The U.S. Army has admitted that it secretly conducted at least 239 germ warfare tests in locations across the country, targeting unsuspecting Americans.
The post Conspiracy Theory? US Army Has Admitted to Conducting 100s of Germ Warfare Tests On Americans appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told a cheering crowd of thousands Tuesday that if any country decides to betray the 2015 nuclear deal, there will be “severe consequences.” Although Rouhani didn’t specifically name the United States, he did say that Tehran is “prepared for all possible situations.”
The New York Times reported that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel will work to convince Donald Trump to stay in the agreement at a meeting later this week. And in the meantime, French president Emmanuel Macron is diligently working on swaying Trump’s mind on the issue as well. Both European leaders want the US to stick to the 2015 nuclear deal put in place by Barack Obama.
Wendy R. Sherman, the former top official at the State Department who negotiated the deal for then-President Obama, told the paper that Trump and Macron are likely having a “very difficult conversation,” reported Fox News. “I’m sure that Macron will say how important staying in the deal is to a strong trans-Atlantic relationship in all things, particularly security,” she said.
The White House on Monday appeared to show little change in Trump’s opinion on the deal. “He thinks it’s a bad deal…that certainly has not changed,” Sarah Sanders said alluding to the possibility of rejecting the deal entirely. Trump hasn’t hidden his disdain for Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
Iran is playing with fire – they don"t appreciate how "kind" President Obama was to them. Not me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017
Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel.They are also working with North Korea.Not much of an agreement we have!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017
Trump’s tweet alone shed some light on his feelings about how things are going with Iran. Tensions seem high, but they may go even higher on the heels of Iran’s vow of severe consequences. According to USA Today, Iran cannot be trusted to uphold their end of the nuclear agreement, however.
The key reason that President Trump must not only not recertify the Iran nuclear deal but outright abrogate it is because Tehran is explicitly and demonstrably out of compliance with the agreement on numerous specific counts. Further, after the Iranian regime was caught in 2002 operating a clandestine weapons program in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — conduct underway for at least 14 years — and has never come clean about that program, it cannot be trusted to adhere to any other agreement. –USA Today
It appears that even some in the mainstream media are siding with Trump and asking him to withdraw from the weapons accord. Even after inception of the agreement in 2015, the regime has been confronted with credible information that it is operating more advanced centrifuges than permitted, exceeding limits on production of heavy water and, according to Fox News, covertly procuring nuclear and missile technology outside of approved channels: These are all material breaches of the deal.
Russia is continuing to warn the West of further attacks against Russia. Whether it be in the form of missiles or sanctions, the former Soviet Union doesn’t seem like they wish to play “war games” any longer.
The United States this month added several Russian firms and officials to a sanctions blacklist in response to what it said were the Kremlin’s “malign activities.” Moscow says those sanctions are unlawful and has warned that it will retaliate in a “painful” manner.
“No one should be under any illusions,” said Valentina Matvienko, who is closely aligned with the Kremlin, was quoted as saying by the Interfax News Agency. Matvienko, the speaker of the Russian upper house of parliament, said on Wednesday that Moscow’s response to any United States sanctions will be targeted and painful, Russian news agencies reported.
“Russia’s response to the sanctions, our so-called counter-sanctions, will be precise, painful, and without question sensitive for exactly those countries that imposed them [the sanctions] on Russia,” she was quoted as saying, according to Reuters. “Sanctions are a double-edged sword and those who impose them should understand that sanctions against countries, especially those like Russia, will carry with them risks of serious consequences for those who impose them,” Matvienko added.
Lawmakers in the lower house of the Russian parliament have drawn up legislation that would give the government powers to ban or restrict imports of U.S. goods and services ranging from medicines to software and rocket engines. However, the Kremlin has not yet said if it backs such measures.
U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned the joint U.S., French, and British military operation last weekend that struck several sites in Syria to punish the Russian-backed government of President Bashar Assad for an apparent chemical attack that killed civilians. Trump said the strike was “absolute precision.”
A senior U.S. administration official said on Monday Trump has delayed imposing additional sanctions on Russia and is unlikely to approve them unless Moscow carries out a new cyber attack or some other provocation that would warrant sanctions.
The Russians will respond with an attack if the United States decides to take action in Syria, according to Fox News’ Senior Security Analyst. He also said Washington should” refrain from confrontation” with Russia if there’s any hope of avoiding a third world war.
Walid Phares made the comments recently on Fox News after the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. The Russians are still claiming there is no evidence of the attack and any retaliation would be over false information and “fake news.”
More troubling is that also on Monday, Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzia said that the Americans would have to deal with “serious consequences” should they attack Syria.
“We have repeatedly warned the American side about highly negative consequences that may follow if they apply weapons against the legitimate Syrian government, and especially if the use of these weapons – God forbid, affects our military men, who legally stay in Syria,” the Russian Ambassador to the UN said at a meeting of the UN Security Council. –SHTFPlan
Phares told Fox News: “Well look, the Russians are today stronger in Syria than they were a year ago and certainly six years ago. “So they are trying to say to us and our partners that there will be a response maybe directly by the Russians or as they do usually, task the Iranians to do it.”
His comments come after US President Donald Trump threatened imminent military action against Syria and Russia over the “atrocious” alleged poison gas attack that supposedly killed at least 60 civilians. But there still isn’t much evidence to support that theory. There’s “words” of those who aren’t all that reliable. (White Helmets and the US mainstream media.)
The most recent attack, which screams ‘false flag’ like no other, comes as no surprise to many observers. Russia was sounding the alarm last month that US instructors were actively training militants for a “chemical provocation” that would be used as a pretext for carrying out an attack on the Syrian government (Syrian doctors, meanwhile, said they had not received victims with signs of chemical poisoning from Douma, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said no evidence has been found of a chemical weapons attack). –RT
But that won’t stop the US from using weapons in Syria, and Trump has already put the war-torn nation on notice via his Twitter account.
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018
The tweet appears to be an unofficial announcement of the “major decisions“ which Trump said Washington would be making soon regarding the alleged chemical attack in Syria. It also comes just after Russia vowed to shoot down any US missiles aimed at Syria. “If there is an American strike, then we… will shoot down the missiles and target the positions from where they were launched,” Alexander Zasypkin, the Russian envoy to Beirut, said on Wednesday. “In the past few days, we have seen an escalation towards a significant crisis.”
We appear to be on the precipice of a major conflict in Syria. Oddly enough, most assumed North Korea would start the third world war. If Trump bombs Syria, it would be the US. Tensions are high and prospects for avoiding a horrific conflict look awfully low right now.
The Russians will respond with an attack if the United States decides to take action in Syria, according to Fox News’ Senior Security Analyst. He also said Washington should” refrain from confrontation” with Russia if there’s any hope of avoiding a third world war.
Walid Phares made the comments recently on Fox News after the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. The Russians are still claiming there is no evidence of the attack and any retaliation would be over false information and “fake news.”
More troubling is that also on Monday, Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzia said that the Americans would have to deal with “serious consequences” should they attack Syria.
“We have repeatedly warned the American side about highly negative consequences that may follow if they apply weapons against the legitimate Syrian government, and especially if the use of these weapons – God forbid, affects our military men, who legally stay in Syria,” the Russian Ambassador to the UN said at a meeting of the UN Security Council. –SHTFPlan
Phares told Fox News: “Well look, the Russians are today stronger in Syria than they were a year ago and certainly six years ago. “So they are trying to say to us and our partners that there will be a response maybe directly by the Russians or as they do usually, task the Iranians to do it.”
His comments come after US President Donald Trump threatened imminent military action against Syria and Russia over the “atrocious” alleged poison gas attack that supposedly killed at least 60 civilians. But there still isn’t much evidence to support that theory. There’s “words” of those who aren’t all that reliable. (White Helmets and the US mainstream media.)
The most recent attack, which screams ‘false flag’ like no other, comes as no surprise to many observers. Russia was sounding the alarm last month that US instructors were actively training militants for a “chemical provocation” that would be used as a pretext for carrying out an attack on the Syrian government (Syrian doctors, meanwhile, said they had not received victims with signs of chemical poisoning from Douma, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said no evidence has been found of a chemical weapons attack). –RT
But that won’t stop the US from using weapons in Syria, and Trump has already put the war-torn nation on notice via his Twitter account.
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018
The tweet appears to be an unofficial announcement of the “major decisions“ which Trump said Washington would be making soon regarding the alleged chemical attack in Syria. It also comes just after Russia vowed to shoot down any US missiles aimed at Syria. “If there is an American strike, then we… will shoot down the missiles and target the positions from where they were launched,” Alexander Zasypkin, the Russian envoy to Beirut, said on Wednesday. “In the past few days, we have seen an escalation towards a significant crisis.”
We appear to be on the precipice of a major conflict in Syria. Oddly enough, most assumed North Korea would start the third world war. If Trump bombs Syria, it would be the US. Tensions are high and prospects for avoiding a horrific conflict look awfully low right now.
A report from a non-profit, nonpartisan research group has revealed that for the first time since 2007, the number of registered lobbyists and the amount of money spent on lobbying have increased significantly.
The post Overflowing Swamp: Non-Partisan Watchdog Report Shows Political Bribery Now at Record Levels appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
It is no secret that the last couple decades saw an abrupt increase in the number of private military companies or private security contractors (the so-called PMCs), the overall budgets of some of which can easily surpass the military budgets of certain sovereign states. The turning point in the creation of those companies occurred in 1995 during the military operations conducted by the Armed Forces of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina against the Serbian troops, when the right to carry on hostilities was outsourced by a number of security contractor firms.
The can be no second opinion about Washington being the most faithful adept of the PMC concept, since with the amount of wars the US has been waging against other states the Pentagon needs spare hands to do the dirty job for it, so that Washington won’t lose any further. American intelligence agencies were quick to comprehend in mid 90s that they would need a lot of private contractors if they are to carry on their dubious operations across the globe over the next couple decades. Therefore, the Pentagon started motivating various companies to outsource a wide range of military tasks. As a result, over the last decade alone the US military department has signed more than 3 thousand contracts with PMCs.
Today PMCs are operating more that 90% of all drones that US Air Force and Navy have together, they are also engaged in reconnaissance missions, data analysis, along with developing of promising technologies and materials, on top of providing routine military training, convoy escorts, and air cargo support. In May 2007, the US government disclosed for the first time the total amount of funds allocated on the PMCs by American intelligence agencies, with the total amount reaching 33.6 billion dollars. In January 2015, the US Central Command published statistics on contract employees of PMCs, specifying the CENTCOM alone employs more than 43 thousand individuals that fulfill all sorts of contracts, of which no more than 17 thousand are American citizens, with the rest being natives of UK and Australia.
According to rough estimates, the PMC market worth exceeds 150 billion dollars. As for the continuous increase in the actual of number and their value it can be attributed to an ever expanding share of “secret operations” deals among those that Washington keeps on signing.
Although the existing US legislation has set in stone the principle that “the most complex and sensitive tasks shouldn’t be fulfilled by private organizations”, when it comes to the situation on the ground we witness quite the opposite happening.
This notion has recently been confirmed by the Daily Mail as it reported on the activities of the Academi PMC, which was formerly known under its scandalous name of Blackwater. According to these revelations Academi contractors were engaged in torturing and physically abusing the members of the Saudi royal family and those businessmen that were detained along with them in Saudi Arabia in early November. According to the publication, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally participated in the said interrogations thanks to the dubious services provided to him by Academi. As a result of these interrogations, the Crown Prince received a total of 194 billion dollars in “voluntary donations” from those that he was questioning.
One can recall that Saudi law enforcement agencies arrested a total of 11 princes, four ministers and several dozens of former ministers and prominent businessmen on charges of corruption. Among those arrested one could find one of the richest men on the planet – Al-Waleed bin Talal. Earlier in the Middle East and Western media leaked details about the harsh treatment that the detainees were exposed to, regardless of their social status or previous achievements. Thus, the newspaper The New York Times has already reported that at least 17 prisoners among those arrested on suspicion of participating in corrupt schemes were brutally beaten.
Another example of Washington’s privatization of “right on violence” is the organization of deliveries of lethal weapons to both the areas of armed conflicts, which is prohibited by international law, but even to those regions where extremist and terrorist groups haven’t started violence yet.
Thus, in spite of Washington’s continuous claims that there has been no instance of American lethal weapons being delivered to Ukraine, Western PMCs have been delivering those to Ukraine for over two years now. For instance, AirTronic PMC has been delivering American-made grenade launchers to Kiev for a long while as it’s been confined by its CEO, Richard Wendiver in his interview for the Voice of America. In particular, he specified that the companies initiated such deliveries last year and has been carrying on them until this very day. He added that such deliveries have been coordinated by the US Embassy in Kiev, in close cooperation with the State Department, the Pentagon and the Ukrainian government.
Since other American PMCs have been fulfilling similar contracts in other regions of the world, one shouldn’t be surprised when he seas a picture of a radical terrorist armed with top-notch US weapons systems, especially when those operate in Syria and Iraq. Almost one and a half thousand fully loaded trucks worth of weapons was delivered to the terrorists of ISIS, as it’s been announced by the Syrian Defense Ministry earlier this year. Automatic weapons and grenade launchers produced in American are pretty common among the radicals that the Pentagon has been unofficially supporting. All this has already been proven true, as tons of units of such weapons have already been confiscated from radical militants.
Despite the presence of a wide range of international actors, modern geopolitics is far from being public. A significant role in it is played by the behind-the-scenes actors and secret deals, which are then fulfilled by all sorts of PMCs. Thus, we have found ourselves in an age when private companies are capable of influencing individual countries and even whole regions. This, in particular, confirms the involvement of American PMCs in torture of representatives of the Saudi elites and the ongoing US-made arms deliveries to the Middle East, Ukraine, Afghanistan.
In 2008, the status of PMCs was clarified in the so-called Montreux Document, that was signed by a total of 17. This document contains rules of engagement for those companies and regulates their operations in conflict zones. According to this document, the state that hosts a private military company bears full responsibility for its actions in various regions of the world.
What this basically means is that Washington will not be able to escape responsibility for the crimes committed by its contractors somewhere behind-the-scenes.
Valery Kulikov, expert politologist, exclusively for the online magazine ‘New Eastern Outlook’.
A table was set up for two, an advertisement table,a table with a photo of a giant turkey, two elegant plates, and a U.S. flag sticking out into the air.
“Thanksgiving at Angkor Royal Cafe”, a flier read. And: “23rd November… Join us for a traditional Thanksgiving Feast”.
This was at one of the international hotels inSiem Reap, a Cambodian city near the world architectural treasures ofAngkor Wat and the ancient Khmer capital, Angkor Thom.
The same day I read an email sent to me from the United States, by my Native American friends, with a link to an essay published by MPN News, called “Thanksgiving Guide: How to Celebrate a Sordid History”. It began with a summary:
“While millions of Americans prepare this week to get into the holiday spirit, beginning with Thanksgiving, how many are prepared to view the day through an accurate lens? While to many Americans the holiday serves as a reminder to give thanks, it is seen as a day of mourning by countless of others. The truth is: European migrants brutally murdered Native Americans, stole their land, and continue to do so today”.
The day became an official day of festivities in 1637, to celebrate the massacre of over 700 people from the Pequot Tribe.
In a hotel, I approached a cheerful French food and beverage managerand asked him whether he was aware of what he was suggesting should be celebrated in one of his restaurants?
“Oh I know I know,” he replied, laughing. “It is a little bit controversial, isn’t it?”
“Bit controversial?” I wondered. “It appears more like you are inviting people to celebrate genocide, a holocaust, with free flowing wine and a giant turkey.”
“I am trying to see things positively,” he continued grinning at me. Then he summarized: “So I guess you won’t be joining us tonight? What a pity…”
“What a pity,” I thought, “what a pity.”I won’t get to eat that famous American pie tonightand turkey and who knows what else, just because I am not eager at all to celebrate the massacres and land grabsperpetrated by the Empire.
The manager couldn’t help asking: “Where are you from?”
I knew he would ask. No European would say what I was saying.
“I’m Russian,” I replied.
“Oh I see,” he gave me that ‘I should have guessed’.
“Russian-American,” I added.
*
Most of the people don’t even know about them, including many of the victims. On the other hand, the genocides committed by the others, particularly by adversaries of the West, are widely discussed, publicized, analyzed, inflated and very often even fabricated.
Cambodia is the textbook case of the latter. Here, several decades ago, the U.S. and its allies first supported the hopelessly corrupt and brutal government in Phnom Penh, while triggeringa monstrous carpet-bombing campaign of the Cambodian countryside, mainly near the border with Vietnam. This was supposed to prevent the country from ‘going Communist’, or at least ‘Ho Chi Minh style Communist’. Hundreds of thousands of villagers were murdered by the bombing. Millions were forced to hit the road, leaving their dwellings, as the countryside was converted into a giant minefield, covered by unexploded ordnance.Further hundreds of thousands died from starvation and diseases.Furious, mad from suffering, the people of Cambodia rose against the collaborators with the West in Phnom Penh. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge took the capital virtually unopposed. Recently, deep in the jungle, I spoke to the former Pol Pot’s personal guards. I asked them point-blank whether they knew anything about Communism. “Nothing at all,” I was told. “The U.S. was murdering our families, for no reason. Corrupt elites were selling the country to the West. We were all outraged, and ready for revenge. We would follow anybody calling for revenge.” However, the West is passing the events, to this day, as a “Communist genocide”.
Rwanda is yet another ‘case’ ofa twisted narrative. I made an entire full-length documentaryfilm – Rwanda Gambit – on the subject. There, the West turned the historyupside down, reducing the entire tragedy into a primitive and easy-to-digest narrative of bad Hutus killing good Tutsis. Yet even the former U.S. ambassador Robert Flatten told me that his country groomed, armed and supported the deadly RPF, mainly Tutsi army, which had been, before 1994, raiding the Rwandan countryside from neighboring Uganda, burning villages and killing civilians. While a former Australian lawyer and U.N. investigator, Michael Hourigan, supplied me with information about the downing of the plane, which, in April 1994, killed both the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President CyprienNtaryamira, while on the final approach to Kigali airport. The orders to shoot down the plane were given by the RPF leader Paul Kagame, who was in turn sponsored by the West. This event triggered the terrible bloodletting on 1994. The next year, in 1995, the Rwandan army entered the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and participated in the killing of at least 9 million people, mainly civilians, on behalf of Western governments and multi-national companies, making it the worst crime against humanity in recent history.
In fact, almost all the major genocides committed by the West or its allies in modern history, are ‘silent ones’, including those in Iraq, Syria, Iran, West Papua, East Timor, DRC, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Angola, and dozens of other unfortunate places all over the world.
The gruesome genocides committed by the West all over the world, during the last 2,000 but especially during the last 500 years, are never defined as such; never as ‘genocides’. Throughout history, European countries have been destroying, systematically, most of the cultures on all continents of the Planet, enslaving virtually all the non-white nations, plundering and looting its colonies (read: almost all the non-white nations of the world), while exterminating hundreds of millions of men, women and children. The death toll has been rising, accumulating, to near 1 billion, according to thetestimony of one of my friends, a senior U.N. statistician.
*
I will return to the ‘Cambodian story’ soon, on the pages of this magazine. And I will be returning, again and again, to the genocides committed by Europe and North America, virtually everywhere. Unless the history is understood and acknowledged, the world has no future, and there can be no solutions to the terrible problems that our humanity is facing.
But for now, let me conclude this brief essay by saying that I did not participate in the consumption of turkey and American pies on Thanksgiving holiday, in the Cambodian city of Seam Reap.
My thoughts went to those 700 people from the Pequot Tribe who rebelled, stood firm and died for freedom, almost 400 years ago. These were some of the first fighters against Western imperialism. These were the ‘Americans’ that I admire, this is America that had been terribly damaged but not yet completely destroyed. No overly sugary, sentimental and empty words could fully choke its essence, as no gluttony and food orgies could ever fully silence the screams of the pain of those who died in the hands of the European invaders, during and after the conquest of what has been so cynically christened as the ‘New World’.
Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images,a writer of revolutionary novel Aurora and several other books. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
(INTELLIHUB) — Fox News host Judge Jeanine laid her plan to tax the “deviants” in Washington for what their scandals have cost the American people on her Saturday broadcast of “Justice.”
According to the judge, it’s simple, just take it out of their pay.
The judge gives her take on the matter.
The post Judge Jeanine: Washington is a swamp in more ways than one appeared first on Intellihub.
According to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, it won’t be a simple task for North Korea to destroy their nuclear arsenal even if they wanted to. Moon says that because the communist nation’s weaponry is so advanced and more developed than most realize, simple destruction isn’t possible.
North Korea is under heavy international pressure to end its weapons programs, pursued in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. But it has vowed never to give up its nuclear arsenal giving a metaphorical middle finger to the United Nations. According to Reuters, speaking to reporters in the Philippines, Moon said that if North Korea agreed to hold talks, negotiations could be held with all options open.
“If talks begin to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue, I feel it will be realistically difficult for North Korea to completely destroy its nuclear capabilities when their nuclear and missile arsenal are at a developed stage,” Moon said in a briefing. “If so, North Korea’s nuclear program should be suspended, and negotiations could go on to pursue complete denuclearization.” But talks, according to Washington, aren’t in the works.
Last week, the North said it did not oppose dialogue, but would “never put the issue related to the supreme interests of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and security of its people on the bargaining table”.
“We are not interested in such dialogue and negotiations in the least,” the North’s official news agency said, referring to the country by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The North defends the programs as a necessary defense against Washington’s plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, and a legacy of involvement in the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention.
United States President Donald Trump has traded insults and threats with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as North Korea races toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States. Trump threatened in his maiden U.N. address to “totally destroy” North Korea if the United States was threatened and has said the time for talking, the policy of previous U.S. administrations, is over.
Moon also reiterated his stance that now was the time to increase pressure on North Korea so that it would come to talks. He said differences in understanding between South Korea and China, North Korea’s lone major ally, regarding the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on South Koran soil had not been resolved. “China has not said it has changed its stance to agree to THAAD and still says THAAD infringes on its security. We have, in turn, explained THAAD is not aimed at China but only toward curbing North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations,” he said.
This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge
America’s liberal left coast states count themselves among the most adamant supporters of controversial pieces of legislation intended to support low-income families. From their stunningly high income tax rates to their $15 minimum wage mandates, states like California and Washington are leading the charge on implementing Bernie’s socialist agenda.
Of course, some of the biggest advocates of that socialist agenda are the billionaire leaders of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies…which is precisely why it’s so ironic that it’s the “tech boom” being enjoyed by those billionaires that has resulted in surging housing prices and what SFGate described earlier today as a “homeless explosion pushing West Coast cities to the brink.”
Housing prices are soaring here thanks to the tech industry, but the boom comes with a consequence: A surge in homelessness marked by 400 unauthorized tent camps in parks, under bridges, on freeway medians and along busy sidewalks. The liberal city is trying to figure out what to do.
“I’ve got economically zero unemployment in my city, and I’ve got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just can’t afford housing,” said Seattle City Councilman Mike O’Brien. “There’s nowhere for these folks to move to.”
That struggle is not Seattle’s alone. A homeless crisis is rocking the entire West Coast, pushing abject poverty into the open like never before.
Nationally, homelessness has been trending down, partly because governments and nonprofit groups have gotten better at moving people into housing. That’s true in many West Coast cities, too, but the flow the other direction is even faster.
“So everybody who was just hanging on because they had cheap rent, they’re losing that … and they wind up outside,” said Margaret King, director of housing programs for the nonprofit DESC in Seattle. “It’s just exploded.”
According to stats gathered by the Associated Press, some 168,000 people in California, Oregon and Washington count themselves among the growing tally of homeless folks who can’t afford housing.
—Official counts taken earlier this year in California, Oregon and Washington show 168,000 homeless people in the three states, according to an AP tally of every jurisdiction in those states that reports homeless numbers to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That is 19,000 more than were counted in 2015, although the numbers may not be directly comparable because of factors ranging from the weather to new counting methods.
—During the same period, the number of unsheltered people in the three states climbed 18 percent to 105,000.
—Rising rents are the main culprit. The median one-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area is more expensive than it is in the New York City metro area, for instance.
—Since 2015, at least 10 cities or municipal regions in California, Oregon and Washington have declared emergencies due to the rise of homelessness, a designation usually reserved for natural disasters.
Of course, when home prices double in a matter of just a few years and are seemingly just as volatile as a tech stock circa March 2000, you know there’s a problem.
Meanwhile, as we pointed out a few weeks ago (see: San Diego’s Deadly Hepatitis A Outbreak Turns “Statewide Epidemic” As “Outbreak Could Last Years”), the homeless crisis in California has resulted in an alarming hepatitis A outbreak that started in San Diego and is now on the verge of reaching statewide epidemic status as cases have spread through homeless tent cities all the way north to Sacramento.
California’s outbreak of hepatitis A, already the nation’s second largest in the last 20 years, could continue for many months, even years, health officials said Thursday.
At least 569 people have been infected and 17 have died of the virus since November in San Diego, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles counties, where local outbreaks have been declared.
Dr. Monique Foster, a medical epidemiologist with the Division of Viral Hepatitis at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Thursday that California’s outbreak could linger even with the right prevention efforts.
“It’s not unusual for them to last quite some time — usually over a year, one to two years,” Foster said.
Of course, as SFGate points out, local governments on the West Coast are responding to the crisis in the best way they know how, namely by raising taxes…
All along the West Coast, local governments are scrambling for answers — and taxpayers are footing the bill.
Voters have approved more than $8 billion in spending since 2015 on affordable housing and other anti-homelessness programs, mostly as tax increases. Los Angeles voters, for example, approved $1.2 billion to build 10,000 units of affordable housing to address a homeless population that’s reached 34,000 people within city limits.
…which should only serve to accelerate the number of businesses relocating to Texas.
During the last two years of the Obama administration (Fiscal Year 2015 – 2016), law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security spent $138 million on new guns and ammunition. But what’s strange, is that $20 million was spent on guns and ammunition for federal bureaucrats.
Four notable examples of paper pushers and bureaucrats arming up, according to Forbes, are as follows:
1) The 2,300 Special Agents at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are now carrying AR-15’s, P90 tactical rifles, and other heavy weaponry. Recently, the IRS armed up with $1.2 million in new ammunition. This was in addition to the $11 million procurement of guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment procured between 2006-2014. What could go wrong when tax collectors have guns?
2) The Small Business Administration (SBA) spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to load its gun locker with Glocks last year. The SBA wasn’t alone in the purchase of guns either. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service modified their Glocks with silencers. And recently a vote on the bill to allow civilians the freedom to hunt with a silencer was “indefinitely postponed.”
3) The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a relatively new police force. In 1996, the VA had zero employees with arrest and firearm authority. Today, the VA has 3,700 officers, armed with millions of dollars’ worth of guns and ammunition including AR-15’s, Sig Sauer handguns, and semi-automatic pistols.
4) The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agents also carry the same sophisticated weapons platforms used by our Special Forces military warriors. The HHS gun locker is housed in a new “National Training Operations Center” – a facility at an undisclosed location within the DC beltway.
Last year, Forbes released their OpenTheBooks.com Oversight Report: The Militarization of America in an editorial published with the help of former-U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn at The Wall Street Journal. The report quantified the $1.48 billion spent by 67 non-military federal agencies on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment from 2006-2014.
Spending on guns and ammo at 58 non-military federal agencies (including 40 regulatory, administrative agencies) amounted to $158 million. The continued growth of the federal arsenal begs the question: Just whom are the feds planning to battle?
Federal bureaucrats are amassing arsenals of weapons and many agencies are now battle ready, but that is not a goo
In the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, many Washington politicians have tried shifting the conversation to the Second Amendment, reinvigorating the call for tighter gun control. President Trump has an opportunity to propose changes concerning gun control, but not in the way his opponents are calling for.
Trump should listen to the advice former U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn memorialized at Forbes last year after the Orlando nightclub massacre: the non-military, non-law enforcement – paper pushing administrative federal agencies – are the ones who should be subject to stricter gun control laws, not the general public. –Forbes
It may be too late, however. When you give the government socialist powers, somehow, someone is going to be needed to enforce all the rules an all you have to do, is offer them a paycheck – a paycheck stolen from those who they now power over. It isn’t a difficult concept. It looks like the government will enforce socialism at the barrel of a gun. Humans don’t want to be stolen from and told what to do, and the only way to make them complicit slaves is by threatening to shoot them. It takes a lot of guns and ammo to enforce a socialist and communist society.
With tensions between Turkey and the US escalating dramatically and unexpectedly in the past few days, when first Turkish police on Wednesday arrested a local employee of the US embassy in Istanbul and charged him with espionage and an attempt to overthrow the government, which was following on Sunday afternoon by the US embassy in Turkey announcing that "effective immediately" it has
"suspended all non-immigrant visa services at all U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey"...
Statement from the U.S. Mission to Turkey pic.twitter.com/RjTU3BfSXZ
— US Embassy Turkey (@USEmbassyTurkey) October 8, 2017
... only to see a identical Turkish tit to the US tat, when the Turkish embassy in Washington tweeted that it too suspended non-immigrant visa services for U.S. Citizens, echoing almost verbatim the US statement, to wit, "Recent events have forced Turkish Government to reassess the commitment of the Government of the United States to the security of Turkish Mission facilities and personnel. In order to minimize the number of visitors to our Embassy and Consulates while this assessment proceeds, effective immediately we have suspended all non-immigrant visa service at all Turkish diplomatic facilities in the U.S."
Statement from the Turkish Mission to the U.S., October 8, 2017 pic.twitter.com/4i0BwInOCj
— TurkishEmbassyDC (@TurkishEmbassy) October 8, 2017
... the market got nervous, and in early - and illiquid - FX trading, the TRY has tumbled to as low as 3.8533 per dollar, a level last seen in January, a drop of as much as 4%, the biggest slide since the fake attempted coup attempt in the summer of 2016.
This is the currency seventh consecutive decline, after dropping 0.8% Friday amid concern Fed tightening would hurt EM currencies, and should it persist may finally have an adverse impact on other EM currencies, not to mention various other local Turkish asset classes when markets reopen in a few hours.
(COMMONDREAMS) The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) responded to reports on Tuesday evening from journalists on Capitol Hill, who alleged that Capitol Police were blocking reporters’ access as they tried to cover healthcare protests.
Police may not delete photographs without a warrant, period.
If you think your rights were violated by Capitol Police, contact @ACLU_DC. https://t.co/6fdvuIoOgB
— ACLU National (@ACLU) July 25, 2017
Reporters from the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, the New York Post, and the Washington Post all tweeted from the Senate Gallery that reporters were being prevented from covering the protests. As nearly 100 demonstrators were arrested for protesting the vote to move to a debate on Trumpcare, which would cut health care coverage for up to 32 million Americans, police told reporters not to document the scene.
Sergeant at Arms just backed reporters off, called it a ‘crime scene.’ Protesters have been escorted away.
— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) July 25, 2017
Senate gallery staffer tells reporters to “back up” away from protesters who are being arrested. “This is a crime scene”
— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) July 25, 2017
Contrary to what the staffers reportedly suggested, there is no blanket law prohibiting the media from covering a “crime scene.”
Journalists also wrote that Capitol Police demanded that photos of the protests and arrests be deleted.
Reporters blocked from Senate halls where protesters being arrested, shouting, “Kill the bill!” Being told, “no photos. Delete your photos.”
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) July 25, 2017
Capitol Hill staffer now telling reporters “no photography, no videos” of protestors
— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) July 25, 2017
Capitol Police made me delete the video I recorded. https://t.co/NQH2fLFYiO
— Andrew Desiderio (@desiderioDC) July 25, 2017
As the ACLU notes in its online guide for members of the media, “When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police…Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances.”
The intimidation of journalists has escalated on Capitol Hill in recent weeks as the Senate has inched toward voting on Trumpcare. A female reporter was kicked out of the House Speaker’s lobby in June for not adhering to the House’s dress code. And after years of being permitted to interview senators in Senate building hallways, reporters were told in June that interviews would no longer be allowed. (The Senate Rules Committee reversed course on this rule following an uproar.)
By Julia Conley / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo
The charge of “driving under the influence” used to only apply to drivers who were under the influence of drugs or alcohol—but it will now apply to drivers who text, eat, smoke, read or groom while driving in the state of Washington.
The implementation of the Driving Under the Influence of Electronics Act was expedited from January 2019 to July 23 after Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a partial-veto, and insisted that “public safety is better served by implementing this bill this year.”
“When you are driving with a cell phone, you are a more dangerous driver than if you are driving drunk with a .08 blood alcohol level,” Inslee said during a press conference. “There’s hardly anything we’ve done in the last several years at the state Capitol to save more lives than this distracted driving law.”
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Statistics from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission found that 171 of 568 road deaths in 2015 were “blamed on some form of driver distraction, not necessarily electronics.”
Although both texting and holding a cellphone to your ear while driving are already banned in Washington, the new regulations will outlaw composing or reading any message, taking pictures, and ultimately holding a phone for any reason other than calling 911—even when sitting at a stoplight.
Penalties under the new DUI-E law will include a $136 fee for first-time offenders, a $234 fee for second-time offenders, and a $99 fee for “grooming, smoking, eating or reading while behind the wheel.”
While the fines might not seem outrageous at first glance, Toni Matous, an agent with Magnolia Insurance Agency Inc. in Seattle, told Q13Fox that insurance companies were some of the top lobbyists for the new distracted driving law—and that is not by mistake.
READ MORE: Survey Says.....One in Three Americans Believe Police "Routinely Lie to Serve Their Own Interests"
“The $136 ticket you get is going to be nothing compared to the insurance consequences,” Matous said, noting that tickets under the DUI-E law will count as primary offenses that will be added to drivers’ records.
Matous called the law the “new drunk driving,” and said that in the case of a family with a teenaged driver, if that driver receives a DUI-E ticket, it will affect the entire family by making their insurance skyrocket by up to thousands of dollars each year.
“The insurance industry is losing big, losing big in the personal auto insurance industry and they’re reeling, trying to find out how to find out how to solve the problem,” Matous said.
In order to cover the costs of implementing the new law, the state’s law enforcement agencies have spent $400,000 to add “6,000 patrol hours aimed at driver distraction.” While distracted driving offenses resulted in over 5,400 citations in Washington in April 2016, numbers are predicted to increase drastically with all of the new infractions that police will have the opportunity to cite.
While this new law in Washington may seem bizarre based on the fact that it makes things such as eating and smoking while driving illegal, it is not the first time a law has been introduced to fine Americans for being distracted. In May 2016, a Democratic assemblywoman from New Jersey introduced a bill to sentence individuals to up to 15 days in jail for the heinous crime of texting and walking.
Washington’s DUI-E law could set a precedent for future laws in other states, but it also allows for an abuse of power by police. It takes away the accountability that makes officers look for a legitimate infraction before pulling a car over, and it gives officers the ability to make their quotas by simply alleging that a driver was looking at an electronic device, even when their vehicle is not moving. As a result, the drivers pay a high price, and both the police state and the insurance companies who lobbied for the new law make a profit.
Tacoma, WA – Two cops with a fondness for corporal punishment are under criminal investigation for possible child abuse, after telling a woman to beat her 9-year-old grandson with a belt.
As The News Tribune reports, the officers not only urged to do it — contradicting the advice of Catholic Community Service workers who were present — but showed her how. They suggested she could use a small extension of her hand, since she was physically limited, and said it was her legal right to beat the boy.
Even more astonishingly, the boy was bleeding from broken glass after a panicked rage episode, and had a diminished mental capacity – which the officers knew about from a previous encounter. The boy had been committed to a hospital in April, and then in May was choked and abused by a babysitter.
On June 5, the boy had a breakdown when his grandmother went to get prescriptions following a back surgery and asked two therapists to watch him for the brief period. When she returned, he had broken all the glass he could find and locked himself in the house.
The grandmother was able to enter the home, calm down the boy and take away the knives he was holding. But it was too late, as one of the therapists had already called police. The cops showed up, forcing the woman to beat her 9-year-old mentally ill grandson.
“He came to me as a broken child…completely disabled. And I promised my boy that I would never hurt him or hit him.
I told the policeman that I promised my boy that I would never hurt him. They told me I had to. They weren’t going to call an ambulance or anything, and my boy was bleeding and he was completely out of control and he was completely terrified.
And I screamed at my therapist, ‘I can’t hold his wrists and kiss him, but I can beat him with a belt?!’
And I looked at [the therapist], and the police officer said, ‘Don’t look at him. He’s nothing. He means nothing to us. We’re the ones with the guns, with the power. We’re the ones who you need to listen to.’”
READ MORE: DUI Checkpoints Now Include Mouth Swabs that Can Tell If You Smoked Pot Days Ago
One cop grabbed the belt and slapped it loudly on the table. The cops threatened that they’d have the boy taken away by Child Protective Services if the woman did not beat her grandson. The volunteer social workers, whom the cops disparaged in their report, were frozen in disbelief as they looked on.
“And I did it,” she said. “I hit him with the belt. Of course my boy fought with me, because why wouldn’t he? I will never forgive myself. They told me to wait until he was sleeping and beat him in his sleep. They told me to hit him for every window that was broken. It was absolutely the worst day of my life.”
As a result of this ‘discipline,’ the boy became furious and violent toward his grandmother, even threatening to kill her. The cops then decided to involuntarily commit the boy to a children’s hospital, where workers saw the red marks on the boy’s arms and back.
“They told me they would bring me up on child abuse charges,” she said. “I’ve never hurt a child in my life, ever. I told the social workers what (the police) made me do.”
The first police report from June 5 made no mention of the belt beating, but a second report filed at a detective’s request describes the incident from the cops’ self-righteous perspective. The officer states in the report that he “gives out hundreds” of copies of the law on physical discipline to parents, in an apparent crusade for corporal punishment.
“The law, RCW 9A.16.100, refers to use of force on children. It states that physical discipline is permissible, if it is “reasonable and moderate and is authorized in advance by the child’s parent or guardian for purposes of restraining or correcting the child.”
The law goes on to list a series of unauthorized actions, such as striking a child with a closed fist. It closes by saying the list is “not intended to be exclusive.” It doesn’t mention belts.”
Even when a child is sitting amidst piles of broken glass, bleeding and holding knives after a mental breakdown, these cops felt compelled to tell this grandmother to beat the boy with the belt from his Sunday suit.
READ MORE: Ottawa Police Shoot Unarmed Teen 16 Times While Family Begs Them Not To
“I will never call the police again,” the woman said. “They tried to convince me that this wasn’t violence. I said, ‘That wasn’t violence? Then what was it?’ They said, ‘It’s just discipline.’ These guys were really prehistoric.”
The two officers are on administrative leave while the criminal investigation begins. Cops have no business telling parents to carry out corporal punishment, which science overwhelmingly tells us doesn’t work – and, in fact, contributes to increased aggression and antisocial behavior.
This disturbing case is another insight into the mentality of violence that infests too many of those sworn to protect and serve.
Image source: Ready.gov
It is illegal for emergency management officials to prepare for a North Korean nuclear attack in Washington state.
Incredibly, a Cold War-era law prevents any sort of emergency evacuation planning for a nuclear attack – even though the state is on the West coast and could be among the first states hit from the reclusive country. KING-5 TV in Seattle first reported of the nutty law.
“State law does not allow any advanced planning,” Karina Shagren of the Washington state Emergency Management Division told KING-5.
Are Your Prepared If An EMP Cripples The Power Grid? Get Backup Electricity Today!
That means the division cannot plan evacuations or relocations in case of a North Korean attack.
The law, passed in 1983, reads, “The comprehensive, all-hazard emergency plan authorized under this subsection may not include preparation for emergency evacuation or relocation of residents in anticipation of nuclear attack.”
Retired army general and former presidential advisor Barry McCaffrey called the law “goofy.”
“Certainly it’s a goofy thing to not tell people to think about a major real threat,” McCaffrey told the TV station. “What we’re trying to achieve is deterrence, which means ballistic missile defense.”
The law was written and passed in 1983 when many people thought a Soviet nuclear attack would be so devastating that evacuation and relocation would be pointless. The author of the law was former Democratic state legislator Don Nelson.
“I haven’t abandoned my basic belief that we need to find peaceful ways of dealing with the nuclear threat,” Nelson told KING-5. “But I also believe we have a crazy dictator who could do anything.”
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the section below:
Hanford Nuclear Facility Reactor B (vonguard/Flickr)The U.S. Department of Energy activated the Emergency Operations Center Tuesday due to a tunnel collapse at the Hanford nuclear site.
According to KING-TV, a “tunnel in a plutonium finishing plant collapsed in Hanford early Tuesday morning. The tunnel was full of highly contaminated materials such as hot radioactive trains that transport fuel rods.”
As Breaking911 reports, some workers were being evacuated while others were advised to shelter-in-place. The Hanford Fire Department is on scene and updates will be posted as they are available. Workers in the vicinity are still being sheltered as a precaution.
From the U.S. Department of Energy
“The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Richland Operations Office activated the Hanford Emergency Operations Center at 8:26 a.m., after an alert was declared at the 200 East Area. There are concerns about subsidence in the soil covering railroad tunnels near a former chemical processing facility. The tunnels contain contaminated materials.”
Actions taken to protect site employees include:
As we detailed previously, radioactive leak problems at the Hanford Site, a nuclear storage tank in Washington State, are nothing new.
We first wrote about the ongoing radioactive leakage at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, in 2013.
As a reminder, during the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Alas, the site has been leaking ever since, as many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate and Hanford’s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the neighboring Columbia River.
Hanford’s weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons of high-level radioactive waste, an additional 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste, 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater beneath the site and occasional discoveries of undocumented contaminations.
The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup. The government spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup — one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The cleanup is expected to last decades.
However, as Krugman would say, the government was not spending nearly enough, and after a major documented leak in 2013, over the weekend, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste are estimated to have leaked from the Site once again, triggering an alarm and causing one former worker to label it as “catastrophic.”
As AP reported, the expanded leak was first detected after an alarm went off at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on Sunday, and on Monday workers were preparing to pump the waste out of the troubled area. They were also trying to determine why the leak became worse.
It’s unclear exactly how much waste spilled out, but estimates place the amount at somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 gallons, according to the Tri-City Herald.
The problem occurred at the double-wall storage tank AY-102, which has the capacity to hold one million gallons of the deadly waste, and which has been leaking since 2011. At the time, the leak was “extremely small”, and the waste would dry up almost right after spilling out between the inner and outer walls, leaving a salt-like substance behind.
However, over time the small leak got bigger.
In March, the US Department of Energy began pumping what was left in the storage tank, which originally held some 800,000 gallons of waste. However, after leak detector alarms sounded early Sunday morning, crews at Hanford lowered a camera into the two-foot-wide space between the tank’s inner and outer walls. They discovered 8.4 inches of radioactive and chemically toxic waste has seeped into the annulus.
Pumping work on the tank has been halted as officials reevaluate the situation and figure out how to get to the leaked radioactive waste. It’s possible that the leak was made worse when the pumping began, but that has not been confirmed.
Taking a page right out of the TEPCO playbook, the U.S. Department of Energy released a statement Monday calling the leak an “anticipated” outcome of an ongoing effort to empty the tank in question. The Washington state Department of Ecology said, “There is no indication of waste leaking into the environment or risk to the public at this time.”
But one former tank farm worker said the leak should be considered a major problem.
“This is catastrophic. This is probably the biggest event to ever happen in tank farm history. The double shell tanks were supposed to be the saviors of all saviors (to hold waste safely from people and the environment),” said former Hanford worker Mike Geffre.
He should know: Geffre is the worker who first discovered that the tank, known as AY-102, was failing in 2011. In a 2013 series, “Hanford’s Dirty Secrets,” the KING 5 Investigators exposed that the government contractor in charge of the tanks, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), ignored Geffre’s findings for nearly a year. The company finally admitted the problem in 2012.
Another problem: tank AY-102 is just one of 28 double-shell tanks at Hanford (there are 177 underground tanks total) holding nuclear byproducts from nearly four decades of plutonium production on the Hanford Nuclear Site, located near Richland. Initially, the plutonium was used to fuel the bombed dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.
The new leak poses problems on several fronts. The outer shell of AY-102 does not have the exhaust or filtration system needed to keep the dangerous gases created by the waste in check. Workers have been ordered to wear full respiratory safety gear in the area, but the risk remains. And unlike Fukushima where cleanup crews are aware of the danger, in Hanford virtually nobody is aware of the dangers of the radioactive seepage.
“The hazards to workers just went up by a factor of 10,” said Geffre.
The breakdown calls into question the viability of three other double-shell tanks at Hanford that have the exact design of AY-102. It is not clear how many of them may have comparable “extremely small” leaks which have gotten bigger, and even if there was it is likely that the DOD would not reveal them.
“The primary tanks weren’t designed to stage waste like this for so many years,” said a current worker. “There’s always the question, ‘Are the outer shells compromised’”?
Oh, and let’s not forget that the accumulation of waste in the outer shell also means “the deadliest substance on earth is that much closer to the ground surrounding the tank. And currently, there is no viable plan in place to take care of it.”
Or, as Ben Bernanke would say, the Plutonium is contained.
“It makes me sad that they didn’t believe me that there was a problem in 2011,” said Geffre. “I wish they would have listened to me and reacted faster. Maybe none of this would be happening now. It’s an example of a culture at Hanford of ‘We don’t have problems here. We’re doing just fine.’ Which is a total lie,” said Geffre.
Via Zero Hedge
The U.S. Department of Energy activated the Emergency Operations Center Tuesday due to a tunnel collapse at the Hanford nuclear site.
State Emergency Operations Ctr activated for Hanford Site emergency. Monitoring situation at this time.
— WA Emergency Mgmt (@waEMD) May 9, 2017
According to KING-TV, a "tunnel in a plutonium finishing plant collapsed in Hanford early Tuesday morning. The tunnel was full of highly contaminated materials such as hot radioactive trains that transport fuel rods."
The dark area underneath the tall orange flag is the collapse site – a hole left by the tunnel collapse. pic.twitter.com/7fvqsRimhC
— Susannah Frame (@SFrameK5) May 9, 2017
As Breaking911 reports, some workers were being evacuated while others were advised to shelter-in-place. The Hanford Fire Department is on scene and updates will be posted as they are available. Workers in the vicinity are still being sheltered as a precaution.
Other first responders standing by at Hanford, waiting to hear if they can move in closer. pic.twitter.com/uFTZPmkKcj
— Susannah Frame (@SFrameK5) May 9, 2017
From the U.S. Department of Energy
“The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Richland Operations Office activated the Hanford Emergency Operations Center at 8:26 a.m., after an alert was declared at the 200 East Area. There are concerns about subsidence in the soil covering railroad tunnels near a former chemical processing facility. The tunnels contain contaminated materials.”
Actions taken to protect site employees include:
* * *
As we detailed previously, radioactive leak problems at the Hanford Site, a nuclear storage tank in Washington State, are nothing new.
We first wrote about the ongoing radioative leakage at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, in 2013.
As a reminder, during the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Alas, the site has been leaking ever since, as many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate and Hanford"s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the neighboring Columbia River.
Hanford"s weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons of high-level radioactive waste, an additional 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste, 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater beneath the site and occasional discoveries of undocumented contaminations.
The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation"s high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation"s largest environmental cleanup. The government spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup — one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The cleanup is expected to last decades.
However, as Krugman would say, the government was not spending nearly enough, and after a major documented leak in 2013, over the weekend, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste are estimated to have leaked from the Site once again, triggering an alarm and causing one former worker to label it as "catastrophic."
As AP reported, the expanded leak was first detected after an alarm went off at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on Sunday, and on Monday workers were preparing to pump the waste out of the troubled area. They were also trying to determine why the leak became worse.
It’s unclear exactly how much waste spilled out, but estimates place the amount at somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 gallons, according to the Tri-City Herald.
The problem occurred at the double-wall storage tank AY-102, which has the capacity to hold one million gallons of the deadly waste, and which has been leaking since 2011. At the time, the leak was "extremely small", and the waste would dry up almost right after spilling out between the inner and outer walls, leaving a salt-like substance behind.
However, over time the small leak got bigger.
In March, the US Department of Energy began pumping what was left in the storage tank, which originally held some 800,000 gallons of waste. However, after leak detector alarms sounded early Sunday morning, crews at Hanford lowered a camera into the two-foot-wide space between the tank"s inner and outer walls. They discovered 8.4 inches of radioactive and chemically toxic waste has seeped into the annulus.
Pumping work on the tank has been halted as officials reevaluate the situation and figure out how to get to the leaked radioactive waste. It’s possible that the leak was made worse when the pumping began, but that has not been confirmed.
Taking a page right out of the TEPCO playbook, the U.S. Department of Energy released a statement Monday calling the leak an "anticipated" outcome of an ongoing effort to empty the tank in question. The Washington state Department of Ecology said, "There is no indication of waste leaking into the environment or risk to the public at this time."
But one former tank farm worker said the leak should be considered a major problem.
"This is catastrophic. This is probably the biggest event to ever happen in tank farm history. The double shell tanks were supposed to be the saviors of all saviors (to hold waste safely from people and the environment),” said former Hanford worker Mike Geffre.
He should know: Geffre is the worker who first discovered that the tank, known as AY-102, was failing in 2011. In a 2013 series, “Hanford’s Dirty Secrets," the KING 5 Investigators exposed that the government contractor in charge of the tanks, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), ignored Geffre’s findings for nearly a year. The company finally admitted the problem in 2012.
Another problem: tank AY-102 is just one of 28 double-shell tanks at Hanford (there are 177 underground tanks total) holding nuclear byproducts from nearly four decades of plutonium production on the Hanford Nuclear Site, located near Richland. Initially the plutonium was used to fuel the bombed dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.
The new leak poses problems on several fronts. The outer shell of AY-102 does not have the exhaust or filtration system needed to keep the dangerous gases created by the waste in check. Workers have been ordered to wear full respiratory safety gear in the area, but the risk remains. And unlike Fukushima where cleanup crews are aware of the danger, in Hanford virtually nobody is aware of the dangers of the radioactive seepage.
"The hazards to workers just went up by a factor of 10,” said Geffre.
The breakdown calls into question the viability of three other double-shell tanks at Hanford that have the exact design of AY-102. It is not clear how many of them may have comparable "extremely small" leaks which have gotten bigger, and even if there was it is likely that the DOD would not reveal them.
"The primary tanks weren"t designed to stage waste like this for so many years,” said a current worker. “There’s always the question, ‘Are the outer shells compromised’”?
Oh, and let"s not forget that the accumulation of waste in the outer shell also means "the deadliest substance on earth is that much closer to the ground surrounding the tank. And currently there is no viable plan in place to take care of it."
Or, as Ben Bernanke would say, the Plutonium is contained.
"It makes me sad that they didn’t believe me that there was a problem in 2011,” said Geffre. “I wish they would have listened to me and reacted faster. Maybe none of this would be happening now. It’s an example of a culture at Hanford of "We don’t have problems here. We’re doing just fine.’ Which is a total lie,” said Geffre.
Dear Mike, if you think that is bad, you should see what they say about the "markets"...
* * *
