Enenews, which calls itself a “news outlet,” has no easily identified publisher. The website was registered as a Florida limited liability company by a Palm City attorney named Grant N. Grand July 1, 2011. Grant N. Grand is also the registrant for FLORIDAOILSPILLLAW.COM which says it is “Documenting the BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil, Gas, & Dispersant Disaster.”
Grand was sued for copyright infringement July 15, 2010 for allegedly posting a May 10, 2010 Las Vegas Review-Journal story, “Exxon Valdez oil risks spur warning for gulf cleanup crews” by R-J staffer Keith Rogers on his own website in its entirety. The headline changed to “Exxon Valdez foreman: ‘Oil is 1,000 times more toxic than we thought’” and the byline to “OILFLORIDA.”
Las Vegas-based Righthaven LLC bought the rights to the R-J article July 7, 2010 and sued Grand a week later. “Rather than requesting websites remove R-J stories before filing lawsuits, Righthaven typically sues the websites and seeks $75,000 in damages for copyright infringement,” a July 16, 2010 Review-Journal article revealed. According to VegasInc in “Righthaven files, settles more copyright lawsuits” October 13, 2010, Righthaven had reached a confidential settlement with Grand.
It has not damaged our ability to report news, including exposés regarding Fukushima’s impact on the Pacific and North America that is seen nowhere else. There is no other news website in the world that has the breadth of original radiation testing, monitoring and reporting that EnviroReporter.com has. Phony rumors and aggregators are mere sideshows to the hot news that, unfortunately, just keeps coming.
That is little consolation to Radiation Station Pacifica California’s David Crain for the thrashing he has taken over his viral video, which has been seen by over 770,062 viewers as of March 10. “The video I made and shared and then got picked up then went nuts was my first attempt and perhaps my last” Crain told EnviroReporter.com January 6. “I now would have done it differently, more like you have done, perhaps. You can’t deny the results. It’s in the universe. This has never happened to me before nor have I ever posted anything on YouTube.”
Whatever faults can be attributed to Crain’s somewhat misguided beach testing, they were not repeated by Michael E. Boyd of Soquel, California, as EnviroReporter.com has discovered. Boyd posted Implications of radioactivity in seawater to desalination in Santa Cruz County California January 11 and the results are amazing.
Boyd took multiple radiation measurements at Capitola Beach in Monterey Bay January 9 just 67 miles down the coast, and down current, from where Crain made his now infamous video at Pacifica State Beach. The same day, the Santa Cruz Sentinel ran with a story called “State rebuffs radiation concerns at beach.”
Equipped with a GMC200 Geiger Muller nuclear radiation monitor with software for USB data logging, Boyd looked for where Fukushima radiation would actually be, the Pacific Ocean. “The sea water sample taken at the tide line from high turbidity tide water was examined in comparison to a sample taken from [a] reverse osmosis filtration system in my home,” Boyd wrote. “The tap water is supplied by the Soquel Creek Water District.”
Boyd also detected huge radiation readings in the mists generated by the churning surf. He is not mystified, however, as to the source of the hot sea spray. “Fukushima Japan’s TEPCO nuclear power plant melting down must be the cause of higher radiation levels on the Pacific seashore, not the government compelled speech on the subject, that natural sources are the cause, as reported by the media,” Boyd concluded in the report. “Irrespective, the fact remains that radiation levels are elevate[d], what ever the cause.”
The Sea of Fuku Goo has arrived in Monterey Bay, home of one of the richest marine habitats in the world. It is sloshing southward along the California Current to Los Angeles and beyond to Baja California before curving back along a westward current across the Pacific to reload up on Fuku goo.
The implications of such a radioactive environment extend beyond the state’s shoreline. Some of the priciest real estate in the world is along the California coast, worth hundreds of billions of dollars in a state with over $4.4 trillion worth of property. If and when radiation sleuths, including EnviroReporter.com, detect these astronomical readings, videotape them, and post the hot shots online, will wealthy residents along the Southern California coast take notice? Most rich folks aren’t stupid and the thought of breathing in Fukushima radionuclides at such high levels day in and day out might not appeal to many of them.
The hottest property in the Golden State could become, literally, the hottest property courtesy of a triple meltdown begun exactly three years ago with no end in sight. Whether this causes a massive real estate crash is still to be seen. More than one wealthy homeowner along the Pacific has told EnviroReporter.com that they are unloading their multi-million dollar properties while the market is on the upswing.
Hot Pot
EnviroReporter.com has also learned that soil in the most marijuana-intensive growing region of California is hot with radionuclides that could have come from nowhere but Fukushima. The implications are enormous as marijuana is California’s largest agricultural product. Plus, it is inhaled deeply with users holding their breath as long as possible to absorb the psychoactive components of cannabis.
Amateur radiation sleuth Michael Van Broekhoven gathered two soil samples from near Willow Creek and from “commercially available top soil in Northern California.” Both samples, collected in April 2013, tested positive for cesium-134 and cesium-137.
That the samples contained cesium-134 is proof that the radiation came from Fukushima as Cs-134 has a half-life of 2.0652 years meaning it couldn’t have been fallout from atomic weapons fallout. Nor is there an active nuclear reactor in the area leaking radiation that could have been the source.
The Willow Creek soil sample had 0.962 Becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) of cesium-134 and 13.39 Bq/kg of cesium-137 according to the lab gamma spectroscopy analysis done for Van Broekhoven in May 2013 by Cinnaminson, New Jersey-headquartered EMSL Analytical, Inc.. The store-bought dirt had even more Cs-134 with 1.11 Bq/kq though less Cs-137 at 4.10 Bq/kg.
Super strong strains of the pot are sold in Los Angeles for nearly $300 an ounce and have names like “Gucci OG” and “King Louie XIII.” Indoor grows use the commercially available top soil in Northern California that Van Broekhoven bought to test to raise potent plants as well. Now, both indoor and outdoor Humboldt County dope could have been grown in Fukushima-contaminated dirt.
This alarming revelation means that the twelfth-largest economy in the world, California, has its number one product being grown in potentially lethal soil. The marijuana industry in California was worth $13.8 billion according to public policy analyst Jon Gettman in 2006. Gettman holds a Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason University where his doctoral studies were focused on regional economic development. His report is one of the few that tackle the hard to discern production figures and value of the product.
The worth of the California’s annual marijuana crop could cost double that now according to EnviroReporter.com sources. Even the 2006 pot crop worth dwarf’s the 2012 value of California’s second most valuable commodity, milk, which was valued at $6.9 billion by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
The meltdown misery doesn’t end in California. The state’s San Joaquin Valley’s $105.81 billion produce industry packs and ships to everywhere in the country. Common sense would suggest that with high radiation along the California coast down as far as Santa Cruz, and hot radiation rains in Death Valley, that there would be evidence of unnaturally high radiation somewhere in between. There is. An approximate line between the two places goes through the central valley city of Fresno which has had incredibly high beta radiation detections.
Facing Fukushima
With all this evidence, then, how could it be the perfect crime? Well, it isn’t.
Even with public apathy, an asleep at the switch government, and a hostile media, David Crain’s video going viral shows that hot radiation gets hits. People will watch videos showing Fukushima’s invisible fingers tightening around the throat of the West Coast. A lot of people. No matter the amount of media derision, seeing is believing.
Dale Ramicone is ready for that day and already has the right equipment. He and other dutiful Americans will also continue to monitor for Fukushima radiation because they know it’s the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean he sees much chance of people rising to the challenge of facing Fukushima.
“The cost will come little by little,” Ramicone says. “Men, women, children will have their lives impacted over the coming decades. More cases of leukemia, thyroid cancer, an insidious poisoning that leaches into our bodies. Our lives will be shortened, health slowly sapped from an entire population.
“The truth will be hidden, of course. Denials will come from every corner. It will be easy, since no one will really look. If no one looks, no one knows, and of course, there will never be an official acknowledgment. No headlines blaring “Two Decades, 20,000 dead!” No accounting, so no one is accountable. It’s perfect, a perfect crime, don’t you think?”
Almost.
As long as there are people and reporters willing to tease out and find Fukushima radiation in America and beyond, there is hope that a sober facing up to the radioactive reality is possible.
Over 500 of such souls gathered on a San Francisco beach October 19, 2013 using themselves to spell out FUKUSHIMA is HERE.
Since the miseries of Japan’s triple meltdowns won’t end anytime soon, perhaps for hundreds if not thousands of years, intrepid and brave individuals and groups have plenty of time to expose the continuing radioactive nightmare of Fukushima.
@zach: Apparently you’re a student from St Michael’s Grammar School, an Australian co-educational independent day school located in St Kilda, Victoria that costs tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend. I’m afraid that while that tony education has taught you how to construct poorly-punctuated sentences, it also did not impart the critical thinking skill set that would have enabled you to see that the “perfect crime” that this article exposes had nothing to do with your prattle here. Give it another read.
A perfect crime? why would japan do this to try and harm a few americans when it killed thousands of their own, cost them hundreds of billions of dollars and even made large parts of their own country uninhabitable due to radiation?
I think you have to be pretty big headed to believe that japan decided to do that to attempt to harm a couple of americans in such a far fetched way.
Start having some sympathy for the Japanese who had their lives ripped apart by the disaster.
@All: The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works sent EnviroReporter.com the following regarding progress, or shockingly no progress, done to make more safe America’s nuclear power plants and infrastructure. Having just finished Fukushima – The Perfect Crime? will probably have our readers not very surprised at what the outstanding, yet sadly outgoing, junior Senator from California has to say:
Opening Statement of Ranking Member Barbara Boxer
EPW Hearing on “Oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”
October 7, 2015
(Remarks as prepared for delivery)
Today, the Environment and Public Works Committee is holding an oversight hearing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). I remain concerned about the slow pace at which the NRC is implementing measures intended to protect American nuclear plants in the wake of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns that occurred in Japan in March 2011.
It has been more than four years since the Fukushima disaster, and Japan continues to face challenges in its cleanup efforts.
Only one of Japan’s 43 nuclear reactors has been turned back on since the Fukushima disaster. A recent analysis by Reuters found that of the other 42 operable nuclear reactors in Japan, only seven are likely to be turned on in the next few years. Reuters also found that “nine reactors are unlikely to ever restart and that the fate of the remaining 26 looks uncertain.”
For the last four years, I have been saying that in order to earn the confidence of the public, we must learn from the Fukushima disaster and do everything we can to avoid similar disasters here in the U.S.
Following the last NRC oversight hearing in April, I met with Chairman Burns to discuss the commission’s progress on implementation of the Fukushima Near-Term Task Force recommendations. I appreciate the letter he sent me after our meeting outlining the status of the commission’s work and anticipated timelines for completing each of the recommendations.
While I recognize that progress has been made on some of the recommendations of the Post-Fukushima Task Force, I am frustrated and disappointed with the overall slow pace. Not one of the 12 task force recommendations has been fully implemented. And many of the recommendations still have no timeline for action.
I am also concerned with some of the decisions the NRC is making on whether to implement important safety enhancements.
In particular, I am troubled that the Commission overruled staff safety recommendations and voted not to move forward with multiple safety improvements. For example, by a 3 to 1 vote, the Commission decided to remove a requirement that nuclear plants have procedures in place for dealing with severe accidents, like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. These procedures ensure plans are in place when multiple failures of safety equipment occur or other unanticipated events take place.
This requirement was identified in the aftermath of Fukushima, but after years of work on this and other proposals, the Commission simply chose not to move forward. That is unacceptable.
The Commission does not appear to be doing all it can to live up to the NRC’s mission “to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while protecting people and the environment.”
We need to look no further than the two nuclear power plants in my home state. At California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, NRC has repeatedly declared the plant safe even after learning of a strong earthquake fault near the plant.
At the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Diego County, which has been closed permanently, the NRC recently issued exemptions to emergency planning requirements. The plant’s operator will no longer be required to maintain detailed plans for the evacuation, sheltering, and medical treatment of people residing in the 10-mile zone around the plant.
I am aware that the NRC is planning a rulemaking on decommissioning issues, but rubber stamping exemptions the way the Commission has is the wrong approach. I believe it is wrong to relax emergency planning requirements with thousands of tons of extremely radioactive spent fuel remaining at the site. The millions of people living in close proximity to the plant deserve better.
The NRC owes it to the citizens of California and the nation to make safety the highest priority and I urge all the Commissioners to refocus your efforts to do just that.
I look forward to discussing these issues with you today.
It should be mandatory that dispensaries test ‘medicinal’ marijuana for the presence of radiation now-along with pesticides, fungicides, etc. Wise up folks and quit smoking it.
@Eric: While it may be understandable to advocate such an extreme act, that would be terrorism which is unacceptable. Plus, there is no way to diminish the tons of goo at Fukushima by exploding the place sky high – radiation can’t be vaporized away, blown apart or scattered enough to be safe. It would make the massive mess even more unmanageable and deadly to flora and fauna on the land and in the sea.
Nuke the reactors. It would do less harm to the environment and oceans
Very good investigative factual journalism.
With regard to mainstream media’s coverage, it appears OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD is exerting it’s full force on this grave issue. For those who are not familiar, OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD was covertly implemented by the CIA soon after the agency was formed after WWII, for the purpose of infiltrating mainstream media and using it as a propaganda tool to promote their many covert agendas. Even though it was ordered by Congress to cease it during the late 1970s, it obviously was not done, and no oversight exists. Sensitive subjects which hit close to home, such as real investigations into murdered presidents, govt involvement in drug traffic, 911 and other false flag operations that factually implicate the true holders of power, will trigger the CIA’s mocking propaganda machine into high gear. And like paid stooges, the mainstream media falls in line with a synchronized goose step. And innocent victims be damned.
Anti-nuclear legend Harvey Wasserman has Michael Collins on as his guest to discuss Fukushima – The Perfect Crime? in this fast-paced show with a host who really knows his radiation. Collins describes radiation discovered along the Pacific coast in Pacifica and Santa Cruz, California, Fukushima-tainted dirt lab tested from the heart of marijuana growing country in Humboldt County, extremely radioactive rain in Death Valley, high radiation found through US EPA RadNet monitors coast to coast, meltdown deniers successfully pulling the wool over the Los Angeles Times, news aggregators and “alternative” news outlets, and the now-infamous Ventura County Reporter cover art for one of Collins’s 2012 Fukushima stories that shows how clueless the media, and Americans in general, are about the ongoing triple meltdowns that began in Fukushima Japan March 11, 2011. Not to be missed rarity.
This IS the perfect crime, because our stooge governments are allowing TEPCO to get away with it.
Specifically, I like how the Japanese Government has taken to explaining the skyrocketing thyroid cancer rates in Fukushima Prefecture — “it’s because we’re testing more thoroughly, not because there are more cancers.”
Yeah, right. If the Japanese Gov’t wasn’t lying its ass off, it would repeat the Fukushima study somewhere out of the immediate fallout zone, and then compare. Please don’t bet on that happening.
You can read some of the sordid details here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/09/fukushima-children-debate-thyroid-cancer-japan-disaster-nuclear-radiation
It’s about time for a bunch of nuke plant employees to show up and mansplain to us that “hardly any radiation was released, nukes are safe, even YOU eat bananas, and …” because we’re all just supposed to believe all the nuke industry’s bullshit.
There is an amazingly concerted effort going on to trivialize Fukushima. As recently as this week, the Japanese government was explaining away the skyrocketing childhood thyroid cancer rates in Fukushima Prefecture as “we’re doing a better job detecting, that’s all.”
“Ignore this situation at your peril.”
That’s a phrase I’ve heard far too often in my life, as to a variety of economic and public health disasters. With respect to radiation from Fukushima reaching the United States, the warning is appropriate.
In 1986, few Americans had ever heard of Ukraine, when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion and meltdown occurred. Whether out of Soviet egotism and pride, or out of fear of intense public anger and its consequences, the highest levels of the Soviet government made decisions to work in near silence (in terms of what the Soviet public knew) to attempt to staunch the continued atmospheric impacts of the explosion and meltdown. Moscow and Leningrad were far from the accident site, the bureaucrats and decision makers’ children were thought to be relatively safe, and catastrophic decisions were made. The residents of Pripyat, the town nearest the reactor, were not evacuated until 2 days after the explosion. Ukrainians living within 20 miles of the reactor were not evacuated until a month later, while Belarussians living in that 20 mile zone were not evacuated at all. The rest of the Soviet population was not aggressively educated on how best to protect themselves from becoming chronically ill from the variety of sources contaminated by the fall out from the burning reactor.
Literally hundreds of thousands of “Soviet citizens” of no consequence, Belarussians living to the north, Russians living in Bryansk Oblast of Russia to the northeast, and Ukrainians living to the east, west and south of Chernobyl were exposed first to airborne radiation from the explosion and fire, then to radiation in their drinking water drawn from the region’s surface waters, and then to radiation in the meat they ate and milk they drank because animal forage had been radioactively contaminated. Belarussians and Ukrainians were also extensively exposed from radioactive contamination of locally grown grain which went into their every day foods. The Soviet government found it inconvenient to try to prevent the public from unknowingly eating radioactively contaminated food (a situation which continues in Belarus today with particular intensity).
Over the succeeding years, the people living in those regions saw a dramatic increase in cancer and related health problems to such an extent that the people now call it “Chornobyl disease”. Birth defects substantially increased. Children died with more frequency than in other eastern European countries. Individual medical doctors in southwest Russia, Belarus and Ukraine began to undertake independent investigations of the effects of radiation on the health of the people. Those physicians wrote about their findings in medical journals published in the Russian and Ukrainian languages. In autopsies of the region’s dead children their organs were examined and Caesium-137 was found in its highest accumulation in the endocrine glands, in particular the thyroid, the adrenals and the pancreas. High levels were also found in the heart, the thymus and the spleen. The average person-on-the-street in the region now takes for granted the fact that their countrymen are still chronically sick and dying from the radiation.
The Belarussian, Ukrainian and southwest Russians have historically been chronically fatalistic, knowing that “Life stinks then you die” (a translation of a sentiment expressed in both languages.) As a consequence, the public at large in those countries knows and understands the “consequences of the Chernobyl explosion and fire” from practical experience and they soldier on.
Yet there were at least 7 non-Soviet organizations with “western” orientation which conducted public health studies in the region. All of those studies were met with criticism that Chernobyl related illnesses and deaths were under-reported or over-reported. Each study seemed directed toward a particular political goal.
In 2007 three physicians who lived in southwest Russia and Belarus put together of collection of articles on the medical effects of the Chernobyl explosion which had been written in the Russian language by practicing physicians and medical school professors. The book was simply titled “Chornobyl”.
By 2009, the New York Academy of Sciences had sponsored the publication of an English translation of that Russian language book, called “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”. The publication was little noticed until 2011, when its contents began to be discussed as a result of the Fukushima meltdowns and radioactivity releases. A shit storm about the English translation publication ensued, with some “western” scientists and statisticians vociferously attacking the report out of a belief that eastern Europeans are incapable of conducting “credible” medical and environmental research…a charge which Russian and Ukrainian scientists and physicians find incredibly insulting, given those countries universities’ reputation for producing brilliant academics. In the 2 years following the Fukushima meltdowns the English-language translation of “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment” became very difficult to obtain, in essence a suppressed or black listed document.
In contrast with Belarussians, Ukrainians and southwest Russians’ of the consequences of the catastrophe for their countries populations, Americans are completely in the dark about the consequences of Fukushima. Americans have not realized that public health consequences from the Fukushima meltdowns have already begun to occur, and as a consequence Americans are not trying to improve their chances at maintaining their pre-Fukushima life expectancy or that of their children. They are far more “in the dark” than the citizens of their historical enemy, the Soviet Union.
On all manner of issues, the Obama Administration is accused of “strictly controlling the message”. The progressive media, largely pro-Democratic Party, figuratively stick their heads in the sand on the consequences of Fukushima. No one is discussing how to better the non-interventionist outcome which was and is seen in Belarus, Ukraine and southwestern Russia.
The Republican/conservative media are supportive of economic powerhouses in the U.S., like the food and real estate industries as well as those in the medical industry who profit from widespread cancer treatment. The Republican/conservative media say nothing about the affects of the Fukushima meltdowns on people and the environment in America even when presented with the Obama Administration’s inaction and lack of candor as an opportunity for unfettered “slam journalism”.
Attacks are as-to-be-expected on journalists, scientists and citizens who try to discuss what is happening in the United States with respect to the Fukushima meltdowns. So confident of their silencing of the message, TEPCO’s American advisor Dale Klein* is now seriously talking about a program of perpetually dumping the region’s fresh water, now radioactively contaminated, into the Pacific, whether neighboring countries like it or not. The corporate, political and media elite have created an oligarchy of silence, laying down a fog of fatalism blinding the American people.
* http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/10/fukushima-operator-dump-contaminated-water-pacific
The radiation disaster in Fukushima has been and still is a cluster of lies that is allowing them to radiate the air and the Pacific Ocean and everything that lives in it and eats from it! TEPCO must be replaced with a group of international radiation and nuclear power plant experts to stop the leaking radiation from entering the Pacific Ocean and to clean up this ongoing disaster! The people at TEPCO that caused this disaster to happen by not securing the generators to higher ground after they were told to do so long before the earthquake hit and the people in the Japanese Government that allowed this to happen should be tried for crimes against humanity then put into prison! Now dozens of people are showing up with thyroid cancer and other cancers! Anyone that has been eating pacific ocean fish or sea food should think about doing a radiation detox.
Dang!
Amazingly well written. I am at a loss of words.
I read it twice and will probably read it again.
This one will be forwarded to my family and friends.
“…more holes than a Fukushima reactor.”
– Michael Collins
Wow. Thank you for this. When I’ve mentioned, or made reference to the radiation contaminating here, people seem to ignore it or deny it. And some, appear to have the attitude of, we can’t do anything about it, so ignore it. I will be sharing this link.