$wine Flu Over the Cuckoo'$ Ne$t - Post #300

When the polio vaccine wa$ introduced in the middle of the twentieth century, it wa$ touted as the an$wer to a terrible debilitating disea$e that had crippled thousand$ of innocent$. At that time, it seemed like $cience could an$wer all of our $ocial and medical problem$, and quickly took the role of me$$iah of the atomic age. $cience had overthrown tyrant$, and now, promi$ed to defeat di$ea$e... or $o it appeared to the ignorant tru$ting ma$$e$ who rolled up their $leeves to receive the magical injection$.

Unfortunately, the reality of the matter i$n't a$ gloriou$ as pharmaceutical marketer$ would have you believe. Like all di$ea$e$, polio is cyclical, and it had already been waning for some time when the fir$t inoculation$ were being admini$tered. There hadn't been a new ca$e of the di$ea$e in the U$ for $everal month$, and ironically, $ince it'$ introduction, the only people who contract polio are tho$e who have received the vaccination. But people aren't generally intere$ted in reality. It'$ more convenient and comfortable to believe that almighty $cience is in control of our de$tiny, and defeating di$ease through vaccination$ and pharmaceutical drug$, all of which cau$e seriou$ $ide effect$. Unfortunately, vaccination$ kill and maim more people than they $ave, and are $etting up the population with compromi$ed immune $ystem$ that will lead to more $ickne$$.

Here we are $ixty years later, and there is ample evidence that vaccination$ are carcinogenic and harmful to the human$ who receive them... especially to infant$ who'$ vaccination mortality rate$ are so high that the Japane$e government ha$ been prompted to adopt policie$ preventing inoculation$ before the age of two.

Now we're being $poon fed more marketing propaganda de$igned to $care the ma$$e$ into receiving the new, barely te$ted, $wine flu vaccine. How many will die from thi$ new vaccine that i$ $uppo$ed to prevent H1N1, a di$ea$e that ha$ killed fewer people than die from a$pirin or lawn mower accident$?

People are $o gullible. They'll believe anything a doctor tell$ them.

Roll up your $leeve... this i$ going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me. Cha ching $$$

911

Eight years later...

Did you see the frightened ones
Did you hear the falling bodies
Did you ever wonder
Why we had to run for shelter
When the promise of a brave new world
Unfurled beneath a clear blue sky

Did you see the frightened ones
Did you hear the falling bodies
The flames are all long gone
But the pain lingers on
Goodbye blue sky
Goodbye blue sky
Goodbye
Goodbye
From Pink Floyd's, The Wall

Six Years Later: How Are We Doing So Far?

Yesterday marked the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately, it looks like we'll have a military presence there for a long time to come. So much for change.

To me, one of the most socially impacting and unreported aspects of our involvement in Iraq, is the toxic landscape we have created there. Long after America's troops have all left Iraq, traces of depleted uranium will continue to cause severe birth defects* and drastically affect the quality of life there.

Many Americans are completely unaware that our military used uranium tipped munitions throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. You'd have thought that we'd learned our lesson in Yugoslavia where the terrible effects of depleted uranium were observed and documented. Unfortunately, we adopted an "ignore it and it will go away" attitude toward the obvious side effects of the toxic but effective new weapon.

Depleted uranium is not an atomic weapon. The hardened uranium is used in armor piercing weapons. When a depleted uranium tipped shell impacts its target, the uranium vaporizes and becomes airborne. Unconfined microscopic radioactive particles make their way into the lives of civilians and soldiers alike. Radiation doesn't discriminate. American soldiers who have entered immobilized Iraqi tanks to procure war souvenirs, have unknowingly inhaled radioactive particulates, and contaminated their uniforms with the deadly dust. Gulf War Syndrome, a common debilitating disease among Gulf War vets, may be due in part to depleted uranium exposure.** Here in America, buyers of used Iraq, Afghanistan and Gulf War uniforms may become secondhand victims of depleted uranium poisoning as well. Buyer beware!

I would like to point out that I am not necessarily anti war. I'm all for military destruction of anyone and everyone responsible for what occurred on September 11th, 2001, but would prefer to reach that goal without the unnecessary destruction of innocents. That, I cannot support.

* No wonder they hate us:

Is it really worth it?

By the way, if you couldn't tell, the above photographs are human beings. Their deformities are a result of exposure to depleted uranium.

** Other evidence suggests that Gulf War Syndrome may have been caused by the mandatory anthrax vaccinations of US soldiers because many enlistees who never went to the Gulf have also experienced the same symptoms. The common factor is the vaccinations that were administered to all US military personnel. Soldiers who refused to take the controversial anthrax vaccination were court-marshaled. It has been reported that the French Gulf War soldiers, did not receive the anthrax vaccinations, and have not suffered from Gulf War Syndrome.

Have a nice war!

Oh, and Happy Spring too.

Bye Bye Blacksheep

On this day in 1968, early in the morning, ranchers discovered that thousands of their sheep had mysteriously died overnight. Toxicologists from the National Animal Disease Center at Ames, Iowa, determined that the sheep had died from exposure to the highly volatile VX agent, a terribly toxic chemical weapon, which just so happened to be in large supply at a couple of neighboring military bases at the time.
Read Allah Bout It.

The Road to Knowheresville: Toxic Tooele

Next time you're planning on taking your high-level nuclear waste on vacation with you, be sure you don't visit Skull Valley, Utah... Unless, of course, you have your permit...Then, apparently your high-level nuclear waste is welcome here, and I guess you are welcome to bring in low-level nuclear waste at your own convenience, and without a permit. Tongue in Cheek?


Skull Valley is no stranger to toxic governmental activities, and has seen it all - from rocket tests, to open-air biological weapons tests.

Highway 196 is a long windless road and serves as the primary access from the north.
The old Tekoy Test Range, once a high-tech test area for rockets and related operations, appears more like a ghost town now.
Behind the gate a lone, cracked and overgrown road heads west across the desert.
A bit further south is the location where thousands of sheep mysteriously died in 1968. The infamous Sheep Incident, as it has come to be remembered, was the result of an accident during one of hundreds of open-air chemical weapons tests at the nearby Dugway Proving Grounds. Oops!
Dugway Proving Grounds is off limits to anyone other than official personnel. And they're dead-serious about it too.
Dugway Proving Grounds has hosted hundreds of open-air biological and chemical weapons tests, even intentional meltdowns that were conducted for research purposes.

Looking back into Skull Valley from Lookout Pass reveals part of the expansive property of the Proving Grounds. The Lincoln Continental Highway once passed through Dugway, but now, that route is closed to tourists and historians alike.
To the east of Dugway, over the Stansbury Mountain Range, in Rush Valley, sits the south area of the Tooele Army Depot where Uncle Sam has been busy destroying the United States' chemical weapons stockpile at the Deseret Chemical facility.
TAD was home to the majority of the United States nastiest weapons of mass destruction stockpile. Now, nearly all of the chemical weapons have been eliminated in this high-tech incineration facility.
The Tooele County Emergency Warning System was designed to alert local citizens of chemical and biological leaks, threats and accidents at the proving grounds. Numerous announcement towers are located throughout the county, in the event of an emergency. The system is tested every Wednesday afternoon.

With Deseret Peak in the background, this tower serves the Grantsville Reservoir area.
This tower serves the South-East edge of Tooele. Notice the Tooele Army Depot north area in the valley behind the tower.




If this had been an actual emergency, you may have heard one of the following prepared messages:

"Warning. Warning. An emergency condition exists at Deseret Chemical Depot. Stand by for instructions and tune to a local radio station or television station for emergency information."

"Evacuate. Evacuation is required for your safety. Evacuate quickly and calmly north toward Interstate 80.""Go inside. Stay indoors. Close all windows and doors. Turn off all heating and air intake systems. Stay indoors."

OR

"If you have not evacuated, go inside now for your safety. Close all windows and doors... Stay indoors and stand by for information."

Enjoy your stay in Tooele.

Man's Best Fiend - Tether of Terror

Lately I've been paying special attention to a segment of our society who lives by rules above the rest of us. A class who's abhorrent behavior is actually encouraged and rewarded in our culture. I'm speaking, of course, about dogs.

Some animals are created more equal than others.*
If I chose to urinate on a fire hydrant or defecate in a public park, I would surely be sited for a public indecency crime. Yet man's best friend can urinate on anything he wants to, and is free to defecate anywhere said creature feels the urge. When he does, the master says, "Good doggy," pulls out a plastic baggy,** scoops up the warm fecal matter, ties the vile baggy to the leash, and strolls away with the full fecal baggy dangling and bouncing on the taut tether. Sexy! Sure, 99% of the matter is collected, and disposed of, by the good master, (at least here in our area.***) However, a residue of bacteria still remains in the area where the dastardly deed was done. In public places, this is a real danger to young children who unsuspectingly roll, crawl and play in grassy areas where dogs defecate.

A Future Thinker's Solution

If dogs are as smart as their Humans claim, they could easily be trained to use a sanitary doggy lavatory. Special taxes could be levied against dog owners, and the funds could be used to construct doggy potties where pooches could poop & pee in privacy, away from view of the public. Additionally, bad doggies who illegally poop in public places would be sited with a hefty fine. An alternative would be the doggy diaper which would prevent potentially dangerous bacteriological substances from coming in contact with the populous. One thing is sure, something needs to be done about this powerful out of control fecal fraternity who live by the anthem, "I Like Dogs and I Vote."

* Animal Farm by George Orwell
** Occasionally provided via tax payer$, many of whom don't have pets, (steal from the rich and give to the pooch).

*** Santa Cruz dog owners are pretty good about picking up after their pets. However, in some places, the mess is left behind to be discovered by unsuspecting passers by. Squish! Bad doggy!

"What's brown and sounds like a bell? Dung." Monty Python

How To Build an Atomic Bomb

On this day in 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage for their part in helping the Soviet Union develop a plutonium implosion device like this one.

Fat Man Blueprints

Ironically, the pro-communist German scientist, Klaus Fuchs, did much more to assist the Soviets with their nuclear program than the Rosenbergs, but he was not executed. I wonder... if the Rosenbergs had been German, like the Red Fox, rather than Jewish, would they have been executed? I doubt it.

The Fiendish Side Of The Friendly Atom

The ghostly silent Big Wheel located in the evacuated town of Pripyat.
© Chernobyl Interinform

On this day in 1986, the masque of the friendly atom was ripped off to reveal the fiendish nature of nuclear energy. Every benefit humanity has ever received from atomic power was undone when reactor #4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station went critical after a series of explosions which destroyed the housing of the energy block, and resulted in an out-of-control meltdown. The ultimate cost of human life associated with this single event is incalculable.

Time was critical, and days went by before there was any official declaration by the Soviet Government that there was a problem* which would ultimately effect every person on this planet, making us all down-winders to the worst nuclear disaster in history... so far.

Meltdown

Gravity tugged at the heavy radioactive molten core... burning and boring deeper with every passing hour. It would burn its way through to the core of the earth unless it could be stopped. Hundreds of experienced miners were brought to the zone to perform a task never before undertaken. Teams worked non-stop to dig a diagonal shaft to a point directly beneath the highly radioactive molten core. The brave and indefatigable miners hollowed-out a large cavern, then pumped in millions of gallons of liquid nitrogen to create a subterranean reservoir. Nothing like this had ever been attempted, so everyone had their fingers crossed when the core melted through the ceiling of the chamber and dropped into the reservoir of liquid nitrogen. Fortunately it worked, and the meltdown was stopped. Unfortunately, Chernobyl is still an international problem that hasn't gone away and radiation continues to escape the damaged reactor site.

How much is that doggy in the window?

Ten million people were evacuated, many of them farmers, and pet owners, but no accommodations were made for the animals. All the pets and farm animals had to be left behind to fend for themselves. But after it was determined that contaminated creatures could wander out of the zone, extermination teams, called hunters, were sent in to find animals... and kill them. Horses, cows, dogs and cats... nothing was spared. The dead carcasses were dragged to the street, then loaded onto trucks and taken somewhere to be disposed of. Only one bullet per animal was allowed, therefore many were wounded and left to suffer and die.

The dogs barked excitedly. It had been a long time since anyone had been around, and they were happy to hear the voices of the men. With their tails wagging, the dogs came running to greet the armed men.
* "Problem? There's no problem... everything is great... fine... wonderful"

Got atomique?

Have a nice meltdown!

Xtra Files 4: Counting Sheep or Two Shakes of a Dead Lamb's Tail - Remembering the Infamous Sheep Incident at Dugway

Tooelean Twilight Phantom

In the early morning hours of March 14, 1968, I was fast asleep in my cozy little bed, seemingly safe from monsters and bogy-men, while outside a winter storm raged. Not too far away, somewhere in the stormy twilight sky, a Phantom F-4 fighter-jet fitted with a special canister containing the highly toxic VX chemical-nerve agent headed out across the Great Salt Lake Desert on what should have been a "routine" open-air, chemical-weapons test. Blinded by the snow storm, the pilot skillfully navigated his way over the snow-covered alkaline mud flats of Skull Valley as though he had done it a hundred times. The dense quiet of snow falling at Lone Rock was briefly interrupted by the thunderous sound of the Phantom's two powerful J79 engines as it passed over the unpopulated landmark. Visually stealthed by the storm, the warcraft continued on course southward towards its target.Nearby, at Dugway Proving Grounds, located about forty miles southwest of where I slumbered, the US Army was conducting a routine, open-air, chemical-weapons test. Except for the storm, everything seemed routine, but on this particular blustery morning, something went terribly wrong. The F-4 was scheduled to employ a 300-gallon TMU-28 spray-tank canister over a specified target, but unfortunately, it failed and began to vent from beneath the jet as it maintained its scheduled flight-path. The powdery aerosol nerve agent continued to spew from the faulty canister as the Phantom thundered over rangelands populated mostly by thousands of sheep. Particulates of the highly toxic VX chemical mingled with snow flakes that tumbled and danced their way to the ground, contaminating the snowy desert below.

XO Infamous Sheep Incident OX

The result was the death of more than 6,000 sheep,* and a host of other wild animals and birds. The toxic carcasses of the poisoned animals were sent to a central location in the desert where mass graves were dug, and the bodies which had become gelatinous (a gruesome side effect of VX) were buried and forgotten. The US Army denied any involvement, but agreed to pay the herdsmen for their financial losses... to $hut them up. They did a pretty good job of covering up the story, but people knew that something had happened, and assumed that some gas had drifted from the test site and poisoned the sheep. No one knew for sure... except the army, and they weren't talking.

Whiffs - Not a Gas

Unfortunately for the government, the sheep incident, as it has come to be known, didn't go entirely unnoticed, and stirred up a bit of media attention. In 1974 my small town of Tooele (pronounced too-ill-uhh), was all a-buzz when it was made known that a big-time Hollywood movie company was coming to town to make a film. Lots of Tooelians were cast as extras,** to appear on the big screen, in Whiffs starring Elliot Gould. This was Gould's first movie following the critically acclaimed box-office s*m*a*s*h, M*A*S*H. There were lots of other celebrities*** in the film too, but unfortunately, it wasn't very good. .

"We don't want to kill the enemy... we just want to make him a little sick."
Eddie Albert as Col. Lockyer in the 20th Century FOX film, WHIFFS 1975

Whiffs' title song was nominated for an Oscar in 1975, but other than that, the mis-managed movie didn't make much of an impact, and lingered about as long as a fart in a windstorm. Whiffs did have an interesting premise, with lots of promise. Based, very loosely on the incident at Dugway, Whiffs is a fictional dark comedy about a government human test guinea pig, (played by Gould), who's health and quality of life is permanently impacted by repeated exposure to chemical weapons. Since he's no longer of any use to the army, he's forced to take an early retirement. He gets back at the system by stealing from the chemical weapons stockpile at Duggum**** Proving Ground, then unleashes chemical warfare on my home town. This was accomplished in part by a yellow and blue, bi-plane that flew a grid over Tooele spraying us with gas... crop-duster style. When my small city of about ten-thousand people was completely incapacitated, the banks were robbed, and the hero made his climactic getaway.

Geofrey Cambridge as Dusty spraying Tooele with a chemical weapon
in the 20th Century FOX Film, WHIFFS 1975

During the filming of Whiffs, the bi-plane spewed Hollywood smoke***** as it flew all around town for what seemed like days. It was closely followed by a helicopter that filmed it canvasing our town with a grid of "gas." It was exciting to watch. My friend Albert Buck and I rode our bikes to the Tooele City Airport, a desolate landing strip beyond the westerly edge of town, to sneak a peek at the unusual aeroplane. I had never seen a bi-plane before, except on TV, so I was anxious to look at it up close. Soon it approached the runway from the south, landed and taxied to the fueling area where we were waiting to inspect it. Located a few hundred feet on the opposite side of the runway, and over an old barbed-wire fence to keep out cattle, the Tooele Army Depot, keeper of the majority of America's chemical weapons stockpile, loomed quietly, as if watching. Sprawling across the valley to the foothills on the other side, thousands of bunkers, warehousing the implements of war, spotted the landscape like nervous goose bumps on Mother earth. A grim reminder of the reality of chemical warfare... in my own back yard.

Forty Years Later

Today, forty years later, America's chemical weapons' stockpile has been destroyed at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility located at the Deseret Chemical Depot about twenty miles south of Tooele.

Dugway Proving Grounds remains operational, and continues to produce America's latest and greatest biological weapons. DPG is sometimes called Area 52, or the new area 51, probably because of all the unmanned aircraft/drone research and development taking place there these days.

*Counting sheep+ means something quite unique to this Tooelean. Fortunately we can all rest well knowing that our government doesn't lie to us anymore. Sleep tight tonight my little sheep.


** Including Paula Argus, my high school English teacher who tot me too rite rill good.


*** Eddie Albert, Jennifer O'Neil, Harry Guardino, Alan Manson to name a few.

****Spoof on Dugway Proving Ground, and perhaps alluding to the mass-graves the government dug to hide their dastardly deed.

***** Or was it another governmental chemical or bio-test conducted under the guise of a Hollywood movie?

Begin counting sheep now. Below are 6,000...

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They might just as well have been people had conditions been different.

OX Achtung XO

It's been forty years since the US Army's chemical weapons accident at Dugway Proving Grounds that killed thousands of sheep. Forty years ago, Rhetro Zenberg was less than forty miles away when the infamous sheep incident occurred... America's worst home-land chemical weapons accident.

"In the early morning hours of March 14, 1968, I was fast asleep in my cozy little bed, seemingly safe from monsters and bogy-men, while outside a winter storm raged. Not too far away, somewhere in the stormy twilight sky, a Phantom F-4 fighter-jet fitted with a special canister containing the highly toxic VX nerve agent headed out across the Great Salt Lake Desert on what should have been a "routine", open-air, chemical-weapons test."

See the whole story this Friday at zenberg.blogspot.com