The Hudson River is beautiful. It begins in the Adirondack mountains, a little over 4200 feet from the base of New York State’s highest peak, Mt. Marcy, and flows for 315 miles; past the extraordinary rock formations known as the Palisades, to the southern tip of Manhattan, where it meets the Atlantic Ocean.

At the lower end of the Hudson, the freshwater from the mountain mixes with salt water from the Atlantic, forming an estuary. Past home to a variety of commercial fisheries, the Hudson River has been known to contain up to 200 different types of fish.

Yet despite its natural beauty, the Hudson River is a very dangerous place. Beneath the pristine surface is a PCB graveyard, where deposits of the known carcinogen have settled into the sludge that sits at the bottom of the river. For years environmentalists have been working to get it cleaned up. There is just one problem: the company responsible for the majority of the PCB deposits that pollute this national treasure is a very big company, with very close friends in Washington.

That company, General Electric Company (GE), has spent millions of dollars trying to convince Congress and the public that the proposed cleanup of the Hudson River will actually make the PCB problem worse.

Their main reason for resisting the original EPA-sponsored cleanup proposal, projected to cost in excess of $500 million, is a “moral” argument, not a financial one, says GE spokesperson, lawyer, and former CEO Jack Welch. He insists the cleanup is not necessary because PCB deposits have settled into the muck at the bottom of the river, which Welch says means that “the river is cleaning itself.” Scientists, environmentalists, and a variety of non-profit organizations (with no ties to GE ) say otherwise.

Despite the passage of the 1976 Toxic Substance Control Act, which banned PCB manufacturing and required any use of PCBs be done within “totally enclosed systems,” numerous tests for PCB concentration have continued to yield extremely high levels of the contaminant throughout the Hudson River. In 1992, Department of Environmental Conservation(DEC) fish sampling data revealed a 300% increase in PCB levels of fish in the Upper Hudson.

As far back as 1977, when the EPA’s Clean Water Act made it illegal to dump any PCBs into navigable waters, the Hudson was becoming known as a toxic river. Yet six years later, an EPA study of the “PCB problem” in the Hudson River resulted in a Record of Decision (ROD) calling for no action. This caused extreme concern in the environmental community as it came even as the FDA reduced the limit for ppm PCBs in fish fit for human consumption, from 5 to 2, in response to new data.

In 1989, DEC took the lead and asked the EPA to reconsider their 1984 ROD of “no action.” DEC followed their recommendation by releasing the Hudson River PCB Action Plan, which would have required 250,000 pounds of PCBs be dredged from the bottom of the Hudson River. It has been 20 years since that recommendation was made, but no dredging has ever been done.

The “self-cleaning” nature of the Hudson, according to Welch, makes it dangerous to dredge the river. All that muck will come up, he says. Welch believes that if we leave it alone, river water will just naturally keep getting cleaner and cleaner.

Reality, however, does not support this argument.

In 1993, more than 15 years after PCB dumping stopped, DEC found an “oily liquid” at the GE site at Allen Mills that contained 72% pure PCBs. They also found seven GE PCB-laden capacitors in the water near GE’s Hudson Falls plant. This prompted DEC to order GE to clean up the land around the river, but they have yet to require any cleanup of the river, itself.

Meanwhile, scientists discovered that evaporation of PCBs allows them to become airborne–meaning PCBs in the sediment of the river, which are exposed at low tide, can potentially be breathed in by residents or tourists. This prompted research into PCB levels in locals. The results were not good.

High PCB levels were found in the bodies of people who do not eat fish. Additional studies showed high levels of PCBs in tree swallows and a 16-week old bald eagle tested for PCBs was found to have 71 ppm PCBs in its body fat.

Since then, a Natural Resources Damages Claim has been made, and the EPA has begun work on a feasibility study to outline the scope of work involved in a Hudson River cleanup. In 2002, they came up with a comprehensive plan that included removing “enough PCB-laden muck to fill more than 800 Olympic swimming pools from the bottom of the river.”

The cost of the program was estimated at more than $500 million. But in October of 2005, EPA announced a Consent Decree, which would, if accepted, allow GE to limit their cleanup to the first two phases of the original 2002 dredging plan, which would only cover about 10% of the site.

Since then, two separate lawsuits have been filed to force the EPA to disclose documents pertaining to the discussions they have had with GE and the White House, regarding the proposed Hudson River cleanup. But so far, mum’s the word. For political reasons the EPA prefers to keep secret the information that explains their sudden reversal of policy regarding a comprehensive cleanup of the Hudson river.

GE is putting an enormous amount of time and money into avoiding responsibility for the cleanup, despite the fact that they used and dumped PCBs into the land and water long after they knew they were one of the most toxic substances known to science.

Enrichment is a process that uses networks of machine centrifuges, which spin uranium hexafluoride gas into low-enriched uranium for civilian power plants and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons fuel, depending on the duration of the process.
National Public Radio

Iran said it successfully enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges. For large-scale enrichment, Iran needs tens of thousands of centrifuges.

Iran’s nuclear boss, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said Iran aims to expand the process to use 3,000 centrifuges in the last quarter of 2006, meaning Iran is preparing for a semi-industrial scale enrichment.

The centrifuge program is located at the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Plant, parts of which have been built underground to protect it from air or missile strikes.

It is not clear whether reaching the 3,000 mark means building more centrifuges. In 2005 – when Iran had suspended enrichment-related activities – Iranian officials said the country had around 2,000 centrifuges.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Uranium enrichment is the greatest technical obstacle to a country making nuclear weapons — or even fuel for reactors, which Iran says is its sole aim. It requires precision-crafted centrifuges made out of hardened steel, which must spin very fast without crashing. Once uranium has been enriched to the level needed by a reactor, it takes about as long again to enrich it to weapons grade.

Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president who now heads Tehran’s expediency council, said yesterday that Iran had begun enriching uranium in 164 centrifuges.

This is no more than a pilot plant. Iran has stated it that hopes to run 50,000 centrifuges at its nuclear plant in Natanz. This year it announced plans to install the first 3,000.
Times Online

In 1964, a report produced by the Tennessee Department of Public Health stated that the Chattanooga Creek was “without a doubt, the most grossly polluted stream in the Chattanooga area.”

In 1969, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare determined that Chattanooga, Tennessee had the poorest air quality in the nation. This was due, in large part, to a heavy manufacturing industry that included chemicals and pesticides.

Many cities have faced these same challenges. Many cities still do. But Chattanooga’s responses and solutions have been unique, and very successful.

One of the first things the city did was create, and have approved by the state, the Hamilton County Air Pollution Control Bureau. The Bureau was charged with establishing air quality regulations for the city. In an effort to ensure compliance of these regulations, the Bureau worked directly with the manufacturing sector. At the time, the primary need was for smokestack “scrubbers”, which remove most of the toxic by-products typically released by industrial smokestacks.

The manufacturing sector responded quickly and creatively. Not only did they agree to the $40 million in renovations that was needed, but local entrepreneurs chose to build the scrubbers in town. Today the scrubbers are still being manufactured, and are being exported worldwide. Thus, a profitable industry was created, while simultaneously improving air quality.

The city began holding “community visioning” meetings, seeking resident assistance with the environmental and economic troubles it was facing. One outcome of those meetings was the creation of the Moccasin Bend Task Force. This task force studied the 22-mile long Tennessee River and, with the input of hundreds of local citizens, developed the Tennessee River Park Master Plan. The Master Plan eventually resulted in the development of a 23-mile River Walk. The city maintains it through a yearly River Rescue clean-up effort, and it has enabled Chattanooga residents and tourists to enjoy the river again. The Master Plan didn’t just focus on the banks of the Tennessee River. It also included strategies for cleaning up and beautifying the banks of the creeks that feed into the river. In addition, a water treatment facility was built farther upstream, to aid in purifying the streams and lake. Now, where “no swimming” signs used to be the prominent feature, you can instead see people swimming, boating, or simply walking along the river’s edge.

From the river, the environmental revitalizing moved to the downtown district. Trees were planted along the streets. Not just for aesthetic purposes, but to help reduce pollution. The trees are purchased from a local, private nursery. Street pavers were built to help reduce the effects of storm water run-off. Air and traffic pollution have been reduced with the introduction of an electric mass transit system. The technology and vehicles were developed and built locally, and are now being exported globally. People who work downtown can park in garages at the edge of the downtown district, then take electric shuttles to their final destinations. The money generated from the parking garages helps cover the cost of the electric vehicles.

One of the most aggressive and innovative projects is the South-Central business district. Being built as an eco-industrial park, the goal is zero emissions. This means that the waste products from one industry become resources for another within the district.

Chattanooga has excelled at developing a sustainable community, because it has re-integrated the human element. At the heart of most of its initiatives has been the Chattanooga citizens themselves. The community vision meetings were the cornerstone for most of the changes that have been made. But the citizens don’t just offer ideas, they help implement and maintain them. This is done, not only through clean-up efforts like River Rescue, but also through everyday activities. The Orange Grove Recycling Center is a perfect example.

Though it could use machinery to separate the recyclable materials that come in from the nearly 60,000 homes and municipal drop-off sites, the Center instead employs about 100 developmentally disabled adults. Not only does manual sorting reduce industrial pollution, but it also gives an often-ignored part of the population a sense of purpose and belonging. The workers are paid for their time, and are given the opportunity to become and integral part of this community’s sustained environment.

Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise was yet another result of the community vision meetings. It is currently creating a mixed-use, mixed-income development in a part of downtown Chattanooga’s Southside district. Included is an elementary school that will allow children in the area to walk to school for the first time in years.

While most cities, nationally and globally, make an effort to reduce negative affects on the environment; few (if any) have attained the level of success enjoyed by Chattanooga. Here, industry is not the enemy, but instead has offered viable and effective solutions. Here, the citizen and the government official aren’t at odds. Rather, they work together to creatively address the environmental challenges the city has faced.

Chattanooga has become one of the few cities designated as an EPA attainment city. This has been due, in large part, to combined efforts of Chattanooga citizens and city officials.

From “most polluted city in the nation” to one of the best (possibly the best) models of an environmentally healthy and sustainable city, in under 40 years. Not bad.

Sources: Chattanooga Horizon Plan 2010, RiverCityCompany.com, CneInc.org

When I imagine someone sounding the alert that the government has poisoned the masses, I imagine some wacko in the woods somewhere with a stockpile of bottled water in his basement and a high powered telecope perched on a tower to watch for aliens. Not so.

The tale of Aspartame is even more chilling, partly because it is a true story. Mostly because it’s common knowledge.

Donald Rumsfeld is implicated? Common knowledge. Aspartame causes brain tumors? This too, is well documented and is finally becoming common knowledge. And, the inevitable conclusion is that the U.S. government is apparently implicated in one of the more sinister mass poisonings in recent history.

Yes, poisoning. There are not one, not two, but ninety-two (92) symptoms of aspartame poisoning. These symptoms are not sneezing or vague malaise but humdingers such as convulsions, and the ultimate symptom, “death,” which is a fairly serious symptom and the last one you’ll never complain about.

Aspartame should have never been approved by the FDA, and in fact, the panel reviewing the manufactured sugar substitute voted against approval. Aspartame was “approved” out of corporate greed, despite evidence that it is a dangerous exitotoxin that causes brain tumors in laboratory animals.

Aspartame was successfully kept off the market for over ten years prior to GD Searle hiring Donald Rumsfeld as their CEO. Shortly after he was hired aspartame became approved through an unbelievable conflict of interest. Several FDA commissioners that voted against approving aspartame were replaced by those that voted for it [creating a tie]. Shortly after aspartame approval these FDA commissioners were given cushy jobs with quarter million dollar salaries as a reward for their help.
source

Who knows more about the toxicity of aspartame than the FDA? Their toxicologists, Doctors Adrian Gross and Jacqueline Verrett strenuously objected to aspartame approval for 16 years. It wasn’t just that aspartame is not safe, and in original studies triggered brain tumors, seizures, and all sorts of other tumors, it was that the manufacturer filtered out what they didn’t want FDA to see.

ASPARTAME WAS APPROVED BY PRESIDENTIAL ORDER: President Reagan knew it would take 30 days to get Hayes into the FDA so he wrote an executive order making the outgoing FDA Commissioner powerless to oppose aspartame. From the congressional record, Senate, page S5497, May 7, l985:

“Two FDA officials have told Common Cause Magazine that Hayes was determined to push aspartame forward, in part as a signal that the Reagan administration was ushering in a new regulatory era. One official privy to some of the deliberations made at Hayes’ level says the “people at the top” were not receptive to important concerns raised about the quality and validity of some of the key tests submitted in support of aspartame.”
Dr. Betty Martini

Our FDA has never been the same since. Deadly chemicals now being blessed by FDA are marketed as wholesome pharmaceuticals, are just the tip of the iceberg, and result of Rumsfeld’s damage to FDA. The reasonable FDA lawful standard is that a chemical must pass all toxicity tests at one hundred times the “maximum human dose,” in order to pass as a food additive. What the original tests showed is that at a dose of three cans of pop per day, scaled to the weight of the animal, aspartame releases DKP, a recognized virulent brain carcinogen. No other chemical causes the brain cancer rate to jump as much.”
Dr. James Bowen

So just how widespread is Aspartame? Well, it is in cereals, juices, candy, breath mints, sugar-free chewing gum, gelatin desserts, cocoa mixes, coffee beverages, tea beverages, instant teas and coffees, wine coolers, topping mixes, yogurt, vitamin supplements, herb supplements, soft-drinks, over the counter drugs, prescription drugs, laxatives, milk drinks, instant breakfasts, frozen desserts, shake mixes, tabletop sweeteners…and more. Do you or anyone you know ingest any of these?

It is in everything. In fact, I think your regular church-going Mid-western voting Amreican citizen is just about riddled with this toxic stuff. Next time you are in the grocery store, look at how many things have aspartame in them.

“When has gone wrong with our way of thinking when it is considered “normal” that 1 in 3 people get cancer? IT IS NOT NORMAL. Cancer is not a natural disease and even if it were, it wouldn’t be “normal” for cancer to claim the lives of 25% of the population.”
Stephen Lester, Is There a Toxic Connection, 1996

Forget about the toxicity for a moment. Aspartame happens to be a rip-off. It causes people who eat the stuff to crave carbohydrates. They don’t lose any weight.

“The fact that aspartame fattens people is generally well known. We have all seen the post cards and comics that depict an overweight person with a Diet Coke in one hand while reaching for a bowl of corn chips with the other hand. The reason aspartame so strikingly stimulates the appetite is it provides over half of its content in a form of a phenylalanine isolate.

The amino acid phenylalanine outcompetes all the other at enzyme sites in the body. This suppresses the formation of dopamine from tyrosine and the formation of serotonin from tryptophan. The serotonin is the neurotransmitter that reports carbohydrate metabolism. When your serotonin levels are not allowed to raise as they normally do when you eat carbohydrates you crave more and more food. The dopamine is the neurotransmitter that lets you feel satisfied, so when you use aspartame you have unsatisfiable cravings. The aspartame also poisons your metabolism so you cannot burn calories.
rense.com

At the same time, Monsanto, and its buy-out partner Ajinmoto dress up in the pep squad gear to tout just how cool they claim aspartame is. It’s bold.

Monsanto’s previous incarnation, G.D. Searle, was the ugly elephant Donald Rumsfeld was riding when he promised to get aspartame approved by the FDA despite nine years of evidence that it caused severe illness in laboratory animals. Evidence? What evidence? The laboratory rats had their brain tumors cut out and voila! Suddenly, the removed evidence made it appear that there were NO deleterious effects of aspartame. I am not making this up.

Action based on fact in the United States is never based on fact. Iraq had nuclear weapons, therefore the U.S. invaded. Aspartame causes no cancer, therefore Americans eat it.

So what makes Aspartame so toxic? Well, like most creepy things that have no business on the skins of or in the bodies of humans, it was discovered by accident. Just as the crop pesticides used in the United States are incarnations of chemical warfare substances, so too was Aspartame never meant to be food. Aspartame was a byproduct of research on ulcer drugs. Looking for a compound that would inhibit the release of gastrin, a gastrointestinal hormone, the intermediate compound aspartylphenylalanine-methyl-ester (aspartame) was created. The researching scientist accidentally got some aspartame on his finger, tasted it, and the rest, as they say, is mystery.

In 1969 the Journal of the American Chemical Society reported:

We wish to report another accidental discovery of an organic compound with a profound sucrose (table sugar) like taste . . . Preliminary tasting showed this compound to have a potency of 100-200 times sucrose depending on concentration and on what other flavors are present and to be devoid of unpleasant aftertaste. (Mazur)

I wonder what would happen if one went to the local drugstore and loaded up on ulcer drugs. Sprinkled them on one’s breakfast cereal every morning and added them to one’s coffee.

As soon as you swallow, your body converts aspartame converts to a particularly dangerous form of free methanol, then to formaldehyde, and then to formic acid.

Methanol is basically wood alcohol, and formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, as is formic acid. But the clearest way to describe what aspartame does in the human body is to explain what an exitotoxin is. Aspartae acid, in aspartame, is an exitotoxin. This means that it over-excites neurons to the point of death. Exitotoxins destroy human nerve cells. Ingested by the young, they destroy the proper formation of nerve cells. Children’s brains develop in severely miswired patterns, resulting in ADD, hperactivity disorder, and learning disorders.

The damage, unfortunately, does not stop there. I cannot do justice to the panoramic scope of harm caused by aspartame without simply listing the illnesses caused by caused by this chemical.

Here is a list of symptoms and illnesses caused by or worsened by Aspartame compiled by Mark Gold.

Abdominal Pain
Anxiety attacks
Arthritis
Asthma
Asthmatic Reactions
Bloating, Edema (Fluid Retention)
Blood Sugar Control Problems (Hypoglycemia or Hyperglycemia)
Brain Cancer (Pre-approval studies in animals)
Breathing difficulties
Burning eyes or throat
Burning Urination
Can’t think straight
Chest Pains
Chronic cough
Chronic Fatigue
Confusion
Death
Depression
Diarrhea
Dizziness
Excessive Thirst or Hunger
Fatigue
Flushing of face
Hair Loss (Baldness) or Thinning of Hair
Headaches/Migraines dizziness
Hearing Loss
Heart palpitations
Hives (Urticaria)
Hypertension (High Blood Pressure)
Impotency and Sexual Problems
Inability to concentrate
Infection Susceptibility
Insomnia
Irritability
Itching
Joint Pains
Laryngitis
Marked Personality Changes
Memory loss
Menstrual Problems or Changes
Migraines and Severe Headaches (Trigger or Cause From Chronic Intake)
Muscle spasms
Nausea or Vomiting
Numbness or Tingling of Extremities
Other Allergic-Like Reactions
Panic Attacks
Phobias
Poor memory
Rapid Heart Beat
Rashes
Seizures and Convulsions
Slurring of Speech
Swallowing Pain
Tachycardia
Tremors
Tinnitus
Vertigo
Vision Loss
Weight gain

Aspartame Disease Mimics Symptoms or Worsens the Following Diseases
Alzheimer’s Disease
Arthritis
Birth Defects
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Diabetes and Diabetic Complications
Epilepsy
Fibromyalgia
Lupus
Lyme Disease
Lymphoma
Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS)
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Parkinson’s Disease

Looking at the exhaustive lists of hurts caused by Aspartame, I begin to wonder if there is anything that Aspartame doesn’t cause. Could all of this be true?

When considering the idea of truth, my mind wanders inevitably to coporate advertisers. Like Thai underworld pimps, they inevitably take innocent small truths and quickly warp them into something else entirely for their own profit.

I was looking at that red and white Nutrasweet swirl logo the other day and I was impressed with how much it reminds me of familiar, comforting patterns. It looks like a peppermint candy. Yum. It also looks like a barbershop pole, thereby insinuating old-fashioned and hygenic dependability. The brains that went into making and marketing Aspartame were no dummies.

As often occurs when big money and big greed get going, great advertisers step in and make their enticing propaganda to feed the wheel of consumption. My favorite piece of Aspartame drivel was disseminated by Nutrasweet AG’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Hans Heezen, when he stated: “Aspartame is a unique sweetening ingredient not only because it tastes like sugar but also because it is treated by the body in exactly the same way as other foods.”

The crucial question here is, “which other foods?” An unearthed portion of pickled sixty year old Kim-Chee from Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It’s worth mentioning that saying that Aspartame “tastes like sugar” is a whopper of an understatement – it’s over 200 times sweeter.

For more giggles, check out the Nutrasweet advertisement that slyly compares Aspartame to human breastmilk. Now here’s a big, bold, spare-no-prisoners statement:

“Remember your first taste of NutraSweet? Mothers’ milk doesn’t contain NutraSweet, but it might as well. Aspartame is made from things which occur in much larger quantities in other parts of our diet, and our bodies digest it completely naturally. The principal components of aspartame are two building blocks of protein – phenylalanine and aspartic acid, which are just like those found in eggs, fruit, cheese or fish. And even in mothers’ milk. So when you’re looking for a partner for sugar, pick the sweetener which your body will recognise.”
Source

Mother’s milk is made in a place like this? It’s also a superfund site that has leached arsenic into the adjacent river

Trade names for Aspartame are NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Canderel, Benevia, Misura. In Europe Aspartame hides under the seemingly innocuous “E 951″ label. World-wide, warning labels that say “contains a source of phenylalanine” or “phenylchetonurics should not consume this product,” signal the presence of aspartame.
Truth In Labeling

Dr. John Hoey, writing about the book The Truth About the Drug Companies says according to Angell, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the pharmaceutical industry’s U.S. trade association has “the largest lobby in Washington,” which in 2002 employed 675 lobbyists (including 26 former members of Congress) at a cost of more than $91 million. The result has been above-average growth in corporate profits during both Republican and Democratic administrations. The most recent and perplexing lobbying effort caused Congress explicitly to prohibit Medicare from using its huge purchasing power to get lower prices for drugs, thus opening up a dollar pipeline, in the form of higher drug prices, directly from taxpayers to corporate coffers. These changes, along with the cave-in by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in l997 that permitted direct-to-consumer advertising to bypass mention in their ads of all but the most serious side effects, have further augmented profits. The overall effect has been a corruption not only of science but also of the dissemination of Science.” No wonder new books keep being published like Dr. Carolyn Dean’s “Death of Medicine”.
wnho.net

Reading all of this, I cannot help but think of the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz when she says “Poppies will put them to sleep.” Poppies are drugs, of course, but alluringly sweet. Aspartame is sweet and destructive… and it’s everywhere. But it will do more than put us to sleep. It will cause tumors, seizures, heart arhythmia, a whole cornucopia of discomfort and pain.

And we won’t lose any weight.

TEXAS ranks 10th in number of nuclear warheads deployed, a change from 5th place (and 1,365 warheads) in 1992 and 6th place in 1985 (630 warheads). However, nuclear weapons are stored only at the Pantex Plant of the Department of Energy outside of Amarillo on a temporary basis while they await dismantlement. Though the composition is constantly in flux depending upon which warheads are scheduled, the current pool includes some 150 W69 SRAM warheads and 200 W79 8-inch artillery shells.

More From Taking Stock: Worldwide Nuclear Deployments 1998:

In October 1950 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) determined there was need for a second facility in addition to Burlington, and Pantex was chosen in 1951. Originally built by the Army Ordnance Corps in 1942, Pantex was used during World War II to load conventional munitions (bombs and artillery shells) with TNT. Throughout late 1950 and 1951 the plant was rehabilitated and began full operation (with assembly of Mark VI nuclear bombs) in May 1952. The operating contractor, the Proctor & Gamble Company, ran it for the U.S. Army Ordnance Command beginning in 1953. In 1956 Mason & Hanger took over and has run it ever since. With some exceptions Pantex evolved in the early years to become the assembly facility for the Livermore Laboratory, and Burlington assembled Los Alamos designed warheads.

By November 1951, with the Cold War heating up, the AEC estimated that five plants would be needed to match the future numbers of warheads that were planned to be built. A third facility was planned at Spoon River, Illinois. But by 1953 it was decided that two plants would suffice to meet production goals and plans for the other three were canceled. The Burlington Plant operated until 1975 when its functions were transferred to Pantex.

The disassembly/modification work continued at Medina until 1965, when all functions were transferred to Pantex. At the current 1,300 warhead per year retirement rate, it is estimated that some 300 to 400 weapons are present at Pantex at any one time. Warheads in the pipeline to be dismantled are also stored at Kirtland AFB in New Mexico. These include 200 W79s, 1,100 W69 SRAM warheads, and 450 W56 Minuteman II warheads. The last W48 155mm (6-inch) artillery warheads, W70 Lance warheads, W68 Poseidon warheads, and B57 nuclear depth and strike bombs have been completely retired.

Over the ten year period from October 1986 through September 1996, Pantex disassembled 12,514 warheads. It has more than enough capacity to disassemble the entire stockpile at current workload levels and will complete its current work orders in the year 2000. As of the end of 1997 there are approximately 10,750 “pits” (nuclear cores of warheads that have been dismantled) in storage at Pantex.

Web-posted Thursday, November 10, 2005
House approves measure that includes Pantex funding
Amarillo Globe-News

The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved the Energy and Water Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2006, a measure that includes $523.3 million in Pantex Plant funding. The House approved the measure by a vote of 399-17. The Senate has yet to pass the bill, but is expected to take it up before Thanksgiving.

Through the appropriations process, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Amarillo, worked to secure approximately $76 million in additional funding for Pantex above President’s Bush’s budget request, according to Thornberry’s office. The bill includes $51 million more than the president’s request for Pantex’s Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities programs, infrastructure and facilities programs that support Pantex operations, bringing the total in that budget category to $181. 2 million.

Thornberry’s office said House members approved $126.2 million in funding for Pantex’s safeguards and securities programs, $25 million more than the president’s budget request.

“The missions performed at Pantex are vital to our national security. I am thankful for the support Pantex receives through this bill,” Thornberry said in a statement.

The McCormick and Baxter Creosoting Company Superfund Site is an incredible example of derelict urban space. It is a postapocalyptic wasteland of the highest order. It is an abandoned indistrial zone of more than 50 acres that has been declared a Superfund clean-up site because of creosote and heavy metal pollution.


If you’ve never visited, and you live in Portland, you really should. There is no security, and people are often wandering around. It’s great for urban mountain biking or just exploring.

Be careful though!

The soil and water are still toxic, so don’t take your dogs. Not to mention the fact that it’s just illegal to be there. But no one seems to care.



Information about the McCormick & Baxter Creosote Superfund Site from the EPA:

The McCormick & Baxter site is located on the northeast shore of the Willamette River in north Portland. The legal address is 6900 North Edgewater Ave., Portland, Oregon 97203, and DEQ’s Environmental Cleanup Site Information (ECSI) number for this site is 74. The site includes about 43 acres of land and about 15 acres of sediments beneath the Willamette River.

McCormick & Baxter Creosoting Company operated between 1944 and 1991, treating wood products with creosote, pentachloro-phenol, and inorganic (arsenic, copper, chromium, and zinc) preservative solutions. Historically, process wastewaters were discharged directly to the Willamette River, and other process wastes were dumped in several areas of the site. Significant concentrations of wood-treating chemicals have been found polluting soil and groundwater at the site, and in river sediments adjacent to the site.

From 1942 to 1990, McCormick & Baxter treated utility poles and railroad ties with creosote, pentachlorophenol (PCP), and arsenic compounds. Waste oils generated from the wood-treatment processes were disposed of in unlined ponds and concrete tanks on-site. Surface water runoff from the site was discharged to the slough until 1978, when it began to collect in two storm water collection ponds.

In 1983 and 1984, a consultant to McCormick & Baxter found that soils throughout the site were contaminated with arsenic, chromium, copper, PCP, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are constituents of creosote. Soil contamination extends to depths of 40 feet below ground surface (bgs) in some areas. The consultant’s sampling in 1984-88 indicates that the shallow aquifer beneath the site is contaminated with many of the same substances to a depth of 175 feet bgs. Beneath the site, the shallow aquifer is interconnected with the deep aquifer. The deep aquifer within 4 miles of the site provides drinking water to approximately 97,000 people.

source
download high-res images

With that great American crop, corn, threatened, so was the livelihood of our all-American corn farmers. Enter High Fructose Corn Syrup – the new sweetener that would drive up demand for corn and provide a super cheap new form of sweetener for packaged foods, breads, cereals, sodas, spaghetti sauce, ketchup – you name it, HFCS would be in it. The future looked sweet indeed.



More stable than sugar against the disintegrating elements (such as moisture), foods with High Fructose Corn Syrup can literally travel thousands of miles and sit on the shelf of your local convenience store forever and (almost) never go bad. Cheaper ingredients meant cheaper groceries for the good American consumer. A win- win situation, it seemed.

Because of the unusually long shelf life of HFCS, store-bought cakes, cookies, brownies, mixes, breads, sodas, juices, tomato sauce and all of the rest could be sold with practically no expiration date. HFCS, despite misleading labels that read “all natural,” is an ENTIRELY man-made substance. It’s almost indestructible. Like Styrofoam, eternal and immortal.

The pornographic underbelly of all this (and there always is one, it seems, where money and government and conflicting desires come into play) is that in laboratory tests High Fructose Corn Syrup causes male rats to never fully develop their testicles. And High Fructose Corn Syrup also causes the hearts of female rats to expand until they burst. Exit pornography, enter horror flick.

But is this a rat tragic story or a human tragedy? Well, hold into your seats because the seemingly innocuous little sweet nothings that Secretary Butz so gracefully introduced to our bellies in the seventies are now linked to obesity, diabetes, and yes, even cirrhosis of the liver. And as if the above were not enough, there is also some preliminary evidence that HFCS is carcinogenic.

In his groundbreaking book FatLand, Greg Critser breaks down exactly how HFCS is metabolized by the human body. In short, because our bodies have absolutely no way of understanding this highly engineered substance…they convert it into storage material and chuck it away…hence we are fattened up.

The explanation goes like this: glucose molecules, which are the building blocks of sucrose, can be metabolized (used, eaten) by any and every cell in the human body. This is not so with Fructose. It has to be metabolized through the liver. Hence, your liver ends up releasing triglycerides into your bloodstream and generally has trouble dealing with this weird substance. Fructose, which used to be advised for diabetics because it did not stimulate insulin production, really does appear to do a lot of fancy footwork with enzymes and other hormones, too. It does not allow the release of the hormone that tells the brain you are full. Hence, you overeat.

Now, what about the HFCS advocates who maintain that High Fructose Corn Syrup really is an “all-natural ingredient” because, they say, it is made from corn and fructose is the sugar naturally occurring in fruit? Well, wine and isopropyl alcohol both contain alcohol. However, the rubbing stuff for cotton balls should never go in your wineglass. Get it?

Let’s look a little more closely at how this stuff is made. Saying that HFCS is an all- natural substance is like saying two celebrities naturally bumped into each other and fell in love – when more often their PR agents set them up. HFCS is set up as follows: Corn starch is boiled, distilled, and generally messed with until you get a corn syrup with a big jacked-up amount of fructose…HFCS could have as little as 45% fructose or as much as 85%…the “hard stuff”…

So, the absolutely spine-tingling fact is that shortly after the 1970s, and especially throughout the 1980s, HFCS began to replace sucrose (table sugar, cane sugar, or beet sugar) in almost everything. This means that for the last 25 years — a lifetime for some reading this — this jacked-up, messed up “all-natural” toxic sweetener has been in all of our foods as we developed into the fat ADD-riddled little monsters that we are.

Too often we as consumers are under the spell of the idea that our health depends on our own free will. That is, what we do or do not do for ourselves makes all the difference in our health. Watching a new commercial for Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers on TV, I am struck by how easy, offhand and rampant this assumption is. If only each American could do their part to reverse the obesity epidemic through personal self-control and initiative? And yet this is not entirely true. What we don’t know can hurt us.

I heard recently the claim that health depends less on how we take care of ourselves than how we take care of each-other. This speaks directly to the need for more accurate public health and nutrition information and corporate responsibility. The Land of the free? I don’t know. Freedom from accurate information, freedom from healthy food…these do not really seem like freedoms at all.

Watching the food channel, I recently heard that the most delicious pork comes from Spain, where the swine are fattened up on an all-corn diet. This little tidbit reminded me of we Americans. Surely Americans are often enough referred to as pigs, but who knew we held so much in common with this lowly animal? It seems we and they are being fattened up for some strange slaughter yet to come.