions. This decision enables fishing communities to seek disaster relief assistance from Congress.

Things are particularly bad up in Alaska, and biologists are “stumped” as to why this could be happening…

In 2016, the pink salmon harvests in Kodiak, Prince William Sounds, Chignik and lower Cook Inlet came in woefully under forecast and stumped biologists as to why.

The estimated value of Kodiak’s 2016 haul was $2.21 million, compared to a five-year average of $14.64 million, and in Prince William Sound the ex-vessel value was $6.6 million, far less that the $44 million five-year average. The total state harvest was the smallest since the late 1970s.

Although state biologists weren’t ready to declare a cause for the poor pink salmon performance, the Commerce Department press release attributed the disasters to “unusual ocean and climate conditions.”

Further south, it was being reported last month that millions of dead sardines are washing up on the shores of Chile.

I could go on and on with a lot more examples like this, but hopefully you get the point.

Something really strange is happening in the Pacific, and a lot of people believe that there is a link to Fukushima.

Not too long ago, I wrote about how the elite of Silicon Valley are “feverishly prepping“, but the truth is that all of us should be. If you need some tips on how to get started, you can find my prepping book right here. Our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster is just one piece of the puzzle.

But it is definitely a very important piece. The nuclear material from Fukushima is continuously entering the food chain, and once that nuclear material gets into our bodies it will slowly irradiate our organs for years to come. The following is an excerpt from an absolutely outstanding opinion piece by Helen Caldicott that was published in the Guardian…

Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.

Are you starting to understand the gravity of the situation?

Sadly, this crisis is going to be with us for a very, very long time.

According to Bloomberg, they are not even going to start removing melted nuclear fuel from these reactors until 2021, and it is being projected that the overall cleanup “may take as long as 40 years”…

Decommissioning the reactors will cost 8 trillion yen ($70.4 billion), according to an estimate in December from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Removing the fuel is one of the most important steps in a cleanup that may take as long as 40 years.

The unprecedented nature of the Fukushima disaster means that Tepco is pinning its efforts on technology not yet invented to get the melted fuel out of the reactors.

The company aims to decide on a fuel removal procedure for the first reactor during the fiscal year ending March 2019, and to begin removing fuel in 2021.

A lot of people that end up dying as a result of this crisis may never even know that it was Fukushima that caused their deaths.

Personally, I am convinced that this is the greatest environmental crisis that humanity has ever experienced, and if the latest reading from reactor 2 is any indication, things just took a very serious turn for the worse.

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at his End of the American Dream blog.