World's Fastest Banjo Player Will Have To Leave U.S.

From the KFGO radio station:

Johnny Butten, recognized as the fastest banjo player in the world in the Guiness Book of World Records has had his visa application by The Department of Homeland Security denied.

Butten who lives in Hitterdahl with his wife and children was told he must leave the country by Saturday because his application for a "Green Card" visa was rejected, and his current Visa runs out on Saturday.

The Government no longer recognizes the Guiness Book of World Records as a major award, part of the requirement in getting a visa. That award was recognized when he recieved his current visa 3 years ago.

Butten has lived in this area for three years and besides his musical entertaiment he is a member of the Hitterdahl Fire Department...

YUGOSLAVIA VERSUS LIBYA: NATO's War of Aggression against Yugoslavia

NATO War Crimes Amply documented

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research

Remember Yugoslavia. 24 March 1999.

This article was first published in early June 1999. It documents the nature of NATO's "humanitarian war" directed against an entire Nation.

The humanitarian justification to bomb and invade Yugoslavia was fabricated.

A similar process is now being applied to Libya.

The bombing of a sovereign country, is being carried out by the so-called "international community" to "save the lives of civilians" under the new logo of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P), pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 1973.

Libya 2011: The realties are otherwise: civilians are the unspoken victims of US-NATO bombings. A Blitzkrieg is being carried out against an entire population.

According to the late Walter J. Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in relation to the humanitarian bombing of Yugoslavia:

"The bombing war also violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent "Polish atrocities" against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.

This assessment by Walter Rockler applies to Libya, which has all the essential features of the 1999 bombing campaign against the Federation of Yugoslavia.


Michel Chossudovsky, March 24, 2011


~ . ~ . ~


General Wesley Clark, NATO's Supreme commander in Europe, confirmed in late May that "NATO'S air campaign has not reached its peak yet and the alliance should be prepared for more civilian casualties.". General Clark also confirmed that "he would be seeking to increase the number of air strikes in Kosovo and expand the range of targets.

As the bombings entered their third month, there was also a noticeable change in "NATO rhetoric". The Alliance had become increasingly unrepentant, NATO officials were no longer apologising for civilian casualties, claiming that the latter were contributing to "helping Milosevic's propaganda machine."

Low Intensity Nuclear War

With NATO air-strikes entering their third month, a new stage of the War has unfolded. NATO's "humanitarian bombings" have been stepped up leading to mounting civilian casualties and human suffering. Thirty percent of those killed in the bombings are children. In addition to the use of cluster bombs, the Alliance is waging a "low intensity nuclear war" using toxic radioactive shells and missiles containing depleted uranium. Amply documented, the radioactive fall-out causes cancer potentially affecting millions of people for generations to come. According to a recent scientific report, "the first signs of radiation on children including herpes on the mouth and skin rashes on the back and ankles" have been observed in Yugoslavia since the beginning of the bombings.

In addition to the radioactive fall-out which has contaminated the environment and the food chain, the Alliance has also bombed Yugoslavia's major chemical and pharmaceutical plants. The bombing of Galenika, the largest medicine factory in Yugoslavia has contributed to releasing dangerous, highly toxic fumes. When NATO forces bombed plants of the Pancevo petrochemical complex in mid-April "fire broke out and huge quantities of chlorine, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer flowed out. Workers at Pancevo, fearing further bombing attacks that would blow up dangerous materials, released tons of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube."

~ more... ~

Critical Ass

World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together en masse on human-powered transport (the vast majority on bicycles, but some on skateboards, rollerblades and roller skates), to "deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world."^[1]

The dress code motto is "Bare as you dare".^[2] Full and partial (especially topfree) nudity is encouraged, but not mandatory, on all rides. Any mandate to cover intimate parts is forbidden; this is a distinguishing feature of WNBR against other cycling events.

Creative expression is also encouraged to generate a fun and immersive atmosphere during the ride, capture the attention and imagination of the public and media, and make the experience more personalized and fulfilling for the riders. Body art, such as body painting, are common forms of creative expression, as well as costumes, art bikes, portable sound reinforcement systems (such as public address systems, bullhorns and boomboxes) and musical instruments or other types of noisemaker.

Pre-ride parties for WNBR have become events unto themselves, often featuring musical bands, DJs, body-painting, temporary structures/installation art, political tabling, and catering. In addition to simply being able to ride clothes-free on community streets, some rides have established precedent by having body-painting parties, often involving numbers of naked riders and artists in high-visibility municipal parks.

~ more... ~

~ Reports of recent naked protest bike rides may be found here, here, here, and here ~

Magnetic Hill in Ladakh Defies Gravity

From Zuzu Top:

Have you ever heard of a place on earth that defies gravity? Unbelievable, is it? Nestled in the lap of snow caped Himalayan ranges and silver valleys, Ladakh in India has a Magnetic hill where a vehicle moves up a steep hill even with their ignition off. The Magnetic hill or Gravity Hill is situated at a distance of 30 km from the capital city Leh and is located on the Leh-Kargil-Baltik national highway, at a height of 14,000 feet above sea level.

~ more... ~

[ Actually, there are many such places - 1, 2, 3, 4 - including one on Mt. Pendeli, Attica, Greece. ]

Egypt to protest against anti-protest law

Lina El-Wardani reports for Al-Ahram:

The Egyptian cabinet approved yesterday a decree-law that criminalises strikes, protests, demonstrations and sit-ins that interrupt private or state owned businesses or affect the economy in any way.

The decree-law also assigns severe punishment to those who call for or incite action, with the maximum sentence one year in prison and fines of up to half a million pounds.

The new law, which still needs to be approved by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, will be in force as long as the emergency law is still in force. Egypt has been in a state of emergency since the assassination of former president Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Since former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on 11 February, Egypt has witnessed escalating nationwide labour strikes and political protests. Amongst those protesting have been university students, political activists, railway workers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, journalists, pensioners and the police force.

Many labourers have expressed their shock at the decree. “We really had hopes that the new government will support us and look into our demands. We expected them to say we have all of your legal demands on our desks and there is a timeline of a month or two within which they will be achieved,” said Ali Fotouh, a driver in the public transportation sector.

“I don’t understand what they mean by protests that affect the traffic and the business. This is not fair, why don’t you solve our demands so that we don’t go on strikes. This tone reminds me of the old days of Mubarak, threats and oppression used by the regime. This is no longer valid after January 25 Revolution.”

Many agree with Fotouh that this decree will incite even more protests and create even more distrust between the new government and the army on one side, and the people on the other.

~ more... ~

Syria: Protest Increase Despite Brutal Crackdown

‘I could be the father of a Japanese Chernobyl’

From Fukushima Engineer Says He Helped Cover Up Flaw at Dai-Ichi Reactor No. 4 by Jason Clenfield, Bloomberg:

One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.

“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?” Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. “I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.”

Tanaka’s allegations, which he says he brought to the attention of Japan’s Trade Ministry in 1988 and chronicled in a book two years later called “Why Nuclear Power is Dangerous,” have resurfaced after Japan’s worst nuclear accident on record. The No. 4 reactor was hit by explosions and a fire that spread from adjacent units as the crisis deepened.

No Safety Problem

Hitachi spokesman Yuichi Izumisawa said the company met with Tanaka in 1988 to discuss the work he did to fix a dent in the vessel and concluded there was no safety problem. “We have not revised our view since then,” Izumisawa said.

Kenta Takahashi, an official at the Trade Ministry’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said he couldn’t confirm whether the agency’s predecessor, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, had conducted an investigation into Tanaka’s claims. Naoki Tsunoda, a spokesman at Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the plant, said he couldn’t immediately comment.

Tanaka, who said he led the team that built the steel vessel, was at his apartment on Tokyo’s outskirts when Japan’s biggest earthquake on record struck off the coast on March 11, shaking buildings in the nation’s capital.

“I grabbed my wife and we just hugged,” he said. “I thought this is it: we’re dead.”

~ more... ~

~ See also Yellow Rain Falls In Tokyo? Pollen Excuse Exact Same As Chernobyl Yellow Rain Lie ~

Neutron beam observed 13 times at crippled Fukushima nuke plant

According to Japan Today:

Tokyo Electric Power Co said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was crippled by the massive March 11 quake-tsunami disaster.

TEPCO, the operator of the nuclear plant, said the neutron beam measured about 1.5 kilometers southwest of the plant’s No. 1 and 2 reactors over three days from March 13 and is equivalent to 0.01 to 0.02 microsieverts per hour and that this is not a dangerous level.

The utility firm said it will measure uranium and plutonium, which could emit a neutron beam, as well.

In the 1999 criticality accident at a nuclear fuel processing plant run by JCO Co in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, uranium broke apart continually in nuclear fission, causing a massive amount of neutron beams.

In the latest case at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, such a criticality accident has yet to happen.

But the measured neutron beam may be evidence that uranium and plutonium leaked from the plant’s nuclear reactors and spent nuclear fuels have discharged a small amount of neutron beams through nuclear fission.