The Unexplained - Howard Hughes - Edition 129 - Linda Moulton Howe

Oct. 25, 2013 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:11:32

Edition 129 - Linda Moulton Howe

Award winning investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe - we talk about the state of theworld and the truth about the Fukushima nuclear disaster...

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	Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Unexplained.
	Thank you very much for your recent contacts.
	I'm going to be doing some shout-outs.
	High time we did those very soon.
	A lot of emails have come in recently.
	I can't get to all of them, but thank you very much, and please keep your feedback coming.
	WWW.theunexplained.tv, there's a link there to send email, and I see every single one, and I do react to your emails.
	And if you ask me to do something as far as I possibly can, then I do it.
	Some very good guest suggestions you made recently, and I'm acting on those right now.theunexplained.tv, that's the website designed and created by Adam Cornwell, a creative hotspot in Liverpool.
	Like I said, I'm going to do some shout-outs in just a second.
	I've got two things to do before that.
	Number one, just to explain an email that I had here and to talk about it just briefly, because I want to get your thoughts on this.
	I had an email from a guy called Alejandro, who's been a regular listener of The Unexplained, but was very, very unhappy with the way that I did the Dr. David Kelly show, with David Halpin, who wants an inquest into the death of Dr. David Kelly, the so-called Iraq whistleblower who died.
	He'd like that inquest reopened.
	Now, Alejandro thought that I was, what was the word he used, timid.
	And very British, he said, in the way that I did it, and I pussy-footed around.
	Well, I don't think I did.
	My way of doing this show is to elicit people's information and get their stories by talking to them, not by shouting down at them.
	I know there are people on air in America who will go on air and they say it's a goddamn conspiracy, and what are you going to do about it?
	And they'll bang the table, and that's their act.
	That's not my way.
	I want this to be more serious and journalistic, but I also would like it to be a good listen.
	And I think the way that we do this show is probably the right way.
	We can always improve it, and you can always give me your advice on how I should be improving it.
	But I don't want to go down the road of declaiming, because I don't think that gets us anywhere.
	So, Alejandro, I'll take your point on board, but I don't think we can go down that route.
	I hope you understand.
	Jesse Ventura, we were hoping to get him on.
	His people were very hopeful that we'd have him on here around about now.
	No sign of him at the moment, but we'll keep trying with his people.
	And Jesse, or your people, if you're listening to this, please try and make just an hour for the unexplained, because I can introduce you to a whole new UK audience who may not have heard of you and will be very interested in what you have to say, and an audience around the world, too.
	And maybe some of my American listeners who know very well who Jesse Ventura is would like to hear him on this show.
	So I'm still hopeful.
	But it's looking slightly less likely than it was before.
	But let's see.
	I never give up hope.
	All right, shout outs now.
	Hello, Paul Madison.
	Thank you for your email.
	Dee in San Diego, nice to hear from you.
	Dee.
	Martin in Wayne, New Jersey.
	Thank you for yours.
	Lee Thatcher in Britain on his UFO experiences.
	Thank you, Lee, for that.
	Greg Phillips in Bristol, thank you for your email.
	Scott Helms in Greensboro, North Carolina.
	Good to hear from you.
	Scott Robin, Ohio, thank you.
	Ian Liston Smith in the UK.
	Bernie Olilia in New Jersey, thank you.
	Martino Catalano, thank you for your email.
	Scott Weber in Oregon, good to hear from you.
	Juka Muckanen in the US.
	Nice to hear from you.
	Thanks for that email.
	Juan Barnett, thanks for the points you make.
	And Adeen Schoenmaker in New York City.
	Nice to hear from you.
	We are reaching out around the world.
	You know how to get in touch if you'd like to.theunexplained.tv.
	Follow the links and you can make a donation or make contact with this show.
	Linda Moulton Howe is our guest this time, investigative reporter, well known on television and radio in America, and also she has and is custodian of one of the greatest investigative websites the world has ever seen, EarthFiles.com.
	She's been a guest on this show a few times and I've been on radio with her quite a number of times.
	So a great pleasure to have Linda Moulton Howe.
	If you haven't heard her before, she is, to summarize, an Emmy Award-winning TV producer, investigative reporter for radio and the internet.
	She's received two dozen TV production and journalism awards for her excellence.
	The website EarthFiles.com got the 2006 W3 Silver Award for Excellence in News, the 2003 Webb Award for Excellence, and the 2000 Encyclopædia Britannica Award for Internet Excellence.
	This lady is the real deal.
	So let's cross to Albuquerque, New Mexico now and get on Linda Moulton Howe.
	Linda, nice to have you back on.
	Well, it's wonderful to be here, and it seems like since we talked about a year ago that an infinity of new things have happened in so many categories on the Earth that do you get a sense that it isn't just an idle statement to say that everything,
	everything seems to be speeding up, whether we're talking about extinction of Earth life to non-humans interacting with the planet, animal mutilations, the whole gamut, and then all of the political unrest around the whole planet as if everything were agitated at a level that I don't remember in my lifetime ever feeling that there were so many unknowns every day that you get up.
	Well, listen, if you live in the UK, Linda, I'm sure it's the same in the U.S. Life is very, very topsy-turvy and very unsettled for an awful lot of people.
	A lot of stuff that you would never think could happen has happened.
	And there seems to be this thing, and I'm not making a political point here at all because, you know, I don't do politics really.
	I'm not really into party political politics here because I think a lot of it is a sham.
	However, the fact of the matter is that we are becoming a divided society here.
	And we get more evidence of that all the time where the fat cats, so-called, and I never thought I would speak like this because it's just not my way, seem to be getting fatter.
	And the rest of us seem day by day, month by month, to be getting poorer.
	We've had a big thing here.
	We're going to talk about power issues and nuclear power in just a moment.
	I could not agree with you more.
	It is so clear now.
	We're once upon a time in the United States, growing up, we actually thought that we had a free life, that we could do and be anything that we wanted to be.
	And today, in 2013, it is very clear that the United States is in some sort of a transition into, unfortunately, a police state, and that we are marauding not just the United States, we're marauding everybody else in the world.
	Linda, when you see that.
	Linda, when ordinary decent people start to think these things, and I've started to think this too, and I'm sure you're not back in the 50s and 60s, people would have said she's a goddamn pinko, but more and more ordinary people are beginning to say these things.
	If you look within the last few days here in the UK, we've read with astonishment about the monitoring surveillance of the mobile phone, the cell phone of Ankela Merkel, the German Chancellor.
	What on earth is that about?
	How could that possibly, on any level, be justified?
	And I completely share her rage.
	It is every man's rage to realize that in the United States for at least a decade or more since 9-11 or at least from there, that the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency that were never supposed to have their eyes and their ears focused on Americans have been focused on Americans while they have been focusing on everybody else in the world and that we are in a new digital age where
	it is possible for our government to be listening to every other government on the planet.
	And this is, I think, this is the revolution, Howard.
	We're in a digital age where it is not only governments that are marauding, but that is why we are dealing with bullies, quote unquote, the internet bullies, all of these complicated new dimensions in which children are killing children.
	It's as if the planet is gone mad and that maybe out of all of this, I keep hoping that we're going through a kind of phase of adolescent insanity because of all of the digital potential that the planet has.
	Whether it's good or it's not good, this is the reality that we are in.
	And when you realize that every child now, their focus is in a 2 by 4 inch screen or an 8 by 10 inch screen or a computer, more of their lives now than ever before, and that children are not going and climbing hills and getting out into nature and having a relationship with the Earth.
	It's all electronic.
	It is all digital.
	It means a couple of things to me.
	Never have humans been easier to manipulate than now by government forces and the 1%.
	Because when you have an entire planet that that's China, that's the U.S., it's everybody, who are their focus comes down to screens.
	It means that the content in those screens is now what is dictating what people think, what they see.
	And in an odd sort of way, where we had all thought that this was going to be a revolution in which the computers were going to free the world, I think it's gone the other direction.
	I think you're absolutely right on so many levels, Linda.
	And I do worry.
	I worry not because I'm this generation looking at kids now and thinking they don't really get the chance to think outside the box, and I mean literally outside the box, whichever digital box they're carrying.
	But the fact is that their minds are being influenced by this content, whether they know that it is happening or not.
	I believe that is the case.
	So many people here need to be concerned about stuff that's happening in this country and in your country too.
	But they don't seem to be.
	Now, I know there's been a recession and I know that life is tough for people.
	It's tough for me.
	It's been tough this last 18 months or so for me, very, very.
	But I still have a chance to think about things.
	And I'll tell you, we have a story here that's very much in the news this week.
	And it is the story of what we're paying for our electricity and our gas here, because we use both here.
	We use gas that comes through pipes and electricity that comes down the wire to power our homes.
	And most of us don't have solar power and that kind of stuff.
	We can't afford it.
	We haven't done that.
	So the energy price is a very big deal.
	And we have six big energy providers in our privatized energy industry here, and they've all put prices up by about 10%.
	Now, when you consider that people's wages, if they're lucky enough to be working, are either not going up at all or they're going up by maybe 2%, it makes you ask big questions about why this kind of stuff happens.
	And yet, in some countries, there would be marches.
	Listen, I'm not inciting people to do that kind of stuff, but there would be more active protest.
	There would be talk of maybe boycotting these companies or making them answer for what they've done.
	Here, people complain to an extent on Facebook.
	I've done it myself.
	But nobody's taken any great action.
	Okay, some of these companies are going before a parliamentary committee, I think a couple of parliamentary committees in the next week to explain for themselves.
	But what they're not explaining is how they're making enormous great profits, and they are blaming green taxes and the raw material cost of energy for this.
	But those two things do not amount to a 10% increase in the annual cost of your electricity bill.
	It's a huge problem.
	So, which brings me to the point, our government has decided that it's going to invest more, or it's going to get invested more, in nuclear power.
	And in this last week, a decision has been made.
	Now, this may astonish you because a lot of other countries are moving away from nuclear power for very good reasons.
	We are moving towards it.
	We're going to build a nuclear power plant that is partly financed by the Chinese and is run by EDF, a French company.
	So we've got, what, a socialist government in France and a communist government contributing to the free market of our energy supplies in the UK.
	Somebody, a comic on radio today, made that very point.
	It's bizarre.
	It's more than bizarre.
	But it's also extremely concerning because I don't think we get to be told the truth about nuclear power.
	I'm not a big green campaigner.
	That's not where I'm coming from.
	But when I reported the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster and when I've looked into the aftermath of that, which I know you've researched extensively, I feel we have to be very, very concerned.
	I'm sorry, I've spoken a lot to you, Linda.
	Oh, no, Howard, it's great because you are going to the heart of so many issues that kind of have a confluence in a crossroads, which I think boils down to the illusion of elections now.
	We are in a country that has promoted itself to the world as being free and democratic, and that our elections actually counted, that you could vote out somebody because they had screwed up or done something wrong, and then the next person would be this fresh breath of air, and everything could be changed.
	The same in England once upon a time, but not anymore.
	Elections are illusions.
	And so the 1% that understands what a crock all of this has been sort of festering for a long time, that the 1% that are devoted to profit and greed, and that means if nuclear energy will get them more money and more power faster, we'll damn the planet.
	And I think that's what's happening.
	We're being divided into a planet now in which there are humans who really do care about the Earth and life on this earth.
	And then there are this other group, the 1%, that are marauding in power, politics, greed, around the world.
	And the only thing that they seem to care about is whether they have made another billion dollars that day or that hour, and that they have the total control on political power.
	And if you go to some of the really chief marauders of the planet, like Monsanto, who has a mission statement that they want to have the monopoly on the global food supply, that has been stated in some of their speeches, a monopoly on the global food supply.
	And the way they're going to do that is to have a monopoly on genetically modified seed and that it will be the, from here until hell freezes over, that eventually, if Monsanto had its way, everything growing on this planet would be part of their patented seed evolution.
	Well, scientists that I've talked to, frankly, off the record, Howard, they themselves are afraid to talk on the record anymore.
	Science has become as political as everything else because here in the United States, so many laboratories are dependent upon federal funding.
	And if a scientist talks out publicly the truth and they lose their federal funding, which is controlled by a Congress, which is controlled by corporations here, then the scientist says to me, this has happened so many times in the last five or seven years, I will be interviewing somebody, let's say, about the nicotine-based pesticides that are clearly killing pollinators everywhere.
	And I will be trying to ask hard questions to do an interview that will go out for broadcast.
	And a scientist will say to me, Linda, you've got to stop recording.
	And I do.
	And then we have a frank conversation.
	And they say, if you continue to ask me these questions, I will lose my funding or I will lose my job or whatever it is.
	And I have had probably since 2000 and maybe starting to see this for real, at the last two or three years of the Bush administration coming into the Barack Obama administration, where we all thought politically that the Barack Obama administration was going to rectify all of the corruption and the misuse and abuse of power, and it's been worse.
	More whistleblowers have been attacked and all of this.
	Well, in the Barack Obama administration and the last few years of the Bush administration, that's when, as an investigative reporter in my entire life, up against a lot of difficult subjects, I have had this experience over and over of scientists saying to me, you've got to stop.
	I will lose my funding.
	Well, Howard, if we are now in a world, it doesn't matter whether it's just the United States, it's everywhere, where now the 1% is marauding the planet, controlling science, controlling what reaches the public and the media, manipulating what reaches the public and the media now so easily through the web.
	I have no trust any longer with what is on the web unless I am going to a site like The Guardian.
	I still trust the UK Guardian.
	I think it is one of the few beacons in, we'll call it the world press, that is trying to its core to report facts and is the leader in the whole Snowden revelation about what has been happening in the United States with the National Security Agency allied with the Central Intelligence Agency allied with the Federal Bureau of Investigation here.
	Those three.
	Originally, FBI was supposed to be domestic, CIA and NSA were supposed to be international ears and eyes for the government.
	It is so clear that since 9-11 that those three have been intertwined and working together, and that is why Angela Merke has had her cell phone, her private cell phone, listened to by the NSA for what was it they said in that release that was the Snowden material going through The Guardian to the world for at least 30 days in and around the last international conference.
	So we are at a point where I am myself saying to colleagues that I have known for 30 years, like Jim Mars, who has been warning about this happening, that the United States would become a full-blown fascist totalitarian regime.
	If we no longer, that's UK, Australia, the United States, Canada, all of the allies of World War II, if we are no longer able to have a system in which the masses,
	the 99%, have any real influence on anything that is actually happening in the business, corporate, money world, and the governments that are paid, and I'm saying this, governments are now paid to come into the details of leadership by those corporations.
	It's happening everywhere.
	But there will be people, Linda, let's try and just show the other side of it to an extent.
	I know there'll be people listening to this who will say, well, that's always been the way of things.
	You look back 60 years, the big corporations call the shots, and especially in America where people's campaigns are sponsored, there are big contributions to the campaigns.
	That is the way of a free market society.
	So is it really as conspiratorial as all that?
	Well, I understand the definition of conspiracy.
	The intent to do one thing while the masses are being misdirected in another so that a goal that is usually defined as insidious can be accomplished.
	That is usually the definition of a conspiracy.
	So I think, and you're asking a very good question, but I think the difference is this.
	I have seen from the 20th century into the 21st century a United States that I grew up when I was a student.
	And when I was at Stanford University, I was, along with other students, we were rebelling against the Vietnam War.
	That's when the couple of students were killed and shot by National Guard at Kent State.
	And none of us could believe that.
	And it was like one of those reality checks to Congress and the government that our government, National Guard in a state, actually killed two students that were protesting the Vietnam War.
	And everything seemed to take a 90-degree turn after those students were killed.
	As if, and this is maybe what you and I are talking about, as if there was still conscience in political leaders in the United States, conscience meaning guilt, that it had gone so far that the youth,
	my generation, were protesting in masses in the United States that had nothing to do with elections, meaning we weren't going against the government by waiting for a ballot box.
	We were gathering in hundreds of thousands against that war.
	And I think it is a fair statement, I do not think this is an overstatement, that my generation, those of us that were born in the 40s and were in school, in universities in the 60s, that we stopped the Vietnam War.
	It took a horrible toll, but I think we stopped as a generation with protests.
	Okay, so maybe the problem is not with power.
	We can change this arc of thought, because what is so important today, it is not possible any longer in the United States for 20-year-olds or 60-year-olds or anybody to mass against a war or an economic gathering without tons of police and batons and microwave crowd control.
	And they're now making it impossible in Washington for people to actually mass in front of the White House or in front of the monument.
	In other words, from the time that my generation was able, even though people were killed, to stand up against this government and say this war, this criminal war must be stopped, today the government,
	the Defense Department, and the drones that have microwave crowd control in them is in such a position of power that they have made it nearly impossible now for any of the mass demonstrations that existed in the 60s.
	And I think it's the same in your country.
	Well, yes, there is one factor, though, Linda, and I'm sorry for interrupting, but the factor seems to me to be that I doubt whether people want to protest like that anymore.
	I don't know whether there's the appetite for it anymore.
	People seem to have the business of trying to make ends meet, which is hard enough here and there.
	Also, they've got an awful lot of distractions, digital distractions, more television to choose from, more music than ever to choose from.
	It's almost bewildering.
	People just don't have time to think.
	But you know, what you're saying is which came first, the lack of desire to get out or the fact that the government's crackdown on what once upon a time was a democratic right to mass and protest,
	that the crackdown by governments against protesters has increased, I think, exponentially every decade since the 60s when my generation stopped the Vietnam War.
	And yet there would be people in the U.S. and the U.K. who say that the Occupy movement, which happened on Wall Street, happened in the city of London as well.
	Those people succeeded in getting their case out there.
	Eventually, those protests fizzled out one way or another.
	But there would be people, politicians, who would say, well, hey, well, we have a free, free society because they were able to get out and protest about the way things are.
	They had their protest and now they've gone away.
	Well, protest, they were given what?
	Tiny little boundaries.
	If they stepped out of those little boundaries, whether it was in New York or Washington or Sam, they were creamed.
	They were put in jail.
	You did not have the massive demonstrations that we had in the 60s.
	I'm telling you, it was different.
	And so right now, Jim Mars and I, we've laughed about this.
	Jim has said, well, Texas wants to secede.
	And by God, we are sick and tired of the government marauding over people in the United States.
	And Texans want to take back the government.
	And I said to him, you know, Jim, there is this illusion that the American public, the citizenry, the 99%, still have the power to protest and change.
	The truth is, the Defense Department in the United States, the MOD in England, they hold all of the marbles.
	Who in the world can protest any longer against drones that have microwave, they're called crowd control microwave weapons or something like that.
	And that a year ago, where in the United States in 2011 to 12, it was not legal, this unbelievable Congress that we now have in the United States that doesn't represent anybody except themselves, they voted to allow microwave weapons to be used as mass crowd control in the United States.
	And what about the issue of terrorism, though, Linda?
	Because people here and there would say we have to use enhanced surveillance and we have to use slightly tougher and more focused methods in order to be able to maintain public safety.
	You know, we've had a few terror plots here thwarted over the last year or so that could have been very, very nasty, and you've had yours too.
	Is that the price we pay for freedom?
	I understand the question, and you probably are going right to the most difficult issue.
	How do we have governments that are true democracies in which it doesn't now deteriorate to 99% versus the 1% controlling the 99% with all of the military backing the 1% side?
	How do we do it so that we have a true democracy and still have the ability to survey and filter out possible terrorist attacks?
	I don't have all the answers, but what I do know has happened is that the defense by governments that they have to maraud in order to catch the few terrorists has completely diluted any pretense any longer of our having a democracy.
	Because where we started this conversation is that the agitation of the planet is that the 99% know they are trapped in systems now that are totally unfair, that everything is favored to the 1% that continues to get richer and grow more and control.
	I think that intuitively, do you not feel that the, we'll call it the 99% in England, and I know it's here, the 99% in the U.S., there is this sense that the lies and the corruption and the manipulation by governments that use television and the media and the web to keep the lies and the manipulations in place,
	the 99% know at some level how controlled their lives are now by an elite that doesn't play fair.
	I think in many ways, on many levels, that's hard to disagree with.
	If you look at what it costs to buy food, I never used to look at what food cost in the supermarket.
	It just didn't impact on my life.
	Now I think very carefully about every purchase.
	I do.
	And I watch the prices go up all the time.
	And I think this market is not fair.
	If this was a fair market, prices would not escalate like this.
	That's right.
	And the bizarre thing is that people do not seem to be as annoyed about it.
	Yes, they're worried about it because they've got to feed their families, but they don't seem to be as outraged as I would expect people to be.
	And I think people would have been 20, 30 years ago.
	But maybe I'm just deluded.
	Maybe I don't know anything.
	No, I do think there's this huge change.
	That's the point of what we're talking about.
	There has been a huge change.
	And probably what has allowed it more than anything else has been the rapid evolution into the digital age.
	And where people now are spending so many hours on these tiny screens, where once upon a time people were more intimately engaged in the world around them.
	People did go and hike in hills.
	You don't see that a lot anymore, even in a place that is as physical as where I live in Albuquerque.
	And when you just look at the human animal, we were designed to be out and move our bodies and use calories.
	What is one of the biggest problems in the United States?
	Obesity.
	And here too.
	Obesity right down the line.
	Yeah.
	It's depressing.
	Look, there are a few things I want to talk with you about, and our time is always limited when we do these webcasts.
	So I want to talk with you about the Fukushima nuclear plant.
	And I thought it was, well, it was very interesting that this week we had that decision made about a new nuclear plant here in the UK.
	You know, I'm not a big fan of nuclear energy at all.
	I think it's a mistake and I think it will be proved to be.
	But, you know, again, I may, by experts, be proved to be wrong.
	It may be a great form of technology, but I worry about it.
	But I remember reporting the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.
	And you could see from the very beginning that this was a deeply serious situation.
	Now, of course, the Japanese are very polite people, and they live in a very paternalistic society.
	So I watched, as I watched for another reason last night, NHK television from Japan and the way that they reported this thing, and it was all about not overplaying it, actually downplaying it, making sure that nobody panicked.
	And I think to an extent, and certainly when I heard you recently speak on Radio in America about this, I think even more.
	That was a bigger disaster than we've been told.
	And that is a deep concern.
	And only yesterday, which brings this even further into focus, there was an earthquake off Japan.
	They measure earthquakes, I think, differently from the way that we do, but it was a 7.1 or a 7.3, depending on how you measure it.
	And the announcement that was put out by TEPCO, the power provider out there, today, was that no damage was done to the Fukushima site.
	So everything's okay, isn't it?
	I'm not sure whether it is.
	Howard, do you believe that?
	When I saw on CNN the first, that's where I first saw it, the crawl at the bottom of the screen, TEPCO says no damage.
	My immediate reaction as an investigative reporter and a human on the planet is, I don't believe it.
	And that is what has happened since the 311 catastrophe, which was a gigantic earthquake 9.1 and that gigantic tsunami.
	The government of Japan, which basically was allied with TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, on every press release on everything they were doing was a lie.
	And in fact, who was it?
	I was talking with one of the people at the Union of Concerned Scientists back in 2011, and I was doing interviews with Arnie Gunderson, who is a nuclear engineer by background and had been very involved with Three Mile Island here.
	And we were all trying to get a reality check on what has happened at those nuclear power plants at Fukushima.
	And one of them told me, this is, in other words, this was a first-hand conversation of a nuclear expert on the East Coast talking to me, an investigative reporter trying to get a reality check.
	And they had first-hand knowledge that Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, had made a phone call to somebody in the Japanese government, I'm assuming to the prime minister's office, immediately within 24 hours saying that the United States was standing by to fly boron that could be dropped onto Fukushima to stop any possibility of a nuclear chain reaction or anything there,
	right?
	Because we knew what had happened at Chernobyl.
	And if the Chernobyl, if they had gotten in boron and dropped it down on what was essentially a chain reaction happening in Chernobyl right from the get-go, maybe it would not have been as bad.
	And the person talking to me said that the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, trying to say the United States is immediately standing by to help put out any possible chain reaction at TEPCO, was politely refused.
	And if you recall, one of the frustrations that we began to hear in the first week and two weeks from after that horror show of what was happening and knowing that there had been all of this damage and we were seeing the video of the steam exploding from the Unit 3 and so forth that was making around the world was that the military,
	we had even brought in some sort of a military airplane or something to fly over.
	And it was reporting that there was tremendous damage.
	And still, the Japanese government and TEPCO started making it difficult.
	They were not allowing anybody who wanted to get on the ground there to come in.
	And after a while, it was very clear that the Japanese government was taking a, don't bother us, we have this under control.
	And they didn't, and they have never had it.
	And finally, when those headlines that came out back in, let's see, it was on August 21st of this year, the Tokyo Electric Power Company dismayed the world.
	I'm reading from my own report, with its announcement that one of its thousand Fukushima containers that it built trying to cope with all this radioactive water coming from all of the waste water at these damaged units has been leaking at least 80,000
	gallons of highly radioactive water for at least a month, and no one knew, not TEPCO and not the overseeing regulator, Japan's nuclear regulation authority known as the NRA, and that those 80,000 gallons, that's 300 tons of water in a month, had strontium-90.
	And strontium-90 seeks out bones.
	It stays in the body.
	It has a half-life of 30 years.
	It will be radioactive for 300 years, Howard.
	And this was completely outside Of human knowledge for a month?
	Now, the only way that something like that happens from my point of view, as somebody who has been trying to stay on this since March 11, 2011, and realizing that everybody I talked to off the record before they did an interview said the Japanese government is not dealing with this straightforwardly.
	TEPCO is lying through its teeth.
	And Japan is a nation where they still wear white gloves.
	And the whole attitude is, if we don't talk about radiation, it'll go away and everything will be fine.
	And now we're facing the reality check of this earthquake is that whether or not there was little damage, more cracks, whatever it is that happened, that TEPCO has reinforced, it's not going to tell the world the truth again.
	And we are facing the reality that there was a 9.1 seismic event on March 11, 2011.
	There was a 7.1 or 7.3 yesterday on October 25th, 2013.
	The seismologists say this is an aftershock of the 9.1.
	And if you went back into my EarthFiles news site, I remember very specifically doing an interview with a seismologist looking at what we'll call the network of major fault lines in the ocean basin that is surrounding Japan.
	And that he, it was a very sobering interview.
	And he said, right now, they were looking at the possibility that Tokyo itself, the biggest city in Japan, has three fault lines that come right to Tokyo.
	One of them is related to the huge one that released all that energy on March 11, 2011.
	And he said the possibility that Tokyo could be slammed badly by a nine-point or a seven or eight point was there, but that the worst possibility is that there could be a seismic event that would literally crack open the coastline on which Fukushima sets.
	And then, Howard, you've got four, they're still not controlled.
	Those are four highly radioactive cores in those four units at the TEPCO plant in Fukushima.
	If there is a seismic event that just tears through, we're talking about something that maybe is off the charts in terms of comprehensibility of what could be the result of those four still-hot nuclear cores.
	And we've been told from the very beginning that this thing was under control and that people were on the scene.
	We saw some very brave people at the beginning, right from the start and all the way through.
	But I noticed that one of the first things that happened yesterday when this 7.1 or 7.3 hit, not very far from that plant, first thing they did was to withdraw the staff, to take them away from there.
	I thought that was an amazing thing to do because then you literally do have something that has the potential to go completely out of control.
	And actions speak louder than words always, Howard.
	The very fact that there was that order means that no matter how polite the Japanese government and TEPCO is trying to be to the rest of the world, and by that I'm being sarcastic, meaning never telling the truth about what is really happening,
	the very fact that they pulled out all of the workers means there had to have been some, there had to have been something that was communicated that when that earthquake occurred, something rattled, fell, broke, or released at TEPCO.
	Or there was the potential for something very, very serious.
	They weren't just being cautious because that's a situation where you can't be over cautious.
	You have to make sure that the staff are there to monitor this thing.
	It has to be very, very serious.
	It occurred to me as a journalist to pull the people out because they're your backstop.
	Once they're gone, you have no control over it.
	And I'll tell you another thing that really concerns me, and I keep trying to get reality checks.
	I've tried to talk with people like Greenpeace.
	Those are really brave people who have been out in boats as close as they would be allowed to go.
	And what they have reported have been finding higher than any allowable radioactivity in some of the fish that Greenpeace has pulled in and had some scientific analysis.
	And we get these periodic reports in the United States from the Pacific coast of somebody finding something that is setting off a Geiger counter on the Pacific coast.
	What is the truth about how much radiation, including strontium-90, has been going into the Pacific Ocean, and it has, and how much is diluted, which is the best case, and how much is getting into marine life that people are eating, and that there's this food chain in the oceans.
	If you've got seafood that is highly contaminated in Fukushima and it is going into the stomachs of larger animals and it finally gets out into the Pacific Ocean and gets to the Pacific coast, how much radiation is really going into human mouths and polar bear mouths and others that no one has any reality on because there's nobody standing and handing out lots of money
	to laboratories and scientists to actually do what's called baseline and doing a lot of collecting of marine life.
	It isn't happening.
	And so we're in one of those bizarre, what do you call it?
	We're living with an unknown with a capital U where Japan still sits with the possibility of having it ripped open and really having a release of strong radiation versus whatever the heck allowed 80,000 gallons of strontium-90 and cesium-137 to go out for an entire month without anybody knowing into the Pacific Ocean.
	And there isn't any planetary oversight now of what exactly the impact is in the Pacific Ocean.
	Because the one thing you would have expected was a concerted international effort, number one, to repair the damage, to use every available scientific resource to monitor that situation, and to do that in the long term.
	But the Japanese government appeared to have quite literally wanted to just keep the lid on this.
	That's right.
	And then you come back full circle.
	We're talking about all kinds of headlines here in the areas of nuclear power in which we have taken offline a couple of nuclear reactors because they are exactly the same design as Fukushima and they weren't considered to be safe.
	And there are headlines about America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs reform, and they aren't telling the truth either.
	And the United States is no longer powering ahead with building new nuclear power plants, which was a big discussion about five or six or seven years ago because of what has happened in Fukushima.
	And yet, Howard, the UK, you're saying that they have announced that you're going to go to build a nuclear power plant on your island.
	With a little help from our friends, the French and the Chinese, it is utterly bizarre.
	Now, I know we don't live on a nuclear, on a seismological font line.
	We're not in an area like that.
	But my own personal view, and I'm not a scientist, but I am a journalist, and so are you.
	My own personal view is that there are no eventualities that you can allow for.
	If you see what I'm saying, there is no plan that they could create that would satisfy me that this thing is 100% safe.
	And then you build into it the fact that I believe there are a couple, I think it's a couple of reactors of a similar kind being built by the same people in different parts of Europe.
	And they've been massively delayed in the building because of problems with the building, I understand.
	I may be wrong about that, but I think that's the case.
	I'm very, very uneasy about this.
	And I'm very, very concerned that our politicians have walked us into this situation and they've told us, well, problem is, you see, previous governments didn't really plan for the future of energy here.
	The UK used to get a lot of free energy from the North Sea, North Sea gas.
	There was loads of it underneath the sea.
	So we lived really nicely.
	And all of the receipts of that were spent.
	So we haven't got that money left anymore.
	And none of it really was invested in the future of energy.
	So we're buying gasoline from the old Eastern bloc.
	And we have to make a plan.
	Well, I'm not a tree hugger in any manner or means.
	That's not me.
	I just watch the world.
	I don't think I would be building nuclear power plants.
	I think I would be trying to find another way.
	I would be incentivizing people to stick.
	Only yesterday I had a haircut.
	My hairdresser, very down-to-earth lady in London, she's had £15,000 worth of solar panels put on the roof of her house that not only power her house, but also houses nearby.
	And she sells power back to the national grid and makes a little bit of money out of it.
	And it will be paid for in 10 years.
	Why the hell aren't we doing more of that?
	Yes, why is not everyone being encouraged?
	And you know the answer on the other side of my question, which is where we began with this whole discussion.
	It's because the fossil fuel corporations do not want any threat to their profit until they have sucked out the very last molecule of petroleum.
	And in the process, they will have made their companies now be in control of wind, of solar, of hydrogen, of any other alternative.
	It is, again, it's the 1% power greed has this unfair hold on every aspect of the earth.
	And there is one other piece here that we didn't discuss that I think we should bring up, and that is Japan's fish and farm food.
	How safe is anything in Japan, let alone what's going out into the Pacific Ocean?
	And this question, it isn't just rhetorical to Japan.
	It is if England goes to nuclear power, while the United States seems to be backing off from that, but let's say it changes here, and that there is an earthquake and there is a release of radiation, what exactly does happen to marine life and farm food?
	And Japan is like a big experiment now showing us.
	Well, this is one thing Greenpeace has done.
	This is just in the last few months.
	Greenpeace has reported that in Japan, this is guys who went into stores and went into markets and they did some radiation measuring.
	Radioactive rice, radioactive beef, fruits, vegetables, milk, and baby formula have been found.
	And as recently as January 2013, fish caught off the coast of Fukushima measured 254,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium.
	That level is 2,540 times the legal limit for human consumption.
	Howard, this is measurement this year.
	And could I give you what is happening in October of 2013?
	Here's the problem.
	Greenpeace, which is one of the very few human organizations that actually tries to go out into the field and get reality checks, they get harassed, They get chased away.
	They have desperate, we need money to try to get out there because no government, no political organization, no one is going out into the waters or into the supermarkets or into the markets and saying on television, here, here is a Geiger counter, here is what this salmon is giving off in this market 100 miles north of Fukushima.
	It's only been Greenpeace.
	And Greenpeace is up against constant harassment and being taken away in handcuffs in jail.
	And here is something that I think that if people would do a little research on their own, they would realize we're not dealing with anything that is easy and how dangerous it potentially can be when you have radiation in these levels going out into the environment.
	Fukushima, Daiichi, in 2011, after that tsunami and that seismic event, released about 10 million curies of radiation.
	And most of it was spread as what is called medium and long-life isotopes.
	And they went in the winds over the Pacific Ocean.
	That means that there really isn't a single human on this planet.
	I don't care whether they are the president of something or the head of a scientific lab.
	Unless you had grids of scientists out trying to monitor what happened with those prevailing winds of 10 million Curies of radiation.
	The truth is, Howard, there is no one on Earth right now who knows what the consequences of Fukushima might be in terms of what is happening with radiation.
	So they're not even monitoring it as well as they monitored what came out of Chernobyl, because, of course, here in the UK, we were very concerned it was all heading our way.
	So we did a lot of measurements as to what was arriving through the air here.
	And some of that stuff did arrive here.
	I think it was detected in North Wales, but we were all told it's within safe limits, but it definitely comes from there.
	You're saying that the consequences, the nuclear consequences, the radiation consequences of what happened at Fukushima are not even being as well monitored as they were at Chernobyl.
	That's right.
	Because when took this out over the Pacific Ocean, water from TEPCO was going out into the Pacific Ocean.
	So you had air and water going with high radiation into the Pacific Ocean that not a single human on this planet had any reality check over and still don't.
	So to say that we have a clue for the Japanese government in TEPCO to try to assure the world that they now have everything under control and that they're going to be hosting the Olympics, they're going to be having how many people flying in to Tokyo and into that area?
	I just think this is incomprehensibly irresponsible at this point.
	But we're looking at a different kind of society.
	When I watched that TV newscast last night from the English service of NHK, the state broadcaster in Japan, and they are very, very subdued, very, very polite.
	The newscaster looked like the Maitre D of some restaurant, you know, some hotel restaurant somewhere.
	And they were basically giving people the message from the very beginning.
	When they didn't know how bad this was, the message was nothing to worry about.
	That's right.
	And the first thing I screamed at my monitor.
	I was watching this on the internet.
	How do you know that?
	And we're trapped in a planet now in which the political and money forces of Earth prefer lies and manipulation of the public and the media to constantly cover up corruption and disaster and danger.
	That it's beyond 1984, Howard.
	We are on an entire planet now of news speak, any way you cut it.
	And trying to get to facts and report real facts in this planet is becoming as rare as the diamond.
	And I want to also bring up to you and your audience, I don't cry very often, but this past week, I was sent from Australia.
	It was a link from an Australian viewer of my news website, EarthFiles.
	And they came in a humble email that said, Linda, have you seen this?
	And I opened it up.
	It's the Newcastle Herald in Australia.
	The title is The Ocean is Broken.
	The date is October 18th.
	And the story focuses on the real-life immediate testimony of Ivan McFaden, or Fadden is his name.
	And what he is, he has worked for many years as a Newcastle yachtsman who has gone from Melbourne to Osaka, Japan on a regular route where they would carry trade or cargo and they would fish the whole way.
	He and his crew always depended that they didn't need to take a lot on their boat because they would fish and eat from Brisbane to Japan.
	This article, here is a quote from McFadden, who's been doing this for years.
	This is the very first time this year, 2013, quote, there was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we could catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat.
	There was nothing.
	They found during their 28 days, they had two fish.
	He said, no birds, hardly a sign of life at all.
	We've never encountered this.
	In years gone by, I've gotten used to all the birds and their noises.
	They'd be following The boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again.
	You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance.
	And of course, life is a circle.
	If you have no fish, you have no birds.
	Exactly.
	And he said, We were in silence.
	And you read this article.
	This is a fisherman now.
	This is this year.
	All the way from Australia to Japan.
	No fish, no birds.
	And then he goes on and says that they found...
	And they were, they told us, let's see, they were only interested in tuna.
	Somebody came up in a boat to them, and they were talking about how they had nothing to fish.
	And they were looking down in the water, and everything was trash.
	They said that they were looking into water that was just filled with trash.
	They'd never seen this before.
	And they were saying that maybe this was garbage that was coming from 311 in Japan.
	And that thousands and thousands of yellow plastic buoys, huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets, pieces of polyesterine foam by the million.
	Slicks of oil and petrol were everywhere.
	Countless, hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by, I guess, the killer wave, and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.
	And he says, in years gone by, when you were becalmed by a lack of wind, you just start your engine and motor on.
	He said, we couldn't do it this time.
	In many parts of the ocean, between Australia and Japan, we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable.
	This is unheard of out in the middle of the ocean.
	I mean, Howard, we're talking about somebody who had spent their life going between Australia and Japan, and now the sea is full of trash, no birds, and two fish in 28 days.
	And do we think that that is something that's going to play itself out in time?
	Because, you know, the Earth is supposedly a self-renewing, self-regulating thing.
	Do we think that all of that trash is just going to degrade and the ocean perhaps will live again?
	Plastic doesn't degrade.
	True.
	Those things will just float on, won't they?
	And when you think of his title, this is about the fisherman.
	The ocean is broken.
	My God, that's two-thirds of our planet.
	And I understand, I understand that this is one route between Brisbane and Japan.
	But isn't this becoming the metaphor for everything we're talking about and living on a planet in which now the 1% that has been marauding and doesn't care what it's destroying, that every day that there are more headlines and more stories like this that break your heart, that we are on a planet that we humans are self-destroying.
	So this is a bit left field, but what's the answer to all of this then?
	Eventually, we're going to have to try and find another planet, aren't we?
	And that's what we're in the process of doing.
	I don't know if cosmic forces would let us off of this planet at this point.
	We are so irresponsible.
	And I guess now, if there is any light at the end of the current tunnel, it is that you and I and so many people that I know every day, every week now, are conversations around these subjects and that there is a sense that the 20s, the 20-year-olds, literally now are giving a flip about this planet again.
	And if that generation that is on the two-inch screen, that is being raised in the digital age, if there are flaring lights that are coming out of the 20-year-olds who are saying, we really do care.
	We don't want the orca, those beautiful orcas, the dolphins that have been abused and abused by SeaWorld.
	We don't want the orcas to be kept imprisoned in these little cages on seaports for the entertainment of humans.
	These huge, glorious dolphins with their huge brains that clearly are the top of the brain power in the oceans and what humans have been doing to them, all the way from that to nuclear power and development is insane.
	We have to do something else.
	If the 20-year-olds are really caring and they have the energy and they will become a political force, maybe that political force will counter the marauding 1%.
	I think that's a hope.
	I worry without those 20-year-olds, you know, you and I are both older than 20.
	Not very much older than 20.
	But we both are.
	In spirit, I'm not at all.
	Exactly.
	I'm still 18, and I know you are, too.
	But when we're not around to ask questions, I damn well hope they are.
	I know.
	I know.
	And that I can't, in my heart and my soul, I can't believe that we're in a cosmos that would continue to support the marauding 1%.
	Well, we are, as the Chinese often say, living in interesting times.
	What is that Chinese greeting wish, whatever it is?
	May you live in interesting times.
	Well, we are.
	And may you nor I give up trying to find the real facts, the real truth, and keep reporting them.
	And that may be between Snowden and the people that are now trying to get out all of his information, which the Guardian, the Guardian in England is a beacon to me, that may be in there, that we, in our efforts to bring the pressure of fact in a world that is seemingly drowning in abuse of no truth and lies,
	that maybe out of all of this, that no matter what our age is, that we still, there's a bunch of us who feel that the pressure and power of fact and truth is the one thing that we can keep trying to share on a planet that needs facts, needs the pressure of truth, whether it is from what is actually happening in Fukushima to, we're not alone in this universe, Howard.
	We never have been.
	There are other intelligences.
	The governments have to stop lying.
	We have to get to a point where there is a, if there's a tipping point in climate, may there be a tipping point away from the marauding of power and greed and keeping huge truths away from the 99% to a planet that goes into a truly new age where everything that we need to know in terms of truth, we are all sharing that truth.
	We've got a digital age that could make it possible now instead of so much manipulation of counterintelligence agents of the web, that the humans, that the people, become the masters of what is being shared on the web in terms of we're not alone in this universe.
	And I personally hope in your life and my life that some of the non-humans who do care about us, and I think there is something out there that does, would show up and it would all be suddenly a revolution, a straightforward revolution,
	and this planet could finally join what must be, as Michio Kaku says, lots of civilizations out there that are highly advanced, that are not warring with bullets and nuclear weapons, and that we could get out of, what does he call us, that we're in the zero level of awareness, and that we're dealing with civilizations one, two, and three.
	Oh my God, to feel, to feel with confidence that humanity could finally get past its warring tribalism and actually start learning from those that had survived themselves and that they cherished life and that they looked at this as a planet in which the petri-dish nature of Earth is what is worth preserving and fighting for and
	that there are intelligences out there that know that and that they may stop humans in a way that yet we have not even encountered.
	But not because they want to destroy us, but because they know that we are like ignorant little children and we have to get past this phase or we really truly are going to destroy ourselves.
	In other words, Linda, we need to raise our game.
	Listen, we're more or less out of time.
	I wanted to talk with you about crop circles because you've done a lot of work on that and we've talked about that before.
	I wanted to talk with you about Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch.
	No time for that right now, but I think what we've just talked about is fundamental and very, very important.
	And I hope in our own way, we've encouraged people who may not have thought about all of this before to think about it now.
	Because one of these days, it may be too late.
	I agree that it is time for all of us to be talking about the issues we just did.
	And let's do another program and we can talk about the earth mysteries of obstacles and Sasquatch.
	Real phenomena, but what exactly is behind them?
	That's what I would like to know.
	Just a quick question.
	Very recently, I interviewed David Paulidis, who, you know, investigates disappearances, mostly in America and Canada, of people in the great wild spaces.
	Do you think that something like Bigfoot could be responsible for those?
	I think less Sasquatch, which I do not think is an aggressor against humans really in the big scheme, but more likely that as far as I know, I think I can say this with some certainty, there are at least three different extraterrestrial biological entities, civilizations that interact on a regular basis with this planet.
	Interaction does not mean that we see what they're doing.
	Interaction does not mean that we are looking at extraterrestrials among us or their prime intelligence all the time.
	It's interaction because most of the time I think we're dealing with drones, highly intelligent, interactive, self-activating drones that are extraterrestrial and can use invisibility that we're dealing on a planet that this has been going on for centuries.
	So if people are disappearing, maybe this is how it's happening.
	Linda, listen, we're right out of time.
	Once again, we've broken my record for duration of podcast, and I don't mind that at all.
	It's wonderful to speak with you.
	We've now been speaking on radio and on this forum for about 10 years now, Linda, and I'm delighted.
	I first heard you on Art Bell's program, Coast to Coast AM.
	Art now, of course, does his own show, Dark Matter.
	You've been on that too.
	I first heard you back in, was it 1997, 98 or so, and I'm glad that over these years we've developed a relationship and talk, and we need to keep talking, Linda, because I think it's important.
	Linda Molten Howe very much.
	Thank you.
	Linda Moulton Howe, it's EarthFiles.com.
	If you want to know more about her, go to my website, triple w.theunexplained.tv, and you'll find a link to Linda's website.
	I think we've just spoken about some very important issues.
	Thank you to Adam Cornwell, the man who devised and maintains our website, www.theunexplained.tv.
	My name is Howard Hughes.
	More great shows in the pipeline.

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