By Yoichi Shimatsu with dedication by Jeff Rense
Exclusive to Rense

Today, recalling that high-risk journey on a brave horse, I’m glad it did not break a leg or even sustain a scratch through the world’s roughest terrain. So how is it, I’ve been wondering, that 30 stronger and bigger horses have broken their legs or suffered heart failure, and had to be put down at the Santa Anita Race Track in Los Angeles County? The only lame theory put forward so far is that unseasonable rainfall had somehow altered the texture of the track’s surface, sure, as if it never storms at Royal Ascot or Churchill Downs, for instance, that downpour at the recent Kentucky Derby, which resulted in the disqualification of the first-place winner.

When horses die for no apparent reason, I get emotionally upset due to my childhood upbringing in Southern California back in the days of singing cowboys like Roy Rodgers and his palomino, Trigger, that charming wife of his, Dale Evans and her mare Buttermilk, and Gene Autry and Champ, followed by the non-musical gunslingers Hopalong Cassidy and Topper, Josh Randall (Steve McQueen) and Ringo, and Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood) and Midnight. And there’s the Kimosabe sidekick, Tonto, and his pinto named White Feller, but let’s not ride in that direction, at least not now. Hi-Yo Silver, Away!

Cesium and Strontium

California may be the Bear Republic, but its foothills are the prime range of champion horses. Let me venture to suggest what’s been killing that symbol of the glorious West. Since around April 2011 when fallout from the Fukushima reactor meltdowns started amassing across North America, radioactivity levels have been surging. In the past eight years, humans especially babies and now children have been suffering a surge of cancer, due to cesium-137 in milk from dairy cattle grazing on contaminated pastures. Cesium mimics potassium, a vital mineral in muscle and tissue development, especially in the heart and brain, which accounts for some of the fallen horses at Santa Anita.

So why are racehorses suffering multiple broken bones? Strontium-90, is in the same chemical group as calcium in the Periodic Table of Elements. Tall grass, the stuff of hay, draws up from its roots dissolved calcium, which is why geographic regions rich in limestone like Ireland and Arabia produce large, strong and fast horses. Calcium-enriched bones provide the structural strength for a equine body to transfer and absorb the enormous impacts of galloping at full speed with a rider on its back.

Atoms of strontium-90, however, insinuate into the calcium-and-protein matrix of bone, which soon become porous due to bombardment by released neutrons and also heat damage from radiation. Osteoporosis, which may naturally take up to 40 years in a horse’s lifespan, is sped up by strontium to affect colts as young as two years of age. Bone loss is also exacerbated by the cesium-137, which affects the heart and therefore slows the blood circulation needed for growth and repair of bones and ligaments. Not only in California, horses worldwide are dying from ingestion of radioactivity, as can be seen in the Fukushima region as shown in a recent video I edited titled “The Man from Soma-han” posted at rense.com.

Why is the most-probable cause of the horse injuries and deaths never mentioned in the media? Under orders from the Governor’s office and the Federal Government, veterinarians and wildlife researchers throughout California are cooperating with the official cover-up, as seen in Santa Anita and also at the marine mammal rescue centers along the coast, where sea lions have been dying en masse. Losing one’s license to practice veterinary medicine, however, is a small sacrifice as compared with public’s right to know what has been transpiring and how to forestall the negative effects. If this appalling official silence goes unchallenged until Team USA and its equestrians are sent to their doom at next year’s summer Olympics in Tokyo, well, then Americans should just burn the Constitution on every street corner and then drink the Kool Aid because it’s over for freedom of expression, truth and justice.

Precipitation Delivers Radioactivity

The actual fact, as exposed in May by CBS Los Angeles, is that 60 horses, more than double the number reported, have died at Santa Anita in this spring’s racing season. Now let’s consider the environmental factors for this ongoing massacre. The racetrack is equidistant at 40 miles from the beaches north and south of the Los Angeles-Palos Verde bulge. The marine layer of fog and showers, moving eastward from the California Current is obviously lethal, as confirmed by radioactivity readings I’ve taken over the past several years, and as visible in the near-total destruction of sea-life in the tide pools.

The other major source of precipitation is from due north, in storms off the North Pacific Current that veer parallel to the Coastal Range. The massive forest fires across California have released accumulated radioactive particles from the forests into the atmosphere. What goes up must come down, and so rainfall has concentrated radioactivity around Santa Anita due to its location at the foot of Mount Wilson (1,741 meters) in the San Gabriel range. Two major creek networks deposit radioactive isotopes into dams and water-storage tanks directly above Santa Anita, where the city and racetrack draw their fresh-water supply. Horses consume vast amounts of water and grass, the latter spread out extensively across wide pastures, which is why they are among the first species killed off by radioactive fallout.

It is urgent now to truck in water from less contaminated regions for the endangered animals and for the human population at the edge of the San Gabriels. The other immediate step is block off all pasturage and haul in hay from less radioactive regions, possibly on the far side of the Sierra. When a prize horse can easily cost millions of dollars, safer food and water are a small price to pay. Then, the entire population of the state’s horse herd, cattle, goats and other pastoral animals needs to be tested for genetic damage, and the all-clear gene pool needs to protected from exposure and monitored, otherwise mutations will doom these species to extinction. Sadly, the same must be done for the human population.

Dying Canaries

The horses at Santa Anita are the canaries in the mine for the human population of Los Angeles and rest of the West Coast. What’s been killing the horses will soon result in mass deaths of children. The timeline since the Fukushima disaster is terribly troubling. The racehorses at Santa Anita are between 3-to-5 years of age, meaning they are the second-generation after the Fukushima meltdowns started eight years ago. Their mothers had minimally two years of ingestion and external exposure of radionucleotides, meaning as foals the fallen horses drank radioactive mare’s milk and then after weaning consumed nuclear-contaminated grass, hay and water. The human diet, likewise, is massively poisoned, as shown in the sudden deaths of athletic teenagers and young adults, which can only be explained by radioactivity in the diet along with external exposure outside.

Resist Now or Lose Everything

Before signing off, let me disclose my personal interest in the location of this equine tragedy. My paternal grandfather, a turn-of-century immigrant from Japan, once owned a farm in the San Gabriel mountains. The racetrack itself loomed large for my family since it served as an initial detention center for Japanese-Americans during the mass internment following Pearl Harbor. My father was already then in the US Army training to battle the Nazis in Europe, but one of his younger brothers initiated the first act of resistance against the War Relocation Authority (WRA), when he caught a Korean agent planted by the FBI. He was outraged that the federal government spied on citizens who had committed no crime or act of treason and, to the contrary, were willing to sacrifice their homes and livelihoods for the good of the nation. The WRA guards assailed Uncle Mas with billy clubs but he was strong as a bull and remained defiant in his American patriotism, even when they cunningly tried to brand him as an enemy national opposing the war effort. Meanwhile his older brother, my father, fought on the front lines in Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and crossed the Siegfried Line into Germany, and then continued on to Japan. Lesson clear: the government spins bald-faced lies, even when its self-serving treachery harms the national interest.

That spirit of unyielding resistance to the authoritarianism behind this purposeful deception of the American people, provides the Constitutional imperative to demand all the facts about the radioactivity threat to the United States of America. And let the nuclear energy corporations and their sponsors in the Department of Energy (DOE) be damned as traitors. Whether it be the ghost of Tom Mix or the Lone Ranger reincarnated, “politically correct” hypocritical California is in dire need of traditional Western heroes riding in with guns blazing at all the bad guys.

Dedication to a Heroine…

This article is dedicated to the late Dr. Patricia Doyle who was the first to warn, years ago on Rense Radio, of thoroughbred race horses facing the oncoming threat from the Fukushima-contaminated radioactive grass and hay and water they are fed. She was deeply saddened when her prediction came to pass, due to human neglect of the radioactivity threat, and these great equine athletes began to fall apart on the track. We are now starting to see increasing numbers of human athletes falling in similar fashion, a trend that will increase the days ahead. Dr. Doyle’s extraordinary contributions to public health and wisdom are sorely missed. Hers was a unique and exceptional voice on the world stage. – Jeff Rense