Inflammation, Free Radical Damage, Oxidative Stress, Hydrogen and Cancer

From: Dr. Sircus

Studies on brain tumors in the past 10 or more years have shown an increase in the incidence of brain tumors in the general population. Can you guess why this is so? Extensive research during last two decades has revealed the mechanism by which continued oxidative stress leads to chronic inflammation, which in turn mediates most chronic diseases including cancer.

Oxidative stress, caused by rivers of free radicals, is a plague on modern man. Whether it’s the toxic pollution in the air you breath 24/7, the radiation your doctor exposes you to,[1] pharmaceutical medicines, chemotherapy, your cell phone constantly at your brain, or even your WI-FI and other EMF pollution generating devices, you expose yourself to oxidative stress,[2] which will drag you down into the pit of disease and cancer putting an end to your happiness, health and even life.

Oxidative stress has been associated with numerous health conditions including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, insomnia, cancer, and just about every disease you can imagine yet doctors seem to ignore this fact and work as hard as they can to increase your oxidative stress when they know we are already against the wall with toxins and stress. Imagine a patient, newly in remission from cancer, being exposed every three months to CAT or PET scans, which dramatically increase oxidative stress, just begging for the cancer to come back (or a new cancer to emerge) so they can treat the patient again.

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In Memoriam: Liu Xiaobo - by A. D. Coleman

From:

Photocritic International

A. D. Coleman on Photography and New Technology

In Memoriam: Liu Xiaobo

Chinese poet, dissident, and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo died of acute liver cancer on Thursday, July 13, 2017 while in police custody. At the time of his death he had been released from prison, where he had served almost nine years of an 11-year sentence, and transferred to the First Hospital of China Medical University in Shenyang. There the Chinese authorities kept him under guard until his passing, preventing him from making any final public statement.

Untitled photograph (Liu Xiaobo with doll), ca. 1999, © copyright by Liu Xia, from the “Ugly Babies” series

In 2009 a Chinese court convicted Liu of subversion for his role in co-authoring and disseminating “Charter 08,” which called for the recognition and practice of the democratic freedoms proclaimed in the constitution of the People’s Republic of China. His opposition to the Chinese Communist Party goes back to his leadership role in the events leading up to the Tienanmen Square Massacre of June 4, 1989.

Liu Xia installation with the “Empty Chair,” Hong Kong, June 9, 2012. Photo © 2012 by A. D. Coleman.

 How Liu managed to reach a state of terminal liver cancer while imprisoned and under the presumed supervision and care of the Xi Jinping regime remains unexplained. He is the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in prison since the anti-Nazi German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1938.

You’ll find his New York Times obituary here, written by Chris Buckley.

 

Lui Xia, “Untitled” (1996-99). Photograph © Liu Xia. 

Predictably, just hours after Liu’s death Donald Trump praised China’s president, Xi Jinping. Trump has yet to acknowledge Liu’s death.

Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia in an undated photo released by his family.

 Liu Xiaobo’s wife (now his widow), the noted poet and photographer Liu Xia, has been under extralegal house arrest since Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel prize, although she has been neither charged nor convicted of any crime. Chinese officials refuse to acknowledge even the fact of her detention. Chinese authorities allowed her to visit her husband during his last days, under close police supervision; they were never allowed to be alone together.

Untitled photograph by Liu Xia, © copyright 1996.

Liu’s body was cremated and his ashes buried at sea, so that no gravesite exists that could serve as a place of pilgrimage by his supporters.

Liu Xia’s whereabouts are currently unknown. Those close to her fear for her mental and physical health, and her safety. With her husband now dead, she has become de facto the most internationally recognized symbol of opposition to the oligarchy that rules mainland China as a military dictatorship.

(Full disclosure: In 2012-13 I assisted with the international tour of the photography exhibition “The Silent Strength of Liu Xia,” organizing showings in Hong Kong, Taipei, Berlin, Madrid, and Richmond, VA. Toward that end I developed and published the only English-language website devoted to her work, “Liu Xia: Silent Strength.” There you’ll find information about her life and work, including a number of essays about her — one of them by me, “Freedom Reflex: The Photographs of Liu Xia.” The site also includes downloadable pdf files of two catalogs of her work.

With the ascension to power in the PRC of Xi Jinping, my contacts in the circles around Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia asked me to suspend my efforts to circulate the exhibition, and the development of the website, in hopes that the new regime in China would show leniency toward these dissidents. Clearly that has not proved to be the case.

Untitled photograph by Liu Xia from the “Ugly Babies” series, © copyright 1996.

Ban Hydrofluoric Acid

From:  TRAA

On February 18, 2015, an explosion in the Electrostatic Precipitator (ESP) unit at the Torrance ExxonMobil Refinery shook the community and registered 1.7 on the Richter scale. The explosion blasted off a chunk of the ESP the size of a fully loaded semi-truck & trailer  (80,000 lb.). Falling from 12 stories up, it accelerated to 60 mph before crashing three feet from the acid settler tank containing  50,000 lb. of volatile and toxic modified hydrofluoric acid (MHF).  At a January 2016 hearing, the federal Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigated and declared this a “near miss” on a catastrophic MHF release.  This information had not been made public by the refinery or the City of Torrance in its report on the explosion; it first came to light from a CBS Evening News expose in September 2015.  According to the United Steel Workers International, “No industrial process risks more lives from a single accident than does… alkylation using HF,” because HF (and MHF) form a ground-hugging dense vapor HF cloud upon release.

“We were really, really lucky… [This was] a near miss [on MHF]… It could have been much more catastrophic… If I were in the community I absolutely would be concerned.”

– US Chemical Safety Board Chairperson Vannessa Allen Sutherland

ExxonMobil has denied CSB’s requests for information on the alkylation unit, where MHF is

used.  This is what they have to hide:  MHF was put in place by the 1990 Torrance-Mobil 

Consent Decree to “significantly reduce” the danger from hydrofluoric acid (HF).  But MHF

is actually 90% HF and almost exactly as deadly. The safety claims made for MHF are bogus,

and the public has been fooled.

According to Vanessa Sutherland, the chairperson of the CSB, hydrofluoric acid (HF) is “one of the most hazardous and deadly chemicals.” With even minimal exposure, HF causes painful, slow-healing chemical burns and damages internal organs and bones. “In worst-case scenarios, at deadly levels, it causes asphyxiation because once inhaled it causes respiratory problems that build up fluid and you ultimately drown,” Sutherland said in an interview with CBS News.  Fluoride ions from HF can penetrate intact skin, enter the bloodstream, and bond with calcium, making it unavailable to the body. This can cause death or permanent organ damage.  Symptoms can be delayed.  For this reason, immediate medical attention is required for even modest exposure.  MORE

The Gentlemen's Club

It is a shocking fact that  after sinking The Gentlemen's Club in oil. Plains All American Pipeline was rescued from allowing the oil in the broken pipeline to also flood into the Los Angeles River.  

THE GENTLEMENS CLUB 5175 San Fernando RD Los Angeles CA 90039

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Tech TalkAt WorkTest and Measurement Differential Lidar Catches "Fugitive" Methane on the Fly

From:  IEEE Spectrum


By Douglas McCormick

Posted 29 May 2017 | 16:00 GMT

Image: Steve Karcher, Ball Aerospace

The methane plume imaged from a light aircraft by Methane Monitor: real-time [left] and processed [right].

In 2015, methane accounted for 655 million kilograms  of the 7.1 billion kilograms of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere of the United States alone. The energy sector was responsible for just under half of the methane released, about 279 million kg—lost product with a value of hundreds of millions of dollars.

So detecting leaks from the 2.6 million miles of natural gas pipelines snaking across America is properly both a business and an environmental priority. Air surveillance has reduced serious pipeline leaks by 39 percent since 2009, but there have still been 250 serious incidents in the past 8 years. These include a San Bruno, Calif., pipeline blast that killed eight people in 2010 and the Aliso Canyon leak in 2016—which released about 97 million kilograms of methane, essentially doubling the Greater Los Angeles area’s usual volume of methane emissions from all sources for a three month period.

Until now, efforts to detect what the industry calls “fugitive emissions” have been constrained by the instrument sensitivity and response times. Airborne surveillance required low-flying, slow-moving, expensive-to-run helicopters.

A new approach increases sensitivity and tightens control of timing and synchronization to permit the system to operate at higher speeds and higher altitudes—allowing a shift from helicopters to faster-moving, higher-flying single-engine, fixed-wing aircraft, which are less expensive to own and operate. The innovation earned Ball Aerospace & Technologies engineers Steve Karcher, Phil Lyman, and Jarett Bartholomew the Engineering Impact Award for Energy at NIWeek 2017 in Austin, Tex. The award was presented on 23 May. MORE

Global climate projections help civil engineers plan

From:  The Guardian 

NOTE:  Relevant to the use of Geopolymers

 Spaghetti Junction near Birmingham, England. Photograph: Jason Hawkes/Getty Images

A new study helps civil engineers account for ongoing climate change in infrastructure design

People who work on building infrastructure understand the risks of climate change. As the Earth warms, new stresses are applied to our buildings, bridges, roads, houses, and other structures. Some of the obvious threats to infrastructure are from extreme weather including heat waves, storms, and intense rainfalls. There are some other less obvious threats, and many of the threats vary by location.

Regardless, the planning for infrastructure relies upon a reasonable estimation of future climate changes. To help quantify such an estimate for the civil engineering community, a recent paper was published by the Institution of Civil Engineering Journal of Forensic Engineering (I was fortunate to be a coauthor). The article was prepared with the collaboration of Dr. Michael Mann from Penn State University and Dr. Lijing Cheng from the Chinese Institute of Atmospheric Physics. 

The paper in question does not uncover new facts. We didn’t discover past warming that wasn’t known. We didn’t create new predictions that were previously uncreated. Rather, we assembled available information to provide a solid basis that can be used for future plans involving infrastructure.  MORE

Brits Threaten Assange As Swedes Abandon Sex Smear

From:  Justice Integrity Project 

• Andrew Kreig
• May 21, 2017

British authorities threatened WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with arrest on a bond-jumping charge last week after their Swedish counterparts gave up trying to investigate Assange on what appears to have been a dubious series of sex claims that have been pending against him for nearly seven years since his 2010 speaking trip to Stockholm.

The British effort, if pursued aggressively with threatened punishment beyond the norm, would further compound a travesty of justice that has already disgraced the Swedish and British legal systems.

The Swedes have wasted vast amounts of taxpayer money for the probe, as have the British in the latter's around-the-clock surveillance of Assange for years cost millions of pounds. The evidence suggest that both nations have undertaken such extraordinary actions to thwart WikiLeaks and not to investigate claims arising out of consensual sex with two Swedish women who invited Assange to sleep with them separately before complaints arose.   MORE

 The CIA Didn’t Just Torture, It Experimented on Human Beings

From: The Nation


By Lisa Hajjar
DECEMBER 16, 2014
Reframing the CIA’s interrogation techniques as a violation of scientific and medical ethics may be the best way to achieve accountability.

(AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program. The experimental nature of the interrogation and detention techniques is clearly evident in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of its investigative report, despite redactions (insisted upon by the CIA) to obfuscate the locations of these laboratories of cruel science and the identities of perpetrators.

At the helm of this human experimentation project were two psychologists hired by the CIA, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. They designed interrogation and detention protocols that they and others applied to people imprisoned in the agency’s secret “black sites.”

In its response to the Senate report, the CIA justified its decision to hire the duo: “We believe their expertise was so unique that we would have been derelict had we not sought them out when it became clear that CIA would be heading into the uncharted territory of the program.” Mitchell and Jessen’s qualifications did not include interrogation experience, specialized knowledge about Al Qaeda or relevant cultural or linguistic knowledge. What they had was Air Force experience in studying the effects of torture on American prisoners of war, as well as a curiosity about whether theories of “learned helplessness” derived from experiments on dogs might work on human enemies. MORE

Time Line - Invading Iraq for Oil and Power

Healing from Unjust War

They wanted war and lied to have it – The Mother Jones Time Line

January 20, 2001  - George W. Bush is Inagurated as President of the United States. We now know he was not legally elected.

February 3, 2001 - National Security Council (NSC) directed NSC staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy:

“The review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields”.

It is confirmed that these oil companies attending the meeting.  Officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. From:  Washingtons Blog and Washington Post.

Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts  Part One – Judicial Watch

Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts Part Two –  Judicial Watch

CNN interviews former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, who says, "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill told CBS, according to excerpts released Saturday by the network. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap."

September 11, 2001 – The World Trade Center in NY and the Pentagon are hit, sending shock waves around the Globe.  The world reaches out to American in sympathy. 

Published: Wednesday May 2, 2007

Hours after 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld allegedly said, 'My interest is to hit Saddam'

RAW STORY

September 28, 2001 – Osama ben Laden catagorically denies having any part of the attack on NY and the Pentagon in an interview published in Ummat, a Pakistani daily published in Karachi on September 28, 2001. The interview was translated into English by the BBC World Monitoring Service and made public on September 29, 2001. 

During the interview ben Laden said, “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people.  From: Global Research

Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. It is the United States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children, and common people of other faiths, particularly the followers of Islam. All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.”

October 7, 2001 - The United States and a coalition force launch Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.   which, under Taliban control, had provided a safe haven for Osama bin Laden while he and other al-Qaeda leaders plotted attacks against the Western world. President Bush declares a war on terrorism and vows to hold states responsible for harboring terrorist organizations.4

October 8, 2001 - The Office of Homeland Security, later to become the Department of Homeland Security, is established.

October 9, 2001 - Letters containing anthrax were sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. 1   Both senators had been attempting to slow the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act. Just seven days before the incident, Leahy accused the Bush administration of reneging on an agreement on the bill. 2   9/11 Research   

October 26, 2001 – Patriot Act - President Bush signs into law the USA Patriot Act, which greatly expands domestic law enforcement capacity to conduct surveillance and wiretaps, increases presidential powers during a terrorist attack and tightens federal oversight of financial activities. Concerns soon arise over restriction of civil liberties.

November 8, 2001 - The New York Times and the PBS program “Frontline” report that an Iraqi defector, an army general, claims that the Iraqi military trained Arab fighters to hijack airplanes. These claims could not be substantiated and one of the defectors is later exposed by Mother Jones to be using a false identity. 

December 3, 2001 – Bush denounces Saddam Hussein as evil.

December 5, 2001 - Interim government placed in Afghanistan

December 9, 2001 -  The city of Kandaharis surrendered by the Taliban.  Osama ben Laden is traced to the Tora Bora caves. Al-Qaeda leaders continue hiding in the mountains, 

August 26, 2002 -  Dick Cheney publicly states, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

September 16, 2002 - Iraq agrees unconditionally to the return of inspectors. CNN

September 19, 2002 - Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri delivers a letter to the United Nations from Saddam Hussein stating that Iraq has no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. CNN

October 1, 2002 - The United Nations and Iraq agree on terms they say are consistent with existing U.N. resolutions. The United States threatens to veto unless a U.S. resolution is approved that would allow military action for non-compliance by Iraq. CNN

November 8, 2002 - The U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 1441. CNN

November 13, 2002 - Iraq delivers a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, accepting the terms set forth in resolution 1441. CNN

November 27, 2002 - Inspections resume in Iraq. CNN

December 7, 2002 - Iraq submits a 12,000 page report on its WMD programs. CNN

January 16, 2003 - Inspectors discover 12 chemical warheads, 11 of them empty, at the Ukhaider ammunition storage area. CNN

January 20, 2003 - After two days of negotiation, Hans Blix, Mohamed ElBaradei, and Iraqi officials reach an agreement about Iraqi cooperation and concessions regarding the inspections. CNN

February 5, 2003 - Secretary of State Colin Powell briefs the U.N. Security Council on inspections. He presents evidence that the United States says proves Iraq has misled inspectors and hid proscribed weapons and equipment. CNN

February 14, 2003 - Blix and ElBaradei brief the U.N. Security Council. Blix reports that the inspectors have not yet found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Blix also reports that Iraq is in violation of U.N. resolutions concerning its al Samoud 2 missile program. CNN

February 19, 2003 - Inspectors visit the Ibn al Haytham factory northwest of Baghdad and tag 32 al Samoud II missiles. CNN

February 27, 2003 - Iraq agrees to destroy the country's al Samoud II missile stock. However, the letter doesn't specify a date that the missile destruction will begin.

March 10, 2003 - It is revealed that Iraq possesses drone aircraft that could have been used to launch a chemical or biological attack against other countries. The plane has a wingspan of 24 feet five inches, which suggests that it could fly further than 150km/93 miles, which is the limit imposed by U.N. resolutions.

March 16, 2003 – Dick Cheney publicly states,  “And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”  Statement made just three days before the invasion.

March 18, 2003 - Inspectors withdraw from Iraq.

March 20, 2003 – Bush announces the start of a war against Iraq. Allied forces begin the campaign with strikes on military targets, including an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.

April 9, 2003 - Saddam Hussein's rule collapses in a matter of hours as much of Baghdad comes under American control. Across much of the capital, Iraqis take to the streets to topple statues of Mr. Hussein, loot government ministries and interrogation centers, and give a cheering, often tearful welcome to advancing American troops. 

Published: Wednesday May 2, 2007

Hours after 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld allegedly said, 'My interest is to hit Saddam'

RAW STORY

“According to NBC's chief Pentagon correspondent, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that his "interest is to hit Saddam Hussein" just hours after the attacks on September 11, 2001, "even though all indications pointed at al-Qaida as the guilty party," a Rhode Island newspaper reports.

At the annual Business Expo at the Rhode Island Convention Center Tuesday, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski "advanced a theme garnering attention since former CIA director George J. Tenet made his public revelations last week," writes Tom Mooney for the Providence Journal.

"Some things are right on the mark, when he says the Bush administration appeared predisposed to attack Iraq," Miklaszewski says of Tenet's book At the Center of the Storm.”

Quote from Dick Cheney from RightWeb  - “During the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, for example, he said that there was “no doubt” that the Saddam Hussein regime had “weapons of mass destruction” and predicted that Iraqis would greet U.S. troops as “liberators.” In 2005, Cheney insisted that the Iraqi insurgency was in its final stages. Faced with criticism for his mistaken views, Cheney has been unrepentant, arguing in July 2014: “I look back on it now, [the invasion of Iraq] was absolutely the right thing to do.”[1]”

Letter from Washington   February 16, 2004 Issue

Contract Sport

What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?

By Jane Mayer

The list of cronies and how they used war for their own benefit is frightening.  The asserted, self-serving meme that America is, according to daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, “We know that America is the exceptional nation, and that there is no substitute for American leadership around the world.”[4]  is a chilling reminder of the  constructed reality these people have built, which allows them to ignore the swimming pools of blood draining from their victims. 

As the Invasion forces from America left, for what proved to be a temporary hiatus, the oil companies who had signed on with Cheney before 9/11 remained to steal the natural resource of this devestated nation.  Aljezeera - Western oil firms remain as US exits Iraq  by Dahr Jamail

Life is cheap in Palestine...

From:  Jane Stillwater 

by Jane Stillwater 

     In apartheid Israel right now, 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners are currently in the fourth week of a hunger strike, protesting against the brutal (American-blessed) neo-colonialist occupation of their homes in the West Bank.  Many of the hunger strikers are now close to death.  http://mondoweiss.net/2017/04/israelis-palestinian-prisoners/

     "What do we care if they die," say their Israeli occupiers.  "They are sub-human anyway.  They are more like animals than people.  That would just mean 1,500 fewer Palestinian dogs to get in our way."  Lebenstraum is important in Israel.  https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170421-that-barbecue-outside-a-hunger-strike-prison-exposes-israeli-settlers-blind-hatred/

      And life is cheap in Yemen too.  The Saudis (with America's blessing) are planning to starve 28 million Yemenis to death.  "What do we care," say the Saudis.  "They have oil.  We want oil.  End of discussion."  http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40147-the-us-provided-cover-for-the-saudi-starvation-strategy-in-yemen

     And, just like in Yemen and Palestine, life is cheap in America too.  "Let's send more troops off to Syria," Americans say, also giving their blessing to this illegal "war" for oil.  But Syria is just like Iraq and Afghanistan -- more American troops will be slaughtered there in yet another deceitful neo-colonialist bid for more oil pipelines and more oil.  "Hey, it's not like we don't pay those dogfaces and grunts for their service," say the boys in Washington DC.  How much for an American soldier's life?  Not much.  And the price keeps getting lower and lower.  http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/benefits/2016/05/21/shrinking-military-paycheck-2017/84546824/

        Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.

And while you're at it, please buy my books!   http://straitwellbooks.blogspot.com/2016/04/our-top-best-seller-right-now-is-bring.html   

     Plus here's a sneak preview of my latest book, a thrilling murder mystery entitled "Road Trip to Damascus," hopefully coming out by the end of 2017:  http://straitwellbooks.blogspot.com/2017/05/new-book-by-straitwell-press-coming-out.html