REPEAT AFTER ME: RADIATION ON THAT CALIFORNIA BEACH IS NOT BECAUSE OF FUKUSHIMA (...Yet)

"Kite Runner," from jurvetson's photostream, Taken at Half Moon Bay, California. Creative Commons Some Rights Reserved. 

This is a hard article to introduce, because it should need no introduction.  The reasons otherwise are not comfortable.  Procrastination, however, is unethical, as I know the outcome of a not irrelevant number of contemporaneous debates depends in part upon a video that went viral, you know the one.*  It was on the mainstream news, where it was debunked in an officious manner bound to be dismissed by the 'faithful.'

Now, if you have been following this blog, surely you know me to have such faith down in my heart.  So what gives?

The truth, that's what.  

The readings were that high before 3/11/11.

You heard me.

The sands of this same beach were measured and noted and studied for their abnormal readings before even October 10, 1970, the date of the star-crossed nuclear power plant's first criticality:

In the 2008 paper Radioactivity of sand from several renowned public beaches and assessment of the corresponding environmental risks by Radenkovic, et al, published in the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society, notable concentrations of Ra226, Th232, K40 were found in LA-area beaches (see table 1). Going back even further 1959, Tracing Coastal Sediment Movement By Naturally Radioactive Minerals is a report by Kamel & Johnson, from Berkeley, which states “This radioactive thorium is added naturally at discrete places along the coast where rivers flowing through thorium rich granite out- crops reach the coast or where the thorium rich granite itself outcrops at the sea coast.” Read more

That alone ought to convince you.  Never mind this: 

Dan Sythe, CEO of International Medcom (whose Inspector device is featured in the video) and self professed “truth junkie,” was concerned about these reports and immediately had soil samples taken from the beaches in Half Moon Bay where the video was created to identify the cause of these higher levels. Using a SAM 940 Multichannel Analyzer he found the sand to contain NORM levels of Radium 226 and Thorium 232 – in line with what would be expected based on the previously linked papers. He did not find any Caesium which would indicate contamination from Fukushima. He documented his findings on the Geiger Counter Bulletin, in a post titled "California Beach Radiation Not From Fukushima" [emphasis and quote marks mine]. Read more

There are screenshots of his readings at the above link.  It is a post that does not pull punches. True, they use the over-worn comparison of a jet flight; I find that unfortunate; but if one does not ingest the sand that is not mixing internal radiation with external.  

Also worth noting is that while normal background levels around California are between 30-60 CPM, and measurements have been taken on these beaches in Half Moon Bay (as well as other spots along the west coast) of upwards of 200 CPM, this is still far less than what a person is exposed to on a typical commercial airline flight where levels are regularly over 800 CPM for the duration of the flight. 200 CPM is within the level you would expect to measure from a granite counter top, or a building with some kinds of exposed brick. Read more

To insinuate from this that Safecast is engaging in the dirty tactics of the Pro-Nukers is just plain wrong,. They are not. They do not confuse corium with bananas. They do not talk of X-rays or of ocean dilution.  If  you, Gentle Reader, find that you have been a little part of this problem, then you have something you need to go do.  Go do it. No offense, but to make such allegations without checking your facts thoroughly is, in my opinion, to have a situation urgently in need of your attention, whether that be to write an email, print a retraction, revise a blog post, make a phone call: try to reach the same ears that heard you give credence to misleading information.

Be sure to call me on it if ever I am in need.

To be sure whether or not the maker of the video was aware of the actual facts of the matter need not be proven one way or the other. Knowing the truth we can still give the video its proper influence as a source.  It may still, however, be tempting to wonder at motive, since the videographer certainly goes out of his way to present the data scientifically, not sensationally, or at least to seem as if he does.

In other words, it is incredibly easy, in the current climate, to believe him and disbelieve the inevitable debunking (like this one) that followed. Our reputations as sources of such information are crucial, and they would suffer as a consequence. 

All of which is begging one last question: 

Why would someone want to make such a misleading video?  

Glenn Greenwald, Feb 24, 2014 at 6:25p ET:  How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet  to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations From the Snowden archive Western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction [The 'Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group' a previously secretunit of the UK's 'Government Communications Headquarters'] document [...] entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations” Agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable Tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG [as] “using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world,” including “information ops (influence or disruption)” These surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people’s reputations and disrupt their online political activity Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups These GCHQ documents are the first to prove that a major western government is using some of the most controversial techniques to disseminate deception online and harm the reputations of targets The state is deliberately spreading lies on the internet about whichever individuals it targets, including the use of what GCHQ itself calls “false flag operations” and emails to people’s families and friends Claims that government agencies are infiltrating online communities and engaging in “false flag operations” to discredit targets are often dismissed as conspiracy theories, but these documents leave no doubt they are doing precisely that Read more

In the light of recent disclosures about the methods and tactics of the surveillance state that has coalesced around us, a not improbable hypothesis presents itself to my mind, and so I make a stab. 

Radioctivity from the Fukushima disaster has been observed to concentrate, not dissipate, in the Pacific Ocean; much of it is moving in more or less a straight line, headed for somewhere in the vicinity of Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco.  The timing of this video, just before Christmas 2013, puts it at the far beginning edge of what will doubtless be a frightening increase in radioactivity all along this coast; by drawing off the attention and protest-ready energy of the first people aware of it to focus on a hoax, reports about the developing crisis situation, as it becomes very very real, will be, it is hoped, strangled in their mostly alternative media cradles.  

Don't let this happen, O Netizen.  

Please read and download the above study (you cannot get the full text for free elsewhere).  Please read the Safecast article. Be informed.  Inform others.  We need every last one of us fighting if we are to make it through -- if we are not to die here, like rotten cabbages.

"For La Legra Negra - The Toxic Green Version" Some rights reserved by suzi54241

Be seeing you.

*(Listed as video 'source' on the YouTube page is -- a webpage with a 'click here' that takes one to back to a different post of the same video -- seems like an SEO move, but I am not one to call such minor infractions bad.)