Smart meter or no power at all?

infowars/Nevada is supposedly one of those states with a smart meter ‘opt out’ policy. On the ground, however, the reality is a little different.

Mona Orkoulas lives in the mountains outside Las Vegas, Nevada, where she works in real estate. Like many Americans she has been impacted by the downturn in the economy and is struggling to make ends meet. Mona was born in the US and raised by an Egyptian/ Greek family. She has always paid her bills on time, and makes protecting her health a priority. For years Mona worked on humanitarian projects in the Middle East: drilling wells, and providing drinkable water and renewable power to remote villages. So she is familiar with the need for safe, reliable public services. Now, it turns out that she may need some humanitarian assistance herself — not in the developing world but right outside Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
The story starts when Nevada Energy (NVE) installed a ‘smart’ meter on Mona’s bedroom wall in January without permission, or even so much as a few days’ notice.
Mona reports that she does not have any prior history of medical issues. Shortly after NV Energy installed the smart meter, she started noticing an increase in her heart rate first thing in the morning and an elevated blood pressure. She felt fatigued, and started having headaches. A low grinding sound had started when the meter was installed and this made it difficult for Mona to sleep, or even be in her own home during the day. She tried different things to get rid of the symptoms, but nothing worked. Finally it dawned on her: the only thing which had changed in her life was the meter. When she started researching the issue, she realized she was not alone. Others were experiencing the same annoying humming grinding sound, the same adverse health impacts — and linking it to recent smart meter installations. She has amassed a whole binder of studies about the negative effects of EMF’s on health.
A letter from Mona’s doctor to NV Energy reads:

Neurological and cardiological findings may be associated with pulsed EMF… EEG, ECG, MRI and sleep study changes may be associated in some hypersensitive individuals to pulsed EMF. If multiple Smart meters are in use in her area, the possibility of constructive and destructive interference between the various EMF signals is a distinct possibility whose effects may be potentially more dangerous. I recommend that this patient be allowed to have NVE reinstall an analog meter at her house.

So she called the power company, expecting that they would remove the unsanctioned meter right away — or at least come out and do an analysis to find out what was causing the grinding noise. Months later, frustrated after at least six failed attempts to have NVE address the problem, Mona finally purchased a standard analog meter and had an electrician install it at her residence. She carefully photographed and recorded the readings on the old and new meter, to be sure that she paid for every kilowatt-hour used. She attempted to return the unwanted smart meter to NVE offices, but was turned away.
On August 6th, at about 10:30am, three men from Nevada Energy, armed with guns, arrived unannounced on her property, removed the analog meter from the socket, took her analog meter as well as the unauthorized smart meter she had removed, and left her living without electricity. One of the men identified himself as an investigator with the company and said that he was investigating her for “criminal tampering.”
She was in tears, visibly shaken by the encounter, and recalls asking the men, “Why are you on my property with guns?” Their response: “this is procedure Ma’am.” (If this has become the “procedure” then we need to act to stop this kind of utility intimidation and abuse.)
More than a month later, the lights are still off and Mona hasn’t budged. “They’re not putting that thing back on my house,” she says.
We asked Angel de Fazio, who has been on the front lines working to fight NVE’s smart meter program, what is going on here? Doesn’t Nevada have an ‘opt out’ choice?
Angel says “Nevada residents only won the right to be placed on the ‘delay list’, not a full ‘opt out’.”
In other words, if you wised up before the installation trucks came and still have your analog, NVE has a ‘delay list’ you can sign to ‘delay’ your installation date. But if the power company managed to sneak on your property and install a smart meter — even without permission — then your choice is a smart meter or no power at all, as Mona discovered. Even if you have a letter from your doctor, the power company apparently thinks it knows best what’s good for you.
While awareness about smart meter problems has been greater in states like California, Maine, and several other states, the “take a smart meter or lose your power” policy remains quietly in force in other states where awareness may not be as widespread. However, people in these states (like Mona) have had enough and are standing up to the utility industry in increasing numbers.
Angel tells Stop Smart Meters! that Nevada’s opt out proceeding has been a sham. “The Nevada PUC will be holding hearings on October 3rd-5th to determine which of the ‘non-transmitting’ meters they will trial to replace people’s analogs and how much they will charge for the ‘privilege’. Even the ‘right’ to have a non-transmitting meter is under threat.” In other words, there may be no official ‘opt out’ at all unless people organize and make more noise.
“NVE has conned the PUC into believing that only a certain number of people can opt out or their Federal Stimulus Grant will be in jeopardy. That is a lie,” Angel says.
NVE has been calling people on the ‘delay list’ who want to ‘opt out’ and repeatedly pressuring them to accept a smart meter. The company admitted that they lied to utility customers, telling them that the meters are federally mandated (which they are not), and telling people their power would be cut if they didn’t accept the meter (which they do not have the legal authority to do). Similar stories abound about other utilities including Southern California Edison, Detroit Edison, Duke Energy, and Oncor.
Now NVE is accusing Mona of tampering with their equipment, which she says is ridiculous, because she gave them plenty of opportunity to remove the problematic smart meter. “I had no intention of stealing electricity,” she says. “I just wanted the grinding noise and headaches to stop.”
California Penal code defines “tampering” as:

(carrying out)(1) specified acts with the intent to obtain utility serviceswithout paying the full charge, or with the intent to enable another person to do so, or with the intent to deprive any utility of its full lawful charges for utility services.”

Nevada laws are similar. Despite this, NVE claims that Mona “tampered” with the meter and are now charging her hundreds of dollars in fees and forcing her to obtain an expensive County inspection. For the last month, Mona has been ‘camping’ in her house, unable to use her appliances, lights or hot water. The laundry that was in the washing machine when they cut her power was locked in, and by the time she could get it out it was totally destroyed by mildew. The NVE agents came without warning.
Mona has borrowed a gas generator that she uses for an hour a day, but she’s worried that this is a fire hazard in the forest where she lives. The power cut has had a devastating effect on her life, she says. “My business has taken a nosedive since I have had to travel into town to access my e-mails. I can’t use my computer, fax machine, or any lights. I’m cooking over a camp stove in my living room.”
Back in December, Stop Smart Meters! raised more than $1000 from supporters like you to help families who had been cut off by PG&E try to have a decent Christmas. These donations helped people through a difficult time, and the outpouring of community support gave them strength to take back their power from the utility. In part because of the strength of these families who refused to accept a forced smart meter (or a ‘non-transmitting’ meter), we now have an official analog ‘opt out’ policy in California. It’s extortion for sure, but it’s better than the policies they still have in places like Nevada.
Mona doesn’t know what she’s going to do, and was even thinking for a time about allowing a smart meter back on her home — at least for the time being. “Winter comes in these mountains a month before everywhere else,” she says.
It’s hard to stomach the fact that in 2012 in the United States, men with guns from a private corporation and no warrant show up and threaten us for not accepting a hazardous device on our homes. As a community we must come together and reject these Gestapo tactics. Under the US Constitution, we have a right to be safe and sovereign in our homes. If you turn a blind eye while the rights of your friends and neighbors are being violated, they may be at yourhouse next.
We’ve been speaking with Mona and she doesn’t want to give in to NVE. She’s willing to rough it, to protect her health and to prove a point to the utility and to America — if that’s the way the utilities are going to behave, maybe we’re better off without them!
Mona says “Some of us eat organic foods, buy our nice bottled waters, exercise daily, but where is the point in all of this wellness when we are forced to have a radiation box attached to our homes?”

 

Sumatran quakes in April were part of tectonic plate breakup

A woman and her baby evacuate to higher ground after a strong earthquake in Sumatra in April. (Heri Juanda / Associated Press / April 11, 2012)

• 
• Planet Earth may be 4.5 billion years old, but that doesn't mean it can't serve up a shattering surprise now and again.

latimes/Such was the case on April 11 when two massive earthquakes erupted beneath the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, far from the usual danger zones. Now scientists say the seafloor ruptures are part of a long suspected, yet never before observed, event: the slow-motion splitting of a vast tectonic plate.
The first of the quakes, a magnitude 8.7, was 20 times more powerful than California's long anticipated "big one" and tore a complex network of faults deep in the ocean floor. The violence also triggered unusually large aftershocks thousands of miles away, including four off North America's western coast.
"It was jaw-dropping," said Thorne Lay, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. "It was like nothing we'd ever seen."
At first, Lay wondered whether the computer code he used to analyze earthquakes was wrong. Eventually, he and other scientists realized that they had documented the breakup of the Indo-Australian plate into two pieces, an epic process that began roughly 50 million years ago and will continue for tens of millions more. Lay and other scientists reported their findings online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Most great earthquakes occur along plate borders, where one plate dives beneath the adjoining plate and sinks deep into Earth's mantle, a process called subduction. The April 11 quakes, however, occurred in the middle of the plate and involved a number of strike-slip faults, meaning the ground on one side of the fault moves horizontally past ground on the other side.
Scientists say the 8.7 main shock broke four faults. The quake lasted 2 minutes and 40 seconds — most last just seconds — and was followed by a second main shock, of magnitude 8.2, two hours later.
Unlike the magnitude 9.1 temblor that struck in the same region on Dec. 26, 2004, and created a deadly tsunami, the April 11 quakes did not cause similar destruction. That's because horizontally moving strike-slip faults do not induce the massive, vertical displacement of water that thrust faults do on the borders of plates.
The type of interplate faults involved in the Sumatran quakes are the result of monumental forces, some of which drove the land mass of India into Asia millions of years ago and lifted the Himalayan Mountains. As the Indo-Australian plate continues to slide northwest, the western portion of the plate, where India is, has been grinding against and underneath Asia. But the eastern portion of the plate, which contains Australia, keeps on moving without the same obstruction. That difference creates squeezing pressure in the area where the quakes occurred.
The study authors say that over time, as more quakes occur and new ruptures appear, the cracks will eventually coalesce into a single fissure.
"This is part of the messy business of breaking up a plate," said University of Utah seismologist Keith Koper, senior author of one of the studies. "Most likely it will take thousands of similar large quakes for that to happen."
The quakes were also notable for triggering powerful aftershocks thousands of miles away. Though major quakes have been known to trigger aftershocks at great distance, they are usually less than 5.5 in magnitude. The April earthquakes triggered 11 aftershocks that measured 5.5 or greater in the six days that followed, including a magnitude 7. Remote shocks were felt 6,000 to 12,000 miles from the main quakes.
Fred Pollitz, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and lead author of one of the studies, said the quakes were extremely effective in transmitting seismic wave radiation around the world. Though Pollitz said the magnitude of the larger Sumatran quake is No. 10 on the list of quakes since 1900, no other temblor has triggered so many strong aftershocks so far away.
"It's the most powerful earthquake ever in terms of capability of putting stress on other fault zones around the world," he said.
Pollitz said the quakes were likely to teach seismologists about the physics of earthquakes, particularly those along strike-slip faults. That knowledge, he said, would certainly apply to California's San Andreas fault, which is also a strike-slip fault.
Lay said that the Sumatran quakes were most surprising in that they were completely unanticipated by seismologists and that he did not expect the event to repeat any time soon.

 

Immigration agents sue to stop Obama’s non-deportation policy

washingtontimes/Saying they’re fed up with being told they can’t do their jobs, 10 immigration agents on Thursday sued the Obama administration to try to halt the president’s new non-deportation policy and an earlier memo instructing them not to go after rank-and-file illegal immigrants.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Texas, adds a legal controversy to the political fight that has been brewing over President Obama’s immigration policies, which have steadily narrowed the range of immigrants the government is targeting for deportation.
The 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and deportation officers said Mr. Obama’s policies force them to choose between enforcing the law and being reprimanded by superiors, or listening to superiors and violating their own oaths of office and a 1996 law that requires them to put those who entered the country illegally into deportation proceedings.
Upping the ante, the agents are being represented by a high-profile lawyer, Kris W. Kobach, secretary of state in Kansas and the chief promoter of state immigration crackdowns such as Arizona’s tough law.
“ICE is at a point now where agents are being told to break federal law, they’re pretty much told that any illegal alien under age of 31 is going to be let go. You can imagine, these law enforcement officers are being put in a horrible position,” Mr. Kobach said.
Last week, at Mr. Obama’s direction, the Homeland Security Department began taking applications from those 30 years of age or younger who came to the U.S. as children and who have kept a fairly clean criminal record. They are being granted “deferred action,” which is an official notice they are not to be deported, and will be allowed to obtain work permits to stay and get jobs legally in the U.S.
ICE officials didn’t have an immediate comment on the lawsuit, but the Obama administration has repeatedly defended the legality of its actions.
At a House Judiciary Committee hearing in July, Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, warned of the possibility of a lawsuit and asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano if she would rescind the order before it came to that.
“Representative, I will not rescind it,” she replied. “It’s right on the law. It’s the right policy. It fits within our prosecutorial priorities. And although it came out of the Department of Homeland Security, let me say that president is foursquare behind it, embraces this policy as the right thing to do.”
She said the administration doesn’t have the ability to issue a stay of action for a broad category of people, but said the new policy is different because it invests decisions on a case-by-case basis with agents and officers, who are instructed not to pursue cases for those who meet the guidelines she laid out.
Ms. Napolitano said she’s acting in accordance with Supreme Court rulings that have established a wide latitude for discretion by the executive branch, and said federal law directs the administration to establish immigration enforcement priorities.
But in their 22-page complaint, the agents say they’ve been told in broad terms to ignore a whole class of illegal immigrants. They said they have been instructed not to bother asking for proof, but to take an illegal immigrant’s word that he would qualify for the president’s more liberal policy.
One of the instances the lawsuit cites is a now well-known case in El Paso where ICE Agent Samuel Martin picked up an illegal alien from the El Paso County jail. Agent Martin says the man tried to escape and, in the process, assaulted him and another agent — but when they got the man to ICE’s processing center agency supervisors said he had to be released under the new policies.
In that case, the issue wasn’t Mr. Obama’s recent policy on immigrants eligible under the so-called “Dream Act,” which stalled on Capitol Hill, but an earlier memo by ICE Director John Morton that said agents should focus on criminals and repeat-immigration offenders.
Chris Crane, an ICE deportation officer, president of the National ICE Council and one of those suing to stop the policy, said morale is low among rank-and-file employees at the agency.

Read more: Immigration agents sue to stop Obama's non-deportation policy - Washington Times

West Nile Virus on Track for Worst Year Ever

abc/The West Nile virus outbreak that has infected people in 38 states is on track to be the worst in history, a top official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told a news teleconference today.

The CDC has recorded 1,118 infected people with 41 deaths, but health officials say they expect reported cases to rise dramatically. The disease generally peaks in mid-August, and the new infections generally take a couple of weeks to show up in the tally.

"Thus, we expect many more cases to occur," said Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, director of the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases at the CDC.

Petersen said the number of people infected has risen substantially in the past few weeks. Just one month ago, a mere 29 cases had been detected. As of Tuesday, he said, 47 states had reported indications of the virus in humans or animals; only Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont have so far been spared. Human cases have been detected in 38 states.

The total, he said, is the highest number of West Nile virus cases reported to the CDC by this time in the summer since the disease was first detected in the United States in 1999. In short, this outbreak is on track to be the worst in the country's history.

The worst year on record is 2003, in which the country saw 9,862 cases of West Nile virus infection and 264 deaths.
He described more than half of these cases -- 56 percent -- as neuroinvasive, meaning the infection had spread to the brain in these patients.
While it is unclear why this year has been harder hit than others, many think it is possibly because of the weather.
"It is a very complicated ecological cycle," Petersen said. "Hot weather, we know from experiments in the laboratory, can increase the transmission of the virus."
It is possible that the mild winter and the hot summer also increase the number of mosquitoes, which spread the virus.

The health departments and blood banks are also making efforts to protect the blood supply. To date, the virus has been detected in the blood of 242 donors. Donated blood is routinely screened for West Nile virus.

Seventy-five percent of the cases have been reported from five states: Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Illinois. Texas appears to be the hardest hit, with 586 reported cases in total. The death toll so far in Texas is 21, but it appears that at least four additional deaths will soon be added to the total. Dallas County has been hardest hit, with a total of 270 cases and 11 deaths.

"We are talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of people whose lives will be changed," said Dr. David L. Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. "Texas has really been the center of this outbreak."

The totals are creeping closer to the 2003 figures in Texas, which were the worst ever for the state. In that year, Texas recorded 438 cases and 40 deaths statewide.

There are several components to the Texas government's response. It has been coordinating with local health departments to obtain as much data as possible and track the areas hardest hit. Additionally, a new lab test to detect the virus has been implemented, allowing doctors to get an answer in two days while previous tests took 10.

Initially, they were using ground sprays to kill the mosquitoes harboring the virus, but aerial spraying has since been added to the strategy. "It would have been impossible for us to cover the county with land-based spray," Lakey said.

To prevent spread of the disease, the CDC encourages the public to use insect repellent, wear long sleeves, replace or repair screens on windows and doors, empty standing water and to support local mosquito control.