Monthly Archives: December 2013

US Sailors from Radioactive USS Ronald Reagan Sue TEPCO – Updated

A local resident asks: “What is this ship doing sitting in San Diego? Does anyone have radiation readings from this ship?” Good question.

Read Harvey Wasserman’s Jan. 12, 2014 update on this developing story: Toll of U.S. Sailors Devastated by Fukushima Radiation Continues to Climb

Sign a support petition: WE WANT JUSTICE FOR FUKUSHIMA’S IRRADIATED FIRST RESPONDERS FROM USS RONALD REAGAN & OTHERS

San Diego’s Radioactive Nuclear-Powered Supercarrier
It’s easy to see from any highrise hotel in trendy downtown San Diego. There it is, moored across the bay in its home port at Coronado Island. The USS Ronald Reagan is a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered so-called ‘super(aircraft)carrier’ that sailed into the cloud of deadly radioactive emissions spewing from the earthquake/tsunami, triple melt-down, multiple-explosion Fukushima nuclear power plant to provide relief to the devastated Japanese population in March of 2011, allegedly without its commanders being aware of the major radiological risks to its crew members. Now it is permanently radioactive and – so charge attorneys representing at least 51 USS Reagan sailors and Marines – are many exposed members of its ship’s company and related military and contractor personnel.

As one outraged reader comments,

“Why has this not made national headlines??? The Aircraft Carrier Ronald Reagan is nuclear powered. Radiation detection equipment did not pick up on this?? Why have these sailors and marines medical records been removed from permanent tracking? Criminal implications galore.”

[more]

Who’s Accountable?
Attorneys for the growing list of enlisted plaintiffs, who are suffering from proliferating serious health effects as a result of their radioactive fallout exposure during the US Navy’s Fukushima relief efforts, say the ultimate responsibility lies with TEPCO, the nuclear plant operator. They charge TEPCO officials withheld accurate and timely radioactive emissions data from both the Japanese government and the US military command. This charge is also made by Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan (DPJ), who is still blamed by many in Japan for making bad critical choices in the immediate emergency hours. Kan has acknowledged in recent public presentations that he believes he was given inaccurate information downplaying the seriousness of the actual situation by TEPCO as he and his staff struggled to make responsible decisions during chaotic early stages of the still on-going Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Command decisions are only as good as the accuracy of the incoming information on which they are based, argues Cabral Bonner, an attorney for the military plaintiffs in the complaint heard in San Diego’s Edward J. Schwartz Courthouse, by Judge Janis L. Sammartino, Nov. 19, 2013. “Was TEPCO providing even their own government with proper information? No. So we can assume that the decisions that are going to be made by the men and women in control of the ship will be only as good as the information they’re provided with.”

Co-Counsel Attornys Charles Bonner (l) and Paul Garner (r) with US Navy client Lindsay Cooper (c) outside the San Diego Courthouse, Nov. 19, 2013 - EON photo

Co-Counsel Paul Garner points out that the so-called Ferris Doctrine prohibits enlistees from suing the military for injuries sustained in the line of duty. But in this case, Garner says, even if they could sue the military, they wouldn’t, because the fault lies with TEPCO. “The military is not responsible for the victimization of these people,” Garner says. “It’s the Tokyo Electric Power Company people.”

“We’re suing this foreign corporation because they are doing business in America,” say Co-Counsel Charles Bonner. “Their second largest office outside of Tokyo is in Washington, D.C.. This foreign corporation caused harm to American rescuers, and they did it in ways that give rise to jurisdiction here in this country.”

“The irony out of all of this,” says attorney Garner, “is that the Tokyo Electric Power Company gets money infused to it from the Japanese government. The Japanese government is a major shareholder in this foreign corporation. And TEPCO had the largest return from the bailout money that they got in their history…more money in the last quarter than they ever made before.”

“At first we wanted to point the blame on the commanders of the ship,” says Lindsay Cooper, a young mother who spent days on deck exposed to radiation as she controlled landing and take-offs of helicopters delivering relief supplies, and is now experiencing serious negative health effects. “But we were completely ignorant of the fact that they didn’t know either, that we were literally running for our lives from this radiation.”

For an enlightening historical look at the U.S. military’s record of exposing its personnel to nuclear radiation, please see:
Experimental Animals – ( Why Atomic Vets Nix Nukes )
A Documentary by Michael Porter
Uploaded to EON’s YouTube channel on Feb 24, 2009, Animals has had 6,587 views to date, with more visits in recent days.

EON is proud to host-post another important documentary by the Academy Award-winning team Vivienne Verdon-Roe and Michael Porter. Their 1994 expose’ tells the currently relevant story of the U.S. soldiers and sailors who were used as EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS in America’s quest for nuclear dominance…and were then denied health care. A major voice in the film – directed and edited by Porter, produced and narrated by Verdon-Roe – is former Navy seaman Anthony Guarisco, founder of the INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE OF ATOMIC VETERANS, c/o Vincent L. Guarisco, 5312 Covina Rd., Bullhead, AZ. 86426
To contact the filmmakers: ViviVR@aol.com
For updates on Anthony and his wife Mary, here are two recent articles by their son, journalist Vincent Guarisco
Never Forget The Lessons Of Yesterday For The Sake Of Tomorrow
By Vincent Guarisco
https://www.countercurrents.org/guaris…
—————-
Honoring Two Activist Parents
By Vincent L. Guarisco
https://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/03…
Contact:
vincespainting1@hotmail.com

Arinie Gundersen’s report The Atomic Sailors

For other coverage of this story see here and here and here.

Fox News has this to say:
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
===========





If you like EON’s work, you can support it, whatever your budget level, here.

EON Brings Light in Dark Times


Dear Friends,
2013 has seen the shutdown of San Onofre nuclear power plant, the growth of citizen’s networks responding to the on-going Fukushima radioactive fallout, and mounting public awareness of the risks posed to human health posed by electro-magnetic radiation from cell phones, wireless ‘smart’ meters and other devices. EON has been actively engaged with all these events and more.

This has been an intense and productive year as the EON Team has expanded to include video producers Morgan Peterson and Laurent Malaquais in Los Angeles and social media consultant Caroline Kittrell in Chico.
While we have focused on nuclear and electromagnetic radiation issues, we have also continued to cover election protection, GMOs, evolutionary biology and international trade agreements.

The 120 video reports and 50 blogs we have posted so far this year show the range of issues we cover. Our YouTube channel now has 2,635 subscribers with views of over 1.5 million and our roster of FaceBook and EonNewsNet Twitter followers have increased significantly.

Please consider contributing whatever donation you can afford. We need your support to continue our work, and every amount is helpful. EON is a 501-c-3 organization and contributions are tax-deductible.





Southern Calfornia nuke free activists and organizers celebrate outside the San Onofre nuclear power plant's gate SoCal Edison's decision to permanently decommission the two remaining faulty reactor units.

SHUTDOWN! One down, one to go in California
When we began 2013, we had no idea we would be blessed in June with the permanent closing of San Onofre nuclear reactors!

Hard work by residents, organizations and groups, together with the legal challenges by FOE and the support of Senators Boxer and Markey, combined with failing steam generators and cheap gas prices to force Southern California Edison to shut down their last two reactors.

EON’s on-going series of 54 video reports played a role in making sure that the brave folks doing the work were seen by the public and the Nuclear Free movement throughout the state and beyond during the process and we’re now producing a documentary entitled SHUTDOWN: The California-Fukushima Connection for release next year.

Our commitment is to give a voice to the people on the ground valiantly working for justice, democracy and healthy environments that you won’t see in the major corporate media. We’ve been called ‘C-Span for the grassroots’ and the 120 video reports and the 50 blogs we produced in 2013 alone mirrored the incredibly effective and determined action of folks like you.

Co-Counsel Attornys Charles Bonner (l) and Paul Garner (r) with US Navy client Lindsay Cooper (c) outside the San Diego Courthouse, Nov. 19, 2013 - EON photo

On our ongoing coverage of the Fukushima disaster:
Our latest release is an interview with the lead plaintiffs and their lawyers in the sailor’s lawsuit against TEPCO. They’re suing the Fukushima Dai-ichi operator for covering up the meltdowns and thereby exposing young US service people aboard the USS Reagan to horrendous amounts of radioactivity as they were providing humanitarian aide to Japanese victims of the tsunami and earthquake. They were aboard the USS Reagan aircraft carrier only a couple of miles offshore directly in the blowing airborne plume of high radioactivity while drinking and bathing in highly radioactive water. View video here.

On our ongoing coverage of the struggle against forced exposure to harmful levels of RF/EMF radiation:

Dr. Devra Davis introduces a program on cell phone risks - EON photo


Devra Davis, PhD, founder of Environmental Health Trust, author and lecturer, revealing important new information about cell phones and sperm damage, cell phones in bras leading to breast cancer and most shocking of all, digital dementia in children (verified by MRI) caused by overuse of digital technologies, officially diagnosed in South Korea. View video here.

Please donate whatever is possible for you to help us continue our unique work! Help us continue to help others!





We wish you a Bright Solstice and Happy Holidays,

Jim, Mary Beth, Rachel and the rest of the EON team

Experts on Cell Phone Risks – A Preview

Dr. Devra Davis introduces a program on cell phone risks - EON photo

This is a preview of a forthcoming series of presentations at San Francisco’s prestigious Commonweath Club of California in which Dr. Devra Davis, Founder of Environmental Health Trust, and her medical colleagues show why cell phones and other wireless devices pose serious health risks to you, your ovaries, your sperm, your breasts, your brain and your babies – and suggest science-based precautionary public policy alternatives. Soon to be an informative video series. Stay tuned…. For more EHTrust.org

===========
If you like EON’s work, you can support it, whatever your budget level, here.

The Fairfax, CA-Fukushima Connection

The Fairfax, CA City Council Members listen to public comment on their ground-breaking Fukushima resolution, which they later passed unimously.

“If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” Scoop Nisker

Local City Council Demands Planetarian Response

[scroll down for video report]

“Urgent international rescue” Needed
Consistent with its ground-breaking leadership role pioneering local official resistance to unregulated cell tower proliferation, GMO foods, and ‘smart’ meter deployment, the Fairfax, CA City Council, on Dec. 4, 2013, became one of the first municipal jurisdictions to unanimously approve a measure advocating for 1) an independent expert panel to be formed by the UN General Assembly for transparent international involvement in mitigating the on-going Fukushima nuclear disaster and 2) asking for government monitoring of seafood for radioactivity from Fukushima pollution.

[ Media coverage:
Radioactive Fukushima Water Headed for US West Coast
As nuclear industry and allies in government play down risk, scientists warn there is no such thing as safe radiation

California town passes Fukushima resolution: “Urgent international rescue” needed at site — “Poses health and safety concerns to America’s West Coast” — “Much greater contamination is likely”

Fairfax Resolution text ]

Gov. Agencies Asleep on the Job
Resolution co-author, Council Member Larry Bragman, reported that his attempts to contact local disaster preparedness officials resulted in “a resounding nothing.” Agreeing with a comment from the audience that citizen-based Fukushima fallout monitoring efforts are way ahead of official responses, Bragman said, “The government is not doing its job.”

The Fairfax resolution [PDF here] is an example of a beginning movement on the part of city and county councils to take the lead in developing model legislation demanding transparent, independent monitoring of the on-going contamination of air, ocean and food by the continuing Fukushima nuclear disaster, as well as international efforts to support Japan in dealing with what is increasingly seen as a planetary emergency. [ See draft Berkeley, CA City Council Resolution here. ]

Despite well-funded nuclear industry PR claims of a coming ‘global nuclear renaissance,’ both public and expert growing opinion suggest that Fukushima marks the beginning of the end of the heavily-subsidized, and essentially ecocidal and un-democratic nuclear industry.

International investor reluctance to assume the financial risk of further nuclear power expansion in the face of what energy pundit Amory Lovins has termed “a terminal overdose of market forces,” is strikingly reflected in the recent statement by the head of the World Bank. ‘“We don’t do nuclear energy,” said World Bank president Jim Yong Kim as he and UN leader Ban Ki-moon outlined efforts to make sure all people have access to electricity by 2030.’ [Read more here. ]

As the Fukushima fallout continues with no end in sight, other radioactivity monitoring needs are for all food and supplements as well as for ocean and air monitoring since the Fukushima Dai-ichi melt-downs are emitting thousands of billions of becquerels per day into the air and ocean.

The radioactivity after the initial meltdowns and explosions of March 2011 reached the west coast of North America within four days. According to many computer modelings by ocean scientists from the U.S., Germany and Japan, radioactivity released into the ocean will be arriving in a surface plume and in currents along the coast of North America beginning likely in early 2014. This radioactivity will combine with the fog and become rain and will move across the land.

Through bio-accumulation and bio-magnefication, (rain on grass, cows eat grass, milk can become radioactive or small fish eating plankton, larger fish eat the smaller, etc) the radioactive particles released, such as Cesium 134 and Cesium 137, Plutonium and Strontium 90, will enter the food chain and can be ingested.

Additional resources:
HEALTH RISKS FROM EXPOSURE TO LOW LEVELS OF IONIZING RADIATION
BEIR VII PHASE 2

Fukushima – The fate of contaminated waters
Read the full story at environmentalresearchweb:
https://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/50176

Radiation On West Coast of North America Could End Up Being 10 Times HIGHER than in Japan

NYT Editorial
Japan’s Illiberal Secrecy Law

===========
If you like EON’s work, you can support it, whatever your budget level, here.