Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout?

U.S. babies are dying at an increased rate. While the United States spends billions on medical care, as of 2006, the US ranked 28th in the world in infant mortality, more than twice that of the lowest ranked countries.  (DHHS, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics.  Health United States 2010, Table 20, p. 131, February 2011.)

The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011  - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)

This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant.   Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster.  In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate. 

Spewing from the Fukushima reactor are radioactive isotopes including those of iodine (I-131), strontium (Sr-90) and cesium (Cs-134 and Cs-137) all of which are taken up in food and water.  Iodine is concentrated in the thyroid, Sr-90 in bones and teeth and Cs-134 and Cs-137 in soft tissues, including the heart. 

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U.S. intensifying covert war in Yemen: report

The Obama administration has intensified air strikes on suspected militants in Yemen in a bid to keep them from consolidating power as the government in Sanaa teeters, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

A U.S. official confirmed to Reuters that a U.S. strike last Friday killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel al Qaeda operative, which followed last month's attempted strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Citing U.S. officials, the Times said a U.S. campaign using armed drones and fighter jets had accelerated in recent weeks as U.S. officials see the strikes as one of the few options to contain al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

With the country in violent conflict, Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to Sanaa, the newspaper said.

Yemen's authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was wounded on Friday and is being treated in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He appears to have been wounded by a bombing at a mosque inside his palace, not a rocket attack as first thought, U.S. and Arab officials told Reuters.

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Tokyo Radiation: Show Us the Digits

If picture can be worth a thousand words, what price a number? Especially one measuring radiation?

For most Tokyo residents, fears over radiation from the crippled nuclear complex at Fukushima Daiichi have never really scaled the heights, barring some unsettling early readings from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Shinjuku monitoring center in the days after the March 11 disaster. But news that much more radiation was released from the plant than previously calculated has left a jarring question for some: just how much radiation from Japan’s worst-ever nuclear crisis made it to Tokyo?

Now the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is trying to soothe citizens’ concerns by assisting local authorities in measuring radiation levels at grass-roots levels. Some private efforts to measure radiation levels have been in place for some time, such as the live campus measurements posted by Tokyo University, but the central Tokyo authority is now allocating extra resources in an effort to respond to what it describes as “many calls” from worried residents who do not have access to measurements in their area.

A spokesman from the Tokyo government’s Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health says that to step up monitoring, the city authority has divided the capital into a grid of 100-120 squares measuring 16 square kilometers apiece. Local ward government representatives will be asked to decide where to place the radiation measuring instruments within each square in a meeting scheduled for Friday. Starting June 15, two teams will be dispatched to measure radiation levels in each of the chosen locations. Since the Tokyo metropolitan government only has about 70 measuring instruments, the operation should take about two weeks.

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Pentagon sees Libya military costs soar

US military operations in Libya are on course to cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than the Pentagon estimated, according to figures obtained by the Financial Times.

Robert Gates, the outgoing secretary of defence, said last month that the Pentagon expected to spend “somewhere in the ball park of $750m” in the 2011 fiscal year as part of efforts to protect the Libyan people.

But according to a Pentagon memo which includes a detailed update on the progress and pace of operations, by mid-May US operations in Libya had cost $664m, a figure confirmed by the Department of Defence.

The document, entitled the “United States Contribution to Operation Unified Protector’’, adds that US costs are running at a rate of about $2m a day or $60m a month. The memo has been circulating on Capitol Hill since last week. The DoD declined to comment on the increased costs of the operation.

The pace of spending is higher than reported by the DoD comptroller’s office in late March. In a congressional hearing, Pentagon officials said the US had spent about $550m on Libya, at a rate of about $40m a month.

If spending remains at the increased rate until the end of the recently extended Nato authorisation period, the DoD could face an extra bill of about $274m to pay for a combination of air strikes, refuelling operations and intelligence-gathering missions, putting further strain on its budget.

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US Is Nearing Even Worse Financial Crisis: Jim Rogers

US Taxpayers About To Be Saddled With Another European Bailout Courtesy Of AIG

Just when one thought every imaginable taxpayer bailout scheme had been seen, experienced and in many cases, forgotten, here comes AIG once again. The specifics come from Deutsche Bank's Joshua Shanker initiation of coverage report on AIG (naturally with a Buy rating, $34.00 target price), where within the fine print he notes: "the company believes there may be bargains available from buying RMBS securities from European banks seeking better positioning under Basel III requirements. " Prudently, he adds: "We note that increased yield, in this regard, also carries with it increased risk." Translated this means that AIG is about to do for European banks what the ECB so far has been unwilling and/or unable: namely to transfer the risk associated with European banks' massive ongoing exposure to the continuously collapsing US housing market back to the US taxpayer, in the form of AIG, which was bailed out once, and which will certainly be bailed out again, when the time comes.

As a reminder, AIG was rejected by the New York Fed in its attempt to repurchase the very same loans that were part of the package that sent the company into bankruptcy, only to be rescued in the last minute by Hank Paulson, who flipped on his decision to kill Lehman (thus making Goldman the Wall Street fixed income OTC monopolist) by providing hundreds of billions in order to unwind Joe Cassano's massive wrong way bet.

As for how much RMBS will AIG soon transfer from European taxpayer "backstopping" and back to US? Roughly $21 billion worth.

From the relevant section in the DB report:

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Daniel Ellsberg: All the crimes Richard Nixon committed against me are now legal

In the 1960s, Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon official, a former Marine commander who believed the American government was always on the right side. But while working for the administration of Lyndon Johnson, Ellsberg had access to a top-secret document that revealed senior American leaders, including several presidents, knew that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire.

Officially titled "United States-Viet Nam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense,"–the Pentagon Papers, as they became known–also showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In, 1971, Ellsberg leaked all 7,000 pages to The Washington Post, and 18 other newspapers, including The New York Times, which published them.

Not long after, he surrendered to authorities and confessed to being the leaker. Ellsberg was charged as a spy. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed on grounds of governmental misconduct against him. In April 1973, the court learned that Nixon had ordered his so-called "Plumbers Unit" to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to steal documents they hoped might make the whistle-blower appear crazy. In May, more evidence of government illegal wiretapping was revealed. The charges against Ellsberg were dropped. This led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. (*More bio below)

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SWAT team launch dawn raid on family home to collect unpaid student loans

A father was dragged from his home and handcuffed in front of his children by a SWAT team looking for his estranged wife - to collect her unpaid student loans.

A stunned Kenneth Wright had his front door kicked in by the raiding party at 6 am yesterday before being dragged onto his front porch, handcuffed and led to a police car with his three children.

He says he was then detained for six hours while officers looked for his wife - who no longer lives at the house.

Mr Wright was later told by Stockton police that the order to send in the SWAT team came from The U.S. Department of Education who were looking for his estranged wife to collect defaulted loan payments.

Speaking to ABC News 10, a visibly shaken Mr Wright described what happened when he was woken by a banging on his front door.

He said: 'I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers.

Dressed in his boxer shorts, Mr Wright says he rushed downstairs and was about to open the door when it was kicked open.

An officer then grabbed him by the neck before dragging him out onto the front lawn.

His 3, 7, and 11-year-old children were also removed by officers and put in a waiting police car.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2001010/SWAT-team-launch-dawn-raid-family-home-collect-womans-unpaid-student-loans.html#ixzz1OiOekwv2

Obama Pledges Help for Greek Crisis

President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged European countries and bondholders to prevent a "disastrous" default by Greece and pledged U.S. support to help tackle the country's debt crisis.

Obama, whose political prospects have suffered from persistently high unemployment and ballooning U.S. debt, has pinpointed the euro zone crisis as one foreign "headwind" hitting the U.S. economy.

After a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he stressed the importance of German "leadership" on the issue - a hint that he expects Berlin to help - while expressing sympathy for the political difficulties European Union countries face in helping a struggling member state.

"I'm confident that Germany's leadership, along with other key actors in Europe, will help us arrive at a path for Greece to return to growth, for this debt to become more manageable," Obama said.

"But it's going to require some patience and some time. And we have pledged to cooperate fully in working through these issues, both on a bilateral basis but also through international and financial institutions like the IMF."

A proposal for a second Greek bailout package worth 80 billion to 100 billion euros over three years was taking shape, euro zone sources said.

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Federal healthcare law is “unconstitutional,” opponents say

They disagree on whether it’s unconstitutional, but attorneys arguing both sides of the federal health care law told a three-judge panel in a federal appeals court on Wednesday that the so-called “individual mandate” is critical to the law’s core purpose.

Attorneys for 26 states, led by Florida, and the National Federation of Independent Business, argued the provision is unconstitutional because it forces people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty.

Attorneys for the federal government disagree.

“We’re not saying that Congress can force people to buy something,” said acting solicitor general Neal Kumar Katyal, who represents the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “People are seeking this good already in untold numbers. The good of health care.”

At issue is how that “good” is paid for, Katyal argued.

“It is purely financing. It’s about regulating whether somebody will pay cash or credit,” he said. “It’s about failure to pay. Not about failure to buy.”

But attorney Paul Clement, representing Florida and the other 25 states, said the law indeed forces people to buy health insurance, something Congress can’t do.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/08/2257177/federal-healthcare-law-is-unconstitutional.html#ixzz1OiNWmQsV

Fukushima: More serious than a meltdown!!!

The melted fuel at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station may have leaked through the pressure vessels of the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

The Japanese government will submit a report to the International Atomic Energy Agency that raises the possibility the fuel dropped through the bottom of the pressure vessels, a situation described as a “melt through” and considered more serious than a “meltdown,” according to the report, which cited the document.

To contact the reporter on this story: Go Onomitsu in Tokyo at gonomitsu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kyung Bok Cho at kcho7@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-07/melted-fuel-at-fukushima-may-have-leaked-through-yomiuri-says.html

One in four US hackers 'is an FBI informer'

The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers, a Guardian investigation has established.

Cyber policing units have had such success in forcing online criminals to co-operate with their investigations through the threat of long prison sentences that they have managed to create an army of informants deep inside the hacking community.

In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover FBI agents posing as "carders" – hackers specialising in ID theft – have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars.

So ubiquitous has the FBI informant network become that Eric Corley, who publishes the hacker quarterly, 2600, has estimated that 25% of hackers in the US may have been recruited by the federal authorities to be their eyes and ears. "Owing to the harsh penalties involved and the relative inexperience with the law that many hackers have, they are rather susceptible to intimidation," Corley told the Guardian.

"It makes for very tense relationships," said John Young, who runs Cryptome, a website depository for secret documents along the lines of WikiLeaks. "There are dozens and dozens of hackers who have been shopped by people they thought they trusted."

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Obama loses bin Laden bounce; Romney on the move among GOP contenders

The public opinion boost President Obama received after the killing of Osama bin Laden has dissipated, and Americans’ disapproval of how he is handling the nation’s economy and the deficit has reached new highs, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey portrays a broadly pessimistic mood in the country this spring as higher gasoline prices, sliding home values and a disappointing employment picture have raised fresh concerns about the pace of the economic recovery.

By 2 to 1, Americans say the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, and nine in 10 continue to rate the economy in negative terms. Nearly six in 10 say the economy has not started to recover, regardless of what official statistics may say, and most of those who say it has improved rate the recovery as weak.

New Post-ABC numbers show Obama leading five of six potential Republican presidential rivals tested in the poll. But he is in a dead heat with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who formally announced his 2012 candidacy last week, making jobs and the economy the central issues in his campaign.

Among all Americans, Obama and Romney are knotted at 47 percent each, and among registered voters, the former governor is numerically ahead, 49 percent to 46 percent.

Overall, about six in 10 of those surveyed give Obama negative marks on the economy and the deficit. Significantly, nearly half strongly disapprove of his performance in these two crucial areas. Nearly two-thirds of political independents disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, including — for the first time — a slim majority who do so strongly.

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rememberbuilding7.org

Taxpayer Dollars Still Bailing Out Banks

None of America's largest banks raise money on the free market. Every single one of them is propped up by an implicit taxpayer guarantee that is very similar to the backstops provided to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It is a huge subsidy by taxpayers to the banks, enabling them to be far more profitable than they would be otherise.

Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner (disclosure: we're brothers) explains:

Last week, the ratings agency announced a review of whether these bailout assumptions still apply after passage of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill. The Moody's review will be the truest test yet of President Obama's promise that the legislation—derided by Republicans as a bailout bill — can end the "Too Big To Fail" dynamic that has encouraged financial risk taking and given these banks an unfair advantage.

The implicit government guarantee these banks enjoy is a subsidy. The "five notches of uplift from government support assumptions" that Moody's gives to Bank of America translate into real profits for Bank of America. Without a presumed bailout, Bank of America's [BAC  10.87    -0.41  (-3.63%)   ] senior debt would be rated Baa3, just barely on the right side of the "Investment Grade"/"Speculative Grade" boundary. The presumed "government support" raises the bank's debt rating to A2, which is "very low credit risk."

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True Cost of Fannie, Freddie Bailouts: $317 Billion, CBO Says

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the real cost of the federal government guaranteeing the business of failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is $317 billion -- not the $130 billion normally claimed by the Obama administration.

In a report delivered to the House Budget Committee on June 2, the CBO said a “fair value” accounting of guaranteeing the two defunct mortgage companies – known as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) – was more than twice as high as the Office of Management and Budget had accounted for.

“Specifically, CBO treats the mortgages guaranteed each year by the two GSEs as new guarantee obligations of the federal government,” the CBO report said. “For those guarantees, CBO’s projections of budget outlays equal the estimated federal subsidies inherent in the commitments at the time they are made.”

“In contrast, the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget continues to treat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as nongovernmental entities for budgetary purposes, and thus outside the budget,” the report stated. “It records as outlays the amount of the net cash payments provided by the Treasury to the GSEs.”

The total of those cash payments is $130 billion, and is normally reported as the cost of the bailout of the GSEs to date. However, the CBO said that merely counting the cash payments, and not the cost of federal subsidies granted to the GSEs, obscures their real costs.

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US says dropping bombs is not war, but guessing a computer password is

The US government sure has an interesting way of defining war these days. Just a few months after the Obama administration played word games with the public by insisting that air strikes in Libya were just "kinetic military action," not acts of war, the Pentagon has now come on the record stating that it will treat all acts of cyber-hacking against the US as "acts of war."

The announcement came on the heels of a supposed cyber-attack that occurred a few weeks ago against defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Officials say when hacking incidents like this occur in the future, retaliation in the form of reverse cyber-attacks, economic sanctions, and even "military strike[s]" may take place.

"A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response," said Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman. "All appropriate options would be on the table." A White House statement also said the US plans to "respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country," implying that computer hackers could soon face retaliatory attacks by the US military.

So when the US decides to invade foreign nations, often times without necessary congressional approval, it is just a simple act of exerting kinetic energy. But when a computer hacker correctly guesses a password and breaches the security protocols of the US government or one of its contracted companies, this is an act of war. And so it goes in the arbitrary world of the military-industrial complex, where definitions of war are applied only when it benefits the corporate oligarchy.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032614_cyber_warfare_act_of_war.html#ixzz1OSuzyZzB

VIDEO: Mysterious 'structure' discovered on Mars, No Response From NASA

An American 'armchair astronomer' claims he has discovered a strange structure on the surface of Mars while browsing Google.

David Martines was scanning Google Mars when he discovered the long white edifice and has even listed the coordinates (49'19.73"N 29 33'06.53"W) so others can see it for themselves.

Mr Martines posted a video of the 'station' on YouTube which has been viewed more than 200,000 times.

On the video, he talks through the discovery he has named "Bio-Station Alpha". "It's very unusual in that it's quite large, it's over 700 feet (210m) long and 150 feet (45m) wide. It looks like it's a cylinder or made up of cylinders," he says.

"It could be a power station or it could be a biological containment or it could be a glorified garage — hope it's not a weapon.

"I don't know if NASA even knows about this."

NASA and Google have yet to respond to media inquiries

Watch the video...

The Fallacy of Ron Paul

Alicia Hope

Ron Paul likes to rant against the Patriot Act,  the TSA, the Fed, the IRS, the NWO wars AND the evil police state! Don't get me wrong, I love it when he stands up to the "bullies in the school yard!"

The problem is that he stated that 9/11 was not an inside job during the 2008 presidential campaign. Ron knows better! Trust me! Either he was forced to say what he said or he didn't want to alienate potential voters. It takes courage to really make change in the world. It takes a lot of courage!!!

The government's argument is that 9/11 was a terrorist attack and that they have to crack down so that another attack does not occur. We all know that's a lie but at least their argument is congruent. It's logical! Spock, from Star Trek, would concur with their assessment! If 9/11 had been a true attack from enemy elements outside of the United States, we might need some additional security measures. And, securing the borders would have to be number one on the list.

Ron can't have his cake and eat it, too!

He can't play tennis from both sides of the net. That's what he doesn't realize. That's why he won't win in 2012.

Millions of 9/11 Truthers were hurt in 2008 not only by what he said but how he said what he said. The expression on his face was one of disgust and hate for us. We helped put him on the map!!! Ron felt that we were ruining his chances of winning. That assumption was insane and very wrong. The truth has to come out! Time is of the essence! The police state, TSA groping and military tribunals have sprouted like weeds by watering the 9/11 government lie.

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State Department report on U.S. withdrawal from Iraq cites lack of money, other problems

As the U.S. military draws down forces in Iraq, the State Department’s plans to take over the American role may falter because of lack of money, inadequate housing for increased personnel and unforeseen events, according to a new inspector general’s report.

“Establishing a viable diplomatic mission in Iraq without the considerable support and resources of [the Department of Defense] will almost certainly require years of effort and the investment of significant resources,” according to the report released this week by the State Department’s inspector general.

The administration requested $2.7 billion for Iraq in fiscal 2011, but when the final continuing resolution was passed by Congress, the State Department got $2.3 billion for the effort. The administration has requested $6.3 billion for fiscal 2012. The funding uncertainties have “hindered the ability to derive firm, detailed budget figures for completing the transition and sustaining operations,” according to the report.

The report says the State Department plans to eventually deploy 17,000 political, economic and security personnel among 15 sites throughout Iraq. In Baghdad, the influx is expected to reach 8,000 by the end of 2011, but there are beds for only about half that number now. The embassy is negotiating with the Iraqi government to obtain more residential space in a nearby facility that is a U.S. military base, but there are no contingency plans if a property lease is delayed or denied by the Iraqi government, according to the report.

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