MIKE ADAMS, Editor - Natural News
Stephan: The latest on Fukushima. People are beginning to openly talk about a permanent dead zone in Japan.
It is nothing short of astonishing that the nuclear catastrophe we’ve all been told was ‘no big deal’ has now escalated into the worst nuclear disaster in the history of human civilization. It’s so bad now that soil samples taken from outside the 12-mile exclusion zone (the zone considered safe enough by the Japanese government for schoolchildren to attend school there) are higher than the 1.48 million becquerels a square meter limit that triggered evacuations outside Chernobyl in 1986.
In other words, the radiation level of the soil 12 miles from Fukushima is now higher than the levels considered too dangerous to live in near Chernobyl. This is all coming out in a new research report authored by Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan. That same report also reveals that radiation from Fukushima has spread over 230 square miles.
What we’re facing here, folks, is a Fukushima dead zone where life will never return to its pre-Fukushima norms.
Radiation levels similar to nuclear bomb test site
Bloomberg is now reporting, ‘Tetsuya Terasawa said the radiation levels are in line with those found after a nuclear bomb test, which disperses plutonium. He declined to comment further.’ (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…)
One soil […]
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, - The Cornucopia Institute
Stephan: This is obviously biased; Cornucopia Institute is a litigant. That said it is the best statement of the facts I have seen. This entire GMO struggle just doesn't interest most of the media, but it's implications could not be more substantive.
NEW YORK: New threats by Monsanto have led to the filing of an amended complaint by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) in its suit on behalf of family farmers, seed businesses, and organic agricultural organizations challenging Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seed.
‘Our clients don’t want a fight with Monsanto, they merely want to be protected from the threat that they will be contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed and then accused of patent infringement,
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LESTER R. BROWN, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is an excellent analytical essay on one aspect of the water trend.
Lester R. Brown is the president of the Earth Policy Institute and the author of 'World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse.
A NEW scramble for Africa is under way. As global food prices rise and exporters reduce shipments of commodities, countries that rely on imported grain are panicking. Affluent countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China and India have descended on fertile plains across the African continent, acquiring huge tracts of land to produce wheat, rice and corn for consumption back home.
Some of these land acquisitions are enormous. South Korea, which imports 70 percent of its grain, has acquired 1.7 million acres in Sudan to grow wheat - an area twice the size of Rhode Island. In Ethiopia, a Saudi firm has leased 25,000 acres to grow rice, with the option of expanding. India has leased several hundred thousand acres there to grow corn, rice and other crops. And in countries like Congo and Zambia, China is acquiring land for biofuel production.
These land grabs shrink the food supply in famine-prone African nations and anger local farmers, who see their governments selling their ancestral lands to foreigners. They also pose a grave threat to Africa’s newest democracy: Egypt.
Egypt is a nation of bread eaters. Its citizens consume 18 million tons of wheat annually, more than half of which comes from abroad. Egypt […]
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CAHAL MILMO, Chief Reporter - The Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: Five major extreme weather events have left the world food system in massive disarray. The development of Virtual Agri-States is leaving a growing number of people starving. Yet, almost no one in the U.S. knows this. Instead, tonight, I listened to Anderson Cooper spend 30 minutes talking about the Anthony Weiner story, an ephemera.
Millions more people across the world will be locked into a cycle of hunger and food crisis unless governments tackle a ‘broken’ production system which is being exploited by speculators and will cause a doubling in basic foodstuff prices in the next 20 years, a leading aid agency has warned.
Research by Oxfam has highlighted a combination of factors, ranging from climate change and population growth to subsidies for biofuels and the actions of commodities traders, which will throw development in poor countries into reverse unless radical reform of the global food system is undertaken.
The charity found that the world currently produces enough food to sustain the population, but still 925 million people go hungry every year. This situation will dramatically worsen as the population reaches 9 billion by 2050, meaning demand for food will increase by 70 per cent at a time when capacity to increase yields is running at less than 1 per cent a year.
Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive, said: ‘The food system is pretty well bust. All the signs are that the number of people going hungry is going up. One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world […]
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Wednesday, June 1st, 2011
, - Associated Press of Pakistan (Pakistan)
Stephan: Yet another extreme climate event impacting the food trend negatively. Prices are going to go up significantly, supplies will limited, and people will starve -- particularly children.
BEIJING — Droughts have negative impact on 6.96 million hectares, or more than 5 percent, of China’s farmlands, the country’s top drought relief authority said.A lingering drought has affected 3.29 million people and 950,000 livestock in the provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan, the Xinhua news on Monday quoted the latest statistics from the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (SFDH).Zhang Xu, deputy director of the SFDH, said the five provinces are starting to struggle with water shortages as the summer farming season begins.There have also been drinking water shortages, he said.Rainfall along the lower and middle reaches of the Yangtze has been at its lowest since 1951, down 40 to 60 percent from the average level, the SFDH said.A lack of rain has also led to lower water levels in nearby lakes and rivers, according to the SFDH.
At 8 a.m. Sunday, water levels at Xingzi Station, a water monitoring station in Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, were recorded at 10.79 meters, down 4.64 meters from the area’s average level. Poyang is China’s largest freshwater lake.
At the same time, workers at Chenglingji Station, which is located on Dongting Lake in neighbouring Hunan Province, recorded water […]
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