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Florida To Spray Residents Like Bugs Over Zika — With A Chemical That Ironically Reduces Fetal Brain Size In Studies

August 4, 2016 By Leave a Comment

The zika psyop continues…

An aerial insecticide spraying campaign began at dawn this morning in Florida to kill mosquitoes that might be infected with the zika virus. The spray will cover a 10-mile area in Miami. Health officials claim the the chemical to be sprayed, an organophosphate neurotoxin called Naled, is “safe” to breathe and no one really needs to take any special measures while they are being sprayed like bugs (although it has been “recommended” that people with allergies stay inside).  

While health officials still have yet to find a mosquito actually carrying the virus in Miami, 15 people have reportedly been diagnosed with zika there, mostly concentrated in the north downtown Miami area, and officials claim to have ruled out transmission via other means such as travel or sexual intercourse.

On Monday, Gov. Rick Scott asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to activate a CDC Emergency Response Team (CERT) to continue going door-to-door to collect urine samples in a sort of zika martial law exercise. The activation call coincided with the CDC announcing an unprecedented travel warning urging pregnant women to avoid the area in Miami where zika-infected people started popping up. It’s unprecedented because this kind of martial law behavior, including the travel warnings, wasn’t even remotely shown during the Ebola psyop, and Ebola is a lot more deadly than zika.

Pregnant woman should avoid the area anyway, because according to the Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides factsheet on Naled, studies have shown that exposure of pregnant animals to for just three days during brain development resulted in 15% smaller brains in their babies, and an increase in aggressiveness and memory deterioration. Naled also happens to be 20 times more toxic when exposure occurs due to inhalation of Naled-contaminated air versus ingestion. Symptoms can range from fatigue, headaches and nausea to diarrhea…

Florida To Spray Residents Like Bugs Over Zika — With A Chemical That Ironically Reduces Fetal Brain Size In Studies

Filed Under: Environment, Health, Politics

Gaia’s Wounds From Humanity’s Stupid Wars

July 31, 2016 By Leave a Comment

The Battlefield at The Somme (Imperial War Museum photo)No war in recent memory can compare to the meat grinder of World War I. Europe still bears the scars of the war, even almost a century later. The gruesome and terrifying type of warfare typical of the Great War had a lasting impact on those who witnessed and experienced it. It also created such carnage on the land where it was fought that some of those areas are still uninhabitable to this day.

The uninhabitable areas are known as the Zone Rouge (French for “Red Zone”). They remain pock-marked and scarred by the intense fighting at places like Verdun and the Somme, the two bloodiest battles of the conflict.

During the Battle of Verdun, which lasted over 300 days in 1916, more than 60 million artillery shells were fired by both sides – many containing poisonous gases. These massive bombardments and the brutal fighting inflicted horrifying casualties, over 600,000 at Verdun and over 1 million at the Somme. But the most dangerous remnants of these battles are the unexploded ordnance littering the battlefield.

Photo by Olivier Saint Hilaire

To deal with the massive cleanup and unexploded ordnance issues, the French government created the Département du Déminage (Department of Demining) after World War II. To date, 630 minesweepers died while demining the zones.

An estimated 720 million shells were fired during the Great War, with approximately 12 million failing to detonate. At places like Verdun, the artillery barrages were so overwhelming, 150 shells hit every square meter of the battlefield. Concentrated barrages and driving rains turned the battlefield into a quagmire that swallowed soldiers and shells alike.

Further complicating the cleanup is the soil contamination caused by the remains of humans and animals. The grounds are also saturated with lead, mercury, and zinc from millions of rounds of ammunition from small arms and artillery fired in combat. In some places, the soil contains such high levels of arsenic that nothing can grow there, leaving haunting, desolate spaces…

http://www.blacklistednews.com/After_100_years_World_War_I_battlefields_are_poisoned_and_uninhabitable/53097/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Related:

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that “to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened”.

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. “During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city,” recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form…

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Toxic_legacy_of_US_assault_on_Fallujah_%27worse_than_Hiroshima%27/53111/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Filed Under: Environment, Health, History, War

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Libya Under Gaddafi’s So-Called Dictatorship

July 22, 2016 By Leave a Comment

What do you think of when you hear the name Colonel Gaddafi? Tyrant? Dictator? Terrorist? Well, a national citizen of Libya may disagree but we want you to decide.

Ruling the country for for 41 years until his demise in October 2011, Muammar Gaddafi did some truly amazing things for his country and repeatedly tried to unite and empower the whole of Africa. So despite what you’ve heard on the radio, seen in the media or on the TV Gaddafi did some powerful things that were not very reminiscent of a vicious dictator. Here are ten things Gaddafi did for Libya that you may not know about…

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Libya Under Gaddafi’s So-Called Dictatorship

 

Filed Under: Economy, Education, Environment, Health, Media, Politics, War

Why Do We Pretend To Clean Up Ocean Oil Spills?

July 19, 2016 By Leave a Comment

…Researchers have known for decades that mixing oil with Corexit rarely works. Short compares it to adding detergent when you’re washing dishes: it produces a cloudy suspension that scatters through the water but hovers close to the top. Sweden has banned its use, and the U.K. followed suit, based on the potential danger to workers. That didn’t stop the aerial bombing of Gulf of Mexico waters with Corexit — which actually killed oil-eating bacteria — because it looked as if the authorities were doing something. Their work made little difference. Bottlenose dolphins, already vulnerable, died in record numbers from adrenal and lung diseases linked to oil exposure.

“We’ve put the wrong people in charge of the job,” says McMahon, who has charted industry’s oil spill myths for years. Corexit, industry’s favorite dispersant, is widely believed to contain hydrocarbon, which gives it an ominous undertone. The product was first developed by Standard Oil, and its ingredient list remains a trade secret. Although the oil industry boasts a “safety culture,” everyone really knows that it operates with a greed culture, adds McMahon. Over the years, industry has become adept at selling an illusion by telling regulators and stakeholders whatever they want to hear about oil spills (in the past, executives claimed that their companies recovered 95 per cent of spilled oil)…

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/07/13/Pretend-Oil-Spill-Cleanup/?utm_source=weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=180716

Filed Under: Economy, Environment, Health, Politics

Newly Discovered Dwarf Planet

July 12, 2016 By Leave a Comment
A team of astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet in our solar system. Dubbed 2015 RR245, it is 120 times farther from the Sun than the Earth at its farthest orbital point.

“The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the Sun. They let us piece together the history of our Solar System,” Dr. Michele Bannister of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, one of the researchers behind the finding.

Rendering of the orbit of RR245 (orange line). Objects as bright or brighter than RR245 are labeled. The Minor Planet Center describes the object as the 18th largest in the Kuiper Belt. © Alex Parker OSSOS team

Rendering of the orbit of RR245 (orange line). Objects as bright or brighter than RR245 are labeled. The Minor Planet Center describes the object as the 18th largest in the Kuiper Belt. © Alex Parker OSSOS team

“Almost all of these icy worlds are painfully small and faint: it’s really exciting to find one that’s large and bright enough that we can study it in detail,” she added…

https://www.rt.com/news/350774-new-dwarf-planet-neptune/

Filed Under: Environment, Science
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