Miscellaneous

Off topic: America’s F-35 Joint Strike fighter. The worst plane ever but Australia still wants them.

PREVIOUSLY: In April 2014 the Australian Abbott government gave its approval for the purchase of 58 additional F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSFs) at a cost of $12.4 billion – making it the nation’s most expensive Defence asset. The extra aircraft is supposed to bring Australia’s total Joint Strike Fighter force to 72 aircraft, with the first of them to enter service in 2020.

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From the Was is Boring blog, March 15, 2015:

F-35 Still Years Away From Being Ready for Combat

by MANDY SMITHBERGER

Excerpt
The F-35 continues to fail the most basic requirements for combat aircraft and common sense. Despite reforms, the F-35 continues to be unaffordable, its engines continue to be susceptible to fire, and the Pentagon continues to misrepresent its performance.

Below are just a few of the issues identified in a recent report from the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation: SNIP

Magnetic fields and other issues regarding hybrid and electric cars

From Alasdair Philips

Excerpt

In response to a question posed to him on the effectiveness of shielding against EMF levels inside hybrid cars

Nothing really screens ELF magnetic fields in practice. Most materials are for RF fields only and screen the electric component that therefore stops the radiated wave. This is not the case for ELF and VLF fields. (c. 3 Hz to 300 kHz). You need to enclose either the source or yourself in a “mostly sealed” high permeability metal box (e.g. like mu-metal). That shorts out the magnetic flux so it can’t really escape. Published EMF adverse-health-effects science is strongest for ELF fields.

You need to be very wary of trying to measure EMFs in hybrid vehicles with a simple Gauss meter. There are enormous DC switching changes that can create large impulse magnetic fields that many meters will ignore and are likely to have biological consequences. They also usually have high-speed switching power trains for motor speed control that create magnetic fields in the range 2 kHz – 200 kHz that again almost no common magnetic field meters will measure. You need a VLF meter for those. Gigahertz Solutions manufacture some good ones. Many cars (including hybrids) still use the chassis as the negative connection with a single large cable through the cabin for the positive. So you are effectively sitting inside a co-axial cable.

Unless you have to drive a lot in cities and need to meet strict new emission restrictions, I would be wary of choosing a hybrid.

People should also look at the battery warranty in close detail. (more)
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“Microwaves, Science and Lies” Documentary Reveals a Product Defense Strategy

From SkyVision Solutions, Posted on August 30, 2014

Excerpt:

For the past ten years worldwide, questioning on the safety of mobile phone antennas has been increasing. Numerous scientific studies have revealed the adverse effects of electro- magnetic waves on health. Yet, most health agencies, industry representatives, and a portion the scientific community claim that current health standards adequately protect the public.

Earlier this year journalist Nancy Meritens and film director Jean Hèches completed their documentary Ondes, Science et Manigances [or Microwaves, Science and Lies], that demonstrates how the telecommunications industry creates doubt about harmful radiofrequency waves through the manipulation of science. Through interviews with several whistleblowers, including citizens, journalists, and scientists, this film reveals how, like the tobacco industry, the lobby of the mobile phone industry has built a strategy of “product defense” by artificially creating a scientific doubt about the harmful effects of electromagnetic waves. In addition to revealing collusion among various organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO), the film documents the actions of specific individuals like Emilie van Deventer of the WHO and Peter Valberg who works for the product defense firm Gradient.
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John Pilger | The Forgotten Coup – How the US and Britain Crushed the Government of Their “Ally” Australia

Across the political and media elite in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died. His achievements are recognized, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him. Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution.” Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia toward the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing….Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should not be “vetted or harassed” by the Australian security organization, ASIO – then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the US bombing of Vietnam as “corrupt and barbaric,” a CIA station officer in Saigon said, “We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.”
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Myelin & Electrohypersensitivty Press Release

Excerpt

From David Ironside

A review of the evidence between Myelin, the insulation around nerves and neural connections,
and electrohypersensitivity.

PRESS RELEASE David Ironside 18/9/14 COULD MYELIN DAMAGE FROM RADIOFREQUENCY ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD EXPOSURE HELP EXPLAIN THE FUNCTIONAL IMPAIRMENT ELECTROHYPERSENSITIVITY? A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE . One of the most compelling modern scientific debates concerns the potential health risks from our ever increasing exposure to the pulsed radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) from cell phones, cordless phones, Wifi, cell towers etc. This invisible technology has been classified a Class 2B Carcinogen by the WHO’s International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC) in 2011. The non-thermal radiation used by modern devices was found to be biologically active and a possible cancer-causing agent. There remain many questions such as the mechanism for how this radiation interacts with biological processes and what exposure level constitutes a health risk. For many people around the world who suffer from electrohypersensitivity, exposure levels and duration of exposure can be very limited before a variety of symptoms manifest. These include headaches, lethargy, dizziness, lack of concentration, pain, insomnia, depression and more.
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Australia’s toxic nuclear past: Maralinga By Frank Walker (and the untold tragedy of Brian Dunlop)

Investigative journalist Frank Walker’s Maralinga is a must-read true story of the abuse of our servicemen, scientists treating the Australian population as lab rats and politicians sacrificing their own people in the pursuit of power. During the Menzies era, with the blessing of the Prime Minister, the British government exploded twelve atomic bombs on Australian soil. RAAF pilots were ordered to fly into nuclear mushroom clouds, soldiers told to walk into radioactive ground zero, sailors retrieved highly contaminated debris – none of them aware of the dangers they faced. But the betrayal didn’t end with these servicemen. Secret monitoring stations were set up around the country to measure radiation levels and a clandestine decades-long project stole bones from dead babies to see how much fallout had contaminated their bodies – their grieving parents were never told. This chilling expose’ drawn from extensive research and interviews with surviving veterans reveals the betrayal of our troops and our country.
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Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we’re nearing collapse

Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we’re nearing collapse

Four decades after the book was published, Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon. The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the “dustbin of history”. It doesn’t belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book’s forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.
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