The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 14 No. 18…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…May 2, 2011

Venue for an Artist

And God Cries...

By Rosalie Bertell

Reddened evening sky,

Candle flickering gently,

It is the hour of prayer

And in the stillness a great pain wells up -

Mothers stoned and burned alive,

Children beaten and trained to kill -

And God cries...

In the stillness, shrill terror breaks the air,

Distress invades my heart

The crush of hopeless despair is upon me

"Disappearing" husbands and children,

A human shield bulldozed

And God cries...

Will the killing never stop?

Families fleeing, cramped in tents, deprived of hope;

"Bunker busters" causing the Earth to quake

Each tear, each cry held precious by a God

who loves with passion and God cries...

Gently the suffering with their compassionate

brothers and sisters are consoled

How sweet the healing presence

Cradled in God's arms the broken and terrorized

are calmed and the pain leaves

and God cries...

Into my heart comes the pain as global tensions ease,

and I too am calmed

and God cries with joy.

Bit of History

Dr. Rosalie Bertell

Born April 4, 1929 in Buffalo, New York, Rosalie Bertell is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. Her mother was Canadian. Her father, Paul Bertell, president of the Standard Mirror Company and inventor of the day-night auto mirror, was a US citizen.

Bertell earned a B.A. (1951) from Marguerite D'Youville College in Buffalo and joined the Carmelites. In 1956, a heart attack forced her to leave. She joined the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart in 1957.

In 1966, Bertell graduated from the Catholic University of America in Washington with a Doctorate in Biometry. She landed a research position at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the world's first cancer research facility. From 1969 to 1978, she was a senior cancer research scientist at the Roswell Institute. She also taught math at D'Youville College.

Overworked, Bertell suffered a second heart attack (1972). While convalescing, she "stumbled'' onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bomb data.

After ten (10) years of studying radiation, she became an expert in the field. Dr. Bertell began her campaign against nuclear power at a public meeting in Buffalo. Niagara County wanted to build a nuclear plant on a site next door to farms producing Gerber's Baby Food and people, mainly women, were concerned. The protest succeeded in getting a moratorium on the plant - the first one in the United States against the nuclear industry.

Armed with a data base of medical information on radiation, Bertell became a sought-after speaker. However, her realization that the military, which set radiation standards, routinely released radiation, created tensions between her activism and her employer, the Roswell Institute, which favored the nuclear industry because it provided research revenue. And, since "scientists are economic prisoners," Bertell was told what she could say. She chose to quit, rather than be silent or lie to the public.

Dr. Bertell has addressed conferences worldwide on the harmful effects of radiation. Her congressional testimony on medical x-rays resulted in the halt of x-rays in shoe stores and annual medical x-rays in schools and in workplaces.

In 1984, she founded the International Institute of Concern for Public Health (IICPH), serving as its president from 1987 to 2004. She headed the 1984 International Medical Commission Bhopal, which investigated the Union Carbide chemical spill in India, and organized the International Medical Commission on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to fight for the rights of victims. In the Philippines, she assisted the people in dealing with problems stemming from toxic waste left by the US military on their abandoned Subic and Clark military bases. She worked with the government of Ireland to hold Britain responsible for the radioactive pollution of the Irish Sea, and is assisting Gulf War Veterans and Iraqi citizens in dealing with the illness called Gulf War Syndrome.

A feminist who believes that if women had more decision-making power, the world would be a better place, at the 1995 Forum on Women in Beijing, Bertell alerted delegates to the dangers of military-developed chemicals and their long-term impact on life. She identified chlorines among the worst offenders on the planet. Developed during World War I, chlorine did not exist in the atmosphere until then. Now there is evidence that one class of chlorines has "demasculinized and defeminized'' birds and fish, and Dr. Bertell warns that studies on the implications for human sexuality and reproduction have just begun.

According to Dr. Bertell, on the issue of weather and the impact of El Nino, "It's the military who have messed up our weather and ozone. They blamed it on Mt. Pinatubo and now El Nino. Where did that come from all of a sudden? Everybody repeats El Nino and accepts it. It is public relations, not scientific data.''

Dr. Bertell has also worked on the relationship between diabetes, cancer and leukemia and radiation. On the issue of obesity, she believes, "It's not just junk food. It's well-known that radioactive iodine in North American's atmosphere slows down the thyroid gland and that contributes to (being) overweight.''

Dr. Bertell has served as a consultant to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and to Health Canada. Dr. Bertell served as Co-chair for Canada on the Ecosystem Health Workgroup of the Science Advisory Board to the US - Canada International Joint Commission (IJC) on the Great Lakes, and on the IJC Nuclear Task Force. She also serves as advisor to the Great Lakes Health Effects Program of Health Canada, and to the Environmental Assessment Board of Ontario. She is also a founding member of the International Commission of Health Professionals, and the International Association of Humanitarian Medicine.

Dr. Bertell is the recipient of honorary degrees and numerous awards including the Hans-Adalbert-Schweigart-Medal (1983), Right Livelihood Award (1986), World Federalist Peace Award, Ontario Premier's Council on Health, Health Innovator Award, the United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 award, and the Sean MacBride International Peace Prize. Bertell has published and reviewed numerous articles for professional journals and was editor of the journal, "International Perspectives in Public Health." She wrote the books No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth (1985) and Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War (2000).

Dr. Bertell believes the major issues facing humanity are the dangers associated with economic globalization, war and the proliferation of chemical and radioactive pollutants as the result of preparation for war and the toxic products and processes developed from weapons research and production. She declares it's all about money. "War and money make the world go around. When you have money, you have to be prepared to go to war to protect it and that is the main concern of corporations and governments.'' For Bertell, educating the public is essential, because "once your eyes are open, you can't close them again.'' (Sources: www.ccnr.org/bertell_bio.html, www.rosaliebertell.net/, and www.bariumblues.com/dr_rosalie_bertell.htm)

Climate Change and Greenhouse Gases

By John Burl Smith

Climate models are sophisticated computer programs that incorporate as many details as possible about the complexes of the environment, including hundreds of dynamic processes, such as ocean currents, cloud formations, vegetation cover and the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These models produce data of the net effects on square-shaped plots over the Earth's surface. The smaller the squares, the better the resolution these model can provide.

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research have released a scientific assessment that provides the first comprehensive analysis of observed and projected changes in weather and climate extremes in North America and U.S. territories. This assessment predicts that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to increase as human activities continue to increase atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

This report presents scientific evidence that a warming world will experience changes in the intensity, duration, frequency, and geographic extent of weather and climate extremes. Tom Karl, Ph.D., director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. stated, "This report addresses one of the most frequently asked questions about global warming: what will happen to weather and climate extremes? This examination concludes that we are now witnessing and will increasingly experience more extreme weather and climate events in the future."

Purdue University researchers, studying severe weather and climate change, looked at the effects of global warming on the number of severe storms in the future and discovered a dramatic increase in potential storm conditions for some parts of the United States. The team used climate models to examine future weather conditions that favor formation of severe thunderstorms - those that produce flooding, damaging winds, hail and sometimes spawn tornadoes.

According to associate professor, Robert Trapp, lead researcher, "It seems that areas in the U.S. prone to severe thunderstorms presently will likely have more of them in the future." The study found that increases in storm conditions occur during the typical storm season and that by the end of this century the number of days that favor severe storms could more than double in locations such as Atlanta and New York.

Noah Diffenbaugh, who collaborated on this study, believes, "These findings illustrate how a relatively small increase in temperature can have a dramatic effect on day-to-day weather, which means that a few degrees of global warming could make these severe events much more common than they are today."

Team member Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma believes bringing together experts in climate modeling with experts in severe storms to examine how climate change may affect weather provided a new approach. "We know the basic ingredients for a storm trigger for a severe thunderstorm -- warm, moist air near the ground, cold, dry air higher above the ground and winds that increase in intensity from the ground up. It appears that even though, global warming would reduce strong winds that contribute to storms, it could lead to an increase in humid air that fuels severe thunderstorms, outweighing the reduction in strong winds higher in the atmosphere." Scientists at Harvard University have found that tropical cyclones readily inject ice far into the stratosphere, possibly feeding global warming. The finding, published in Geophysical Research Letters, provides more evidence of the intertwining of severe weather and global warming by demonstrating a mechanism by which storms could drive climate change. Many scientists believe that global warming, in turn, is likely to increase the severity of tropical cyclones.

David M. Romps, research associate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, said, "Since water vapor is an important greenhouse gas, an increase of water vapor in the stratosphere would warm the Earth's surface. Our finding that tropical cyclones are responsible for many of the clouds in the stratosphere opens up the possibility that these storms could affect global climate, affecting the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones." These researchers were intrigued by earlier data suggesting that the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere has grown by roughly 50 percent over the past 50 years. The Harvard researchers sought to examine the possibility that tropical cyclones might send a large fraction of their clouds into the stratosphere.

Using infrared satellite data gathered from 1983 to 2006, Romps et al analyzed towering cloud tops associated with thousands of tropical cyclones near the Philippines, Mexico and Central America. Their analysis revealed that narrow plumes of miles-tall storm clouds can rise so explosively through the atmosphere that they often push into the stratosphere. They found that tropical cyclones are twice as likely as other storms to punch into the normally cloud-free stratosphere, and four times as likely to inject ice deep into the stratosphere.

This research established the possibility of a feedback loop between tropical cyclones and global climate. "Typically, very little water is allowed passage through the stratosphere's lower boundary 6 to 11 miles above the Earth's surface -- the tropopause, which is the coldest part of Earth's atmosphere. The tropopause is a cold barrier where water vapor freezes.

But if very deep clouds, such as those in a tropical cyclone with speeds of up to 40 miles per hour can punch through the tropopause, they can deposit their ice in the warmer overlying stratosphere, where it then evaporates. This suggests that tropical cyclones could play an important role in setting the humidity of the stratosphere."

"These reports focuses for the first time on changes of extremes specifically over North America and shows we will continue to see some of the biggest impacts of global warming coming from changes in weather and climate extremes," said report co-chair Gerry Meehl, Ph.D. of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. (Sources; www.sciencedaily.com and www.un.org)

Hood Notes

Severe Weather and Climate Change

By John Burl Smith

Lining up in 2003 with President George W. Bush against the Kyoto Protocol, Russian President Vladimir Putin quipped global warming might improve conditions in his country. "You would have to spend less money on fur coats and other warm things." But last summer, drought and a record heat wave led to forest fires that killed 54 people, while reducing visibility in Moscow to 20 yards, destroying a quarter of the country's grain harvest. Shaken, Putin traveled to an Arctic research station to meet with climate scientists; he likened the fires to "the Nazi blitzkrieg."

Billions of tons of industrial waste spew into the atmosphere each year, trapping the sun's heat and causing dangerous changes in climate and weather patterns and concern around the world. Sub-Saharan Africa produces less than 4% of this waste - known as "greenhouse gases" - far less than North America, Europe, Asia and other industrialized regions. However, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists revealed that Africa is already experiencing the effects of climate change projected for the distant future.

People living in drought-prone regions, like the Sahel and Africa's other dry areas, can expect these areas to become even drier. While flood-prone areas in Southern Africa are likely to become wetter as rainfall patterns shift, causing more frequent flooding. Climate changes could put the lives of an additional 75-250 million African people at risk.

Geoff Jenkins, head of the Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research in Exeter, released a report at the Kyoto protocol convention in Milan for those trying to reach agreement on legally binding reductions in greenhouse gas; it showed that Britain has become twice as stormy over the past 50 years due to climate change. "The contrast between the slight decrease in the number of storms in Iceland and the increase over the UK is pretty conclusive evidence that the storm track, or North Atlantic oscillation, as we call it, has moved south. The pressure changes in the atmosphere has caused storms to become more intense, forcing the deep depressions that used to hit Iceland further south over Britain."

Following Kyoto, European conservatives, including British Foreign Secretary William Hague, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have taken tough action regarding climate change. While U.S. exceptionalists -- the Republican Party and new GOP Congressmen are nearly unanimous global-warming deniers - continue to value economic growth over survival. However, ahead of NASA's James Hansen's prediction of record-high temperatures for 2012 and even nastier weather, the southern U.S. may have experienced a preview of climate change events to come.

Tornado watches were posted from Georgia to Maryland (4-27-11); a series of lethal storms tore through the U.S. Sunbelt and up the east coast, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Upwards of 160 twisters, some with wind velocity of 100 miles per hour, with storm tracks in excess of 150 miles, slammed across six states, killing more than 300 people and causing damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So far, there are 210 confirmed deaths in Alabama alone, plus 34 in Tennessee, 33 in Mississippi, 15 in Georgia, 12 in Arkansas, 5 in Virginia and 1 Kentucky. This was the deadliest day of tornados since a similar onslaught killed 310 people across 13 states in 1974.

April has been marked by heavy rains that have soaked the land and threatened to drive the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to record flood levels. The destructive tornadoes, thunderstorms and hail triggered flash flood warnings, power outages and travel delays of all types from New York to the Gulf of Mexico. The Tennessee Valley Authority shutdown all three reactors at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama after the severe storms and tornadoes caused power outages but said power was restored within hours.

Climate change deniers may be correct and the earth is just experiencing a natural cycle in weather patterns, but what if they are wrong and the world is approaching the tipping point in the degradation of the earth's atmosphere? Such storms will only be the beginning. (Sources: www.bloomberg.com, www.usatoday.com,www.guardian.co.uk and www.sierraclub.org)

Politics Y2K11

America's Nuclear Nightmare (Excerpt)

By Jeff Goodell

The U.S. has 31 reactors just like Japan's -- but regulators are ignoring the risks and boosting industry profits.

Five days after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, triggering the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, America's leading nuclear regulator came before Congress bearing good news: Don't worry, it can't happen here. In the aftermath of the Japanese catastrophe, officials in Germany moved swiftly to shut down old plants for inspection, and China put licensing of new plants on hold. But Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reassured lawmakers that nothing at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors warranted any immediate changes at U.S. nuclear plants. Indeed, 10 days after the earthquake in Japan, the NRC extended the license of the 40-year-old Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor -- a virtual twin of Fukushima -- for another two decades. The license renewal was granted even though the reactor's cooling tower had literally fallen down, and the plant had repeatedly leaked radioactive fluid.

Perhaps Jaczko was simply trying to prevent a full-scale panic about the dangers of U.S. nuclear plants. After all, there are now 104 reactors scattered across the country, generating 20 percent of America's power. All of them were designed in the 1960s and '70s, and are nearing the end of their planned life expectancy. But there was one problem with Jaczko's testimony, according to Dave Lochbaum, a senior adviser at the Union of Concerned Scientists: Key elements of what the NRC chief told Congress were "a baldfaced lie."

Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer, says that Jaczko knows full well that what the NRC calls "defense in depth" at U.S. reactors has been seriously compromised over the years. In some places, highly radioactive spent fuel is stockpiled in what amounts to swimming pools located beside reactors. In other places, changes in the cooling systems at reactors have made them more vulnerable to a core meltdown if something goes wrong. A few weeks before Fukushima, Lochbaum authored a widely circulated report that underscored the NRC's haphazard performance, describing 14 serious "near-miss" events at nuclear plants last year alone. At the Indian Point reactor just north of New York City, federal inspectors discovered a water-containment system that had been leaking for 16 years.

As head of the NRC, Jaczko is the top cop on the nuclear beat, the guy charged with keeping the nation's fleet of aging nukes running safely. A balding, 40-year-old Democrat with big ears and the air of a brilliant high school physics teacher, Jaczko oversees a 4,000-person agency with a budget of $1 billion. But the NRC has long served as little more than a lap dog to the nuclear industry, unwilling to crack down on unsafe reactors. "The agency is a wholly owned subsidiary of the nuclear power industry," says Victor Gilinsky, who served on the commission during the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. Even President Obama denounced the NRC during the 2008 campaign, calling it a "moribund agency that needs to be revamped and has become captive of the industries that it regulates."

In the years ahead, nuclear experts warn, the consequences of the agency's inaction could be dire. "The NRC has consistently put industry profits above public safety," says Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear executive turned whistle-blower. "Consequently, we have a dozen Fukushimas waiting to happen in America."

In his 2012 budget, President Obama included $54 billion in federal loan guarantees for new reactors -- far more than the $18 billion available for renewable energy. Without such taxpayer support, no new reactors would ever be built. Since the Manhattan Project was created to develop the atomic bomb back in the 1940s, the dream of a nuclear future has been fueled almost entirely by Big Government. America's current fleet of reactors exists only because Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, limiting the liability of nuclear plant operators in case of disaster. Even with taxpayers assuming most of the risk, Wall Street still won't finance nuclear reactors without direct federal assistance, because construction costs are so high and because nukes are the only energy investment that can be rendered worthless in a matter of hours. "In a free market, where real risks and costs are accounted for, nuclear power doesn't exist," says Amory Lovins, a leading energy expert at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Nuclear plants "are a creation of government policy and intervention."

They are also a creation of lobbying and campaign contributions. Over the past decade, the nuclear industry has contributed more than $4.6 million to members of Congress... Given the generous flow of money, the NRC is essentially rigged to operate in the industry's favor. (Source: www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/america-s-nuclear-nightmare-20110427)

Disgruntled feels: Ill-informed! It is time we knew more about the dangers posed by nuclear energy and the disaster in Japan, depleted uranium and its deployment by the US military, HAARP (America's High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), chem-trails, fracking and other military-industrial processes that directly affect the health and welfare of our ecosystem. These are matters of survival. As of today, Americans, who rely primarily on US mainstream media, know more about the royal wedding and the antics of Charlie Sheen than about the environmental disaster unfolding in Japan. Rather than informing and educating the people, mainstream media seem determined to keep them ignorant. Consequently, Americans are some of the most ill-informed people in the Western Hemisphere.

Disgruntled says: I watched portions of Ben Bernake's historic press conference; it was the first of its kind by a sitting Federal Reserve Chairman. I am convinced his money supply easing has done little to help the "real" economy. Economic growth is anemic; too few jobs have been created to decrease the ranks of the long-term unemployed, the underemployed and those not counted as unemployed. The dilemma faced by US job seekers was poignantly displayed by the numbers that applied for part-time minimum wage jobs offered by fast-food giant McDonald's; it hired 62,000 workers, disappointing some 938,000 applicants. Printing money, despite the government's claim to the contrary, is not indicative of a "strong dollar" policy. In the "real" economy on Main Street, it has created inflation in food, fuel and commodity prices, despite claims by the Fed that inflation is not a problem. At this juncture, it is my humble opinion that all Bernanke has done is appease the Wall Street robber barons by greasing the wheels of risky behavior, hence the rising stock market.

Disgruntled wants to know: Dr. Helen Caldicott believes, "Your tax dollars should be used for you and your children-and not to build bombs to blow up the Earth." A well-respected expert in the field of nuclear power, weapons and warfare, her recent interview, which is posted online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMXvpWoHzeE, should be required viewing for anyone seeking to become more informed on the dangers posed by nuclear power. After listening to her, I am forced to ask the question, what makes the US government or anyone think what is happening in Japan will not have an impact on everyone?

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.sfexaminer.com... Shark die-off now striking San Francisco Bay...By Annie Austen...Dead leopard sharks have washed up on the shores of the San Francisco Bay and experts are now pointing to toxic waters as a possible cause. According to the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation, a non-profit organization, this is an issue that seems to be growing worse with time. While previous incidents of dead leopard sharks in 2006 and 2007 were related to oil spills, this new wave of carcasses could point to long-term environmental factors. Considering the mysterious tragedy of the leopard sharks and the other large-scale animal deaths that have occurred this year, it's becoming evident that rare diseases or coincidences can no longer be used as excuses. Environmental toxicity could be killing off animal species at a rate humans are unable to rectify.

Email http://wireupdate.com...U.S. investigates elevated radiation readings at Ohio nuclear power plant...By BNO News...The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has launched an investigation into an incident at a nuclear power plant in Ohio in which elevated radiation readings were detected. The incident happened at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, Ohio, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northeast of Cleveland. According to the NRC, the issue involved the removal of a source range monitor from the reactor core while the plant was shut down for a refueling outage. A source range monitor measures nuclear reactions during start up, low power operations and shutdown conditions. "While performing the activities to remove the monitor, workers at the plant identified an increase in radiation levels in their work area," the NRC said in a statement. "The workers stopped and immediately left the area when the higher than expected levels were identified." While officials do not believe the workers received radiation in excess of NRC limits, the level was higher than normal.

Email www.thirdage.com...Tokyo Electric Power Company Cuts Workers' Wages...By Carly Fiske...Tokyo Electric Power Company workers have accepted a significant pay cut as a way to compensate for the nuclear catastrophe caused by the company's damaged nuclear plant, according to TEPCO's union. While most managers and workers would have a pay cut of about 25 and 20 percent, respectively, top officials in the company could lose 50 percent of their paycheck. The cutback will save about 54 billion yen a year, the company states.