I know this is a deluge, but hopefully the content warrants intruding on your inbox.

If you haven't yet listened to the broadcast interview on Dr. Helen Caldicott's web site, I truly urge you to do:

http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=4603&cpage=1#comment-547

The previous post provides a context for today's post as well as several to follow. If you missed it, it is here:

http://zerorads.com/posts_subscribers/two_voices.html

Among other reasons for listening to the internet radio broadcast is that Dr. Caldicott widens the view of what the aftermath of nuclear exposure encompasses. Instead of a few days of nausea or development of cancer, she is looking at permanent mutations of DNA in all Kingdoms of Nature and persisting for countless generations. In a sense, this is the sort of prophecy made by a scientist with visionary proclivities but while it is a possibility, it is not the only possibility. We have grown accustomed to thinking of radiation as a decay process in which the matter from the supernovas used to build our Planet is gradually losing its mass because of some sort of death process that is widely believed to be the correct explanation of radioactive emissions.

Let's just play a bit and see what happens if we get into someone else's sandbox for a few minutes and look at the toys there. What if we were to say that fires caused by lightning are due to the death of lightning when it strikes a tree? We have to consider that if lightning makes no contact at all, i.e., fails to partner with yin, it remains invisible. We only see lightning if it makes a strike. Lightning is electrostatic energy that ionizes as it passes through the air. It heats the air and releases immense amounts of either positive or negative charges, not 100% unlike alpha and beta radiation. Moreover, lightning tends not to create problems unless it strikes something. Likewise, theoretically at least, radiation can pass through space without severe consequences unless it impacts something. I'm sure a point would come where lightning and radiation cease to share attributes but they are both yang and incapable of manifestation without yin. The "problem" is when yang is so clumsy that its style is objectionable to yin.

Anti-Nuclear Dissidence

In the 80s in Santa Fe, I used to attend lots of anti-nuclear meetings. Often, I was the least panicked person in the room. In my estimation, at that time, I felt we might all have to become more multidimensional in order to mitigate the disaster likely on the physical level. Most people were angry with me for not being more vehement. I was vehement enough, but I like to choose my battles and only exert myself on the ones worth fighting. What I most object to about nuclear energy are the military applications and recycling of waste from the nuclear power industry into weapons, weapons that are indiscriminate in that there are perhaps legitimate targets as well as massive collateral damage to innocent civilians, animals, plants, and property. No one has the right to unleash such horror, not the U.S. Government nor any other entity anywhere. In short, like all rational people, I do not see nuclear war as an option so if it is not an option, why use nuclear energy to boil water when safer, cleaner, and less expensive alternatives can be developed.

Secondly, I was anti-nuclear because, like Dr. Caldicott, I was conversant with the history of radiation and skeptical of the alleged medical benefits. However, what I discovered as an astrologer is that icons of 20th century medicine are untouchable so the essays I wrote on Louis Pasteur as well as the one on Marie Curie were rejected by editors, presumably because they were too iconoclastic. So, we have to ask when iconoclasm is the antidote to brainwashing and when it is nothing more than dissidence. Unless we know for certain that we have not been fed a package of lies, we cannot be sure that what we learned is true. Therefore, in the interest of truth, it is fair to suggest that proposing an alternative view is neither disrespectful nor heretical, it is merely something everyone who loves the truth would favor over suppression of thought.

Ethics

Dr. Caldicott touched on a subject precious to me and that is the guilt one feels when colluding with something reprehensible and then wanting somehow to clear one's conscience by finding some justification or other for letting the genie out of the bottle. As I predicted, we are seeing this on a wide scale already in Japan which is why I was always optimistic about how the longer-term management of information and response to Fukushima would unfold. In the beginning, of course, there was a leadership crisis, one that is now blamed almost entirely on U.S. pressures. When, however, it comes to scientists engaged in development of prohibited weapons, whether nuclear or biological, I have less hope for the souls of those who rationalize about some hypothetical benefit that might be found since putting the genie back in the bottle is unlikely to happen. It might happen if we destroy modern civilization and only a few remote tribes survive our folly. Then, there would be a period of revival characterized by sincere relationships to Nature rather than the dishonest science and misuse of power we have today.

Radiation

The purpose of this post is to lay some groundwork for a revolutionary view of radiation. In my first (unposted) attempt, I might have been a little too irreverent, but all I really want to say is that we have several levels and layers of potential insult, injury, recovery, and retrospective insight.

Most medical studies of radiation are based on gamma radiation of a measured dose and duration, not ongoing radiation and not based on the hot particles discussed by Arne Gundersen. What we are hearing and reading about the particles — uranium, americium, plutonium, strontium, cesium and perhaps other radionuclides — is that they are being excreted which means that whether inhaled or ingested, they may not "attach" in all circumstances. This however is lot like what I have been saying about Prozac and other pharmaceuticals: they find their way into the sewer systems and back into soil and water and thus the food chain so what is desperately needed is serious remediation involving plants and perhaps minerals that are more interactive with radioactivity than is healthy for humans. Anyone looking at the pictures of the evacuated areas around Chernobyl sees that Nature is recovering. It is, in fact, eerily peaceful without the presence of people.

If a sunflower plant or chunk of zeolite or selenite or tourmaline is willing to decontaminate the mess created by humans, we owe them an absolutely tremendous debt of gratitude. We, however, have two choices. The Chernobyl option seems to have been to observe recovery with a minimum of human intervention. I.e., scientists can take notes but not meddle because the assumption is that the area will remain uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years. Somehow, I do not foresee the Japanese taking such a laid back attitude. I believe the Japanese will commit the human resources necessary to remediate. Elsewhere in the world, important as the work is, I do not see the sort of funding required to make a serious difference, but Japan has very little space and even less arable land so the Japanese people are truly between a rock and a hard place. I therefore do not see any possibility that officials who stand in the way of recovery will survive public pressure.

Thus, in a miserable and yet ironic way, I believe this crisis is galvanizing the will of the people, not only to remediate but to discover the Path that reorients large segments of the population to adapt to a sustainable trajectory. I do not think the Japanese spirit can be indefinitely suppressed but if we see some xenophobia, that would not surprise me at all. I think this is caused by the need felt by all who suffer to retreat to core values since it is only these values that are in alignment with the soul and therefore only these values possess the immortal qualities that genuinely support our existence.

The truth is everyone on the Planet is faced with similar challenges, but the Japan are in a position in which they are highly motivated to find the way and then perhaps eventually lead the way.

The Shift

Meanwhile, catastrophic as the Fukushima releases continue to be, I believe we have a number of options that are sufficiently radioprotective that serious mutation and degeneration can be avoided — or, if necessary corrected after the fact — but countless people need to commit to the research and the work of implementing solutions. Let me give a few illustrations of the issues that frustrate me.

Since March 11th, I have been watching more and more videos about Chernobyl, including some showing stubborn old people who moved back into their homes despite those homes being in the areas that were deemed uninhabitable. Instead of zooming in on a bowl of soup that looks thin and not particularly tantalizing, we should be studying every ingredient in the pot to see which of the ingredients is most probably a free radical scavenger or electron donor.

To give you an idea of how this works, borscht (which I have mentioned before) is a traditional Eastern European dish usually made with beets. Alternative recipes use tomatoes or sorrel. This is fascinating to me because much as I hate beets, I acknowledge its importance as a medicinal food. However, subscribers to my list embrace a wide spectrum of people, some of whom are really tuned in on fascinating levels and I ran out of sorrel seeds twice already this year. Let me try to avoid digressing: when I look at the soup these old people in Belarus and Ukraine are consuming, I do not see the expected red colors. Ironically, what I found when researching a bit more is that the original, authentic borscht used to made with Siberian hogweed.

This is beyond fascinating because there is a war on hogweed all over Eastern Europe and Canada but most especially in Latvia. Hogweed is being demonized as highly poisonous and capable of causing blindness and even killing people. Yet, some people eat the young shoots and stems. The stems are high in protein and can be eaten either raw or cooked. They taste a bit like celery, but might require an adventurous spirit to become accustomed to the taste. Some people make ash out of the base of the plant to use as a salt substitute. What I might suggest is that when you watch thought-provoking videos on youtube that you try to identify the plants and figure out why something as dreaded as hogweed is spreading all over the most contaminated areas of Eastern Europe. Maybe this is a wild goose chase and maybe not, but if we do not observe carefully, we risk forfeiting the keys to survival.

You know that I am on a rampage about "weeds" because what some governmental agency calls "noxious" might be Nature's chosen plant for a particular task. My craigslist helper defined weed as anything growing where you prefer to have something else. Hogweed is in the same plant family as carrots and parsley and what to we know about these plants? Carrots are one of the cornerstones of juice therapy used in alternative cancer protocols and they come in a wide variety of colors besides orange. There is a chap at the Bainbridge Farmer's Market selling purple carrots. By now, you ought to know that these colors are clues to bioflavonoids and antioxidant actions. Then, we need to look at another plant in this family, the primary one used for toxic metal chelating: cilantro. So, you see, Nature gives us what we need and we need to spend much more time watching Her and much less rearranging Her.

Okay, this has taken much longer to write than I anticipated and I want to go on to the herbs and food that will help us to deal with radiation. Keep in mind that very few people are thinking clearly about radiation. They are cycling around in their loops of fear instead of understanding that the problem with radiation is not that radionuclides emit gamma rays or particulates but that tissues are damaged when they surrender electrons to balance the energy that is otherwise irritating. If we supply what is needed for balance as well as what is needed to repair damaged tissue, we will probably be fine, but we ignore safety at our own peril. The time to start is now, not after symptoms develop.

Many blessings,

Ingrid